Hausfrau

by Jill Alexander Essbaum

  Bruno returned with their beers and Anna’s water, and the men—those rapscallion boys—took up the conversation where they’d left it. Anna paid only vague attention until she heard Tim’s name and figured that Bruno was telling Karl about their dinner with the Gilberts. Bruno spoke in a rapid, scuttling Schwiizerdütsch. Anna didn’t even attempt a proper listen. Karl intuited her frustration and asked Bruno if it would not be better to talk in English. Bruno swigged his beer, shook his head no, and answered, in Swiss German, She is taking classes, needs the practice, it’s time she learned the goddamn language. This Anna did understand. He was smiling when he said it, and the smile was real. Bruno meant all his gestures. Bruno meant every word he said.

  ANNA AND STEPHEN TALKED over one, two, three rounds of drinks. Anna phoned Ursula, fibbed to her, explained that the shops were crowded, that every task was taking twice as long to accomplish as she’d planed, and would Ursula mind watching Victor after school? Would she collect Charles from Kinderkrippe? Would you? Would you …? Of course Ursula would. But she wasn’t happy about it.

  By then Anna had been drained of the vexation she’d been carrying around. Her heart shifted gravity again, only this time, it rose above her head like a helium balloon. Anna acknowledged the absurdity of this feeling. It didn’t matter. She was high on the moment. A wind could come and blow her away. She begged the clock to spin more slowly. She begged the clock to stop.

  “WE MAKE THE PASSIVE voice in German with the verb werden. ‘To become.’ So the bicycle becomes stolen, if you will. Or the woman became sad.”

  Or the body would become ravaged. And the heart will become broken. Somehow it made more sense this way to Anna. “To be” is static. “To become” implies motion. A paradoxical move toward limp surrender. Whatever it is, you do not do it. It is done to you. “Passivity” and “passion” begin alike. It’s only how they end that’s different.

  CLOCKS DON’T STOP. EVENTUALLY, with great disappointment, Anna tore herself away from the drinks, her giddiness, and Stephen’s company. It was time for Anna to go home. She wrote her phone number on a napkin and implored him with a wink not to lose it. She blushed as she made a happy journey to the train station. Yes, yes, of course. A flirtation. Nothing more. I won’t rely on desire to tell me the truth. It rarely does. He will not—he really shouldn’t—call. But as her homeward bound train rolled past the shunting yards to the west of the Hauptbahnhof, Anna felt a tremor in her hand. She attributed it to shivering from the cold. It was winter, after all. But the tremor repeated itself and she realized it was her cell phone. A message that had been sent was received: What are you doing tomorrow? Anna didn’t respond. But on that message’s tail came another: Come see me. And as the train slowed to a stop at Bahnhof Dietlikon, the last message arrived: Tomorrow. 10 A.M. Nürenbergstrasse 12. Anna was pressed to answer; she could do nothing else. She told herself—convinced herself—she could do nothing else. She sent a singular reply.

  Yes.

  She did not even attempt to pretend she had no intention of sleeping with him.

  8

  DANIELA’S PARTY WAS ORDINARY, PROSAIC EVEN. AT TWO THEY feasted upon cervelat, the thick, stubbed wurst known commonly as Switzerland’s national sausage. At three they ate a buttercream cake baked by Eva, a distant cousin of the Benz siblings who lived nearby. At four o’clock Daniela unwrapped her birthday gifts. It was five. Anna had a headache. When she checked her Handy, she found a message from Archie. Tomorrow after class? She texted back: Maybe.

  ON THE DAY AFTER meeting Stephen Nicodemus, Anna left Charles at Kinderkrippe and told Ursula, whom she passed on the street returning from the post office, that she had just a little more shopping left in the city but would be home in time to get Charles and meet Victor after school. Ursula nodded and kept walking. Anna scolded herself for being so chatty. It would be weeks before she learned that the secret to telling lies was simply not to tell them: Omit, Anna, omit. The fewer the details, the more credible you’ll sound. When Anna reached the station, she boarded her usual train. But instead of riding it all the way to the Hauptbahnhof, she got off at Wipkingen, the station just before it. From Oerlikon, the station that immediately precedes it, the ride to Wipkingen was a short two kilometers, three-quarters of which took place in a dark, straight tunnel. Tunnels made Anna apprehensive. Indeed, she found a comfort riding trains, but this occurred in open air alone. In tunnels she could think of nothing but the earth above. What if the ground collapsed? What if I was buried underneath? What is it like to be buried underground? Will I know it when I’m dead? In tunnels she worked her best to distract herself. She would imagine, then, the topographies above her, perhaps with a city map in her hand, and trace the train’s path. On the S3 she’d picture the hills of Zürichberg, the Dolderbahn, the FIFA headquarters, the empty fields between Gockhausen and Tobelhof. On this train, the S8, she imagined the houses she was passing underneath, the people inside of them. Who was cooking, who was sleeping, who was fighting, who was making love. Who was sitting on a balcony feeling sorry for herself. Who was breaking someone else’s heart. Who was having her own heart broken. As maudlin as it was, it perturbed her less than the alternative. It’s through a tunnel a body comes into the world, Anna thought. And as a body leaves it? Anna didn’t know, though some people described a tunnel of light. Anna was willing to accept that as fact.

  A short walk found her at Nürenbergstrasse. Stephen sat on a bench in front of his building. He was waiting for her. He took her to his room on the first floor.

  Anna had never been mad about foreplay. She was not one of those women who needed to endure complicated half hours of rubbing and prodding and explosive plyometrics before her body tensed and the dam holding back her pleasure burst. Her desires were basic. Put it in, take it out. Repeat for as long as possible.

  This was Anna’s first infidelity.

  They fucked so hard that afterward neither could walk.

  DOKTOR MESSERLI POINTED TO a picture of a three-footed fountain framed by stars, the sun and moon, and a two-headed dragon. Pillars of smoke plumed up either side. “Fire,” she said, “is the first act of transformation. And,” she added, “in alchemy, fire is always associated with libido.”

  ANNA ATE TOO MUCH. Her stomach ached and she herself was restless. She was ready to go home but they wouldn’t leave for another two hours at least.

  She rose from the table, stretched her arms above her head, and looked around. “Anyone want to go for a walk?” Bruno grunted. The beer was catching up to him and he was getting tired and cranky. Anna took the grunt for a no. Ursula had no interest. The boys were elsewhere. Daniela had guests to entertain. Even Polly Jean; she was asleep on David and Daniela’s bed. Anna shrugged and started off alone.

  She’d only made it down the drive before Daniela called after her and asked if she wanted an umbrella. Anna shook her head no. All day long rain had seemed unavoidable. And yet, they had avoided it. She’d take the chance. A few steps farther on she heard the call of her name once more. She turned. Karl Trötzmüller was jogging across the yard to meet her. “I want to come with you,” he said. Bruno glanced briefly in their direction, then turned back to his conversation. Anna didn’t need his permission. But apparently she had it.

  Karl caught up with Anna and the two of them started on the path that led into the Mumpf woods.

  “THINK OF A BUCKET, Anna. Your heart is a bucket with a hole in the bottom of it. It leaks. You cannot keep it full.”

  Anna nodded opaquely. A sparrow landed on the outside sill and just as quickly flew away. “I’ve got a hole.”

  “Over time it widens. From the size of a one-franc piece to the size of a small plum, then an apple, then a man’s fist. Eventually the hole becomes so large that the bucket has no bottom at all. Then it is useless.”

  “I have a useless heart.” It was a vacant statement.

  Doktor Messerli shook her head. “No, Anna. All I am saying is you cannot treat a mortal wound with iodin
e and plasters. Repair the hole. That’s the only thing to do.”

  IN JANUARY AND FEBRUARY and the first half of March 2006, Anna spent every available moment in Stephen Nicodemus’s arms. They were wiry and able—not strong, but his. Anna had fallen in love. Or a version of love.

  They spoke most often of things both scientific and theoretical. It was how they flirted. It was almost the whole of their windup. It became Anna’s challenge to ask him questions no one had asked him before. Why is fire hot? she asked. Is fire ever cold? Why won’t wool burn? Does a flame have weight? Have mass? Is there anything that is entirely resistant to fire? Can fire itself catch fire? Can fire freeze?

  Anna made a fetish of all things fire. She passed her palms through the flames of candles she lit in the den. She lifted the covers of the stove and stared at the pilot light. She dreamed of explosions, of houses burning down. She’d wake in the night with ecstatic sweats. What would it be like to strike a final match and set it to the center of this bed? Even Anna knew that she might be approaching the rim of her reason.

  Stephen tried to explain his work to her. Pyrology is an applied science, with practical uses in many fields, he said. Anna replied, Apply it to me, this science of yours, Professor, then threw herself open on his bed.

  “DIFFERENT SYSTEMS GIVE DIFFERENT names to alchemy’s stages,” the Doktor said. “But the step that follows the burning is the washing. Solutio. The bathing of the calcified elements in water. For example, the water of tears.”

  DAVID AND DANIELA’S HOUSE abutted the woods. Anna and Karl entered the forest under a vault of foliage, a canopy of trees. They passed a mannish woman walking a Rottweiler. “Grüezi mitenand,” she greeted them in the local dialect. Anna and Karl greeted her back. She was the only person they passed. Anna wondered if they should have brought the umbrella. It began to drizzle just a few steps in.

  Karl and Anna walked in relative tandem silence for three or four minutes. Karl was a bruising, muscular man, slightly heavyset and almost imperceptibly bowlegged. His blond hair had been bleached by the sun, his hands were calloused, and his was a ruddy, affable face. Karl worked for Kanton Aargau as a Holzfäller, a lumberjack. Karl and Anna shared the most minuscule of small talk. He mentioned Willi, his thirteen-year-old son who lived in Bern with his mother, the woman from whom Karl was divorced. He spoke of a vacation they’d taken the year before to California. He told Anna a joke he’d heard on a television program and asked her if she missed the USA. For Anna he named aloud the plants and trees: Bergulme. Elsbeere. Hagebuche. Efeu. Scots elm. Service tree. Hornbeam. Ivy. Anna wasn’t feeling any better. Her stomach pulsed with queasiness as if her body sensed an encroaching inevitability.

  IN MID-MARCH 2006, ANNA lay on the floor before Stephen in his apartment on Nürenbergstrasse. She wailed: Take me, take me, take me with you. It was the worst day of her life. She’d never felt so awful.

  No, Anna. That’s not going to happen. He spoke patiently, but there was irritation in his voice. He didn’t want to be cruel. Anna clawed at ways to keep him. I’m coming anyway. You cannot stop me.

  That was true. He could not have stopped her. If Anna had found the nerve she would have needed in order to chase Stephen back to America, she would have brandished it, proved herself, made good on her promise to follow. But she couldn’t find it. She didn’t even have a bank account.

  Hi, um, Bruno? Yeah, I need a one-way ticket to Boston. The only thing that made her laugh that day was imagining that phone call. No. Stephen had to be the one to carry her off. He had to do it for it to count, for it to be real. He had to grab her and drag her out. She needed to be able to say I had no choice.

  But Stephen didn’t do that. And Anna didn’t follow him to Boston.

  For three entire months they’d spent at least an hour of most days together. They met at his apartment. They met in the woods and went for walks. They met near the ETH for lunch, coffee, drinks, a fast bout of lovemaking behind the closed door of his office. But the inevitable soon inevited: Stephen left. He went home. He did not come back.

  I feel so fucking used.

  She had no recourse but the comfort of her tears. She hid them in the best way she knew how to hide them: she cried them only at night, only when she walked, only when no one could question them. But there were so many tears.

  And so many daily chastenings. Goddammit, Anna. You’re wasting this much grief on a three-month affair? She tried to be rational. She tried to focus on her family. She tried to feel guilt. All she felt was inescapable woe.

  But no real grief is ever a waste. And every grief is real. And this was bigger than Anna was ready to admit. It extended beyond the immediacy of her shattered heart. But she wouldn’t know that for a very long time.

  By mid-April Anna had a plan. It was selfish and irrevocable. But it seems so strangely sane and sensible, she thought. Bruno had a pistol. A World War II–era Luger. Semiautomatic. Light enough for a lady’s hands. Toggle-lock action. An iron-sighted Nazi sidearm. I will walk into the woods one night and not walk out again. Twice Anna worked up courage. Twice she went into the woods. Twice that courage failed her and she returned from the forest unharmed. Both times her hands shook so hard she couldn’t even grip the gun. The irony was evident: I’m too terrified of the trigger pull to die.

  But she missed a period before she had the backbone to try again (and after the second attempt she knew she wouldn’t). Bruno had wanted another child. Anna hadn’t. But the guilt of the affair and the stress of the breakup were gaining on her. The baby could absolve her. The baby could be her consolation prize. Her only consolation.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES INTO THEIR walk, Karl and Anna reached a Waldhütte, one of the hundreds of free-use cabins dotted throughout the Swiss woods. This Waldhütte was more rudimentary than most. It was a small three-walled hut in which there were two benches and a fire pit that looked as if it had been used as recently as that morning. The Waldhütte’s interior walls were littered top to bottom with graffiti. As fussy as they were about cleanliness and order, the Swiss seemed to Anna to be rather lax about graffiti. It was everywhere. Anna pointed to an enigmatic scribbling on the stacked-log wall of varnished wood. “What does this say?” she asked. She wasn’t invested in the answer, but there was safety in small talk, and Anna sought it. Karl moved closer, put his hand in the small of her back and whispered, It says I want to kiss you, Anna.

  Before Anna could say one way or the other, Karl had turned her to face him so that she was pressed between his body and the wall. He kissed her. His tongue tasted of Weizenbier, the heady wheat brew he’d been drinking all day long.

  Anna protested. “No, Karl. No.” Karl breathed Yes in Anna’s ear. The yes was enough. Anna’s passive self gave in. I’m going to let him fuck me. It was like handing an open wallet to a thief.

  Anna thought a half dozen thoughts at once: I should stop this. I should feel ashamed. I should feel infringed upon. I should feel bad about Bruno. I should feel bad that I don’t feel bad. What time is it? Where are my sons? It’s raining and I’m in the woods. It’s Daniela’s birthday and I am letting this man fuck me. Karl kissed Anna again. When Anna kissed Karl back, these thoughts flew away like little birds.

  It was a quick, hard fuck. Karl peeled off her tights and panties. Anna kicked away her right shoe and wiggled her leg and foot free from the nylon. She hooked her calf around Karl’s ass and hitched him toward her. He’d already loosened his belt and was shoving down his jeans and briefs. His cock was stiff and wet. That was enough to make Anna wet, too. Yes, that’s it, put it in. She spoke so quietly her voice was audible only to the air around her lips.

  They rummaged through each other’s clothes until they hit skin. Anna panicked only once; she thought she heard the crackle of footfalls on the trail. “Just the trees,” Karl said, and he was right. So Anna closed her eyes and opened the valve of her thighs even wider. Karl took the invitation and pushed himself deeper in.

  Then something happened. Anna felt
a shift. A limbic slip. A displacement. Tremendous feeling began to move beneath her skin. It wanted out. Harder, Karl. More. Now. He did as he was told. Every thrust knocked something else loose. A worry, a fear, a conundrum, a despair, a sadness—whatever it was, each fell away, one after the other. Mary who begs for the friend I don’t want to be. Archie who can smell my sadness. Victor who I sometimes just don’t love that much. Stephen who I will love until I die. Ursula who should just shut the fuck up. Doktor Messerli to whom I’ve already told too much. Polly who but for that Wednesday would not even exist. Hans. Margrith. Edith. Otto. Roland. Alexis. My dead parents. My age. My face. My breasts. Bruno. I’ve done everything but eat a plate of glass for you. Just look at me! Love me anyway! Anna started to cry. Karl stopped and looked at her but Anna hit him with her fist, Keep going! He did. Anna tumbled through the litany once more. The harder he fucked her, the truer her thoughts became. Each statement cracked open a new catharsis. It was as honest as she’d been in years. She let them cover her. She lay down in them. I’m a queen in a goddamn mercurial bath. She remembered what the Doktor said: The being dies and takes the body with it. The cost of transcendence is death.

  Anna gave over to a soundless, unexpected orgasm. Karl shuddered and grunted when he came. Anna squeezed him, then pulsed around him then let him slip from her like a soaped finger sliding through a tight ring.

  Anna caught her breath getting dressed. Karl zipped himself back into his blue jeans and handed Anna her shoe. “I’ve wanted to do that for a craving time.” He meant “long.” Anna didn’t believe him but it didn’t matter. “Let’s do it again,” he said. The assent Anna gave was automatic. Okay.