“Of … of course, I know …” Bertil began.
“Shut up, Bertil,” Hennes said. And then, in a very loud and clear voice, continued, “Tannatek wants to leave now.”
Anna saw Abel’s eyes as he looked at Hennes. The blue in them had frozen, turned again into a solid block of ice.
“That’s what I think, too,” the bartender called out to Abel, whom he seemed to know. “Do me a favor, will you? I don’t feel like throwing you out.”
Abel took a deep breath, as if he wanted to say something, but then he turned around silently and left.
“Okay, and when he’s far enough away, you see to it that your friend gets home,” the bartender said to Hennes. “And when he’s slept off his hangover, tell him I don’t ever wanna see him in here again, understand?” Hennes took his hand from Bertil’s shoulder, and Bertil slumped into a chair. “Shit,” he mumbled. “Holy fucking shit.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said tonight,” Anna said. Seconds later, she was running down the street, the same street she had just walked along with Abel. She caught up with him at the end of it, a few yards from the market square.
“Abel!” she cried, reaching out. He swung round, and lifting up his hands, said defensively, “Don’t you dare touch me!”
“I … I didn’t want that to happen!” Anna despaired. “I didn’t know Bertil was … that he was so drunk and … I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t want things to end like that!”
“We’re not living in the Dark Ages,” Abel said. “Yeah, right. And not in India either. There’re no castes here. Ha.”
“But the bartender threw Bertil out, too, same as you! And he told us he doesn’t want to see him there again! Of course, there are no castes! All men are equal!”
“Do you ever listen to yourself when you’re talking such nonsense?” Abel asked.
“No,” Anna said. “Abel. Can’t we go somewhere, away from the others? Where there is nothing and no one? No people, no bars, no schoolyards, no tower blocks …”
He hesitated. Finally, he said: “The Elisenhain. The woods behind the village of Eldena. I promised Micha I’d take her there one day. She loves the woods when there is snow. We could go tomorrow.”
“When tomorrow? Where can I meet you?”
“The Russian store at the corner of the last street before the woods. At four.” He turned to go, and she heard him murmur, “I have to be fuckin’ out of my mind. Crazy.”
“Wait!” Anna called. “Where are you going now? Can’t I come with you?”
He turned back, and the look in his eyes was strange. “No, Anna,” he said. “Where I’m going now, you can’t come with me.”
Linda was sitting in the dark living room, pretending she wasn’t waiting up, when Anna got home.
“You can go to bed now,” Anna said and kissed her. “Sorry. I probably smell like a tobacco factory.”
“You’re shivering,” Linda said. “Didn’t you wear warm enough clothes?”
“I did,” Anna replied. “Even a borrowed sweatshirt. It’s not the cold. I think it’s rage.”
“At what?” Linda asked, but Anna just shrugged.
“Myself,” she said.
The questions came the next day, all the questions that hadn’t been asked the night before. A billion questions that pierced her like tiny sharp needles. Frauke shot most of them at her, but rumors are quick to spread, and the looks of classmates started to get under Anna’s skin. Anna Leemann, at night, in the Polish peddler’s sweatshirt? Is it true she’s dating him?
“Oh, how exciting,” Frauke said. “Tell us, Anna, what’s he like? I mean, deep down inside, under the military parka and the black sweatshirt and …” She giggled. “Underneath everything?”
Anna didn’t answer. She didn’t answer anybody. Strangely, Gitta didn’t say anything.
Abel was standing in the yard as always, in the freezing cold, his hands dug deep into his pockets. There was no fresh white snow today to cover the dirty old snow that wouldn’t melt.
During lunch break, Bertil approached Anna, obviously unsure of himself. “I wanted to apologize,” he said. “For last night. I mean, I can’t really remember what I said … but judging from what the others told me, it can’t have been too nice. I should have drunk less.”
“Children and drunk people always tell the truth,” Anna said.
“I’m … I’m sorry!” Bertil repeated, in despair. “Can’t you forgive me?”
“Not now,” Anna said. “And anyway, you’re asking the wrong person for forgiveness. You need to walk across the schoolyard to the bike stands to find the person you should apologize to.”
“No way.” Bertil shook his head. “No, Anna … you’re not really dating him, are you? Tell me it’s not true.”
Anna walked away without another word and went across the schoolyard herself; she was fed up with the talk—she was fed up with everyone, all of them. She didn’t give a shit what they thought, and she couldn’t do anything about the wall that Abel was building around himself out here. She stood next to him and asked, “White noise?”
He nodded.
“Please,” she said, “can I have one of your earplugs? The others are making me ill. I can’t listen to their questions anymore. Their stupid comments.”
He didn’t look at her. He handed her an earplug in silence. He seemed to have decided that it no longer made sense to pretend he didn’t know her. The white noise from the old Walkman enveloped them both; like a blanket of new snow, it draped itself over them, shutting out all the curious looks.
And the world under the blanket was—surprisingly, wonderfully—absolutely quiet.
• • •
At four o’clock in the afternoon, the sign in front of the Russian store at the corner of Hain Street swung to and fro in the wind, like it always did, alternately revealing its Russian name one side and the German translation on the other. Russian candies in their gold paper boxes were fading in the window, as were the Russian Matryoshka dolls, piled high behind the window blind. Farther along the street, three figures walked next to each other, toward the woods.
The beech trees towered against the winter sky in silence, their snow-covered branches like the work of fairies who had decorated the forest with a thousand tiny songbirds. The Elisenhain at four o’clock on a February afternoon seemed the most wonderful place in the world. A fairy-tale forest full of invisible stories, a storybook forest full of untold fairy tales, a forest full of fairylike tales …
“Bertil apologized,” Anna said. They turned onto the old street, the one with the uneven cobblestones, on which you could still see the hollow tracks made by horse carriages in olden times. But now the cobblestones were buried deep in the snow. Micha was running ahead, like she usually did, counting the footprints of rabbits and deer.
“Bertil,” Abel repeated. “Do me a favor, will you, and don’t mention that name for a while.”
“He’s a sad person in his own way,” Anna said. “He …”
“Is that it?” Abel asked bitterly. “Is that the reason you’re walking next to me? You’re collecting ‘sad’ people you feel sorry for and want to help?”
“You know very well why I’m here,” Anna said, stopping to look at him. And she thought that maybe she should be the one to initiate a second kiss, if only to be sure there’d actually be one. She was afraid he’d back away after everything that had happened last night, afraid he’d had a change of heart. She looked up at the beeches, hoping for a sign, but the towering trees remained silent.
So she threw her fear overboard and kissed him in spite of everything. And he didn’t back away, and she wondered if he had been waiting for her to make a move.
“Hey,” he asked after quite a while, a little out of breath, looking at the top button of her coat, which had come loose, “are you still wearing my sweatshirt? I didn’t notice at school.”