“How can I be so happy,” she whispered, “when there’s a murderer walking free somewhere out there?”
“Go on being happy,” Abel said as he painted a circle on her cheek with some tomato sauce. “Maybe it’s contagious. I hope so.”
They ate the spaghetti at the small living room table, and Abel didn’t say anything when Micha decided that it was easier to eat it with her fingers. “Now there’s only one last thing to do before you go off to bed,” Abel finally said. “Remember what we wanted to do today?”
Micha twirled a blond strand of hair around her finger. “Cut my hair.” She produced a tragic sigh.
“Yep,” Abel said. “Today is hair-cutting day. If there weren’t any hair-cutting days, we’d all end up running around like wild people and nobody would recognize us anymore. Just imagine, you come to school one day and your teacher asks, ‘And who might this wild child be?’”
“She wouldn’t ask that,” Micha giggled. “Mrs. Milowicz only asks when she can talk to Mama, but she asks that all the time.”
“Soon,” Abel said. “Tell her, soon, Micha.”
Then he fetched sharp scissors and a comb from the little bathroom, and Anna watched as he combed Micha’s blond hair. “Snow hair,” he said. “Polar bear hair. When she runs around in the sun in summer, it turns even lighter … nearly white.”
Anna saw his hands slide through that snow hair, saw them handle the scissors. She imagined those hands in her own hair, imagined those hands doing things that had nothing to do with hair cutting. Tonight, she thought, tonight when everything’s all right, maybe … maybe I won’t go home tonight. Will he leave after Micha’s gone to bed? Does he have to meet someone in town? Or will he stay? Does he want what I want?
“Hold still,” Abel said. “You know these scissors are sharp. So sharp you could cut someone’s neck with them and kill him.” The scissor blades reflected the light of the ancient living room lamp hanging from the ceiling. Micha was fidgeting on the sofa, fed up with holding still. “Stop it!” she demanded. “You’re tickling me, and you’ve cut off enough! It’s my turn! Give the scissors to me …” She half-turned to snatch them from Abel, and that was when it happened: Abel’s hand slipped. He cried out; Micha screamed; Anna saw the glittering metal of the blades sail through the air and land on the floor. She looked at Abel’s fingers. There was blood on them.
“Fucking hell!” he shouted. “Micha, are you crazy? What was that about?”
“You cut my neck!” Micha cried out. “Now I’ll die and it’s your fault!”
Abel found a handkerchief and pressed it to the place where the blood came from. It was just a tiny cut on Micha’s neck, a scratch made by the scissor tip when it grazed her skin. It was nothing really, but Micha kept on crying, and Abel pulled her into his arms and hugged her while pressing the handkerchief against her neck.
Anna breathed again. Suddenly dizzy, she had to sit down in one of the armchairs. Nothing had happened, and still the whole scene seemed symbolic—blood on a person’s neck, blood like the blood from a bullet wound—and she thought of Rainer and of Sören Marinke in his ice-cold grave beneath the sand and snow.
“Just a tiny little pain,” he sang softly, “three days of heavy rain … three days of sunlight … everything will be all right …” He held her like a much smaller child, the child she’d once been.
She stopped crying and finally freed herself from his arms. “Am I still bleeding?”
“No,” Abel said. “The singing’s done the trick. It always does. You know that.”
Micha nodded. “When I was small,” she explained to Anna, trying to sound very grown-up, “and I fell and hurt my knees, we always sang that song.” She wiped the last tears from her face. “And it always, always stopped the bleeding, didn’t it? Can I get one of those teddy-bear Band-Aids?”
Abel lifted her up—another gesture from former times, from when she’d been smaller—and carried her to the bathroom to find the Band-Aid. Suddenly, Anna thought: she’s growing up. One day, she’ll be too big to be carried around like that. One day, he won’t be able to hold onto her, she’ll move on, and he’ll be left all alone. Maybe the responsibility for Micha is more of an anchor than a burden. A lifeboat. A wooden plank to hold onto so you don’t drown. She shook her head to rid it of these thoughts. She could hear Abel and Micha laughing in the bathroom; she heard water running, the accident with the scissors already forgotten, and everything was all right again, just as the song said. When Micha came back to the living room to say good night, she was wearing turquoise pajamas, stamped with a lopsided Mickey Mouse, who obviously had trouble focusing his eyes. She proudly showed Anna the green Band-Aid with the teddy bear, which was stuck to her neck. A trophy. And then the door of her room shut behind her, and Abel flopped down onto the sofa.
Anna put Magnus’s bottle of wine on the table. “Let’s drink away that scare.”
He nodded his head, went to the kitchen, and came back with a corkscrew and two water glasses. “Looks like we don’t have wineglasses.”
“I’d drink it from the bottle with straws,” she said. “But I do need some of it now.” She sat cross-legged in the armchair and held out her glass. The wine hadn’t turned to vinegar yet. Fortunately.
“Bad luck seems to really feel at home here lately,” Abel murmured. “Since Michelle left, it’s settled in like it wants to stay forever. It follows us out the door, sticks behind us like a dog. You can run as quickly as you want to, but it’s always quicker.” He picked something up that had fallen under the table and looked at it, a small thing resembling a shaver.
“Is that a … hair trimmer?” Anna asked doubtfully.
Abel nodded. “Hair-cutting day. I’m wondering what will happen when I switch this thing on.”
“Buzz cut,” Anna said.
He nodded again. And then Anna stood up and took the trimmer from his hands and set it aside. “If I promise not to stab and kill you with them, and to stop drinking till I’m done,” she began, “would you give me those scissors? I don’t want you to look like someone you’re not. Ever again.”
“Tell me … where’s that sweatshirt of mine?”
She reached into her backpack, grinning. “Linda washed it. I only realized when it was hanging on the line.”
He shook his head. “Just be careful, Anna Leemann,” he said seriously, “that you don’t try to change me into someone I’m not.” But he gave her the scissors anyway, and she stepped behind the sofa, took the comb, and started pulling it through his hair, like he’d done to Micha’s before. Snow hair, ice hair, was it white in summer, too? She couldn’t remember—she hadn’t looked at him once last summer. He’d been there, at school, but not existing. The sound of the cutting blades made her shiver.
“Magnus asked me to tell you something … from him,” she said. It was just as well he had to keep still now, she thought, because then he also had to listen to her. “My father … We’ve been talking about a few things. Not about everything, not about Sören Marinke, for example. But about the fact that your mother left … and that money isn’t exactly raining down from the sky. I know you don’t want charity. Don’t move, I’m dangerous with these scissors. But he said he’d like to offer you something. He’d lend you the money, and later, when you’ve finished school, when you have a job … you can pay him back. He’d be in no hurry to get the money. You could pay it back, slowly, no matter how long it took. It would be a loan without interest, not like a bank … that would be the advantage …”