And then she did listen. It hadn’t been Gitta. It was Knaake’s voice.
“Anna,” he said. “I might be on my way to finding out something. Call me as soon as you can.”
She shook her head and pressed the send key to call him back. It would be better, she thought, to walk out of the room. Abel was still standing behind her … actually, it would be better not to call back at all. Maybe she didn’t want to know what he’d found out. Her heart was racing all of a sudden.
“Fischer?” a female voice barked into the phone. She flinched.
“I … I thought … I guess I have the wrong number.”
“Or you don’t,” the voice said, a no-nonsense voice without an ounce of friendliness to it. “This is Heinrich Knaake’s phone.”
“I … but … is he there?” Anna asked, confused. “Can I talk to him? I’m one of his students, and he left a message that I should call him …”
“He’s here all right. But you can’t talk to him. He’s in a coma. In the ICU. I’m the doctor.”
Anna closed her eyes and reopened them. “Excuse me?”
“The cell phone was in his jacket pocket. It’s a miracle it’s still working. Tell me, do you know who should be informed? Is there family?”
“No,” Anna answered and tried to swallow her confusion. “I … don’t know him that well. Not at all, to be honest. What … what happened?”
“He fell through the ice,” the no-nonsense doctor said. “They pulled him out of the river last night, in the city harbor. We don’t know how long he was in the water. He was lucky someone came along and saw him. The person who did, though, didn’t pull him out. He called the fire department from a pay phone. The fire department! Now that was a bright idea! And then he hightailed it, our anonymous caller.” She laughed a hard, rough laugh—it was really more of a cough than a laugh. If you worked in the ICU, Anna guessed, you got that kind of a laugh—about these kinds of things, anyway.
She was dizzy. She sat down in the chair at her desk.
“Can we see him?”
“If you don’t expect him to talk to you, then sure. We’re on Löffler Street. We’ll be here.” The doctor hung up. Probably she had a dozen other things to do.
Anna stared at the cell phone. She should have taken the call last night, she thought. Could she have somehow stopped him from falling through the ice? What on earth had he been doing on the ice in the city harbor anyway?
“Anna?” Abel asked. “What …?”
She looked at him. The room was still spinning around her. “The lighthouse keeper,” she said.
“Something has happened to the lighthouse keeper.”
The room was white like the snow outside, much too white. The beeping of the machines made it unreal. Micha groped for Anna’s hand. With her other hand, she held on to Abel. They hadn’t wanted to take her, but she’d insisted.
“I’m on the ice with him, don’t you remember?” she’d said. “With the lighthouse keeper! In the fairy tale!” Now, seeing him, in his white-snow bed, Micha shook her head in astonishment. “He’s not wearing skates,” she said. “We were skating, weren’t we?”
The no-nonsense doctor left them alone. She was busy with other patients. There was a mind-numbing smell of disinfectant and plastic.
They found three chairs, pulled them up to the bed, and sat down. The monitor above Knaake’s still form showed the narrow green line of his heartbeat. The face on the pillows was nearly as white as the pillows themselves. His eyes were closed. The sailor’s beard, which had turned him into a lighthouse keeper, seemed withered in a strange way. They sat there for a long time, silently.
“He liked Leonard Cohen,” Anna said finally. “Like Michelle. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” Abel said. “And I know that Michelle had a fling with a teacher a long time ago. A long, long time ago. And that he was a lot older than she was.”
“He told me he didn’t know her.”
Abel nodded. “Easy for him to say. Maybe he doesn’t remember her.” He leaned forward and touched the limp hand from which an IV emerged—or, rather, into which it disappeared. He touched the hand very gently. “I wanted to ask him. Point-blank. I should have done it. Now …”
“Ask him when he wakes up.”
Abel nodded. But in his eyes, the ice was melting. Anna saw the water in them, and she knew that he was thinking the same thing she was: Knaake might never wake up again. The doctor had shrugged. “What do you want from me? Percentages? Chances? It’s darn cold in the water out there. Darn cold.”
“The story,” Anna whispered. “Tell us how the story goes on. It’s important. The thirteenth of March is next Wednesday, and we’ve got to reach the mainland. I guess none of the crew slept well that night, bedded on the cold ice, with a traitor in their midst …”
“None of them slept well that night,” Abel repeated. “For they slept on the cold ice, with a traitor in their midst. A traitor, thought the rose girl, and a murderer—was it one and the same person? Once, in the middle of the night, she’d thought she’d heard the silver-gray dog whimper … very close.
“But in the morning, the silver-gray dog was nowhere to be found. The lighthouse keeper wasn’t there either. And a thaw had set in. There were fissures, crevices, and deep clefts in the ice now—holes, through which you could make out the water, like dark, lurking eyes.
“‘Oh no!’ whispered the little queen. ‘They haven’t fallen into one of these holes, have they?’ That was when they heard the cry of a bird, and a moment later a big gray seagull landed next to them. She started pecking the ice with her beak, over and over, as if she wanted to destroy it all by herself. No, the little queen thought, the gull is writing.
“‘I found him,’ the little queen read aloud. ‘The lighthouse keeper. He must have gone away, alone at night. Come. Hurry.’
“The seagull inclined her head and nodded, and only when she rose up into the air again did the little queen realize that her eyes were golden. They followed her over the ice till they reached one of the holes full of black water. In it, the lifeless body of the lighthouse keeper was floating. The rose girl helped the little queen pull him up onto the ice. But he still didn’t move. One of his fists was closed around something: a red thread.
“‘It was him!’ the little queen whispered. ‘He showed the cutter the way!’
“She looked up, and then she saw the dark figure standing at the top of the next snowdrift. The sharp ends of tools were sticking out of her coat pocket.
“The little queen looked back at the lighthouse keeper. A tear fell on his breast, a royal tear, and, all of a sudden, he started breathing again.
“‘But we can’t stay here!’ the rose girl urged. ‘We’ve got to go! Quick!’
“A short while later, they were racing away on their skates, faster than ever, around crevices and more holes. Behind them, the cutter was gliding through the torn white desert on her own skates. She had worked on them all night. She had made them from pure gold, and at their tips she had left some space to put the pieces of diamond. The cutter didn’t stop when she passed the body of the lighthouse keeper.
“Only the gray seagull hovered over him for a while before she stretched her wings and followed the small group of runaways.
“In the distance, a narrow green line had appeared. The mainland. It was close. But not yet close enough.”
Abel fell silent.
“So the lighthouse keeper was our traitor,” Anna said in a low voice.
Abel nodded. “He’s been following me. He thought I wouldn’t notice. It’s none of his business what I do at night … but I didn’t want anything to happen to him. Anna, I don’t know how he managed to fall through the ice. I … I wish he’d followed me last night. If he’d been where I was, he couldn’t have fallen through the ice … and if I’d been where he was, I could have pulled him out …”