“Yeah,” Abel said. “I understand. But I’m not interested.”
“But you do go home with guys, don’t you?”
For a moment there was nothing but the broadband noise of the recording and the background music.
“It is,” Abel said finally, “a matter of price.”
At this, Gitta got up and ran out. Anna sat there completely motionless. She’d turned to stone; she couldn’t move. She didn’t understand, yet she understood everything.
Gitta knew she should have reacted more quickly. The sheer surprise had paralyzed her. Paralyzed her like Anna, or like Abel, who’d still been sitting, frozen, at his desk when she’d raced out. Never had Gitta run down the school corridors so fast, but she knew she wasn’t fast enough. Where was the damn secretary? Had she left Bertil alone with the microphone and walked out to do something else? That was the only possible explanation … Bertil was insane … insane … he was insane! Gitta forced herself to run even faster. Why didn’t anybody else do anything? Why was she the only one running? Why had no one tried to stop this announcement? It was reverberating from all the speakers in the school, and by this point everyone knew it had nothing whatsoever to do with the school play. She stumbled, recovered her balance, and raced up another flight of stairs, along another corridor …
“Bertil,” Abel’s voice said through the speakers, blurred by the bad recording. Cell phone, Gitta thought. Bertil recorded this with a cell phone. Inconspicuously, secretly. He’s not stupid.
“Bertil, I don’t know what it is you expect. I don’t do this on a daily basis. I’m not a … how do you call it? Not a professional. To find someone like that, someone who can … help you find out about yourself … show you stuff … for that, you’d have to go to Berlin or, I dunno, Rostock. Some bigger city. What I do is something that just … it happens when the opportunity arises. When someone asks me. And it’s usually older guys.”
“What are you?” Bertil asked. “Bi?”
“That’s none of your business,” Abel said. “But no. I’m one hundred percent straight.”
“I don’t get it … you only go with guys.”
“It’s a market. And it’s a matter of price. It’s not so hard to clench one’s teeth if it means money. Even though you probably wouldn’t understand that.” Abel’s voice was bitter like bile.
“So, okay, thanks,” Bertil said. “I’m as one hundred percent straight as you. What I just said was … not totally honest, I’m afraid. It was more of a test. I just wanted to know. I mean, I did know—I’ve been watching you, but I wanted to hear it from you.”
“So you’re happy now?” Abel asked. “You know, I almost felt sorry for you. Do we understand each other? You’re not gonna tell anybody about this conversation, right?”
“Of course not,” Bertil answered. “I’m not suicidal.”
But he obviously was, Gitta thought. Even though he’d kept his promise. Technically, he hadn’t spoken to anyone about this conversation. He’d just played the recording …
When Gitta flung open the door, he was standing next to the secretary’s desk, alone, the cell phone in one hand, leaning forward and speaking one last sentence into the microphone, “I just thought,” he said, “that somebody should tell Anna.”
Then Gitta’s fist landed in his face.
But it was too late. She knew it was much too late.
Anna turned. She was the last to turn. Everyone else had turned during Bertil’s announcement—they were all looking at Abel, every single one of them. The math teacher was standing at the blackboard and looking at him, too. She seemed absolutely helpless, as if she knew she had to say something. But what could she say?
Abel stood up and left. Without a word. He walked through the aisle between the desks, his eyes lowered to the floor. He closed the door behind him very quietly, and somewhere a second door closed behind him, the school door, possibly forever. He walked across the schoolyard. They saw him walk away, leave a world he’d never really been part of. They saw him pull his hat down low and get onto his bike. He forgot the Walkman’s earplugs. Maybe, Anna thought, he didn’t need them anymore; maybe the white noise had finally made it into his head.
She stuffed her books into her backpack and stood up. She felt that she was now the one the others were staring at. Some of them were whispering. Frauke threw her a glance so full of pity she could have thrown up. She covered her face with her hands, just for a moment, and took a deep breath. Then she walked down the aisle like Abel had, but she didn’t look down at the floor. She made herself look at the others, even at the teacher, at every single person in the room. Some of them averted their eyes. She walked upright, her head held high.
She walked through the corridors of the school with her head still held high, she left the building with her head held high, she pushed her bike through the slush in the schoolyard with her head held high. She rode out to Wieck, rode over the old bridge, rode along the harbor till she reached the mouth of the river. Near the café, she got off her bike and walked out to the pier with her head held high.
She saw that the ice was melting away. She saw that the bald coots were swimming in open water again, in the shipping channel, where the ice had first disappeared. She saw the dirty white swans. And suddenly, her legs gave way. She grabbed onto the white painted railing in order not to fall. She didn’t hold her head high anymore. She doubled up with something that wasn’t pain but was. Crouched down, she waited for the tears to come, but there weren’t any. She cried without tears.
She understood now. She understood so much.
She remembered how Abel had opened the door of the apartment, wearing a T-shirt, his hair tousled, and how he hadn’t let her in. She remembered the words he’d said. Can I come with you? No, Anna. Where I’m going now, you can’t come. I still have to go out … what I do is something that just … it happens when the opportunity arises. How often had the opportunity arisen since she’d known him? Which nights had he been standing in front of a bar, selling the fairy-tale fur of the white cats—and which nights had he been selling himself? Which mornings had he slept through literature class, with his head on his arms, because he’d gone with someone in the night, someone who’d paid the right price? She’d never thought that these things actually happened, not here, not in this tiny city. Maybe in Chicago, she heard Magnus say.
“Of all the ways to earn money,” she whispered. “Abel, why did it have to be that one? Because the opportunity arose? When? When did you start to clench your teeth and is it …? Is it a symbol? A symbol of how far you’d go for the little queen? How far you’d go across the ice? You know, there’ll come a point … a point at which the ice will break …”
She thought of the darkness in the boathouse. Of the broken flashlight. She started to understand what had happened that night. It had been a kind of revenge, revenge for all the clenching of teeth he’d had to do. Revenge taken on the wrong person.
Maybe she’d really been the first woman … that was an amazing idea.
When she closed her eyes now she saw images she didn’t want to see, images of cheap pornography. It’s usually older guys. Usually. Could you get used to anything? Did everything become a kind of routine in the end? She opened her eyes.
Gitta, she thought. Gitta had known, right from the beginning. Gitta had kept her mouth shut. But now … now the whole school knew. And when he’d left, it looked as if he’d left for good.
She had to find him.
Bertil landed on the floor between the big desk and the wall, trapped, and Gitta stood over him for a moment, looking down on him. There was something like a delicate smile on his face. Behind them, the door opened. Gitta looked up. The secretary, who should never have left in the first place, came back in and stood there, confused and a little frightened.
Gitta turned back to Bertil. “My God, you’re sick,” she said. “Absolutely sick … insane. The only person you’ve exposed and unmasked with this is yourself.”