It was no one else.
It was Abel.
He didn’t say anything. He ground out his cigarette and stood there, waiting until she caught her breath. He looked away, out over the ice lit by the floodlight on the side wall of the café.
“If we lose each other, we’ll meet where it’s spring,” she said, finally. “How long have you been waiting for me out here?”
“Since Monday,” he replied. “I’ve been waiting every afternoon since Monday.”
“Since … Monday,” she repeated. “Every single afternoon?”
He nodded. “It was cold.”
“And … Micha?”
“She was with me the first two days. Sliding over the ice, watching other people ice-skating. Now she’s got this idea in her head that she needs ice skates, too. Today, she’s visiting a friend she knows from school. I … I didn’t let her go anywhere for a long time, because I was afraid somebody else would come for her and take her away … but first graders do have to visit their friends, don’t they? You can’t forbid it forever … I’m going to pick her up now. It’s just about time.”
He hadn’t looked at her while he spoke. His voice said, I’m talking about other things so that I don’t have to talk about this one thing. But to find each other again, Anna thought, they had to talk about it. They had to try at least.
“What happened …” she began.
“What happened can never be undone,” he said. “I wrote that to you. I don’t know if you’ve read the letters …”
She shook her head.
He nodded. “That’s good. They were stupid letters. Stupid words. Useless.” And at last he did look at her. There was snow in his eyebrows. He must have been waiting a very long time, here in the cold, where spring existed only behind the glass window of the café. “I don’t ask you to forgive me. What happened is unforgivable. It’s the worst … the worst of all things. It’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen.”
She found his hands and for a moment she pulled back from the touch, her body remembering the danger of touches. But then she took them in hers. He wasn’t wearing gloves. How many hours had he been here, waiting? How many ice-cold, endless hours?
“So let’s not forgive,” she whispered. “Nor forget. The night will remain there. Behind us.”
“But still you’re here.”
“But still I’m here.”
She opened her arms to him, but he shrank back. “I’d rather not,” he said. “You shouldn’t touch me.”
But she took his hands in hers again and held them for a long time, and the wind blew through the cloak of torn love and she was cold, very cold. They were cold together, inside all the impossibilities of the world. Behind the window of the café, the tulips were blooming in the dark.
“I didn’t tell anybody about that … night,” she said and felt how he nodded.
“I kind of concluded that from the fact that I’m still alive. Your father hasn’t killed me.”
Together, they wandered back. He pushed his bike along with one hand. She said nothing about Bertil, nothing about her insane walk in Ludwigsburg, nothing about the talk she’d had with Knaake, nothing about being followed. What she said, after a long time of silence, was, “Let’s go skating. Tomorrow, after school. With Micha.”
And then they got onto the bus, with their bikes, because it was still impossible to ride them. The bus moved so slowly that they could have walked. It didn’t matter. They stood there, holding their bikes, without talking, and Anna leaned against Abel very lightly. He didn’t draw back this time.
When he got out, she stayed in the bus, singing to herself silently. There was no pain in her any longer, nowhere. The cloak she had put back on had covered everything like snow.
“My God,” Linda said when Anna came in through the door, just in time for dinner. “You’re all wet. What happened?”
“Everything,” Anna answered, shaking her hair like a dog. “The worst and the best. I need to take a hot shower. And I need to practice the flute after dinner, and … Linda … can I ask you something? Something important?”
“Yes.” Linda sighed. “Whatever you want.”
“Okay,” Anna said. “Are my old ice skates still in the basement?”
THE ICE WAS SMOOTH AND WIDE, AND IT LAY HIDDEN under the snow like a secret thought.
Where the sea met the beach, the waves had piled the ice floes on top of each other, exactly as they had been piled on the opposite side of the bay, in Ludwigsburg, forming strange figures you couldn’t take apart, like a puzzle or a riddle. The three of them had climbed over the piles of ice floes to reach the plain, smooth ice behind them, but somehow Anna felt as if she were still standing between those surrealistic figures, in an inexplicable, multilayered chaos …
“Anna? Anna!” Micha said and pulled her sleeve. “Are you dreaming?”
“Yeah,” Anna replied, “I am … a dream about finding out how everything fits together.”
“But can we start now? You’ve got the skates with you, haven’t you? The ones I can wear?”
She nodded and kneeled down to open her backpack. Abel had walked ahead of them and was standing near the orange buoy, a relic from summer. He was looking out at the horizon. Maybe he had to be alone for a moment.
Anna thought about school while she helped Micha put on two pairs of socks and her old skates. She thought of the others’ faces. Of Bertil’s when he’d come into the student lounge and seen them sitting on the radiator in the corner, she and Abel, silent and together. He’d nodded and said, “Of course. Of course.” Then he’d turned on his heels and left. But in the doorway, he’d turned back and said, “Take good care of yourself, Anna Leemann. Think of the snowstorm and the shadow out in the woods. And don’t believe everything you hear …”
And Abel had looked at her, questioning, but she’d just shaken her head. She would tell him later. Maybe.
The strange thing was that Gitta had said something similar after Abel had disappeared into class. “Good to see the two of you together again,” she said. “Though it’s weird. Neither of you seems happy about it. Bertil told me he plucked you out of that snowstorm yesterday.”
“He found me because you told him that you’d seen me head out. That’s what he said anyway.”
Gitta had nodded. “Take care of yourself, Anna. And don’t believe everything you hear …”
There wasn’t literature class that day, but she’d passed Knaake in the corridor. “I’m on it,” he said walking by her, winking. “But I don’t know what I think yet. One shouldn’t believe everything one hears …”
Had they all gotten together to confuse her? Whom and what shouldn’t she believe?
“Now,” Micha said, closing the last plastic clasp. “With these skates, I’ll be so fast I’ll arrive at the mainland before the thirteenth of March. In the fairy tale, you know.” She held onto Anna’s arm, stood up, and started marching over the ice. Then she took bigger steps, and then she started to glide. Anna watched her glide away. She hadn’t known that Micha could skate; she’d figured she’d have to teach her. But the pink down jacket was all but flying now. Micha threw her arms up into the air and gave a scream of joy and made a pirouette without losing balance, like a true little queen.
“We don’t give children enough credit,” Anna murmured. “They can take perfect care of themselves. But what … what will happen on the thirteenth of March?”
She slowly walked over to Abel, and he looked surprised, too. “I didn’t know Micha knew how to skate.”
“What about you?” Anna asked. “Can you skate?” She bent down and got her own skates out of the backpack. And another pair that belonged to Magnus.
Abel shook his head. “I’ve never tried. I’m just gonna stand here and watch you two.”
“Oh no,” Anna said. “We’re not doing this without you.”