“How are you, Anna? It is kind to talk to you. You see very pretty.” Karl spoke a very strange and extremely slipshod English. By “kind” he meant “nice,” and by “see” he intended “look.” Both were odd mistakes to make, but Karl was odd to begin with. Seemingly benign but without a doubt peculiar. Even his name was a little off the mark. It’s got too many umlauts, Bruno once snarked. It sounds made up. It’s not Swiss. Umlauts aside, Bruno was right: it wasn’t particularly Swiss. But it was Karl’s. And it suited him.
Anna considered her clothes. She wore a rust-colored autumn dress styled in an A-line pattern, ribbed yellow tights, and black Mary Janes. Anna preferred the feel of dresses on her body. Slacks and jeans were too confining. Swiss women, Anna noticed, were not dress wearers, choosing more often the practicality of pants. Tomorrow, this dress would return to the closet until spring. As it was, the weather was cold enough that Anna had to complete the look with the only sweater she could lay her hands to as they rushed out of the house, a rough red cardigan. It ruined an otherwise stylish outfit. “I look like a Thanksgiving centerpiece,” Anna said to Karl, who laughed and made a hedging motion with his hands. “Well, I do not understand about that,” he offered, confusing “understand” with “know.” “We have not Thanksgiving in d’Schweez,” Karl said, using the native pronunciation of Switzerland’s name. He, too, wore an outlaw grin and stood in a near-reprobate stance, his hands in his pockets, his feet squarely planted, and his hips thrust forward like a come-on. Is this a come-on? Anna wondered. Is he looking me up and down? Yes, Karl eyed her as they spoke. But that’s what people do, they look at each other when they talk, Anna reminded herself. Not everyone’s as haphazardly moral as you.
Bruno returned with their beers and Anna’s water, and the men—those rapscallion boys—took up the conversation where they’d left it. Anna paid only vague attention until she heard Tim’s name and figured that Bruno was telling Karl about their dinner with the Gilberts. Bruno spoke in a rapid, scuttling Schwiizerdütsch. Anna didn’t even attempt a proper listen. Karl intuited her frustration and asked Bruno if it would not be better to talk in English. Bruno swigged his beer, shook his head no, and answered, in Swiss German, She is taking classes, needs the practice, it’s time she learned the goddamn language. This Anna did understand. He was smiling when he said it, and the smile was real. Bruno meant all his gestures. Bruno meant every word he said.
ANNA AND STEPHEN TALKED over one, two, three rounds of drinks. Anna phoned Ursula, fibbed to her, explained that the shops were crowded, that every task was taking twice as long to accomplish as she’d planed, and would Ursula mind watching Victor after school? Would she collect Charles from Kinderkrippe? Would you? Would you …? Of course Ursula would. But she wasn’t happy about it.
By then Anna had been drained of the vexation she’d been carrying around. Her heart shifted gravity again, only this time, it rose above her head like a helium balloon. Anna acknowledged the absurdity of this feeling. It didn’t matter. She was high on the moment. A wind could come and blow her away. She begged the clock to spin more slowly. She begged the clock to stop.
“WE MAKE THE PASSIVE voice in German with the verb werden. ‘To become.’ So the bicycle becomes stolen, if you will. Or the woman became sad.”
Or the body would become ravaged. And the heart will become broken. Somehow it made more sense this way to Anna. “To be” is static. “To become” implies motion. A paradoxical move toward limp surrender. Whatever it is, you do not do it. It is done to you. “Passivity” and “passion” begin alike. It’s only how they end that’s different.
CLOCKS DON’T STOP. EVENTUALLY, with great disappointment, Anna tore herself away from the drinks, her giddiness, and Stephen’s company. It was time for Anna to go home. She wrote her phone number on a napkin and implored him with a wink not to lose it. She blushed as she made a happy journey to the train station. Yes, yes, of course. A flirtation. Nothing more. I won’t rely on desire to tell me the truth. It rarely does. He will not—he really shouldn’t—call. But as her homeward bound train rolled past the shunting yards to the west of the Hauptbahnhof, Anna felt a tremor in her hand. She attributed it to shivering from the cold. It was winter, after all. But the tremor repeated itself and she realized it was her cell phone. A message that had been sent was received: What are you doing tomorrow? Anna didn’t respond. But on that message’s tail came another: Come see me. And as the train slowed to a stop at Bahnhof Dietlikon, the last message arrived: Tomorrow. 10 A.M. Nürenbergstrasse 12. Anna was pressed to answer; she could do nothing else. She told herself—convinced herself—she could do nothing else. She sent a singular reply.
Yes.
She did not even attempt to pretend she had no intention of sleeping with him.
8