Stop please stop it please please stop! Anna tried but couldn’t speak so she thought as loudly as she could. You’re hurting me, Bruno! Don’t! Please don’t!
Bruno moved in close enough to kiss her. His hazel eyes were brown that night, his pupils so black they almost glowed. Anna’s own eyes, flush with tears, asked How? and Who else knows? and, once more, How? Bruno offered little in the way of explanation. “You are a terrible liar and I know everything about you.” Bruno pulled once again on the ring. It caught on Anna’s knuckle. On the third attempt he yanked and twisted hard and then the ring was in his hand. Anna howled and tried a hopeless moment to pull free. She caught the comedy in her attempt. Bruno’s strength and size had always overpowered her. This was partly why she fell in love with him. A version of love for him. A version of love for a version of him. Bruno held the ring very close to her face. Anna’s eyes were infantile; they couldn’t find a focus. The three pretty stones blurred into one. He shook the ring before her. “This is trash.”
Telling the truth felt like the moment’s worst plan. You’re wrong! Anna cried. What are you talking about?! Who’s a bastard?! Polly’s your daughter! Such poorly chosen words. They pushed Bruno to his edge. He cut her off again. Bruno was Swiss. Bruno was self-contained. Bruno was cranky and gruff and distant and precise but he’d never, never been truly violent. In jealousy he could be bitter and cold. In anger he was rough. Rough, yes. He’d been rough before. In the kitchen Bruno was beyond anger. “Who is it? How many? Tell me their names.” Anna shook her head: No, no!
It happened very fast. Bruno grabbed Anna by whole handfuls of her hair. She struggled but her effort was awkward. He pulled her toward him and then just as quickly shoved her away, then slammed her head against the kitchen’s wall behind her. Once, twice, she struck the stone. Bruno yelled unintelligibly—he’d finally raised his voice. Anna couldn’t understand a word. He was speaking Swiss and English simultaneously. He pulled her back toward him one final time, shook her, slapped her face, and then threw her to the floor as if she were something vile in his hands. As she fell, Anna caught her chin and cheek on the corner of the new dishwasher and hit the ground nose first. Bruno watched her fall, sniffing back tears. The kitchen was nothing but tears. Bruno muttered a curse that came out as a sob and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. As he left the kitchen, he tossed the ring at Anna’s head. It landed near Anna’s face with a cheery, casual cling.
Anna reached for her nose. It was bloody. Possibly broken. It hurt too much to palpate for the break. She moved her hands to the back of her head, which was also bleeding and the ache of it pounded, threatening the blindness of pain. She considered an attempt to stand but discarded it. She reached for her ring and tried to push it back onto her swollen, abraded finger. She couldn’t get it past the knuckle so she let it drop back to the floor.
She didn’t know how to get up. Her muscles had forgotten movement in the way that earlier her mind had forgotten the steps required to remove her coat. She resigned herself to the floor until both strength and a clear plan of action presented themselves. Two, three, five minutes passed. So Bruno knew. Huh, she thought. Then nothing more. The water roiled. The kettle whistled. She let it. With nothing else she could have done, Anna fell into a version of sleep on the kitchen floor.
TWO WEEKS AFTER CHARLES’S death, Edith arrived in Dietlikon unannounced with a small pot of violets, a bottle of wine, and a box of chocolate candy. It was a shallow combination of gifts. Like she’s picking me up for a date, Anna thought.
“You’re not dressed? Anna! It’s nearly one o’clock!” No, Anna wasn’t dressed. It hurt her skin to wear clothes. It hurt her head to pick them out of the closet. It hurt her heart to move through the world of the living as if nothing had happened. As if nothing had fundamentally changed. Edith followed Anna into the living room and Anna returned to the same corner of the couch she’d spent two weeks attempting to hide inside of. She picked a blanket off the floor and pulled it up to her chin. It was stained. With what, Anna did not know. Edith played at being wounded. “Aren’t you going to offer me something to drink?”