• • •

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,” Jörg 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 Böhse 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.