“You’ve also described the Swiss.”
Bruno rarely spoke of Oskar. They’d skied and hiked together, camped and fished. Bruno was a good father; Anna assumed that Oskar was as well. Bruno stopped going to church long before Anna had met him and she’d never asked him what he thought about God. Not once, Anna thought. Is that right? That can’t be right? She had no idea what he believed. Asking would have embarrassed them both.
AT SEVEN A.M. THE bells began to ring. Those bells. Mornings they roused her, evenings they soothed her, and during the dark, marauding hours before dawn they companioned her. They rang on every hour, and twice a day they pealed for a continuous fifteen minutes. They rang on Sundays before church. They rang at weddings, funerals, and national holidays. As many people hated them as were indifferent to them. Few loved them. But Anna did. The ringing of the bells may have been her singular Swiss joy. Anna stopped herself from fully admitting this with her daughter in her arms.
Polly eventually defeated her pain with sleep and Anna tucked her into her crib once more then slipped out of the room. She’ll be okay, Anna told herself. It’s the newness of the pain that brings the screaming. A new pain that Polly hadn’t learned how to manage. For even infants understand the rotten, instinctive truth: that no pain ever takes full leave of its person. That pain is greedy and doesn’t give ground. That a body remembers what hurts it and how. Old pains get swallowed by new pains. But newer pains always follow suit.
“WHAT’S THE PURPOSE OF pain?” Anna asked Doktor Messerli. It was a question that had skimmed the air around her for years like a ghost that trolls the attic of a house it is forever damned to spook.
“It’s instructive. It warns of impending events. Pain precedes change. It is a tool.” She spoke in textbook phrases. Anna was suspicious of these answers. Doktor Messerli arced a single eyebrow. “Do you not believe me?”
Anna arced an eyebrow back. No. I don’t.
ANNA PULLED SHUT THE door to her daughter’s room and went downstairs to make coffee. The house on Rosenweg was, by American standards, small. The Benzes were five people residing in what amounted to just over 1,300 square feet of livable space. There were two upstairs bedrooms, each not much bigger than an oversized closet—a shared room for the boys and a room for Polly. The attic encompassed the rest of the second floor. Everything else was downstairs: the kitchen, the bathroom, the den with its tiny dining nook, Bruno’s study, and the bedroom Anna and Bruno shared. Beneath it all lay a cold concrete basement. It was cramped quarters.
Anna descended the stairs as quietly as she could. Their house was old, and the steps creaked and groaned under anyone’s weight. Anna was always conscious of the noise she made, for Bruno, when disturbed from his silences, often became intemperate and took easy offense at everyday, benign occurrences. Anna had learned to tiptoe and step slowly.
Their kitchen was small, narrow, and tucked up. There was hardly room for a countertop, much less a microwave, and their refrigerator was only slightly larger than ones found in college dormitories. Anna made the rounds of marketing twice a week at least. That was Anna’s Saturday afternoon plan. All week she had been occupied and let the shopping slip. Their pantries were almost entirely bare.
“A MODERN WOMAN NEEDN’T live a life so circumscribed. A modern woman needn’t be so unhappy. You should go more places and do more things.” Doktor Messerli’s voice didn’t hide its impatience.
Anna felt scolded but didn’t offer a retort.