ROLAND HAD TAKEN A tangent. Someone had suggested that Schwiizerdütsch was a German dialect and not a language all of its own. Roland was vehement. Nei! Nei! Nei! he yelled, emphasizing each no! by slapping his notepad on the table. “Switzerland is not a German colony! We don’t live under the Bundesflagge! Schwiizerdütsch is ours! They did not give it to us—we built it ourselves!” Roland continued in a broad, philosophic arc. “The language a man speaks defines him. A man’s language tells the world who he is.”
Anna considered that. Everyone’s born into a native language. Most of the people she knew had full command of a second (and according to the bee in Roland’s bonnet, a third): Bruno, Ursula, Daniela, Doktor Messerli. Even Anna’s own sons. To Anna they spoke English. But to each other and to their father when Anna wasn’t around (and sometimes even when she was, though she’d asked them very sternly not to) they reverted to Schwiizerdütsch. It deflated her. Even if she managed a proficient level of German, Anna would never have an indigenous Dietlikonerin’s command of Schwiizerdütsch. She would never share that spoken bond with her children. It just wasn’t going to happen.
Anna didn’t disagree with Roland. It was entirely true—the language you’re born into (or in Anna’s case, the one you aren’t) determines your most basic identity. But Roland had stopped short. There was more. Your native speech situates you in your society. But your second language is the one that reveals your character. Look to the mistakes, Anna said to herself. The mistakes a person makes tell you everything you need to know. It made sense. Leopards don’t change their spots, after all. If a person behaves one way in situation A, then why would anyone expect him to behave differently in situation B? Karl, for example. In speech he confused primary and secondary meanings of words and synonyms. It was a habit born of carelessness. He treated words as if they were interchangeable. This one, that one—a word, a woman. One was good as the other. He meant no malice but … what did he mean? It was always so hard to unravel him. And what about Mary? Her tendency was to stumble over even the simplest of sentences. She flustered easily. She wanted so much to be correct. When she did speak, it was slowly and without flourish. Niklas’s English was always nonspecific. Anna didn’t know him well enough to say what that might mean. Edith didn’t speak German at all. What that said was she didn’t give a damn. Nancy was always trying sentences beyond her reach. If she wanted to say something, she went for it. If it came out wrong, she’d warp the syntax and speak past the impediment, as if she were driving around a concrete pylon. There was always a way to work through the problem. Archie’s German was the kind of German that men who had affairs with sad women spoke. He was terrible with possessives. It didn’t matter what belonged to whom. All was free use.
But Anna. What were her tendencies? It was no mystery. With Anna it was all verbs. She was sloppy in her conjugations, reckless in her positioning. She confused tense with mood and relied too often on the passive voice. Anna laughed at these conclusions. How evident I am! And she was. She truly was. Evident, undeniable, sloppy, and sad.
ANNA WAS FIVE MONTHS into the pregnancy when Polly Jean started to kick. She kicked hard, much harder than either of the boys had kicked, and she kicked constantly. There was no rest from her kicking. She drummed on the walls of the womb like a madman pounds a padded door. The entire pregnancy was difficult. Anna’s morning sickness lasted for months. Her face was by turns dry and scaly, then oiled and pimply. Misery exhausted her. On walks she faced west and spoke aloud in the direction of Boston. I love you. I hate you. I miss you. I never want to see you again. She meant every word she said. The middle way played against each end.
This hyperbolic sadness consumed her. Except when it didn’t. Which was rarely.