Bruno read this in her posture. “No.” He interrupted before she even spoke. It was a sad, smooth no. “You have to leave.”
Anna heard but didn’t hear.
“You have to leave now.” Bruno was calm and sad. His face was red, his expression complicated. He looked as if he’d cried all night. Anna turned her own face away. Next to the table was a small overnight bag that Anna only ever used when she’d be gone a day or two. She’d brought it to the hospital when the children were born. She hadn’t gone anywhere since. It was zipped closed. Bruno had packed it.
“Oh.”
Bruno took a step toward the bag and picked it up and handed it to his wife. It was light. He doesn’t want me gone for long. That’s what this means. For nine years Anna had fought against calling this house home. That morning the very last thing she wanted to do was to leave it. Irony of ironies. Neither Bruno nor Anna knew what to say next. Anna’s window of apology had closed, and it seemed pointless to ask him to narrate his side of the story, from the general suspicions to the absolute facts. Anna broke the strained silence. “Are we … done?” “Done” wasn’t really the right word. But it was the only one she could find.
Bruno answered truthfully. “I don’t know.” His voice was clothed in neutrality.
“The children?” Victor must have gone to school straight from Ursula’s. But Polly Jean.
Bruno shook his head. “They don’t need to see your face.”
“Where will I go?”
Bruno sighed in a that’s-for-you-to-decide way. It was a candid reaction. There was no flippancy here. The paradox of Bruno’s frankness confused her. Everything about this moment was yielding and humane. This was the Bruno she’d wanted all along. But she had to betray him to get it.
“Oh,” she said again but with less surety.
A second time Bruno cleared his throat. “Now, Anna.” He moved toward her, put his hand on her shoulder, and guided her with slow ceremony to the door. He helped her with her coat and handed Anna her purse. And then he took her busted face cautiously in his hands and leaned into her and gave her a kiss. It was tender, meaningful, and it overbrimmed with grief. Anna didn’t—somehow couldn’t—kiss back. “Goodbye, Anna.” His farewell landed with a heavy thud. A steel door closed behind it. He said he didn’t know if they were done. But Anna knew. The kiss told her.
They were.
Bruno stepped back into the house and shut the door without locking it. He didn’t look back.
GERMAN NOUNS ARE CAPITALIZED. WHY? I don’t know. They just are. Zürich is not the capital of Switzerland, Bern is. Bern and burn are near homophones. Capital also means money. Bruno works with money. You can’t write Bruno without a capital B. The German alphabet has an extra letter called an Eszett. It looks like a capital B and sometimes it replaces a double s. In 1945 Germany’s SS was banned, though this hardly has to do with grammar. Or does it? What, after all, is a grammar but a governing law? Order upon order, rule upon rule. Switzerland is so clean it even launders its money. Knock knock. Who’s there? Alpine. Alpine who? When you’re gone, Alpine for you. Said Wagner of Zürich’s Grossmünster’s towers: They look like peppermills. Wagner left Zürich when he fell in love with a woman who wasn’t his wife. The Nazis loved Wagner. The Zürich Polizei wear their rifles like Gestapo. The standard issue Swiss Army rifle is a SIG SG 550. Dietlikon’s standard, its coat of arms, is a six-point star on a banner of blue. The German word for star is der Stern. A star is stern, a moon is strict, the sky is serious business. Heaven is often unkind. You should never rely on the kindness of strangers. The kind-ness of strangers. They come in all sorts, like licorice. Das Kind. The German word for child.
I miss them all. All of them. Every one.
ANNA STOOD IN THE street for a dumbfounded minute before walking away from the house and toward the Bahnhof. The neighbors had left, the postman had moved on, and Anna didn’t know where to go. But all journeys begin at the train station. She arrived at the Bahnhof just past 7:45. She’d missed the S3 by two minutes. Six more minutes and she’d catch the S8. She’d been awake for less than an hour. This had all transpired in less time than it takes for a minute hand to circumnavigate the face of a clock.
What a funny thing time is. It’s mutable. It speeds and it slows. It retreats and it attacks. But Swiss clocks boast the world’s most unflinching precision. Incomparable accuracy. Exactness. Exactness is a form of truth. But nothing is exactly true. Truth, like time, is mutable. Both are relative. Both are told. When it’s 7:45 A.M. in Zürich, it’s 2:45 P.M. in Tokyo. Each city lives in its own hour. Gleich und nicht gleich. The same and yet not. The earth turns on an earth-sized axis. Everything oscillates. No one and nothing’s exempt. The planet spins at an angled pitch. Therefore each day lasts as long as each day lasts. Hours are arbitrary. A minute may endure a thousand years. And an event can occur in an instant.
Anna rode to the Hauptbahnhof during morning rush. She stood near the doors and focused on looking through the window at the landscape. She kept her face angled to the ground. She didn’t want to show it. Anna hadn’t put on any makeup. The bruises weren’t full blown, but if anyone cared to examine her, he’d find them. But the safest thing about a city is how inscrutable you become when you step into it.
She got off the train at platform 53 and walked almost a half kilometer down the Sihl before she realized she’d left both the small suitcase Bruno had packed for her and her purse on the train. She stuffed her hands into her coat pockets. All she had was her cell phone. Now what? Anna’s purse and suitcase were now halfway to Pfäffikon. Do I report this? Who to? Where? Everything seemed so complicated. Day of all days. She couldn’t think it through. But she tried and kept trying until something inside her shrugged oh well, whereupon she drew a deep, deliberate breath and kept walking south toward Löwenstrasse.
Anna wandered down Löwenstrasse without intent until she reached a tram stand. She took the last seat and when an elderly woman walked under the shelter, Anna didn’t rise and offer her place. It didn’t matter. A tram came and went and the elderly woman was gone as quickly as she had appeared. Anna took her Handy from her pocket and considered her legitimate options—there were so few. The obvious course of action was also the most correct and it presented itself first. Mary. I’ll call Mary. Anna called. The phone rang but Mary didn’t answer and Anna hung up before leaving a message. I hate the telephone. I don’t want to leave a message. What will I say? Anna didn’t have the luxury of neurosis that morning. She called again. Once more, the phone rang four times and then it went to voice mail. For the second time in a row, Anna did not leave a message. Quit being an idiot! she scolded herself. So rarely did Anna reach out for help that she wasn’t sure how to do it. Is that what I’m doing? Asking for help and failing? She closed the phone and pressed it between her palms, as if the posture of prayer alone might make it ring. A minute later the phone trembled and an SMS came through. Anna avoided letting herself believe her prayer had anything to do with it. Helping w/Max’s class—will call later. Hope you feel better. Am sorry you are sad. Am here for you. XO —M.
But you aren’t here for me, Anna thought. You’re there. And you aren’t answering the phone. Anna’s thoughts had pity on her thoughts. She tried Mary a third and final time but the call went directly to voice mail. Mary had turned the phone off. Anna didn’t leave a message. She hadn’t figured out what to tell her in any case. She slipped the phone back into her pocket and stood up. An elderly woman—different from the one before—smiled thankfully and nodded as she slipped into Anna’s chair. She thinks I’m giving her my seat. Anna wasn’t but took credit for the good deed anyway.
Anna had wandered Zürich many times before. In the city she was alone with her sorrow in a different way than she was when she walked through the woods or sat on her bench. In the woods her sadness came to a sharp and undeniable point. Every tree, every fallen log, every Wanderweg sign spoke aloud the same, sorry word: alone, alone, alone. In the city thoug
h, Anna’s solitude was a blunt object, a rubber mallet. It drubbed on her. So when, in the clotted streets of downtown Zürich, loneliness attacked, she’d dissociate from it, slip into a fugue. Where am I? How do I get home? I think I’m hungry. I’ve forgotten how to eat. What’s my name? At those times she distanced herself from herself and stood apart from her own volition in the most heinous of ways. A force (from within? from without? Anna could never tell) took charge and drove the bus of her where it willed. Is this one of those days? Anna asked herself. She didn’t think it was. The wind blew some of her hair out of its barrette. She hadn’t brought a hat. She pointed herself in the direction of the Bahnhofstrasse and walked with an unknown purpose, nothing but resignation and the ache of her face to compass her through the journey.
Anna’s fondness for nice things notwithstanding, the conspicuous consumption of Zürich’s Bahnhofstrasse had never wooed her. It was the too-muchness of it all. She couldn’t see through it. But the day’s gray climate made the shop windows shine. Everything invited her in. The designer eyeglasses showcased in the Fielmann window looked at her with a benevolent gaze, and the white, featureless mannequins in the Bally display appeared to be bowing with courtesy and grace. At the Beyer watch shop she leaned her forehead against the glass and (did she?) swooned over a 20,000 CHF vintage Cartier. Nine years in Switzerland and she’d never owned a nice watch. Anna let herself pine for a moment before moving on. She passed chocolate shops and toy stores. She passed the Dior and Burberry boutiques, the English-language bookstore, and several souvenir shops. She stopped at one and peered through the window. Postcards and T-shirts and glassware and maps and clocks and watches and Swiss Army knives. The knives pleased Anna. They were tools to implement, blades with uses. Of all the things she didn’t love about the Swiss, their practical ingenuity wasn’t one of them. Mary had said it about the handkerchiefs she’d given Anna for her birthday: What good is a useful object if it can’t be used? The Swiss weren’t just masters of accuracy, they were Meisters of use. This is why their clocks are categorical, their knives well whetted, their chocolate so toothsome, their banks so efficient. Anna was near Paradeplatz, home of the headquarters of UBS and Credit Suisse. It was inevitable; thinking of banks made her think of Bruno, but she wasn’t ready to think very deeply on the subject of him yet. He’d known all along. All along he had known. Anna couldn’t wrap her understanding around that so she didn’t even try to. Instead, she let her focus shift from the knives in the window to the window itself. She saw her face in the glass and reflected on her reflection. She was otherworldly and misshapen. She could go anywhere she wanted. The going wasn’t the problem. The problem was belonging where she went. This has been the issue from the beginning. It was near ten thirty A.M. She’d been aimlessly wandering for two hours. But she hadn’t gone far at all.
Think, Anna, she implored herself. Mary wasn’t available. Returning to Dietlikon wasn’t an option. Later, perhaps. Anna clung to the possibility of later. If she couldn’t go home, she couldn’t call Ursula. Surely Bruno had told her everything by now or, if not everything, a version of events in which Anna still came off badly. She could call David and Daniela, but that was almost as embarrassing an option as facing Ursula. She opened up her phone and started scrolling through the names. So many friends she did not have. All the distant relatives with whom she didn’t keep in touch. School pals. Lovers.
Even as she was in the process of doing it, she knew that calling Edith wasn’t a very good idea, and before Edith finished saying hello Anna felt an upswell of futility. No way am I asking her for help. I’m not going to let her see me like this.
“Oh. Sorry, Edith. I hit the wrong button.” Anna covered.
“Ha! Well don’t do it again!” Edith teased. “Make it up to me. Come into the city. I’m here already. You can buy me lunch.”
Anna pretended to consider the possibility before declining. By instinct she looked over her shoulder. Zürich’s a big city, Anna. You won’t run into her.
“Suit yourself!” And with that Edith signed off. The conversation lasted less than half a minute.
You have to leave, Bruno had said. And Anna had left.
Anna crossed the bridge at Bürkliplatz and walked south along the bank of the Zürichsee. I’ll stay in the city today and then tonight, when he starts to miss me, I’ll call. He’ll want to make up. He’ll feel bad. He feels bad already. I can go home and we can talk. Bruno had been calm that morning, so calm. That was a worry Anna couldn’t yet place. Going home was an option, but it was the last option on the list.
Anna was almost alone as she wandered down Seefeldquai. Most Züricher were at work, and tourism is thin during off-season. It was all right. She preferred it that way. The lake was gunmetal blue and unfriendly. Still, it soothed her. This was the Zürich she knew. The greater part of all comfort almost always lies in familiarity. A child’s teddy bear. A favorite pair of shoes. In times of calamity we gravitate toward the things we know or know how to do. On the day of a funeral, it’s the quotidian duty of bed making, dress ironing, dish doing that tethers a person to the physical moment and releases her temporarily from the territory of her pain. The comfort, therefore, was foremost the lake’s gunmetal unfriendliness and secondly Anna’s practice at being alone and wandering lonely paths. Were it otherwise, Anna would have felt worse.
She walked along the waterfront all the way to Zürichhorn, the small harbor where the Zürichsee begins to genuinely widen. She took a seat on the steps but they were cold even through her wool skirt so she stood up just as quickly. On clear days, the outline of the Alps separates the earth from the sky. Eiger. Mönch. Jungfrau. Indistinguishable but undeniable. And hidden in a mountain pass over the Schöllenen Gorge in Kanton Uri, the Teufelsbrücke, the Devil’s Bridge. Jungfrau. Anna shook her head. We plan and he laughs at our plans. This is what the Doktor meant. All of this.
Anna turned around and walked back the way she came and with every step her stomach kinked and twisted. This was the misery she’d been trying to dodge all day. She supposed it was inevitable. A memory. Dozens of them. Times happy and terrible both. They came at her like diving birds. She couldn’t fight them off. But even the terrible memories were happier than this. Anna felt helpless and very foolish. She walked past the Chinese Garden. In summer the rectangular thatch of land is crowded with families and sunbathers and picnickers. That day the field was empty except for a single young couple kissing near the gate, his hands under her jacket and her hands down the back of his jeans. A very old woman on a bicycle passed Anna on the left. She wore a dark skirt and thick tights and utilitarian shoes. She’d hidden her hair underneath a red and blue headscarf. She rang her bike bell as she passed. Anna was feebly amused. In the States, very old women didn’t ride bikes lakeside on awful gray days. But Anna hadn’t been to the States since she left them. Not even once. She’d had no one to visit and, like today, nowhere to go.
“THERE ARE TWO BASIC groups of German verbs,” Roland said, “strong and weak. Weak verbs are regular verbs that follow typical rules. Strong verbs are irregular. They don’t follow patterns. You deal with strong verbs on their own terms.”
Like people, Anna thought. The strong ones stand out. The weak ones are all the same.
ANNA’S MOST RECENT APPOINTMENT with Doktor Messerli would have been the day before, but she’d canceled. I shouldn’t have canceled. I need her. She’s only ever tried to help me. Yesterday was a century ago. What would I have said to her? They would have talked about Polly Jean’s birthday and how sad Anna was and Anna would have asked whether Doktor Messerli thought the pain would ever go away. Doktor Messerli would have listened with compassion and responded as she so often did: Vhat dooo yooo sink, Anna? Anna checked the time on her Handy. It was a quarter after one. Doktor Messerli would be in her office. Anna could go there. She could tell her it was an emergency and the Doktor would see her. Of course she would. Wouldn’t she? Is this an emergency? It wasn’t a nonemergency, Anna was sure.
It was already past lunchtime. Anna would have to figure something out. The Doktor would know what to do. Yes, that’s it. I’m going. It was a reasonable, competent decision to have made.
Anna turned in several circles before she found her bearings and began the march toward Doktor Messerli’s office. Now, I must go now, she thought, though she was already on her way. The closer Anna came to Trittligasse the faster she walked. A knot in her stomach tightened like a python around a pig. It was a caution Anna didn’t heed. She walked faster. Now. I must go. Now. Panic began to replace the determination that had steered her from Utoquai to Rämistrasse. She ran the last quarter kilometer to Doktor Messerli’s office, stopping only to peel herself off the ground after she tripped on the cobblestone steps at the west end of the street. She scraped her palms and ripped the knee of her stockings. She flashed back to that day in Mumpf, when she ruined her tights in the Waldhütte where she and Karl first fucked. How did I become this? She didn’t need to speak it aloud. Every atom of Anna moaned. Her face throbbed and her soul reeled and she couldn’t catch her breath.
By the time she reached Doktor Messerli’s office, Anna was so manic that she wouldn’t have been able to pass a sobriety test. She lurched. She could barely stand. She pressed the buzzer once and then decided once was not enough so she hit and hit and hit it as if she were clobbering a nail with the heel of a shoe even as she pulled her Handy from her pocket and attempted to reach the Doktor on the phone. It was beyond rude, Anna knew, the phoning and the buzzing alike. The Doktor was in a session. Appointments are sacrosanct, not to be interrupted. Anna knew she’d be pissed. But the day waned with every passing second and as Anna’s options grew fewer, her worry simply grew. On the walk to Zürichhorn she had repeated it like a mantra: I will be okay, I will be okay. But by the time she fell on the cobblestone steps her cadence had stuttered and her incantation became Will I be okay? She had lost all talent for self-consolation. When the Doktor’s phone went to voice mail, she went from frenetically poking the buzzer with her finger to maniacally pounding the door under the force of her fist. Let me in, let me in, let me in, dammit.
Hausfrau: A Novel Page 24
