“Eggscusi!” Anna apologized immediately, using one of the few Swiss words she knew. The man steadied himself and waved her apology gently away. It was a simple, charming gesture. Then he, too, apologized, but in English and then he laughed a nervous laugh, and asked Anna in terrible German whether she knew where the Lindenhof was and if so, would she show him on the map? He was black-haired and pale-skinned and six inches taller than she. The map he tried to fold refused to be refolded. He shivered in the mist wearing only a light car coat the color of ash. A left front tooth was slightly chipped and he had a mole at the outer corner of his eye, also on the left side. Anna noticed these things. She pegged his accent as midwestern by its even phonetic keel. There was an upsurge in Anna’s heart.
Is it possible to fall in love over a single look? Anna couldn’t say. But at the behest of a glance tossed casually down upon her, she was made witness, victim, and slave to the culmination of all her mythologies. And every heretofore moment in her life, the ones that mattered and the ones that only seemed to matter, had added up to the sum of this intense instant, this instant alone. In the short, sharp span of a single heartbeat, she knew that nothing she’d ever said or done, and nothing she would ever say or do again, would carry even half the tragedy of this.
ANNA STARED OUT THE window on the train from Frick to Mumpf.
I wish I’d never met the man.
7
A SECRET’S SAFEST HIDING PLACE IS IN THE OPEN. ATTEMPT A middling effort at keeping a cucumber-cool demeanor, and no matter the secret, everyone will accept you for who you appear to be. Consider the Nazi who flees to South America and lives out his life in quiet compliance, his remaining days steady and blameless. Mornings he wakes, he rises, he walks out into the open day. He mails letters, rides the bus, buys pears at a market. He eats lunch in an open-air café. He takes his coffee black and always reads the sports scores first. When a pretty girl passes, he tips his hat.
No one knows that seventy years ago his jackboot cracked a Warsaw rabbi’s ribs or that he seized the watch fob that he wears from the rattletrap hands of a Romany horse groom just inside Treblinka’s gates.
So say nothing. Don’t flinch. Act your part. No matter your secret. Atrocious or banal, unfathomable or mundane. It’s a method for the Aufseher and the adulteress alike. If you don’t advertise, you needn’t hide.
And just like that, your big, black lies grow small and white.
“DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING of alchemy, Anna?”
“The belief that base metal can be turned into gold?”
Doktor Messerli nodded. “Yes. In medieval Europe there were men who believed in this possibility. They spent their entire lives in experiment. Of course they did not succeed. But the premise of their work became the foundation for other scientific studies. Chemistry, mostly.”
“Oh.”
“Jung studied alchemy from a philosopher’s point of view. He compared it to analysis. A person achieves individuation through a similar process. She transforms the dark matter of the unconscious into consciousness. The soul’s gold. If you will.” Anna had stopped listening when she said “chemistry.”
DAVID WAITED FOR THE Benzes on the platform. He cheek-kissed both Ursula and Anna (once, twice, three times as is the custom), gave Bruno a firm, jostling handshake, summarily mussed the boys’ hair, and took Polly Jean from Bruno’s arms, fussing briefly but immodestly over the baby before handing her off to Anna. Then they all slid into the car for the very short ride to David and Daniela’s house. It was a tight fit. Victor sat on Bruno’s knee, Charles on Ursula’s. They would travel only a kilometer and a half; David promised to steer the car with caution.
Daniela and David had lived together since Daniela was nineteen. David was in his mid-forties then, old enough to have been Daniela’s father and still married to the mother of his children at the time their relationship began. But the common-law marriage of David and Daniela had endured now for two decades. They seemed to be doing something right.
David was a crumpled, beige man with thick gray hair who was rarely seen without a calabash pipe between his lips. Anna liked David. Like Ursula he had been an educator; for more than thirty years he taught middle school social studies. David was gentle, agreeable, and possessed a pliable carriage not typically found in the Swiss. This made sense: he wasn’t. David was French.
In less than five minutes, the car arrived at David and Daniela’s house.
THE MAN WAS LOOKING for the Lindenhof. The Lindenhof is Zürich’s oldest quarter, the site of what was once an ancient Roman customs post. Now a park, most days (even bad-weather ones such as the very day in question) find the Lindenhof crowded with old men playing garden chess with toddler-sized Schachfiguren upon chessboards painted on the ground, and tourists enjoying the view. Zürich’s entire Altstadt is visible from the lookout on the square.
When Anna answered in English an unmitigated relief drained the tension from his face.
“Oh Jesus, you speak English. Thank God. My German’s no good.”
Anna’s smile was sweet and amused. “That’s obvious.”
He smiled back at her. “I’ve been working up courage to ask for directions.”
Anna returned his returned smile.