Anna wasn’t sure she believed him. Something about the Michelle story was strange. That day, when he hadn’t let her in … who had been in the apartment with him? Was Abel hiding his own mother? Protecting her? But from whom?
He let go of her hand. “Time to go home,” he said. “Take care of yourself, rose girl. They say it’s going to get even colder.”
He watched them ride away on their bikes, ride away in separate directions. And he remembered the day he had seen them together for the first time, in the student dining hall. He smiled. Their outlines seemed to radiate light, seemed to sparkle. Like something dipped into liquid gold. How long had it been since he’d been part of a story outlined in gold? Except when he read literature? Too long. He remembered one golden story, the last one. He remembered the smell of her hair, the intoxicating smell of cheap shampoo; he’d bought her nice, expensive shampoo and later missed the smell of the cheap one … he remembered talking about things she hadn’t understood, things that had meant too much to him … he remembered the music from the old, scratched LPs. Dancing in a tiny living room. An old sofa and dreams that had broken into pieces, later.
Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love …
And for a moment, he wished he were back there, young again, or younger—a little—so he could do everything over again and make different decisions … Faust. But no, no … no Gretchen questions … please, no.
And then, as they left the market square, Abel and Micha taking one street and Anna taking another, he saw their shadows. He hadn’t noticed them before; he’d only seen the bright shining gold … their shadows were long and black. Of course, that was because of the setting sun; it didn’t mean anything. But suddenly he felt afraid. Afraid for these two young people.
He didn’t have children. But if he had, he thought, they’d be Anna and Abel’s age now. And he’d worry about them. He wouldn’t sleep at night; he’d lie in bed, sleepless, worrying. He’d yell at them when they came home late, or maybe he wouldn’t; maybe he’d be silent and lose them in silence. It just wasn’t possible, he thought, to do right by your children.
Better to be alone.
Abel and Anna weren’t his children. They were only his students. Damn. Yet he still carried his fear for them home with him.
Who’s that? That’s the lighthouse keeper
.
The lighthouse keeper? Why was he a lighthouse keeper? Which lighthouse did he keep, and what was it that kept him there?
THAT NIGHT, ANNA SLEPT WITH THE FAIRY-TALE TELLER.
Not in reality. In her dreams. She lay in her bed, in the house of blue air, and dreamed a pocket of time into Abel’s fairy tale, a time pocket that would never be told. It was night on the deck of the green ship. The little queen was dreaming, too, between her polar bear skins in the cabin below, Mrs. Margaret in her arms, the asking man and the answering man, who had finally come in to get some sleep, beside her. And the lighthouse keeper. The lighthouse keeper slept in his boots and his glasses, which were pushed up into the graying hair on his head. The little queen was smiling in her sleep. Maybe she dreamed of the reality beyond her fairy tale, of turquoise ice cream on a snow-covered market square, of letters in the dirt on a window.
Anna was standing on the deck all alone, watching the stars. She found the Big Dipper and Ursa Major and Minor, but Ursa Minor looked like a dog, Ursa Major, like a wolf. She found Perseus, but he looked like a hunter with a long robe, and he wasn’t alone; there were five hunters altogether—four of them, she thought, are still on the black ship. Four of them are still following us. Four of them want to catch us before we reach the mainland. She stepped to the rail and saw the moonlight on the waves. Small pieces of ice danced within it. The sea would freeze. Maybe soon. From one of the waves, a head appeared, the head of the sea lion. She wanted to reach out her arms to pull him on board. And suddenly the sea lion lifted himself out of the water and flew across the waves in a spray of small drops; in the next instant, the wolf was standing next to Anna. But no, she was mistaken. It was the silver dog with the golden eyes—but no, no, it wasn’t the silver dog either. It was a human being. It was Abel, and yet, not Abel. His eyes were the wrong color; they were golden. He wore black, but not the black Böhse Onkelz sweatshirt she hated so much. He wore an ironed black shirt that looked strange on him; it was the kind of black shirt you wear to a funeral. She wanted to ask him whose funeral it was, and if he’d just come from it or was he headed to it later, but before she could ask, he had pulled her into his arms. It was like a weird ballet.
The white sails that the red hunter had torn to pieces with his rapier were still heaped on deck. Anna saw that someone had started to mend them, probably she herself, the rose girl, who had also made clothes for everyone. She felt the red velvet on her skin. She felt the red velvet slide down. She was naked. For a moment she stood like that, in the moonlight, but she wasn’t cold. She undid the buttons of his black shirt—it was easy, like removing one’s own clothes—and the black material slid down, too, and got entangled with the red velvet; black and red like night and blood. She looked at Abel. She tried to smile. She was a little afraid.
The round burn on his upper arm was shining like a second moon, or an eye.
“Don’t look at it,” he whispered, as he pulled her down onto the deck, between the white sails that closed around them like a tent. It was completely dark in that tent; there was nothing to be seen, only to be heard and to be felt and to be tasted.
“It’s a dream,” Anna whispered.
“It’s a time pocket in the fairy tale,” Abel whispered. “That is what you wished for, isn’t it?”
In a dream, in a fairy tale, nothing has to be explained, everything happens of its own accord. That night, Anna knew everything and understood everything and was familiar with everything; she thought of Gitta and had to laugh because Gitta didn’t understand anything—she only talked like she did. The tent made of sails became a cocoon and moved over the deck, rolling to and fro in the rhythm of the waves, an artwork by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, a package whose contents were no one’s business. Anna felt blood on her fingers; she wasn’t sure whose blood it was … maybe her own, maybe blood from the wound on Abel’s temple, or maybe just a memory—or the blood of a third person? No, she thought, there is nobody here. Just the two of us.
And the cocoon, the artwork, the tent rolled over the deck, rolled over the rail, and sank into the icy waters of the night ocean, with Anna and Abel inside it. The white cat, who was lying on deck, silently shook her head at the sight.
When Anna awoke, it was five o’clock in the morning, and she was out of breath. The white cat, she suddenly thought—wasn’t the white cat blind? She sat up in her bed and realized that she was shivering. Her bed seemed vast, and she was very alone in it.
• • •
“Check out our Polish peddler,” Gitta said on Monday, looking out the window. “If he keeps standing there, he’ll be covered in snow like a statue. I don’t get it. He’s been standing there since early morning; he wasn’t in French class—he’s just been standing out there with plugs in his ears.”