“‘Yes,’ the silver-gray dog said, and he bared his teeth when he said this. ‘Yes, they see to it that everything is in order on the seven seas. But what order means, what the rules are, what is right and what is wrong … that is decided by the ones paying the ocean riders. The red hunter has been paying them, the diamond trader has been paying them, and the gem cutter is paying them as well. But us, little queen, we have never paid them. What could we have paid them with? An apple from the garden on your island?’
“‘A splinter of the diamond,’ the white cat remarked, stifling a yawn, and the little queen started, frightened.
“‘But if we had paid them with a splinter of my heart, my heart would have a missing piece!’ she exclaimed. ‘And I …’
“‘Don’t worry, little queen,’ said the silver-gray dog. ‘Nobody’s going to break a splinter off your heart. For the ocean riders, traveling over the ice is forbidden, and fleeing is against their law. As long as the cutter doesn’t call them, you have nothing to fear. And she will only call them when she is absolutely sure that she’s following the right wanderers. When she’s caught up with us.’
“They skated on all day long. When evening came, the distance between the cutter and them had grown smaller. She wasn’t near enough yet, but just the same, she was much too near.
“‘Could I borrow the binoculars again, please?’ the rose girl asked, but the lighthouse keeper said that he had misplaced them somewhere and couldn’t find them.
“‘I’ve got pretty good eyes,’ the silver-gray dog growled. ‘I don’t need binoculars.’ He narrowed his golden eyes and stared a hole into the thickening dark. ‘All day long … I wasn’t sure whether I was only imagining it, but now I’m sure … red threads. We’re all wearing red coats. One of us has left red threads in the white snow to show the cutter the way. One of us is a traitor.’”
Abel fell silent.
“And? Who is it?” Micha asked, out of breath. He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“It can’t be the cat,” Micha said. “She doesn’t have a red coat, only her fur. Or do you think … she might have pulled some threads out of someone else’s coat? She’s probably got sharp claws … The silver-gray dog can’t be the traitor either, for the same reason. And he was the one to discover the thing …”
“The asking man and the answering man are too dumb,” Anna said. “And apart from that, they’re just made up.”
Abel lifted his arms. “But it’s all made up!”
“No,” said Anna. “No. That’s not true. There are only two people who could be the traitor. The lighthouse keeper … and the rose girl.”
Abel stood up. “We’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see what happens and how the story goes on. I can’t tell you yet. I guess it’s going to be sometime till our laundry is dry, even with the dryer … tell me, what would you be doing now … if we weren’t here?”
She thought. “I’m afraid I’d be studying. What would you be doing if you were at home?”
He smiled. “Studying, I’m afraid.”
“You can have my desk,” Anna said. “I’ll sit on the bed with my books. I do that a lot because it’s more comfortable … we should really be doing something to prepare for final exams. They won’t just take themselves. Not really anyway.”
“I’m really lucky that I don’t have finals,” said Micha. “I’ll go downstairs and see what Linda’s doing.”
“Linda,” Abel repeated when Micha had left to hop down the wooden stairs. “Linda. So she’s already on a first-name basis with your mother. Like she’s known her for years.”
“I think,” Anna said, “I think … Linda always wanted a second child, you know. Another child she’d watch grow up and keep safe …”
Piano notes drifted up from the living room, single notes without a real tune; someone was just seeing what happened if she touched the keys. And between the notes, you could hear Micha’s and Linda’s voices.
“Damn finals.” Anna gathered her books on her bed. For a moment she thought that there were a hundred things she’d prefer to be doing right now, but then, when she looked up from her book, she thought that, actually, everything was as it should be: Abel was sitting at her desk, his head bent over a different book, lost in what he was reading, and it looked as if he belonged there. They had slipped into a surreal kind of everyday life: Anna was on her bed, and he was at the desk; they were studying for exams, like a thousand other people in Germany were doing. She smiled and read on, marked lines, words, passages of text; she tried to build rooms in her brain, create drawers, file facts. A safe and absolutely normal occupation … miles away from a dark boathouse.
The piano downstairs had fallen silent; she heard the clatter of baking trays, and the smell of fresh cookies crept to her nose. Linda and Micha were working together in the kitchen.
At some point, Anna got up and walked over to the desk, stood behind Abel, put her hand on his back. He looked up and smiled.
“When I say to the moment flying …” she whispered the words from Faust, putting her arms around him, “… linger a while—thou art so fair.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you still stuck on Faust? I’ve made my way to Herta Müller …”
“Everything I own,” Anna said, quoting, “I carry with me …” She looked at her arms still wrapped around him. “But it’s true, you know,” she added.
He understood, but he laughed away the romance of the moment. “You better not try to carry me,” he said. “I might be a bit heavy …”
“You could take a one-minute break from Herta and kiss me.”
“I could. But after that I’ve got to read on. Final exams …”
“Sure. Final exams …”
Later, Abel took another break, a longer one, but not to kiss Anna. He went outside to help Magnus shovel the driveway. She stood at the bathroom window, watching. It was odd to see them together: Magnus’s broad back in his ski jacket, Abel in his worn, old military parka, which was not made for this weather. They were shoveling equally fast, but not too fast. They weren’t in a hurry; this was not a competition. For the first time in days, Anna thought of Abel’s right hand. He was using it in a normal way again. So Rainer hadn’t broken the joint after all. Anna saw that they were talking. She wondered what about. Maybe about Magnus’s offer of a loan. Maybe about the snow.
“Linger a while,” she repeated, whispering, “thou art so fair …”
And she imagined how things could be later. It was stupid, but the picture just appeared in her mind: she saw Abel and Magnus shoveling snow together … in twenty years, in thirty. Magnus had grown old, his broad back still strong but bent from time, his hair nearly white at the temples. And Abel … Abel was a different Abel, an adult one, one who was absolutely self-confident and didn’t let his eyes dart around the dining room at lunch, as if he were caught in a trap.
“Nonsense,” she whispered. “Thirty years? You don’t stay with the person you meet at seventeen … What kind of fairy tale are you living in, Anna Leemann?”
And still the picture seemed right.
“Look at that,” Linda said, stepping up behind her. “They do get along, after all.”
“There are fresh cookies!” Micha said and held a plate out to Anna. “And we have to stay. Linda just realized that the dryer is broken! Totally broken! We’ve already hung the clothes on the line in the basement … I’ve been standing on a chair helping … and tomorrow, everything will be dry for sure, but tonight we’re allowed to sleep here. What do you think of that?”
“I don’t know,” Anna said slowly as she turned toward Linda, “what Abel will think of that. Is the dryer really broken?”
Linda shrugged and nodded. Anna went down to the basement and tried to turn it on herself, but Linda and Micha were right. The machine was silent; it didn’t work. Anna unplugged the cord and plugged it in again—without success.