Anna couldn’t immediately recall the last time the Benzes had had people over.
During the next day’s class, Roland presented a lesson on false cognates, German words that sound like English words but whose meanings differ vastly. “Bad, for example, doesn’t mean ‘not good,’ it means ‘bath.’ And fast does not mean ‘quickly,’ it means ‘almost.’ Lack means ‘paint,’ not ‘absence.’ ”
And das Gift, Anna remembered, is the German word for poison.
Anna asked Doktor Messerli if there was a correlation between the English word “trauma” and der Traum, the German word for “dream.”
“There’s always a correspondence between one’s dreams and one’s wounds.”
AFTER TUESDAY’S CLASS ANNA followed Archie home yet again. He took her into his bedroom and stated plainly, You are wearing more clothes than I’m comfortable with, and then he pushed a little button through its little hole and then another and when Anna was shirtless, he licked the small, hollow bowl at the top of her sternum and slid his hands into her panties as Anna gave in to the ruddy, florid bud of his erection.
But the following afternoon Mary cornered Anna into taking her shopping. “I want a new dress. We’re having a family photo made next week. For our Christmas cards. I need help. I have no fashion sense.” Once again Anna felt trapped enough to relent. “I’ll even spring for lunch …?” Mary was eager.
Anna suggested they try the Glatt, an enormous American-style mall in Wallisellen, one town over from Dietlikon. It was home to at least a dozen ladies’ boutiques and a few department stores. Glatt is the name of the Rhine tributary that flows through the Zürcher Unterland. It is also the German word for “smooth.”
“Glatt,” Mary said, drawing out the at sound. “It’s so gruff!”
Mary did the talking on the ride. Anna listened but added nothing to the conversation. Mary was green and needy. But her na?veté was tempered by an abiding kindness that even Anna found difficult to oppose.
“HAVE YOU TRULY NO friends in Zürich, Anna? No girlfriends of your own?”
Anna confessed the sullen truth. “No. Not really.”
“Are there friends that you and Bruno share?”
Edith Hammer passed for a friend. For a version of a friend. Edith’s husband Otto worked with Bruno. Anna and Edith had little in common but this: it was each their lot to love a Swiss. Older than the Benzes by a fourth, richer than them by double, the Hammers had a boat and twin teen daughters. They lived in Erlenbach, on the Zürichsee’s east bank, that precious stretch of land known as the Goldküste, the Gold Coast. Edith was fussy, class-conscious, and thoroughly, unapologetically entitled. She had an opinion about everything. When Anna mentioned her German classes, Edith scoffed and made an indifferent face. Why bother? Everyone here speaks English anyway.
Anna answered the Doktor’s question. “Not really.”
THE MALL OVERWHELMED MARY. She wrung her hands and babbled while they skimmed the racks at a few of the higherend stores. But Mary’s tastes ran less chic and they ended up at an H&M where Mary found a black wool shift that Anna wouldn’t have chosen for herself but actually suited Mary well. Mary rounded out her purchase with a pair of ribbed tights and Anna, on a whim, picked up a plum satin bra and panty set.
“Bruno will love those, Anna!”
Afterward, they took seats at a café in the middle of the mall. Mary ordered soup and Anna asked only for a bottle of Rivella, that Swiss-specific carbonated drink made of whey. Mary asked to try it. Anna warned her she might not like it. She didn’t. The milky carbonation is an acquired taste.
The pair sat without talking for an awkward two minutes before Mary broke the conversational lull. “Do you get homesick, Anna?”
This was a difficult question to answer. Anna hadn’t been back to the States since she’d left them. There was nothing she missed about America so much to want to return to it. But Switzerland had never felt like home, and never would.
“No.”
5
WHEN FRIDAY CAME, THE BENZES DROVE TO USTER FOR DINNER with the Gilberts. Uster is a village thirteen kilometers from Dietlikon on the eastern bank of the Greifensee, Kanton Zürich’s second largest lake. “You look very nice,” Bruno said to Anna as they walked up the drive to Tim and Mary’s house. Bruno pronounced his English v’s like English w’s: wery nice, waulted ceiling, wampire bat. Most Swiss do. He even slipped occasionally and said Wictor. The effect of Bruno’s kindness was charming and unexpected. He wasn’t cranky all the time—no one is. But everyone has tendencies and irritability was his.