performed with due diligence and ardor, are not in search of fun or good food. They are educational and, above all, unusual—a trip only works if no one else has managed to do it.” Andy was laughing too and raised an admonitory index finger. “Take nudism. Most people might think sex and naked bodies and pleasure. Not the Swiss. Have you ever been to a nudist camp?”
She shook her head, so he went on: “We’ve even managed to turn that into an educational event. Carefully walled off from the rest of the world, the nudists march up and down, wrapped in scarves, wearing socks and shoes against the cold, but otherwise naked. They discuss world politics because, of course, they watch the world on their satellite TV screens in many languages and read several newspapers a day in order to be informed. All the while, they’re hiking their naked bodies along the carefully manicured paths in search of rugged health and physical purification.”
“This is not funny anymore,” Emma said. “I thought you were trying to keep me from committing suicide, but, if I hadn’t been depressed before, I certainly would be by now.”
“So, you did think of throwing yourself over the railing?” he asked after a while.
“No! Not that it’s any of your business. It would be too cold anyway. But,” she relented, “had I been suicidal, and you had rescued me, I’d owe you my life or something.”
“You would. But then, you wouldn’t owe me much as you wanted to throw it away.”
”I really owe you nothing because I was just looking at the water. For a moment, I thought I owed you for an entertaining hour, but then you turned really depressing. Are you telling me everyone around here is so bloody important that they don’t waste time staring at water?”
“Well, I just explained the misery of the Swiss, so you should be able to figure it out youself. Puritanism suppresses the urge to waste time or take life lightly. However, I’m happy to say you’re looking at the great white exception.” Andy bowed from his waist, and Emma smiled at him.
“How did you get to be that?” she asked him.
“I’d say that falls under the way-too-intimate category of information.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“But then, if you don’t ask, you’ll definitely never find out. I better be on my way. I’m glad you’re planning to stay alive.” He held out his hand. “Bye, whatever your name is.”
She shook his hand. “Emma. Nice to have met you. See you around, I’m sure.”
He turned away. As he moved down the concrete steps and walked along the path, she noticed his limp. From one step to the next, he swung his foot in an arc, and his hips swiveled as if to widen his reach. When his left foot finally touched the ground, his head and upper body copied the circular rotation and settled on a slant. Then the whole motion started again. How could she have missed it the first time around? One of his legs was quite a bit shorter than the other. Quasimodo at home?
She turned her eyes back to the water, but, try as she might, she could not recover the colors of a tropical reef. The river remained gray, dead, and flat.
She turned back to the river path and started walking in the opposite direction from Andy’s. Was it so unreasonable of him to suspect possible suicide? There were years … No. After Karl had been born, she had made a pact with herself she would do her best to stick around for as long as he needed her.
She changed her gait and tried to copy the way he had walked. “Interesting,” she thought. “If one of your legs is shorter, the efficient way to walk is a double circle. Generally, the walking motion is forward, linear, two-dimensional really. But when you add two circles—one lower body, one upper—it makes walking three-dimensional. I wonder if that affects the way you see life?”
She didn’t exactly speak out loud, but sort of muttered. She had decided that putting actual words to thoughts slowed down the mind and stopped her from obsessing.
With a sudden jerk, Emma’s head came up from her focus on her feet, and she pulled back the sleeve of her coat. She knew it! She was late. Everyone would be home in ten minutes, and she barely had time to be there ahead of them, let alone for cooking a meal.
She turned from the river and started walking fast. The path next to the garden plot was narrow, and stinging nettles crowded in from the sides. She rushed past without looking where she trod, and, when a soft squish announced she had stepped on a slug, she didn’t stop to check. The wave of revulsion that swept up her spine stayed with her until she hit the main road. Why such an extreme reaction? It was just a slug: brown, leaving a slimy trail, its bulbous antennae poking into the air. Maybe she would be a slug in her next life. Or had she been one in a former? To be so easily destroyed: no protection, no house to hide under, no legs to run with, no protective coloring except camouflage—brown, invisible, and defenseless. Was she identifying with a slug or simply projecting? And why either?
She crossed the street at a run with cars whizzing by on either side of her, then hurried up the hill on the sidewalk, still caught up with the murdered slug. She kept re-experiencing the moment of impact: the slight resistance under her foot, then the yielding when the shoe pressed fully and the slug body popped, its innards oozing over the ground.
Her eyes were on the ground ahead of her, so she didn’t see the woman until she was inches away. She first noticed a shoe in her vision directly in front of her.
“Watch where you’re going,” a throaty voice said. Emma looked up in time to see a walking stick on its way down onto her head. She raised her arms and caught the blow on her forearm.
“Ouch,” she said. “What’s wrong with you? You’ve got the whole rest of the sidewalk. Why do you need this particular space?”
The brown eyes that stared into hers were empty and dark. The woman’s face was narrow; her features were set close togther as though someone had economized on the elements. The eyes were small, deeply set, and her sparse eyebrows made them seem even smaller. Her pursed mouth was a slit, and the upper lip, wrinkled like an accordion, made her face look as though she’d swallowed something sour.
“This is where I walk. You blunder along as though there were no one else in the world. Can’t you be respectful of other people?”
They had stopped walking and now faced each other, arms and stick down at their respective sides. The woman was nearly the same height as Emma, lumpy in her big coat, and maybe ten years older. Suddenly Emma felt she was looking into the mirror of her future. She stepped sideways to get around the woman but was outflanked. The woman turned with her as though they were performing an oddly complicated dance. Once again facing each other, the woman said, “It’s always the same thing. You people think you own the world.”
The dark-brown eyes seemed to look through Emma, and, remembering she was running late, she decided against asking who “you people” were. Instead, she stepped once more to her right and pushed past the woman, even giving her a slight shove. After several steps, having heard nothing more, she looked back. The woman was still standing in place and staring after Emma, her mouth slightly open.
At the top of the hill, Emma jaywalked against the traffic, having to run when the bus rumbled around the corner. She hurried down the narrow alley behind the apartment blocks that made up her own street, and, by the time she reached her own building, she had her keys in hand.
4
The four-story building of native sandstone had been built in the sixties, and cleaned and sandblasted several times since. It looked clean, anonymous, and boring. Every time she saw it, she had a sinking feeling. She hated the building, and she dreaded having to go in. The door opened from the inside, and Mrs. Meyer stepped through. They greeted each other, and Emma hurried past.
Inside, the hallway smelled faintly of stale air, cooked cabbage, and soap. The stairwell to the basement was open, and she could hear the washing machine going. Tuesday! Tomorrow was her washday. She really had to remember. She climbed the stairs and