Hausfrau: A Novel

by Jill Alexander Essbaum

  Anna was asleep in the Hotel Allegra when he died.

  19

  STERBEN IS THE GERMAN VERB “TO DIE.” IT IS AN IRREGULAR verb. This makes sense; no two deaths are the same. Sterben’s participle changes vowels mid-word: a usual, expected e becomes an o’s wide-mouth surprise. Sterben forms its compound past with sein, which means “to be.” Er ist gestorben. Du bist gestorben. Ich bin gestorben. He and you and I. The present being becomes the passed.

  For dead is something you are. Forever and forever. You are dead and you’ll never be anything else.

  THE TAXICAB PULLED UP to the scene and Anna jumped out before the car fully stopped. She didn’t pay the fare. The driver yelled for her to come back, but when he saw the police, the women clumped in crying circles, and the tall man who stepped out from the crowd to grab hold of the woman who had leapt from his taxi, he guessed the rest. He turned the cab around and drove away. Anna craned to look past Bruno to the place in the road around which the policemen huddled. Bruno blocked her, even though at this point there was nothing left for her to see. Anna yelled out a half dozen breathless questions. Where is Victor? Where is Polly? Where is Charles?

  She didn’t need to ask; she knew who’d been hurt without being told. This is a mother’s talent. Hurt, she told herself. He’s hurt. That’s all. He’s okay. I will him to be okay. But the same mother’s talent knew that he wasn’t. When Bruno explained what had happened, Anna’s yelling folded seamlessly into howling. She buckled at the knees and went limp.

  Margrith stepped forward to steady her but Bruno shook his head. “Put your arms around my neck, Anna. That’s it. Try.” Bruno lifted her and carried her into the house like a new husband delivering his bride across the threshold of their first home. He brought her into the bedroom, laid her on the bed, sat down next to her, took her shaking hands inside his own, and told her everything. Each detail forced Anna’s body into a tighter ball. The driver’s name. The time of death. Which leg the impact broke. Bruno stroked her hair with his right hand and with his left, he rubbed his own tears back into their sockets. “We tried to call you.”

  Anna spoke to the pillow beneath her head. “My ringer was off. I forgot to turn it on.”

  Bruno didn’t respond. There was no reason to.

  I DREAM I AM at the Hauptbahnhof with two pregnant women, one quite young and the other a bit older. They deliver their babies at the same time, but the infant of the older woman either dies or was born dead to begin with. She shrugs and says, “It’s okay. I’ll figure something out.” I tell her I’m sorry but I don’t know what else to add. When I turn back, the younger woman is gone. She has left a note that says she needs to be home before her husband starts to worry. She has forgotten to take her baby. I get very upset and start to look for her but the older woman stops me and makes me give the baby to her. “See?” she says. “It all worked out.” I say I suppose it did.

  MARY CAME TWENTY MINUTES later and joined Anna and Bruno in the bedroom. The women looked at each other and both began wailing with despair. Bruno rose and stepped aside. Mary took his place on the bed and reached to Anna and pulled her into her soft, maternal body and rocked her back and forth as she cried into Anna’s hair, and as Anna, in turn, cried into Mary’s chest. A policeman stepped into the doorframe and motioned for Bruno to come outside with him. Mary nodded in a way that meant It is all right; I will take care of her. Then she looked back down to Anna and continued the rocking.

  “Hush. I have you.” Mary rubbed Anna’s back and smoothed her hair. She noticed Anna’s missing earring. “We’ll find it later,” she whispered and Anna began to sob with even more hysteria.

  “I’M TERRIFIED OF DEATH,” Anna said.

  “Why?” Doktor Messerli responded. “What use, fearing the inevitable?”

  But the fear is in the inevitability, Anna thought. “Do you believe in God?”

  “I believe in a benevolence around which the universe revolves.”

  Anna made a face. “Do you believe in Heaven?”

  Doktor Messerli avoided the question. “No one knows what happens after death. The dead. They so rarely come back.”

  Anna repeated herself. “I’m afraid of death.”

  “Death is transformation, Anna. That’s all.” This was not the concrete answer Anna longed for. “Death is the soul’s way of becoming something new. All living beings die. It’s just what we do. It is just how it is.”

  “I’m still frightened.”

  For the next several seconds, doctor and patient watched each other with solemnity, waiting for the other to speak first. Doktor Messerli interrupted the silence. “Death is change. Nothing more. Metamorphosis. A movement from one state of being into another. Like walking into a different room in your house, Anna. Does it help to think of it in those terms?” It didn’t. Doktor Messerli sighed. “Anna, I only know this: when it is your turn to die—my turn, anyone’s—when it is time for you to let go of one life and reach out for another, you will be left with no other choice but to hurl yourself willingly into the mother arms of transfiguration. It’s not an end. It’s a beginning.”

  ANNA HAD NOTHING TO do with planning the funeral. She was too unwell to be of any use. Services were held three days after the accident. It was a Saturday and the church—the church of which Charles’s own grandfather had been the pastor—was full. So many people came. All the Benzes’ friends, their family, the men and women Bruno worked with, the students in Anna’s German class, members of the church, townspeople, friends of Ursula—people Anna didn’t even know, had never even met—everyone came to the service. Charles’s teacher, Frau Kopp, was also there. Anna couldn’t bear to look her in the eye, and Frau Kopp was kind enough to avoid all direct gazes. Thank you, Anna said inside herself. Archie came to the funeral but slipped away before it was over. Anna had seen him sitting in the back when she’d turned in her seat to survey the church before the service began. His head was down and he was pretending to read the printed-out order of service. Anna’s stomach soured. She vowed to never lay eyes on him again. And she didn’t. Karl was there as well, of course. He was a friend of the family. The sight of Karl had no effect on Anna. She looked at him and felt an absence of feeling. A blank nothing. A nothing so blank that it was brutal. The parents of most of the children in Charles’s class came to the church, though many had left their children home. Tim and Mary also came alone. Anna understood. She wouldn’t have brought Charles to a funeral either, even a funeral for one of his friends. He is too young, too tender, Anna thought in present tense. She hadn’t yet begun to think of him as past.

  The Pfarrer conducted the service in Swiss German. The bells rang.

  The graveside service had been earlier in the day. Anna relied on Bruno and Ursula to hold her up as she cried into one of the handkerchiefs that Mary had given her for her birthday.

  Charles was cremated. They buried his urn in the graveyard’s children’s section.

  That was all Anna remembered of either service. After the funeral Bruno and Ursula and the rest of the mourners went to the Kirchgemeindehaus for a light lunch, coffee, and more tears. Anna didn’t follow them. Mary took her home, helped her out of her clothes, and put her into bed. Please don’t leave, Anna asked when Mary moved toward the bedroom door. Mary shook her head and said of course she wasn’t leaving but that she would be right back. A few minutes later, Mary returned with a tray of food that Anna had no interest in eating. Mary asked her to try her best to eat a little, reminding her gently that Victor and Polly would need her and that to be strong she could not starve herself. Anna took two bites of the sandwich and drank only one sip of the tea. Mary took the tray away and then returned. She sat in a rocking chair next to the bed and kept vigil over Anna for the rest of the day.

  Victor and Polly will need you, Anna. In the days after Charles’s death, Anna had caught herself forgetting she had two other children. Anna’s neighbor Monika babysat Polly Jean for several days, to Bruno and Anna and Ursula’s immed
iate relief. But they couldn’t shield Victor from the experience. He’d shared a room with Charles. He’d shared toys and parents. Victor’s usual sullenness had been replaced with a blank, baffled face that revealed a sadness that existed somewhere beyond the reach of comfort. At the church he sat between Anna and Bruno. They hadn’t allowed him at the burial. Victor didn’t need to see that. Anna hadn’t either.

  THE DAY BEFORE THE funeral the Benzes received, in their mailbox, Charles’s Bestattungsanzeige. Anna found it in Bruno’s nightstand drawer. She was hunting down painkillers; the crying had induced a migraine. Bruno had slipped on the ice last winter and sprained his back. Anna banked on at least one leftover pill.

  The announcement lay at the top of an assortment of other ephemera: a drawing Charles had done in school, a photograph of Anna holding Polly Jean, the card his mother had sent him on his last birthday. He had folded the announcement into careful quarters. When Anna opened it, she couldn’t read past her son’s name. It was a feeling more closely related to embarrassment than to grief. This is something I’m not meant to see. Anna returned the death announcement to its place in the drawer where Bruno kept his private things.

  Bruno never once asked where she had been the day Charles died.

  20

  TWICE IN THE LAST YEAR ANNA HAD BEEN IN THE CITY WHEN A woman (a different woman on each occasion) approached her with a clipboard and asked in Swiss German whether she had time to spare. The women were market researchers seeking ordinary people to participate in taste tests. In both instances, Anna had agreed (what else would she have done?) and each time, she followed the women into a nearby hotel’s conference room. For the first test, Anna was asked to sample and rate several coffees. Is it bitter? Can you describe its aroma? What would you say about the body of the coffee? Would you describe it as “full”? Anna hadn’t begun her German classes yet, and she and the market researcher struggled through the next twenty minutes, the woman miming questions with her hands, and Anna answering those questions with blinks and nods. For her troubles, Anna earned a jar of instant coffee and a large bag of assorted mini chocolates. Anna shoved the coffee to the back of the pantry but—over the next three days—ate the entire bag of chocolate herself. Why should I share? she thought. I’m the one who took the test. She considered it her reward for trying. Sometimes Anna tried. Sometimes she tried very, very hard.

  The second time Anna was approached (on the same street corner, no less) occurred after she’d completed the first month of her German class. This test ran far smoother than the previous one. Anna smiled through it, stumbling over only a few sentences and even fewer words. She vetted pickles that day and this time received a jar of cocktail onions, which, like the instant coffee, had also been pushed to the back of the pantry. There were no chocolates but that was okay. Her poise, the smoothness of speech—those were her reward.

  Anna related this story to Doktor Messerli a few days after the second, more successful encounter. Doktor Messerli asked what Anna thought it meant.

  Anna said she thought it meant that things were looking up.

  A WEEK AND A half after the accident Victor went back to school and Bruno returned to the bank. What else could either of them do? Bruno tackled his grief by throwing himself into work. At the bank he was focused, efficient, busy. At home he filled the extra hours with chores and fix-it projects. He painted the basement and replaced the rotting boards in the shed. He bought a dishwasher and installed it. It helped his hands to have something to do.

  They had tried making love the night before he went back to the office. It was a failure. Bruno lay behind Anna in their bed and locked his arms around her and pulled her toward his erection. He buried his face in her hair and braced his tottering body against his wife’s beautiful, brittle back and pulsed gently but with intention into her. “Please, Anna,” he said. “I need you. I need to be with you.” But Anna could not stop crying and that in turn made Bruno cry. He rolled away. Anna shrank into herself. For an hour Bruno stared at the ceiling as if it might move. Eventually they both fell into tandem, fretful sleeps.

  Anna stayed mostly in bed. Time froze. The house palled. She hadn’t bothered to ask for a refund for her German class, but she had no intention of returning. It felt pointless, rude to the memory of her son. As if she would have been able to concentrate. Grief consumed every minute. Anna was sick all the time. She ate only broth and toast. She grew thin. On walks she hallucinated birds. Black and erratic, they followed her up and back down the hill. They kept to the margins of her vision but daily the flock grew larger and less peripheral.

  Mary volunteered to withdraw from the class as well so that she could come to the Benzes’ every day and take care of Anna and Polly Jean (Monika could not, of course, watch Polly indefinitely). Anna talked Mary out of it, reasoning that whatever Mary learned she could, in turn, teach Anna once she felt better, even though Anna doubted she ever would. And Ursula would be coming over; Anna wouldn’t be alone. Mary accepted this and did as Anna suggested.

  When Victor came home from school he’d bring his snack into the living room and mother and son would sit together on the couch and watch television. Neither wanted to talk. Victor regressed. At night he sucked his thumb and once or twice he wet the bed and the programs he watched on TV were much too young for him. They were cartoons that Charles had liked. Silly children’s shows about red tractors or construction men or trains. On the couch Victor would lean tentatively into Anna as he watched them. Anna would run her fingers lightly through his hair.

  He is too timid to ask for comfort, Anna thought. He isn’t Charles.

  “DO YOU BELIEVE IN Hell?” Anna asked.

  “What’s this?” Stephen pulled Anna closer. It was a remarkably cold morning in early February. They spooned beneath an eiderdown comforter made for one.

  “Oh. Just fire stuff.” Anna smiled as she said it. Her voice was light, relaxed, and happy. It was all she wanted, to be pressed so tightly against him, seamless as the woodwork joinery of a Mennonite table.

  Stephen exhaled. “I don’t really think about it.”

  “Hell, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You aren’t religious.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Your parents?”

  Stephen stretched and shivered and checked his watch. It was time to get up. “Grandparents. Greek Orthodox.” He stood and yawned and threw on a pair of sweatpants as quickly as he could.

  “You’re Greek?” Anna had never thought to ask about his background.

  “Cypriot.”

  “Oh.” Anna didn’t have any more immediate questions.

  “Say, though …” Stephen turned back to the bed and Anna sat up. “Here’s something about fire you probably don’t know. And since you love these divagations …” He offered her a perfect replica of the smile he gave her the first time they met.

  “Tell me.” Anna loved it when he played along. She batted her eyes and indulged her voice a lilt.

  Stephen sat next to her on the edge of the bed. “So, in Jerusalem every Easter, a priest takes a couple of candles into the church they say is built on top of Jesus’s tomb.”

  “This is an Orthodox thing?”

  Stephen nodded yes as he continued. “He goes down into the crypt alone, says an ancient prayer, and when he comes back up the candles are lit.”

  “Okay. What’s the miracle?” Anna gave over to the lecture with attentive, schoolgirl glee.

  “Ah. The miracle is he’s frisked before he goes into the church to prove he isn’t hiding matches or a lighter in his robes. The tomb too. They check it. So where does it come from, the fire? That’s the mystery.”

  “Where does it come from?”

  “What’s said is a blue light appears out of a cloud that itself materializes out of empty air. The light and the cloud kind of dance around each other until they contract into a single, floating column of flame.” Stephen mimed how the elements might come together.


  “Who says?”

  “The priests. And from this flame he lights his candles.” Anna enjoyed these moderate theatrics. “And then he shares the flame and the people tremble with awe. It’s called Holy Fire. Because it comes from God.” Stephen yawned and stood up again. “So they say.”

  Anna was fascinated. “Have you seen it? Do you believe in the miracle?”

  “Anna, don’t be daft. There is no miracle. He’s hidden the matches somewhere.”

  Anna slouched forward. She’d hoped he would say Yes, I absolutely believe it. “But isn’t a blue flame unusual?”

  Stephen bent and kissed the back of her neck. “There are a dozen colors of fire. This is trick of light, of atmosphere. Group hysteria.”

  “So you don’t believe in Hell?”

  “Anna, I don’t even believe in Heaven.”

  IT WAS THE CLOSEST Anna came to a confession. A week after the funeral, a Saturday morning. Mary had come over as she had done every day since the accident. She brought a casserole, a tin of cinnamon tea cakes, another tin, this one filled with walnut fudge, and a bag of various other treats and snacks she thought either Anna or Bruno or Victor might enjoy. “Mary, this isn’t necessary,” Anna said. She knew she wouldn’t eat a bite of it. Mary waved her off and told her it made her happy to do it. It’s how she sublimates her pain, Anna finally realized. Mary put her grief to use. In that way she was as practical as Bruno or Ursula. But Mary had a tenderness they lacked. Is it because she’s Canadian? Anna wondered. No, it is because she’s Mary.