THE DAY THAT ANNA FOUND THE DOLL WAS THE first really cold day of winter. A blue day.
The sky was big and clear, like a glass dome over the town. On her bike, on her way to school, she decided she would ride to the beach at noon to see if the ocean was frozen at the edges. It would ice over-if not today, then in a few days.
The ice always came in February.
And she breathed in the winter air with childish anticipation, pushing her scarf away from her face, slipping her woolen hat off her dark hair, inhaling the cold until she felt drunk and dizzy.
She wondered which of the many boxes in the attic held her skates, and if it would snow, and if her skis were sitting in the basement. And if she could persuade Gitta to get out her heavy old sled, the one with the red stripe. Gitta would probably say they were too old, she thought.
My God, Gitta would say, do you want to make a complete fool of yourself? You're graduating this summer, little lamb. Anna smiled as she parked her bike at school. Gitta, who was only six months older, always called her "little lamb." But then Gitta behaved like a grown-up-or like someone who believed herself to be grown-up-unlike Anna. Gitta went out dancing on Friday nights. She'd been driving a scooter to school for two years and would trade it in for a car as soon as she had the money.
She wore black; she wore thongs; she slept with boys. Little lamb, we're almost eighteen…we've been old enough for a long, long time…shouldn't you think about growing up?
Gitta was leaning against the school wall now, talking to Hennes and smoking.
Anna joined them, still breathing hard from the ride, her breath forming clouds in the cold air.
"So," Hennes said, smiling, "it looks like you've started smoking after all."
Anna laughed and shook her head, "No. I don't have time to smoke."
"Good for you," Gitta said and put her arm around her friend's slender shoulders. "You start, you can't stop. It's hell, little lamb, remember that."
"No, seriously." Anna laughed. "I don't know when I'd find the time to smoke. There are so many other things to do."
Hennes nodded. "Like school, right?"
"Well," said Anna, "that too." And she knew Hennes didn't get what she meant, but that didn't matter. She couldn't explain to him that she needed to go to the beach to see if the sea had started to freeze. And that she'd been dreaming about Gitta's sled with the red stripe. He wouldn't have understood anyway. Gitta would make a show of not wanting to get the sled out, but then she would, finally. Gitta did understand. And as long as no one was watching, she'd go sledding with Anna and act like a five-year-old. She'd done it last winter…and every winter before that. While Hennes and the other kids at school were sitting at home studying.
"Time's up," said Hennes, glancing at his watch. "We should get going." He put out his cigarette, tilted his head back, and blew his red hair off his forehead. Golden, Anna decided. Red-gold. And she thought that Hennes probably practiced blowing hair from his forehead every morning, in front of the mirror. Hennes was perfect. He was tall, slender, athletic, smart; he'd spent his Christmas vacation snowboarding somewhere in Greenland…no, probably Norway. He had a "von" of nobility in his last name, a distinction he left out of his signature. That made him even more perfect. There were definitely good reasons for Gitta to hang out smoking with him. Gitta was always falling in love with somebody-and every third time, it was with Hennes.
Anna, however, could not stand the slightly ironic smile that he gave the world. Like the one he was giving now. Right now.
"Should we tell our Polish peddler?" he asked, nodding in the direction of the bike stands, where a figure in a green military jacket was hunched over, a black knit cap pulled low over his face, the plugs of an old Walkman in his ears. The cigarette in his bare hand had almost burned down. Anna wondered if he even noticed. Why hadn't he come over here to share a smoke with Gitta and Hennes?
"Tannatek!" Hennes called out. "Eight o'clock. You coming in with us?"
"Forget about it," said Gitta. "He can't hear you. He's in his own world. Let's go."
She turned to hurry after Hennes as he strode up the stairs to the glass front doors of the school, but Anna held her friend back.
"Listen…it's probably a silly question," she began, "but…"
"There are only silly questions," Gitta interrupted good-naturedly.
"Please," Anna said seriously, "explain the 'Polish peddler' to me."
Gitta glanced at the figure with the black knit cap. "Him? Nobody can explain him," she said. "Half the school's wondering why he came here in the eleventh grade. Isn't he in your literature class?"
"Explain his nickname to me," Anna insisted. "The Polish peddler? Why does everyone call him that?"
"Little lamb." Gitta sighed. "I've really gotta go. Mrs. Siederst?dt doesn't like people being late for class. And if you strain that clever little head of yours, you'll guess what our Polish friend sells. I'll give you a hint: it's not roses."
"Dope," Anna said and realized how ridiculous the word sounded when she said it. "Are you sure?"
"The whole school knows," Gitta replied. "Of course I'm sure." At the entrance she turned and winked. "His prices have gone up." Then she waved and disappeared through the glass doors.
Anna stayed outside. She felt stupid. She wanted to think about the old sled with the red stripe, but instead she thought "soap bubble." I live in a soap bubble. The whole school knows things I don't. But maybe I don't want to know them. And fine, I'll ride out to the beach by myself, without Gitta. I'm sick of being called "little lamb," because compared to her, I know what I want. It's much more childish to walk around in black clothes believing that they make you look smarter.
· · ·
And then, after sixth period, and a deadly boring biology class, she found the doll.
Later she often wondered what would have happened if she hadn't found it. Nothing, probably. Everything would have stayed as it was. Forever. Anna living inside her soap bubble, a beautiful and stubborn soap bubble. But does anything stay the same when you're almost eighteen? Of course it doesn't.
The older students had their own lounge, a small room cluttered with two old tables, too-small wooden chairs, old sofas, and an even older coffee maker that usually didn't work. Anna was the first to arrive at lunch break. She'd promised to wait there for Bertil, who wanted to copy her notes from their literature class. Bertil was an absentminded-professor type. Too busy thinking great thoughts behind his thick nerdy glasses to pay attention in class. Anna suspected that he lived inside his own soap bubble and that his was fogged up from the inside, like his glasses.
She'd never have found the doll if she hadn't been waiting for Bertil.
She'd never have found the doll if she hadn't taken all her stuff out of her backpack to search for the worksheet…and if a pencil hadn't rolled under the sofa in the process…and if…
She bent down to retrieve the pencil.
And there was the doll.
Lodged in the dust beneath the sofa, it lay among gum wrappers and paperclips. Anna tried to push the sofa away from the wall, but it was too heavy. Beneath its old cushions, it must be made of stone, a marble sofa, a sofa made of black holes of infinite weight. She lay down on the floor, reached out, gripped the doll, pulled it out. And for a moment, she was alone with her prize.
She sat on the floor in front of the sofa, holding the doll in her lap. As Anna looked at her, she seemed to look back. The doll was about as big as Anna's hand, lightweight, made of fabric. Her face, framed by two dark braids, was embroidered with a red mouth, a tiny nose, and two blue eyes. She was wearing a short dress with a faint pattern of blue flowers on a field of white, so pale that the flowers had nearly vanished, like a fading garden eaten up by time. The hem was ragged, as if someone had shortened it or torn a piece from it to use for some other purpose. The hand-stitched eyes were worn. As if they'd seen too much. They looked tired and a little afraid. Anna brushed the dust from the doll's hair with her fingers.
"Where did you come from?" she whispered. "What are you doing in this room? Who lost you here?"
She was still sitting on the floor when a group of students came rushing in, and, for a moment, she had the odd sensation that she should protect the doll from their eyes. Of course it was nonsense. As she stood, she held the doll up. "Does anybody know whose this is?" she asked, so loudly that the doll seemed to start at the sound. "I found it under the sofa. Has anybody lost it there?"
"Hey," Tim said. "That's my favorite doll. Man, I've been searching for her for days!"
"No, stupid, it's mine!" Hennes laughed. "I take her to bed with me every night! Can't sleep without her!"
"Hmm," Nicole said, nodding, "well, there are people who do it with dogs, why not with children's dolls?"
"Lemme see, maybe it's mine," J?rg said, taking the doll from Anna. "Ah, no, mine had pink panties. And look, this one doesn't have any panties at all…very unseemly."
"Give it to me!" someone shouted, and suddenly the doll was flying through the air. As Anna watched them toss the toy around, she laughed about it. Though something inside hurt. She clenched her fists. It was like she was six and this was her doll. Once more, she sensed fear in the worn blue eyes.
"Stop it!" she yelled. "Stop it! Now! She belongs to some little kid and you can't…what if she falls apart…she belongs to someone! You're behaving like you're in first grade!"
"It's the stress of finals," Tim said apologetically. But he didn't let go of the toy. "See if you can catch her," he challenged, and then he really sounded like he was six. Anna didn't catch the doll when he threw it again. Bertil did.
Bertil with his too-thick glasses. He gave her back to Anna, without saying a word. In silence, she gave him the worksheet he'd wanted to copy. And the others forgot about the doll.
"The janitor," Bertil said gently, before he left. "Maybe the janitor has a child…it's possible, isn't it?"
"It's possible," Anna said, smiling. "Thanks."
But as soon as he turned to go, she knew she shouldn't have smiled at him. Behind his glasses, he had pleading puppy-dog eyes, and she knew exactly what their expression meant.
When the others had gone-to their afternoon classes, to the coffeeshop, into town-when the student lounge was empty and quiet, Anna remained, sitting on the sofa, alone, with the doll perched on her knee. Outside, the day was still blue. The frost in the trees glittered like silver. Surely by now the ocean was freezing over.
She looked at the row of trees outside the window. She saw the branches, heavy with ice crystals, wave in the breeze-and then she caught sight of the figure perched on the radiator by the window. She jumped. Had he been there the whole time, sitting motionless?
It was Tannatek, the Polish peddler, and he was staring at her. Anna swallowed. He was still wearing the black knit cap, even indoors. Under his open military parka she could see the logo of B?hse Onkelz, the skinhead rock group, on his black sweatshirt. His eyes were blue.
At the moment, she couldn't remember his Christian name. She was all alone with him. And she was afraid. Her hands gripped the doll.
He cleared his throat. And then he said something surprising. "Be careful with her."
"What?" Anna asked, taken aback.
"You're holding her too tightly. Be careful with her," Tannatek repeated.
Anna let go of the doll, which fell to the floor. Tannatek shook his head. Then he got up, came over to Anna-she froze-and he bent over to retrieve the doll.
"It was me," he said. "I lost her. Understand?"
"No," Anna said honestly.
"Of course not." He looked at the doll for a moment; he was holding it-her-like a living being. He tucked her into his backpack and returned to the radiator. He pulled out a single cigarette, then, obviously remembering that he was not allowed to smoke in the lounge, shrugged and put it back in his bag.
Anna got up from the sofa. "Well," said Anna, her voice still sounding much too timid. "Well, if the doll is really yours…then I guess everything's fine. Then I can go now, can't I? No more classes for me anyway, not today."
Tannatek nodded. But Anna didn't go. She stood in the middle of the room as if something kept her there, some invisible bond…and this was one of the moments she couldn't explain later on-not to herself or to anyone else. What happened just happened.
She stood there until he had to say something.
"Thank you."
"Thank you for what?" she asked. She wanted an explanation. Any kind of explanation.
"Thank you for finding her," he said and nodded to his backpack, from which the hand of the doll seemed to be waving.
"Well, hmm, oh," said Anna. "I…" she tried to produce a laugh, the small, insignificant kind of laugh necessary to rescue a conversation in danger of drying up before it even starts.
"You look as if you were planning to rob a bank," she said, and when he looked puzzled, she continued, "with that hat, I mean."
"It's cold."
"In here?" Anna asked, and managed a smile in place of the insignificant laugh, although she wasn't sure it was convincing.
He was still looking at her. And then he peeled off the hat, very slowly, like a ritual. His hair was blond and tousled. Anna had forgotten it was blond. He'd been wearing the hat for a while-a month? Two? And before that he'd had a thug's buzz cut, but now his hair almost covered his ears.
"The doll, I figured…I figured she belonged to a little girl…," Anna began.
He nodded. "She does belong to a little girl." And suddenly he was the one to smile. "What did you think? That she's mine?"
The moment he smiled, Anna remembered his first name. Abel. Abel Tannatek. She'd seen it last year on some list.
"Well, whose is she?" Anna inquired. The great interrogator, Anna Leemann, she thought, who's asking too many questions, who's persistent and nosy.
"I've got a sister," said Abel. "She's six."
"And why…" Why are you carrying her doll around with you? And how did you manage to lose her under a sofa in the student lounge, the great interrogator Anna Leemann longed to ask. But then she let it be. Great interrogators aren't especially polite.
"Micha," said Abel. "Her name is Micha. She'll be glad to have her dolly back."
He glanced at his watch, stood up, and slung the backpack over his shoulder.
"I should get going."
"Yeah…me too," Anna said quickly.
Side by side, they stepped out into the blue, cold day, and Abel said, "I suppose you don't mind if I put my hat back on again?"
The frost on the trees glittered so brightly now one had to squint, and the puddles in the schoolyard reflected the sun-gleaming, glaring.
Everything had become brighter, almost dangerously bright.
A chatting, giggling group of ninth graders was gathered next to the bike rack. Anna watched as Abel unlocked his bike. She still had so many questions. She had to ask them now, quickly, before this conversation ended. Before Abel Tannatek turned back into the anonymous, hunched figure with the Walkman, back into the Polish peddler, whose nickname others had supplied and that he wore like a protective cover.
"Why didn't you say it was your sister's doll…when they were throwing it around?" she asked. "Why did you wait until everyone had left?"
He pulled his bike out backward, from the tangle of other bicycles. He was almost gone, almost somewhere else. Almost back in his own world. "They wouldn't have understood," he said. "And besides, it's nobody's business." Me included, Anna thought. Abel took the ancient Walkman out of the pocket of his old military jacket and untangled the wires. Wait! Anna longed to call.
"Do you really listen to the Onkelz?" she asked, looking at his sweatshirt.
He smiled again. "How old do you think I am? Twelve?"
"But the…the sweatshirt…"
"Inherited," he said. "It's warm. That's what matters."
He handed her an earplug. "White noise."
Anna heard nothing but a loud rustle. White noise, the sound emitted by a radio without reception.
"It helps keep people away," said Abel as he gently pulled the earplug from her ear and got on his bike. "In case I want to think."
And then he rode away. Anna stood there.
Everything had changed.
White noise.
She didn't ask Gitta for the old sled with the red stripe. She rode out to the beach by herself later, as it was getting dark. The beach at twilight was the best place to get her thoughts in order, to spread them out over the sand like pieces of cloth, to unfold and refold them, again and again.
It wasn't even a proper ocean. It was only a shallow bay, no more than several meters deep, nestled between the shore and the isle of Rügen. Once the water was frozen over, you could reach the island on foot.
Anna stood on the empty beach for a long time, gazing out over the water, which was beginning to get a skin of ice. The surface was so smooth now, it looked like the wooden floor at home, waxed and polished by time.
She thought about her "soap bubble" life. The house Anna and her parents lived in was old, its high-ceilinged rooms from another, more elegant, time. It was in a nice part of town, between other old houses that had been gray and derelict in times of socialism and were now restored and redecorated. Earlier today, when she'd arrived home from school, she had found herself looking at the house differently. It felt as if she were standing beneath its high ceilings with Abel Tannatek by her side. She looked at the huge bookshelves through his eyes, at the comfortable armchairs, the ancient exposed-wood beams in the kitchen, the artwork on the walls-black-and-white, modern. The fireplace in the living room, the winter branches in the elegant vase on the coffee table. Everything was beautiful, beautiful like a picture, untouchable and unreal in its beauty.
With Abel still next to her, she had climbed the wide, wooden staircase in the middle of the living room, up to her room, where a music stand was waiting for her next to the window. She tried to shake Abel Tannatek out of her head: his wool cap, his old military parka, his inherited sweatshirt, the ragged doll. She felt the weight of her flute in her hand. Even her flute was beautiful.
She caught herself trying to blow a different kind of sound from her instrument, a tuneless, atonal sound, something more scratchy and unruly: a white noise.
Outside her window, a single rose was in full winter bloom on the rosebush. It was so alone that it looked unbearably out of place, and Anna had to suppress the desire to pluck it…
Now, as she stood on the beach, the air above the sea had turned midnight blue. A fishing boat hung between ocean and sky. Anna smashed the thin layer of ice with the tip of her boot and heard the little cracks and the gurgling of the brine beneath. "He doesn't live in a house like mine," she whispered. "I know that for sure. I don't know how somebody like that lives. Differently."
And then she walked into the water until it seeped into her boot, until the wetness and the cold reached her skin. "I don't know anything!" she shouted at the sea. "Nothing at all!"
About what? asked the sea.
"About the world outside my soap bubble!" Anna cried. "I want to…I want…" She raised her hands, woolen, red-blue-patterned gloved hands, a gesture of helplessness, and let them drop again.
And the sea laughed, but it wasn't a friendly laugh. It was making fun of her. Do you think you could get to know somebody like Tannatek? it asked. Think of the sweatshirt. Are you sure you're not getting involved with a Nazi? Not everyone with a little sister is a nice guy. What is a nice guy, by the way? How do you define that? And does he even have a little sister? Maybe…
"Oh, be quiet, will you," Anna said, turning to walk back over the cold sand.
To her left, behind the beach, there was a big forest, deep and black. In spring there would be anemones blooming underneath the tall leafy-green beeches, but it would be a long, long time till then.
