ANNA MADE THE MISTAKE of meeting Edith for a coffee after German class. It was often a mistake to meet Edith for coffee because Edith didn’t drink coffee, she drank bourbon, and drinking bourbon always agitated her. Anna met her on the south end of the Bahnhofstrasse at Café Münz, a bar and lounge near the Zürich branch of the Swiss National Bank. It was the SNB that housed the Nazis’ gold during and after World War II. For her entire first year in Switzerland, Anna was haunted by the notion that cached beneath the streets down which she strode, bankers—the alleged gnomes of Zürich—trolled the subterranean vaults grubbing the treasures of long-dead Jews. She implicated Bruno retroactively until he finally forbade her from ever bringing the subject up again.
Anna ordered a café crème and Edith, being contrary even to herself, ordered a beer. Anna raised an eyebrow and Edith waved her off. “Niklas is teaching me beer,” she said as if beer were a school subject like algebra or civics. “I still don’t like it. But for him, I’ll try anything.” Edith winked. Anna understood that anything meant more than beer. Anna didn’t want to talk about lovers. She didn’t really want to talk at all. But there were empty hours to fill and if she wasn’t spending them with Archie or Karl, then she needed to spend them with someone, and Mary was busy that day. Take one lover, you may as well take twenty, Anna thought. They’re like salty snacks. You can’t stop at one.
Edith yammered on with her typical self-centeredness, hopping from subject to subject like a frog leaping from one lily pad to the next. She spoke first of Niklas, then Otto, then the twins, then the trip they were planning to Ticino, then of a ball gown she recently bought. Anna hadn’t known she was going to a ball. “I’m not,” Edith said. “The dress was too gorgeous to deny myself. I’ll wear it one of these days.” Anna finished her coffee then asked for another. She had little to add and she wouldn’t even offer that until or unless she was asked.
Edith moved from beer to wine. They weren’t alone in the café. Behind them, a couple enjoyed a late lunch. There was a tall, gaunt man in a business suit standing at the bar, smoking and drinking a beer. Sitting by the window nearest the street, a young woman with a nose ring and thick blond hair pulled back in a low ponytail was pushing the last few salad leaves around on her plate and flipping absentmindedly through a magazine.
Anna was staring at the girl with the ponytail when Edith did something Anna wasn’t sure she’d ever done before. “All right, Anna. You’re distracted. You’re barely here. What’s going on?” Edith had never shown Anna any real concern, and Anna was thrown off guard. “Is there something you want to talk about?”
Anna didn’t know what to say. She stared at the empty plastic pot of cream on her saucer and the small spoon next to it as if they might get up and walk around. “Edith, what does Otto do at the bank?”
Edith blinked. “That’s what’s been bothering you?”
Anna shrugged. “Maybe. Kind of.”
Edith swilled her wine and blew out a hard sigh. “I don’t know. Count money? Why are you asking?”
“I mean specifically. What does he do specifically?”
“Do you know what Bruno does?”
“No, I don’t.” Anna shook her head. Her voice got low and sober. “Edith, we should know what they do, I think.” In all those years, Anna had never asked Bruno to explain. He fiddled with other people’s money, that’s what he did. And that’s all that Anna knew. “We should care about our husbands enough to know what they do.” Anna took a slow, deliberate sip from the coffee cup and with an equal measure of reflection, set it back down.
“Anna, you’ve lost a screw. I don’t see what the problem is.” Edith didn’t. The conversation flummoxed her. “The only thing we need to know is this: they bring home a paycheck.” Edith swigged her drink. “They take care of us. Does anything beyond that matter?”