I DREAM I AM at the Hauptbahnhof with two pregnant women, one quite young and the other a bit older. They deliver their babies at the same time, but the infant of the older woman either dies or was born dead to begin with. She shrugs and says, “It’s okay. I’ll figure something out.” I tell her I’m sorry but I don’t know what else to add. When I turn back, the younger woman is gone. She has left a note that says she needs to be home before her husband starts to worry. She has forgotten to take her baby. I get very upset and start to look for her but the older woman stops me and makes me give the baby to her. “See?” she says. “It all worked out.” I say I suppose it did.
MARY CAME TWENTY MINUTES later and joined Anna and Bruno in the bedroom. The women looked at each other and both began wailing with despair. Bruno rose and stepped aside. Mary took his place on the bed and reached to Anna and pulled her into her soft, maternal body and rocked her back and forth as she cried into Anna’s hair, and as Anna, in turn, cried into Mary’s chest. A policeman stepped into the doorframe and motioned for Bruno to come outside with him. Mary nodded in a way that meant It is all right; I will take care of her. Then she looked back down to Anna and continued the rocking.
“Hush. I have you.” Mary rubbed Anna’s back and smoothed her hair. She noticed Anna’s missing earring. “We’ll find it later,” she whispered and Anna began to sob with even more hysteria.
“I’M TERRIFIED OF DEATH,” Anna said.
“Why?” Doktor Messerli responded. “What use, fearing the inevitable?”
But the fear is in the inevitability, Anna thought. “Do you believe in God?”
“I believe in a benevolence around which the universe revolves.”
Anna made a face. “Do you believe in Heaven?”
Doktor Messerli avoided the question. “No one knows what happens after death. The dead. They so rarely come back.”
Anna repeated herself. “I’m afraid of death.”
“Death is transformation, Anna. That’s all.” This was not the concrete answer Anna longed for. “Death is the soul’s way of becoming something new. All living beings die. It’s just what we do. It is just how it is.”
“I’m still frightened.”
For the next several seconds, doctor and patient watched each other with solemnity, waiting for the other to speak first. Doktor Messerli interrupted the silence. “Death is change. Nothing more. Metamorphosis. A movement from one state of being into another. Like walking into a different room in your house, Anna. Does it help to think of it in those terms?” It didn’t. Doktor Messerli sighed. “Anna, I only know this: when it is your turn to die—my turn, anyone’s—when it is time for you to let go of one life and reach out for another, you will be left with no other choice but to hurl yourself willingly into the mother arms of transfiguration. It’s not an end. It’s a beginning.”
ANNA HAD NOTHING TO do with planning the funeral. She was too unwell to be of any use. Services were held three days after the accident. It was a Saturday and the church—the church of which Charles’s own grandfather had been the pastor—was full. So many people came. All the Benzes’ friends, their family, the men and women Bruno worked with, the students in Anna’s German class, members of the church, townspeople, friends of Ursula—people Anna didn’t even know, had never even met—everyone came to the service. Charles’s teacher, Frau Kopp, was also there. Anna couldn’t bear to look her in the eye, and Frau Kopp was kind enough to avoid all direct gazes. Thank you, Anna said inside herself. Archie came to the funeral but slipped away before it was over. Anna had seen him sitting in the back when she’d turned in her seat to survey the church before the service began. His head was down and he was pretending to read the printed-out order of service. Anna’s stomach soured. She vowed to never lay eyes on him again. And she didn’t. Karl was there as well, of course. He was a friend of the family. The sight of Karl had no effect on Anna. She looked at him and felt an absence of feeling. A blank nothing. A nothing so blank that it was brutal. The parents of most of the children in Charles’s class came to the church, though many had left their children home. Tim and Mary also came alone. Anna understood. She wouldn’t have brought Charles to a funeral either, even a funeral for one of his friends. He is too young, too tender, Anna thought in present tense. She hadn’t yet begun to think of him as past.
The Pfarrer conducted the service in Swiss German. The bells rang.
The graveside service had been earlier in the day. Anna relied on Bruno and Ursula to hold her up as she cried into one of the handkerchiefs that Mary had given her for her birthday.