THAT LATE IN THE evening, most of the houses on Rosenweg were entirely dark, their inhabitants already asleep. It took years for Anna to become habituated to this, how Switzerland, machine that it is, powered down at night. Shops closed. People slept when they were meant to. In the States if you couldn’t or didn’t want to sleep, you could always shop at a twenty-four-hour supermarket, wash clothes at a twenty-four-hour Laundromat, eat pie and drink coffee at a twenty-four-hour diner. The television networks ran viewable programming the entire night. So much never shut off. Lights always burned somewhere. It was an insomniac’s solace.
DOKTOR MESSERLI ASKED ABOUT Anna’s insomnia. How long had she suffered, how it presented. How she curbed it. Anna had no real answer and instead replied, “Sleep won’t solve my situation.” Even to Anna’s ears it sounded canned.
WHEN ANNA STEPPED OUTSIDE, the porch lamp, sensitive to motion, flickered on. The front steps led to the driveway. The driveway opened up to the street. The playground in the yard of the Kirchgemeindehaus was across the way. Anna crossed the street and stepped over a small wooden fence and took a seat on a wooden swing intended for very young children. She was uneasy and perturbed and the night air was just damp enough to be cruel.
Even Anna would admit she prowled Dietlikon’s streets too often in the dark hours. In her second month in the country, Bruno woke in the middle of the night and Anna was gone. She wasn’t in the house or the attic or the yard. He ran outside and called for her. When she didn’t answer, he called the Polizei. My wife is gone! My wife is pregnant! The officers came to the house and asked insinuating questions and swapped readable looks. Had they fought recently? Did she take anything with her? What was their marriage like? Did he know if she’d been seeing anyone? Bruno screwed his face into a question mark and forced his fists into his pockets. She is pregnant and it’s two A.M.! By the time he steered them from that line of questioning Anna had come home. She’d barely crossed the threshold when Bruno threw himself around her as if she were a soldier back from battle. One policeman said something low and curt in Schwiizerdütsch that Anna didn’t understand. Bruno answered with a grunt. The officers left.
When they were alone and out of earshot, Bruno dug his fingers into Anna’s shoulders and shook her. Who are you fucking? Who were you with? She’d embarrassed him in front of the policemen. No one, Bruno—never! I swear! Bruno cursed at her and called her a whore and a cunt. Who did you suck off? Whose cock was in your mouth? Nobody’s, Bruno, I swear! That was the truth. Anna and Bruno were in a version of love and Anna had gone for a walk because she couldn’t sleep. It was just a walk! That’s it! And whose cock would it have been, in any case? This she thought but did not say. It took almost an hour, but Bruno finally came to believe her. Or said he did.
A neighbor’s cat hissed and sputtered at what was likely a hedgehog. Three minutes later, the quarter-hour toll of the church bell rang.
WHEN SHE PRESENTED HERSELF for the first of her German classes, Anna was empty of expectation. She was not fully indifferent to first-day-of-school jitters, even at her age. At breakfast she told her sons that she was starting school. Charles sweetly offered his pencil box. Charles was like that. Victor was silent; he had no opinion. Ursula made a show of snapping out a dishtowel.