ANNA HADN’T INTENDED TO concede. It came out of nowhere. It came out of everywhere. It came out of the weather. It came from the wave that Charles turned to give her as he left the house for school, and the half wave that Victor tossed back to her as well, a concession he rarely granted. It came from Bruno’s impossibility when Anna offered him yogurt instead of quark. She’d mistaken the pots at the grocery store. It was easy enough to do. It came from Ursula’s dourness and the rumpled skin that years of frowning had creased into her face. It came out of the German homework that Anna didn’t do the night before. It came from wondering why she still bothered with the German class. It came out of knowing that Mary would be disappointed if she dropped it and what came out of that, in turn, was a big, resigned sigh. It came from that morning’s every annoyance, the sum of which was a defeat so looming that anyone with even a teaspoon of common sense would run far and fast away from it. But Anna didn’t run away. So when it came—this particular dejection—she embraced it like she would have held a long-lost friend (which, in a way, it was) and pulled those many miseries tightly around her shoulders, wrapping herself into a familiar quilt of ineffable, inconsolable longing. By the time Karl replied to Anna’s impulsive SMS, she’d already relinquished her grip on the wheel of her will. It was Wednesday, the last day of October. Anna was on the train to Oerlikon when the message came through. It was Halloween, which most Swiss don’t celebrate, and Anna had been thinking once again about ghosts.
She changed trains at Oerlikon and took the S7 to Kloten. She didn’t even think twice. If she had, she still would have gone.
Anna knocked on the door and Karl let her in. He opened his mouth to speak but she shushed him.
“Don’t. Don’t say a word.” Anna pushed him back and the door closed behind her.
She shoved her face onto his face and they kissed in a reckless, pointless way. There was no mystery here. Anna shrugged out of her coat, threw her bag into a corner, and pulled her sweater roughly over her head, taking an earring with it. She shoved Karl to the bed with enough force to startle him. Anna was damp with abandon.
“DO YOU KNOW ABOUT the Teufelsbrücke?” Anna didn’t. Doktor Messerli explained. “There’s a mountain pass in Kanton Uri—the Sch?llenen Gorge. It’s tremendously steep. The walls are sheer and abrupt.” Anna nodded. She understood. These days, everywhere she turned was precipice. “There is a bridge that crosses the canyon and the river below it.”
“The Teufelsbrücke?” Devil’s Bridge.
“Genau.” Doktor Messerli continued. “It was built in the Middle Ages. But the landscape is so unpredictable and the bridge so fabulously made that at the time, it was believed human hands alone could never have erected such a structure. So the legend says that the Devil built it himself.”
Doktor Messerli continued in the manner of a storyteller, adjusting her intonation and speed of speech for dramatic effect. “But the Devil does no favors. He will always demand to be paid. In this case, he ordered the soul of the first man to cross it.” That seems kind of fair, Anna thought. “No one volunteered, of course. Who would enlist to be so sacrificed?” Anna had an answer but kept it to herself. “Instead, the citizens of Uri decided to trick him and sent the Devil a goat. The Devil was furious. No! A goat would not do! He’d had it. So he picked up the largest stone he could find and started toward the gorge. He would show them. He created it, it was his to destroy.”
“But he didn’t.”
Doktor Messerli shook her head no. “On his way to the bridge he met an old woman carrying a cross. The Devil was so terrified by the cross that he dropped the giant rock and ran away. The people of Uri never heard from him again. They kept their bridge. They kept their souls.”
“So goodness conquers evil is what you are saying.” Doktor Messerli shook her head. “What I’m saying is that our most sinister parts bridge the gap between consciousness and unconsciousness. That’s the dark matter’s most useful function. But hear me: you do not owe the darkness your soul.”
“I’m not planning on giving it away.”
“Planning has nothing to do with it. We plan. The Devil laughs at our plans.”