“I did,” Anna murmured. “A few things … what?”
“We could go over the rest at my place,” Bertil said. “I’ll try to explain a few more things to you, if you can explain that last formula … you’re looking at me like I’m a ghost.”
“Yes,” Anna said. “Oh no. Shit. Bertil, I can’t come over today.”
He hunched his shoulders, which were as narrow as hers. He was too tall for those shoulders. Anna liked Bertil with his dark, unruly hair and thoughtful expressions, but today she had no time for him. Or math formulas.
“This was your idea,” he said. “You wanted to go over the formulas, not me.”
“I know, and I still do.” Math was one of the things she really didn’t understand, and she was too Anna Leemann to accept getting a bad grade on a big test without putting up a fight. “But, Bertil, not today. It’s just not going to work today. Something’s come up.”
Bertil pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Something or someone, Anna?” He looked so dead serious. As if he could read every single thought in her head, every sorrow.
“Somebody,” she said. Nonsense. He didn’t know her thoughts. She smiled at him. “My flute teacher. She called me during lunch to tell me that we have to move this week’s lesson to today. I forgot all about it till now.”
Bertil nodded. “Don’t forget to lower the saddle of your flute teacher’s bike,” he murmured. “It’s a quick release. Looked dangerous last time.”
Anna shook her head. “Bertil Hagemann,” she said. “Take a break from studying. You’re mixed up.” She knew she’d turned red. Red like a child caught doing something she shouldn’t. Of course, she knew whose bike Bertil was talking about.
Anna rode home first. She had the vague feeling that Bertil was somewhere nearby, watching her, even though she didn’t see him. She looked back a few times and told herself that she was getting paranoid. Why would Bertil follow her? Still, she’d put her backpack down in the hall at home and gone upstairs to get her flute and her notes. Paranoid. Absolutely. She rode in the direction of her flute teacher’s house for about two streets, though she wasn’t sure that Bertil even knew where her teacher lived. Paranoid. Stop it, will you! It was five minutes past five. She turned her bike onto Wolgaster Street and headed toward the water.
When she reached the turn to Wieck, it began to snow again. The café lay on the other side of the drawbridge, where the breakwater led out to sea. It was just at the end of the … no, not the cliff but the harbor arm, she thought. It looked a bit like a ship made of glass, that café, a ship full of chairs and tables and little lights on curious, bendable long necks. Anna hadn’t known it was even open in February, but the café was like a living being; it seemed to change its habits at any given time and without any reason. By the time Anna shook the snow from her hat, the big clock on the wall read five thirty. She had the sense that she was too late for the most important date of her life.
The fairy tale had started without her; the little queen had sailed on, aboard her green ship, without waiting for Anna. Maybe she had sailed away for good … There they were, sitting at the back of the café, or at the front, depending on your perspective; they sat at the stern of the glass ship, where only a glass wall and a little terrace outside separated the tables from the water. Micha’s pink jacket hung over her chair in an untidy heap, and she had put her hands around her cup as if to warm them. Abel and she were sitting opposite each other, leaning forward like conspirators, whispering. There were a lot of small tables with two chairs, but they had chosen one with a third chair, and the chair was empty. When Anna saw that, something began to sing inside her, and she forgot her worries and her guilty conscience over Bertil and math—she walked over to the empty chair, walked through the crowd of winter tourists, her feet barely touching the floor.
Abel and Micha looked up.
“See,” Micha said. “I told you she’d come.”
Abel nodded. “Anna,” he said, as if to make sure it was her and not somebody else.
“I … I hurried,” she said, “but I couldn’t get here earlier. Hi, Micha. Good afternoon, Mrs. Margaret.”
Mrs. Margaret was leaning against the sugar bowl, and Micha made her nod graciously.
“Mrs. Margaret has been very impatient,” Micha explained. “Can we start now?”
Anna sat down. They had been waiting for her. They had really been waiting for her.
“Abel said, if you’re not here by six, we start without you,” Micha said. “And he said that you weren’t coming anyway and that …”
“Micha,” Abel interrupted her, “do you want me to begin or not?”
And then Micha said, “begin,” and Anna said, “yes,” and somehow she managed to order a cup of tea by signaling the waitress—and Abel, the fairy-tale teller, opened the door to a wide blue sea and a green ship whose name was as yet unknown.
“The black ship with its black sails darkened the sky behind them. More and more, its darkness seemed to leak out into the blue.
“‘One day, the sun will disappear,’ the little queen said, and at that moment the lighthouse keeper called out from the crow’s nest high up on the mast, ‘I can see an island! Can’t properly see it, mind you—my glasses are fogged up …’
“Shortly after that, the little queen and Mrs. Margaret saw the island, too. And then—and then, they smelled it. All of a sudden, a smell from a thousand flowers in full bloom enveloped the ship. And the little queen’s diamond heart became light and happy. The black ship seemed to recede in the distance.
“When they were very close to the island, it started snowing. The lighthouse keeper had lit a pipe, but now the pipe wasn’t working anymore.
“‘It’s clogged with snowflakes …’ he said. ‘No, wait a second! It’s clogged with rose petals! It’s snowing rose petals!’
“He was right. They weren’t snowflakes falling onto the planks of the green ship but the fragile petals of a thousand roses—white, red, and pink. Soon they covered the whole deck, and the little queen walked over a soft carpet of them to clear the ropes.
“‘Little queen,’ the sea lion said, emerging from a wave, on which floated white petals instead of white foam. ‘Are you sure you want to go ashore here?’
“‘Of course!’ the little queen exclaimed. ‘Look how beautiful the island is! It’s full of rosebushes, and they are all in bloom! This island is much more beautiful than my small island!’
“The sea lion sighed. The little queen put Mrs. Margaret into her pocket, and she and the lighthouse keeper walked down the pier—a pier made of rosewood that led to a white beach. Behind them, the silver-gray dog with the golden eyes came out of the sea and shook the water from its fur. Then it sniffed the ground, gave three loud and angry barks, and returned to the sea.
“‘Seems he doesn’t like it here,’ the lighthouse keeper said.
“‘But I like it a lot!’ said the little queen, walking up the path on the other side of the beach with her bare feet. She passed under an arch of red roses, and the lighthouse keeper followed, smoking his unclogged pipe thoughtfully. Behind the arch made of roses, a group of people waited for them.
“‘Welcome to Rose Island,’ one of them said.
“‘We don’t get many visitors,’ another one added. ‘Who are you?’
“‘I am the little cliff queen,’ the little cliff queen said, ‘but my kingdom—or was it a queendom?—has sunk into the sea. This here, in my pocket, is Mrs. Margaret, but there isn’t a Mr. Margaret, and this is the lighthouse keeper, but his lighthouse no longer has light. And who are you?’
“‘We are the rose people,’ the rose people replied, and, actually, that was quite obvious. For all of them—men, women, and children—were clad in nothing but blossoming roses. Their skin was fair and their cheeks were a little rosy, too, and their hair was dark like the branches of the rosebushes. Their eyes were friendly, and they had dreamy expressions.