SHE CARRIED HER COFFEE into the den. Her German books and all of her notes from the previous night were still scattered on the dining table like clothes cast off and tossed across a bed. The window in the den opened to face the barn of their neighbors, Hans and Margrith Tsch?pp?t. An elderly couple, Hans and Margrith had lived in Dietlikon their entire lives. Hans was a kind and jolly farmer who would wave at Anna from his tractor when they passed each other going up or down the hill behind Anna and Bruno’s house. Hans would give Anna jars of Honig cultivated by his own bees and twice a year he pruned their apple trees. Margrith, too, was nice. But she was also extremely perceptive, and Anna couldn’t help but feel she always knew more about her than Anna would like her to. Anna had never caught her staring through their open windows or peeking into the Benzes’ trash bin. It was something instead in the questions she asked, and the keen-eyed way she asked them, neighborly though they might seem: Wohin gehen Sie, Frau Benz? Woher kommen Sie? The past Wednesday afternoon, in fact, Margrith caught Anna as she was coming off the train, fresh from Archie’s bed. Anna’s hair was in snarls and her makeup lost to perspiration. Grüezi, Frau Benz; woher kommen Sie? she asked.
Just coming back from my German lesson, Frau Tsch?pp?t, Anna replied, and then each continued on in the direction she was headed before they spoke. This early in the morning Margrith and Hans’s windows were still dark. The Saturday sun had not yet risen.
POLLY JEAN WOKE FOR good around seven thirty. Bruno and the boys were up by eight. The weather was gracious; it was a generous, sunny day. Two well-slept boys rattled the walls of the house with the energy they had stored up overnight, like a pair of batteries, recharged. Anna sent them outside to play in the yard. Charles trotted out the door without a word of backtalk. Victor flopped on the couch and pretended he hadn’t heard a thing. When Anna told Victor once more to go outside the pouting began. He wanted to ride his bike to a friend’s house. He wanted to watch cartoons on the television. He wanted to go upstairs. He wanted Anna to leave him alone. This is when Bruno intervened. Go. That’s all it took for Victor to relent. A firm, terse word from Bruno’s no-nonsense lips.
Charles was Anna’s easiest child. He was pleasant, quick to help, and slow to anger. He minded his manners and was rarely perturbed. He was a happy boy. Victor, by contrast, was rarely purely happy. A good son in his own way, Victor was funny, smart, charming, and occasionally perceptive beyond his years (Mami, he once said to Anna, I will always love you, even if Papi doesn’t). But Victor was also self-indulgent. He tended toward pettiness and he didn’t like to share. He was rigid and could not easily accommodate the plans or needs of others. And when he felt slighted, Victor became petulant and ill-tempered. At those times Anna found it impossible to like him very much.
Victor was his father’s son.
Of Charles, Anna said to Doktor Messerli, “He has absolutely no guile.”
“What about Polly Jean?”
“I don’t know her yet.” Doktor Messerli thought she knew what Anna meant.
“And Victor?”
“Victor, I do know.” She was willing to admit nothing aloud but if pressed (and only if pressed very hard) she would have to say that of her two sons, Charles was her dearest. “Of course I love Victor.”
Anna was sorry in a hundred ways.
DOKTOR MESSERLI DREW A diagram. It was a picture of a circle inside of a circle inside of another one. It reminded Anna of Russian matryoshka dolls, or her set of nesting Pyrex mixing bowls.
“These circles? They’re you. The outside circle is the ego. The ego is the suit that your psyche wears. How you are viewed by the world. It is the first part of you that anyone sees.” The Doktor leaned forward and tapped the middle circle with her fountain pen. It left a small but spreading blotch of ink. “This is where your problems lie.” Doktor Messerli traced the circle again, giving it a messy, jagged seam.
“How so?”
“Chaos bars the ego from the serenity, the solidity, and the solidarity of the self.” Anna wondered if she’d practiced this speech; it sounded lofty and rehearsed.
“What’s the answer?”
Doktor Messerli leaned back into her chair. “There is no fit-all answer.”
“What’s the difference between the self and the soul?”
“Anna, our time is up.”
WHORES, ANNA ONCE READ, make the very best wives. They are accustomed to the varying moods of men, they keep their broken hearts to themselves, and easy women always ease through grief.
This thought occurred to Anna unbidden when, in front of the Coop on Industriestrasse, she slipped a two-franc piece into a coin slot, releasing the top shopping cart from its line of brothers. It was a thought called forward by the simple action of shoving a thing into the hole it’s meant for.
Ursula had offered Anna a ride to the supermarket. This was a gesture of clemency on Ursula’s part, which Anna graciously accepted. She told Bruno she’d be glad to take Polly Jean with her if he’d watch the boys. Yes, yes, Bruno said, waving her off and telling her to bring back six large bottles of water, several pots of quark, and three or four dark chocolate bars. In this way Bruno was exceptionally Swiss; Bruno loved candy. Anna took note.