He felt fear creeping up inside him. He didn’t really think it was her. For the last few days, he’d been the follower, the pursuer, the spy—unseen, he hoped, unheard, unnoticed. Now somebody had turned the tables. The vague figure behind him came closer. It was blocking his way back to shore, and he realized that he was walking toward the middle of the river. He reached the place where the ice was thin, or where he believed it to be thin. He stopped.
It didn’t make any sense to run away. He wanted to know now, to know who was following him. He wanted to talk to that person. He was still afraid, but he was sixty-three years old—it wasn’t as if he’d never been afraid before, and up to now he’d always overcome his fear. This wasn’t a deserted beach, after all; this was the city harbor, in the middle of town; the restaurant-ship was only a few hundred meters away, the street even less.
He turned again, wanting to wait for the figure to reach him, but it already had … it was standing directly in front of him. He wasn’t met by a face. It was the barrel of a pistol. Of course, he knew the face behind it, even in the dark … it wasn’t as dark as he’d thought. He heard himself breathe in sharply, in an onset of panic—and of surprise.
“You?”
“Of course,” the figure answered. “Didn’t you know? Haven’t you known for a long time?”
“I …” He took a step backward, and the thin ice creaked beneath his feet. Directly behind him, there must have been a frozen-over hole.
“You started snooping around,” the figure said. “Like a mediocre detective. It’s not good to want to know too much.”
“I …” He tried to think. What if he screamed? What if he slapped the weapon out of that hand and ran toward the shore? He wasn’t fast—he knew that—and he felt paralyzed, his legs frozen stiff, like the ice on the river. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t scream, either. His vocal cords were ice-cold.
“Why?” he heard himself whisper. “Why all this?”
“Did you ever love?”
He nodded. “I think I did …”
“Not like this maybe. If you really love, nothing and no one is allowed to get in the way. Do you understand that? I won’t allow anything to happen to her. This is not about me. It has never been about me. Turn around.”
“No,” he said. “And why?”
“Because I can’t look someone I shoot in the eye.”
He heard something like a suppressed sob, and at first he thought it was himself. But then he realized it was his opponent. And he understood one thing: he must not turn around. No matter what happened. There had to be a solution. A way to get out of this, unharmed. He didn’t feel hatred for the figure holding the pistol, only pity. Maybe this was somehow his fault … he should have understood sooner … he should have intervened …
“Turn around.”
He didn’t. He took a step back. He felt the thin ice give way beneath him. It happened quickly. One second he was standing on the river, and the next, there wasn’t anything beneath his feet. He didn’t feel the cold. The world just disappeared.
And somewhere in the city, someone was wandering the streets aimlessly, hands deep in the pockets of a jacket, white noise in his ears. Somewhere, far away from the river and much later. Somewhere and sometime. No saint.
And somewhere else—and we know where, don’t we?—someone was waiting on a restaurant-ship … in vain.
And somewhere, a silver-gray dog with golden eyes barked in his kennel. Maybe a boy with glasses heard him when he opened the gate. Perhaps, unable to sleep, he’d just gone for a walk.
And somewhere, on a leather sofa, two bodies were moving, entwined like a puzzle, like ice floes, and the light fell on dyed-black hair and on red hair, while in the ashtray, the butt of a joint slowly turned to ashes. How late was it? They hadn’t looked at the clock when they’d gotten back …
And somewhere, somewhere very close by, a vanished person lay in deep, exhausted sleep.
In the middle of the night, Anna woke up because an ice-cold body was pressing against her. She wasn’t sure if she was really awake or if she was dreaming. The body smelled of winter air and cigarettes and of something familiar, and for a moment she was stiff with fear. The body was much too close, and a memory of it being even closer flashed through her like lightning, painful and red.
“Abel?” she whispered. He didn’t answer. He was fully dressed and he was cold as snow.
She pushed the memory aside with all her force, rolled over on her side and put her arms around him. She tried to warm him, but she couldn’t. It was as if he would never, ever become warm again. The shutters shut out the night and created a new, denser night in the room, a kind of absolute night without up and down, right or left. She couldn’t see a thing, all she could do was feel. And she felt the torn cloak of love, the one she had made up to explain things to herself. It was real in that night; she could feel its fabric brush against her skin. She lifted the cloak and put it around the two of them to shut out the world and all reason. She buried her fingers in his hair, laid her hands on his ice-cold cheeks.
And then she heard a strange and frightening sound, like the whimpering of a dog, very low … it lasted only seconds, but it was such a desperate sound, such an infinitely helpless sound, that she shuddered. “Abel,” she said again. She wanted to ask him something, but she didn’t know what. She just held him tight, and, finally, she fell asleep, still holding him in her arms.
When she awoke in the morning, she was in bed alone. She walked over to the guest room barefoot. Abel and Micha were still asleep, together in one of the beds. She must have dreamed that encounter in the night. He’d never been outside.
““THE SNOW IS MELTING,” MAGNUS SAID AT BREAKFAST and pointed outside, where thick round drops were falling from the roof. “My robins will come back.”
The sun was shining on the snow. It would take some time for the snow to go, but it was a beginning.
Nobody said much at breakfast. It was a good kind of Saturday-morning sleepiness, Anna told herself. The silence didn’t mean anything. She went to the basement with Abel to take the dry clothes down from the line. Upstairs, they heard Micha trying to play the piano again.
“She’d stay if I’d let her,” Abel said, smiling. “She’s already forgotten me, hasn’t she?”
“Bullshit,” Anna said. “You’re a saint, remember?” And she hugged him with a shirt in her hand, which led to a weird kind of entanglement.
“Last night,” she whispered. “Did you leave the house?”
He hesitated. “Yes,” he answered finally. “Not for long, though. I had to … deliver something.”
“And did you come to me afterward … or did I dream that?”
He stroked her hair. “You dreamed that,” he said.
“It wasn’t a nice dream,” Anna whispered. “In my dream you were unhappy …”
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s take the laundry upstairs. We should get going, or Micha will start to think that we live here.”
“Wait,” she said on the stairs. “Did you actually think about it? About Magnus’s offer? The loan?”
“Magnus …” Abel murmured. “He’s the only reasonable person here. Do you realize that? He would rather see me gone for good. I wonder what conditions are attached to his offer. He’ll name them sooner or later. Maybe one is that I go really far away to study …”
“Nonsense,” Anna said, but she had a bad taste in her mouth as she said it.
When she gathered Abel’s books from her desk, her fingers felt heavy as lead. Stay, she wanted to say. Stay here, with Micha. Don’t ever leave again. Don’t ever go out at night again. Stay. You don’t have to work nights. Forget those calls, those contacts, those deliveries. Forget the white cat’s magic fur. Throw away this world of the night; fling it into the river … Her cell phone was still lying on her desk. She remembered the call she hadn’t taken yesterday and checked the mailbox, without really listening, while Abel was packing his backpack.