“The rest of the night the rose girl spent sewing. Her needle was a rose thorn she had taken from one of the dried branches. There was enough fabric to make warm clothes for all of them—for the rose girl and the little queen and the lighthouse keeper and Mrs. Margaret. Only the white cat, who constantly slept, didn’t need warm clothes. She was much too disinterested in the world to feel the cold.
“When the morning came, they stood on the deck of the ship, clad in red velvet, and the lighthouse keeper looked through his glasses and called out: ‘There! I can see two islands, very close! We can go ashore on one of them and stretch our legs a little!’
“The little queen wondered where he had found his glasses. Hadn’t she gone back to the ship alone, to get those glasses? And hadn’t she almost been caught by the red hunter because of it? She pushed the thought away and watched as the lighthouse keeper and the rose girl secured the ship’s lines to a pole on one of the islands. The island was full of people, waving and shouting questions: ‘Where does the moon come from?’ ‘What’s the meaning of life?’ ‘Why is it impossible to turn a yogurt container inside out to eat the last bits?’
“‘This,’ the sea lion explained, ‘is the island of questions, little queen.’
“The little queen jumped ashore, and the asking people caught her in their arms. But they didn’t set her down. They lifted her up, above their heads, and carried her away, all the while shouting more questions. In the end, they started shaking her impatiently in hopes she would answer.
“‘Where does someone go when he dies?’ ‘When does fear end?’ ‘Where are all the single socks that disappeared in the washing machine?’
“The little queen didn’t know the answers to any of their questions.
“‘Help me!’ the little queen cried fearfully. ‘They will tear me to pieces!’
“Then the silver-gray dog appeared between the asking people. He snapped left and right with his teeth, and the asking people stepped back. ‘Why is he doing that?’ they asked. ‘Where does he come from? Is he good or bad?’
“The silver-gray dog plucked the little queen from their arms, like a bird from the air. Suddenly, she was sitting on his back, and he was running toward the ship, running through the passage the asking people had opened for fear of his teeth. Soon, the little queen was back on board. On the island, there was a crowd of asking people, who were still stretching out their dozens of arms and shouting hundreds of questions.
“‘Cast off!’ the sea lion called from the waves. ‘Quick! Too many questions can be dangerous!’
“So they pulled away from shore and headed over to the second island. But one of the asking people had managed to jump aboard and climb over the rail. ‘Can I come with you?’ he asked. ‘Are you sailing toward the mainland? What does the mainland look like?’
“‘Shut up,’ the white cat said. ‘How is anyone supposed to sleep when you’re asking so many questions!’
“They now approached another island, where there was also a crowd of people waiting and waving. The travelers could see that they were shouting something, but their words didn’t reach the island of questions.
“‘I wouldn’t be too surprised,’ the lighthouse keeper said, ‘if that was the island of answers.’
“When they were halfway between the two islands, a whirlpool took hold of the ship, turning it around and around in a circle, and they all lost their balance and fell down onto the deck. Finally, the lighthouse keeper managed to steer the ship out of the whirlpool and back on course toward the second island. The sea lion stuck his head out of a wave. ‘That was the place,’ he said, ‘where all the shouted words fall into the water. They’re too weak to make it from shore to shore. I saw the words underwater, millions of them; they’re lying there on the bottom of the sea, a whole load of wrecked sentences, sentences that never reached their destination, questions from one side and answers from the other …’
“‘How sad!’ the little queen exclaimed. ‘A cemetery of words!’
“‘Some are swallowed by the fish,’ the sea lion said, ‘and they start sprouting the strangest things. Sunfish and electric eels and even crossopterygians …’
“‘I do hope the answering people allow us to go ashore for a bit,’ the little queen sighed. ‘I’d really like to walk on solid ground again, just to feel that something exists.’
“But the shore of the island of answers was packed with too many people, too, all of them wanting to get rid of their answers.
“‘Seven o’clock!’ someone called out.
“‘That adds up to 529.7!’ another one shouted.
“The rose girl pushed the asking man gently to the rail. ‘Here, you will find answers to your questions!’ she said.
“‘But how will I know the correct questions if there are so many answers in my head?’ the asking man asked, his eyes full of tears. And he ran into the cabin and hid between the polar bear skins.
“‘To do good!’ one of the answering people shouted without being asked.
“‘Boil it for three minutes, then let it simmer in the hot water for ten more minutes,’ another one answered.
“‘I don’t think we want to go ashore here,’ the sea lion said. ‘We’ll go ashore when we reach the mainland.’
“Before they sailed away from the island of answers, one of the answering people jumped aboard the ship. He went straight to the cabin, where the asking man was hiding, and for a while all you could hear were questions and answers shooting back and forth: ‘Is he telling the truth?’ ‘On the thirteenth of March.’ ‘Is he good or bad?’ ‘Beneath the beeches, where the anemones grow in spring.’ And then the cabin door flew open and both the asking man and the answering man came running out, in a state of confusion. One of them fled to the stern and the other to the bow, and they climbed over the rail and clung to the ship’s hull from the outside, like two figureheads. Obviously they hoped never to meet again.
“In the meantime, the green ship set course once more for the mainland. The shipmates laughed for a good while about the asking man and the answering man. Then they turned and noticed that the black ship was very close now. So close that they could clearly see the four dark figures aboard. And they stopped laughing.”
• • •
Abel looked into his cup, stirred the cold chocolate, and then looked out the window, as if his thoughts were still lost inside the story.
“Those glasses,” Micha said. “I guess the lighthouse keeper just had them in his pocket. That happens to a lot of people. It happens to my teacher. She isn’t even really old or anything, just kind of old—thirty or something—but she always forgets where she puts her glasses. By the way, she asked me again when she can talk to Mama. I wonder why. But, Abel … when the red hunter came aboard the ship … I let him in, didn’t I? I mean, in reality?”
Abel nodded. “You did.”
“And now … now I shouldn’t let anyone in, right?”
“That’s right.”
Micha nodded. “I didn’t let that man in,” she announced in triumph. “Yesterday. I forgot to tell you.”
Abel sat up straight. “Who didn’t you let in, Micha?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Micha replied, “since I didn’t let him in. He’d already come up the stairs, he was on the landing, talking to me through the door.”
“What did he say?” Anna asked.
Micha thought for a while. “That he’s from some kind of office. Something with a shell and a sister. He said it several times, real clear, as if he thought I was half-deaf. Wait … it started with so … shell … a sister office? I think he was from an office for shells and sisters. And he wanted to talk to Mama, too. I didn’t say anything; I was perfectly quiet, as if I wasn’t there at all.”
“That’s good, Micha,” Abel said.
“Possibly … possibly I did say hello, very quickly, at the beginning,” Micha murmured, and Anna laughed, although she really didn’t feel like laughing.