But you aren’t here for me, Anna thought. You’re there. And you aren’t answering the phone. Anna’s thoughts had pity on her thoughts. She tried Mary a third and final time but the call went directly to voice mail. Mary had turned the phone off. Anna didn’t leave a message. She hadn’t figured out what to tell her in any case. She slipped the phone back into her pocket and stood up. An elderly woman—different from the one before—smiled thankfully and nodded as she slipped into Anna’s chair. She thinks I’m giving her my seat. Anna wasn’t but took credit for the good deed anyway.
Anna had wandered Zürich many times before. In the city she was alone with her sorrow in a different way than she was when she walked through the woods or sat on her bench. In the woods her sadness came to a sharp and undeniable point. Every tree, every fallen log, every Wanderweg sign spoke aloud the same, sorry word: alone, alone, alone. In the city though, Anna’s solitude was a blunt object, a rubber mallet. It drubbed on her. So when, in the clotted streets of downtown Zürich, loneliness attacked, she’d dissociate from it, slip into a fugue. Where am I? How do I get home? I think I’m hungry. I’ve forgotten how to eat. What’s my name? At those times she distanced herself from herself and stood apart from her own volition in the most heinous of ways. A force (from within? from without? Anna could never tell) took charge and drove the bus of her where it willed. Is this one of those days? Anna asked herself. She didn’t think it was. The wind blew some of her hair out of its barrette. She hadn’t brought a hat. She pointed herself in the direction of the Bahnhofstrasse and walked with an unknown purpose, nothing but resignation and the ache of her face to compass her through the journey.
Anna’s fondness for nice things notwithstanding, the conspicuous consumption of Zürich’s Bahnhofstrasse had never wooed her. It was the too-muchness of it all. She couldn’t see through it. But the day’s gray climate made the shop windows shine. Everything invited her in. The designer eyeglasses showcased in the Fielmann window looked at her with a benevolent gaze, and the white, featureless mannequins in the Bally display appeared to be bowing with courtesy and grace. At the Beyer watch shop she leaned her forehead against the glass and (did she?) swooned over a 20,000 CHF vintage Cartier. Nine years in Switzerland and she’d never owned a nice watch. Anna let herself pine for a moment before moving on. She passed chocolate shops and toy stores. She passed the Dior and Burberry boutiques, the English-language bookstore, and several souvenir shops. She stopped at one and peered through the window. Postcards and T-shirts and glassware and maps and clocks and watches and Swiss Army knives. The knives pleased Anna. They were tools to implement, blades with uses. Of all the things she didn’t love about the Swiss, their practical ingenuity wasn’t one of them. Mary had said it about the handkerchiefs she’d given Anna for her birthday: What good is a useful object if it can’t be used? The Swiss weren’t just masters of accuracy, they were Meisters of use. This is why their clocks are categorical, their knives well whetted, their chocolate so toothsome, their banks so efficient. Anna was near Paradeplatz, home of the headquarters of UBS and Credit Suisse. It was inevitable; thinking of banks made her think of Bruno, but she wasn’t ready to think very deeply on the subject of him yet. He’d known all along. All along he had known. Anna couldn’t wrap her understanding around that so she didn’t even try to. Instead, she let her focus shift from the knives in the window to the window itself. She saw her face in the glass and reflected on her reflection. She was otherworldly and misshapen. She could go anywhere she wanted. The going wasn’t the problem. The problem was belonging where she went. This has been the issue from the beginning. It was near ten thirty A.M. She’d been aimlessly wandering for two hours. But she hadn’t gone far at all.
Think, Anna, she implored herself. Mary wasn’t available. Returning to Dietlikon wasn’t an option. Later, perhaps. Anna clung to the possibility of later. If she couldn’t go home, she couldn’t call Ursula. Surely Bruno had told her everything by now or, if not everything, a version of events in which Anna still came off badly. She could call David and Daniela, but that was almost as embarrassing an option as facing Ursula. She opened up her phone and started scrolling through the names. So many friends she did not have. All the distant relatives with whom she didn’t keep in touch. School pals. Lovers.
Even as she was in the process of doing it, she knew that calling Edith wasn’t a very good idea, and before Edith finished saying hello Anna felt an upswell of futility. No way am I asking her for help. I’m not going to let her see me like this.
“Oh. Sorry, Edith. I hit the wrong button.” Anna covered.
“Ha! Well don’t do it again!” Edith teased. “Make it up to me. Come into the city. I’m here already. You can buy me lunch.”
Anna pretended to consider the possibility before declining. By instinct she looked over her shoulder. Zürich’s a big city, Anna. You won’t run into her.
“Suit yourself!” And with that Edith signed off. The conversation lasted less than half a minute.