IT WAS A DREAM Anna wrote down but didn’t share with Doktor Messerli: I am in a room of absolute darkness. I fumble as I walk, unsure of the ground beneath me. I hold my arms in front of me, searching for something to grab on to. I touch a wall and it gives under the pressure of my hands. It’s like the wall of an inflatable castle, the kind you rent for a child’s birthday party. Except the more I press on it, the more it gives until eventually I break through. On the other side of this dark room is a new, bright, other, outside world. I am at the Zürichsee. The water is intensely blue. It’s the bluest water I have ever seen. There are swimmers, boaters, sunbathers on the shore. And the sky, too, a stupefying azure. I have moved from absolute darkness into absolute light. I have stepped into a numinous world. It is amazing. I am amazed. And yet it isn’t my world. I do not belong. I was safer in the blackness. But the wall’s been broken, and the darkness is gone. I can’t return to its safety. I am prisoner to the consciousness of this light.
15
ANNA WAS READY TO SKIP MONDAY’S GERMAN CLASS. SHE didn’t want to see anyone. She could say she’d planned a day of leisure for herself, a trip to the spa, whatever. It was her birthday, she could do what she wanted. But she hadn’t planned anything and the prospect of staying home alone depressed her more than the idea of facing the class made her anxious. And Mary had made Anna promise she’d let her take her out to lunch. It would be a disappointment if Anna canceled. So to Oerlikon Anna went.
She hadn’t slept. She lay in bed the entire night, the day’s events tumbling in her head like clothes in a dryer. It had been a day of revelation. I brushed against happiness and I liked how it felt and I want to feel it again. When the last guests left Bruno drove the Gilberts home. Anna waved goodbye through the kitchen window. The boys were upstairs, playing quietly. Polly had been asleep for an hour. Bruno wouldn’t be home for at least forty-five minutes. She had the house effectively to herself. There was ample space and time for her to think.
She’d heard what David had said. It is dangerous to keep secrets. And she hadn’t been keeping hers very well. She ticked through a mental list. Edith hinted. David intimated. Ursula’s voice, on several occasions, had intoned suspicion. Margrith had even seen her in Kloten. She’d thought she’d been strategic and cautious. She’d been nearly proud of her discretion. That’s the problem, Anna thought. She could hear the phantom voice of Doktor Messerli: Hubris is every heroine’s assassin.
Anna didn’t need a walk up the hill or a cry on her bench to figure this out. No more affairs, she thought, and never again. When Bruno returned from the Gilberts’ they made love. It was fun, pleasant, pleasurable sex. They came together. Quietly. Kindly. It was a respectable and ceremonial way of starting over, Anna decided. No more. Never again.
All through the night she worked on a plan. She would be active, not passive. She would invest herself fully in the day-to-day life of the home. She wasn’t planning to can figs or cross-stitch wall samplers (though thoughts of redecorating the bedroom occupied a good half hour of her sleeplessness), but the vow she made was this: To my family I give the entirety of myself. My time, my talents, my attention. I’ll distract myself from the sex with which I distracted myself from the sadness of my life by fully living my life. How circular! How … Jungian! Doktor Messerli would be thrilled at the turn of Anna’s inner events. Perhaps it’s even time to tell her everything. Anna came to, then backed away from, then approached with tentative caution that conclusion once again. This cycle occurred the entire night.
Anna arrived at school early and waited for Archie outside Roland’s classroom. When he got there she pulled him aside.
“I want to talk.” Anna had intended to stand on as little ceremony as possible, but there was no privacy in the hall outside the classroom, and while there wasn’t much she planned on saying, Anna preferred not to advertise herself. Archie waited for her to continue but Anna shook her head. “Not here.” She rubbed her temples and thought for a moment. “Mary’s taking me to lunch at the zoo. Meet me in front of the zoo at one thirty.” The drama was ominous. She didn’t mean for it to be. Or she didn’t think she did, which isn’t at all the same thing.
Far less theatrical, however, was the untangling of her entanglement with Karl. Anna had sent him an SMS before Bruno came back from taking the Gilberts home: I’m sorry. We have to stop. Bruno. Kids. Everything. Okay? She wasn’t exactly sorry and the quizzical “Okay?” at the end of the text served only to soften the blow. Not even a minute passed before the response came through. Jo. I bring it. “I bring it” was a stretch, even for Karl. Anna finally worked out that he meant to type I get it.