“I’m fine,” she replied and forced herself to finish her yogurt. “That article … I was just thinking … It reminds me of something we’ve been talking about at school … Can I have the paper?”
Magnus refolded the pages and passed them to her, almost knocking over a jar of jam in the process. “Don’t get into ‘a heated argument,’” he joked. “You don’t want it to end up ‘deadly.’”
“Ha-ha,” Anna answered shortly. “I gotta go.”
She couldn’t focus in her literature class that day. She watched Knaake opening and closing his mouth, but she didn’t hear what he was saying; it didn’t get through. It was in this class that she had studied Abel Tannatek, hoping to learn more about him. That seemed like ages ago.
Abel didn’t sleep in class this time. Anna saw how the others were looking at his face, at the black eye and thousand tiny cuts on his temple—a thousand small, single wounds, a field of dark, dried blood. He took his time gathering his things after class; he let the others go first, like he always did. Anna waited for him. She told Frauke that she had to talk to Knaake.
Knaake knew that she didn’t have to talk to him.
He looked from Abel to Anna and back, saw that they needed to talk, shrugged, and said that he was desperate for a cup of coffee; he’d leave the room open, come back later to lock it up.
Anna spread the newspaper on the table and pointed to the article: “Deadly Bar Brawl … Rainer Lierski (41)” … Abel put his hands on the table on either side of the newspaper and leaned over it, reading without looking at Anna. A big gray wolf, she thought, that had its paws to the left and right of its victim, on a ship’s railing—an instant before it kills that victim by breaking his neck with its long teeth.
“Shit,” he finally said, stepping back and covering his face with his hands, taking a deep breath. “Shit.”
When he moved his hands away from his face, she saw that he’d grown pale. “He’s dead,” he said.
Anna nodded.
“And I said I’d kill him.”
She nodded again.
“I would have done it,” Abel whispered. “I would have done it if he’d come back.”
“Did he come back?”
“No.” Abel shook his head. He went over to the window and looked down at the schoolyard on which more snow silently fell. Anna stood next to him. Fifth graders in colorful coats were making a sled run; a small group of smokers was standing near the bike stands—Anna saw Gitta. The lights in the classroom weren’t on. To the people outside, they were invisible, high in their tower.
“I wasn’t there,” Abel said. “I wish I could feel relief … he’s never gonna bother us again. But I wasn’t there.”
“At the Admiral?”
He nodded. He didn’t ask the question that needed to be asked. He didn’t ask, Do you believe me?
“You need an alibi,” Anna said. “I left your apartment on Saturday night, a little after midnight.”
“No,” Abel whispered and turned to her. “You didn’t. It was much earlier.”
“No, it was past midnight,” Anna insisted. “I remember how I looked at my watch and thought, it’s already twelve thirty … and if my parents imagined that I was home earlier, then I guess they were mistaken.”
He shook his head, slowly. “No,” he repeated. “No. My alibi is my business.”
And then he did something absolutely unexpected. He pulled her close and held her for a moment, so tight she thought she could feel every single bone in his body. And somewhere between them, she felt his heart beating, fast and nervous. Hunted. He let go of her before the hug became a real hug, left her standing there, and fled from the tower. Anna balled up the paper and threw it in the wastebasket.
When Linda came home that afternoon, Anna was sitting on a folding chair in the snow-covered garden, listening to the birds. She was wearing her winter coat but no hat, and white snow crystals, which the wind had brought down from the roof, were blooming in her dark hair. The snow had stopped falling at midday; the world was very quiet, apart from the twitter of the birds in the rosebushes.
Linda stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her daughter. Anna was sitting as motionless as a statue, a work of art someone had installed in the garden, like a birdbath maybe, a birdbath in the shape of a seated girl. Linda stepped forward and put a hand on the statue’s shoulder, and the statue jumped and turned back into a girl. And all the robins flew away.
“Have you been sitting here for a long time?” Linda asked.
“I don’t know,” Anna said, looking up. Her lips were blue from the cold. Even her eyebrows were laced with snow crystals.
“Come inside?” Linda asked. She didn’t command; she asked. “Have a cup of coffee with me. Tell me … if you want to … tell me, what happened.”
“Nothing,” Anna said. “Nothing has happened. I’m just thinking … I’m still thinking about that article … Chicago … the man who was beaten to death. I wonder … I wonder how furious you would have to be to kill someone and if you can do it with your fists or … or if one fist is enough, because you can’t use the other one … I wonder how somebody dies then … I mean, even if he’s deserved it …” She got up and followed Linda inside, and Linda took Anna’s coat off with gentle hands.
“You’re ice-cold,” she said. “Anna, this man … he didn’t die from a fistfight. It wasn’t in the paper but … well, I shouldn’t be telling you this, I guess.”
“What—what did he die from then? How come you …?”
Linda turned away and put the kettle on.
“The husband of a colleague of mine works in the forensics department. She told me. I don’t know why they didn’t give this information in the newspaper … maybe the police have their reasons for not saying … but I’ll tell you. He died instantly. He was shot.”
Anna grabbed her mother’s arm and saw the surprise in Linda’s eyes. “Shot? Are you sure?”
Linda nodded. “From behind, she said. A shot in the neck. He didn’t suffer. I just want you to know that.”
Anna looked at her watch. “Oh no. I almost forgot that I promised Gitta to … I have to go, I’m sorry,” she said. “Thanks for the coffee.”
Linda shook her head while Anna put her coat back on. “I haven’t even made the coffee.”
“Then go ahead and make it now,” Anna said. “I won’t be gone long.”
She knew Linda was standing at the window, watching her ride away, watching her teeter as her bike wheels slid in the snow that was turning to ice on the road. Linda had always wanted another child, but it hadn’t worked out. After Anna, all her pregnancies had dissolved into nothingness, each and every one of the possible children shifting from nearly being to not being—too soon for Linda to get used to a presence, but late enough to feel its loss. She feared for Anna, always had—from her first step—and Anna knew it. This made life difficult. Linda tried to conceal her fear, by not controlling Anna, by not asking her where she went, by not ordering her around, by saying she thought it was a great idea to go to England for a year, that it was great she wanted to study in a different city. Though if it had been up to Linda, she would have tucked Anna into a small pocket, lined with soft fabric, next to her heart, where she would be safe and warm and nothing would ever happen to her. Like Abel would have done with Micha, if he could have, Anna thought, surprised by this thought: Abel. You’re just like Linda.
She rang the doorbell three times before he opened. He was wearing a faded T-shirt and his hair was messy—messier than usual—as if he had just gotten out of bed or toweled himself off after showering. Two of the tiny cuts next to his eye had opened and were glistening, wet and red.