“It’s too much,” Walther told Anna. “I don’t want anything from them or from you. I want to be able to buy you beautiful things, liebchen.” He gave her that boyish grin and said, “But I have no money.”
“Of course you do,” Anna replied. “Everything I have belongs to you.”
Walther smiled at her sweetly and said, “Does it?”
At Anna’s insistence—for Walther seemed reluctant to discuss money—she explained her financial situation to him. She had a trust fund that was enough for her to live on comfortably, but the bulk of her fortune was in shares of Roffe and Sons. The shares could not be sold without the unanimous approval of the board of directors.
“How much is your stock worth?” Walther asked.
Anna told him. Walther could not believe it He made her repeat the sum.
“And you can’t sell the stock?”
“No. My cousin Sam won’t let it be sold. He holds the controlling shares. One day…”
Walther expressed an interest in working in the family business. Anton Roffe was against it.
“What can a ski bum contribute to Roffe and Sons?” he asked.
But in the end he gave in to his daughter, and Walther was given a job with the company in administration. He proved to be excellent at it and advanced rapidly. When Anna’s father died two year’s later, Walther Gassner was made a member of the board. Anna was so proud of him. He was the perfect husband and lover. He was always bringing her flowers and little gifts, and he seemed content to stay at home with her in the evening, just the two of them. Anna’s happiness was almost too much for her to bear. Ach, danke, lieber Gott, she would say silently.
Anna learned to cook, so that she could make Walther’s favorite dishes. She made choucroute, a bed of crunchy sauerkraut and creamy mashed potatoes heaped with a smoked pork chop, a frankfurter and a Nuremberg sausage. She prepared fillet of pork cooked in beer and flavored with cumin, and served it with a fat baked apple, cored and peeled, the center filled with airelles, the little red berries.
“You’re the best cook in the world, liebchen,” Walther would say, and Anna would blush with pride.
In the third year of their marriage, Anna became pregnant.
There was a great deal of pain during the first eight months of her pregnancy, but Anna bore that happily. It was something else that worried her.
It started one day after lunch. She had been knitting a sweater for Walther, daydreaming, and suddenly she heard Walther’s voice, saying, “My God, Anna, what are you doing, sitting here in the dark?”
The afternoon had turned to dusk, and she looked down at the sweater in her lap and she had not touched it. Where had the day gone? Where had her mind been? After that, Anna had other similar experiences, and she began to wonder whether this sliding away into nothingness was a portent, an omen that she was going to die. She did not think she was afraid of death, but she could not bear the thought of leaving Walther.
Four weeks before the baby was due, Anna lapsed into one of her daydreams, missed a step and fell down an entire flight of stairs.
She awakened in the hospital.
Walther was seated on the edge of the bed, holding her hand. “You gave me a terrible scare.”
In a sudden panic she thought, The baby! I can’t feel the baby. She reached down. Her stomach was flat. “Where is my baby?”
And Walther held her close and hugged her.
The doctor said, “You had twins, Mrs. Gassner.”
Anna turned to Walther, and his eyes were filled with tears. “A boy and girl, liebchen.”
And she could have died right then of happiness. She felt a sudden, irresistible longing to have them in her arms. She had to see them, feel them, hold them.
“We’ll talk about that when you’re stronger,” the doctor said. “Not until you’re stronger.”
They assured Anna that she was getting better every day, but she was becoming frightened. Something was happening to her that she did not understand. Walther would arrive and take her hand and say good-bye, and she would look at him in surprise and start to say, “But you just got here…” And then she would see the clock, and three or four hours would have passed.