It wasn’t Hans, she explained. It was her in his world, the mismatch of her shape in the map of his world. It was Frankfurt, it was German gestalt, the nauseating presence of bratwurst, bockwurst, stadtwurst, knackwurst. It was the large people in their oversized coats, their pink faces, the smell of beer and breaths that were ice-cold. She laughed apologetically. She knew she was being unfair, she said. Everything had got to her- the bigness and fastness of the cars, the roar of the autobahns, the sickening surfeit of the supermarkets, the dreary whiteness of the winters.

She had stubbornly refused to learn the language. She hadn’t liked its sound.
They said they understood but she knew they did not. Her parents were in love with each other and after all these years, one would still have followed the other anywhere. “Honey, we visited Frankfurt once and thought it was a marvellous city,” her mother said, then added quickly, “Of course it is different when you live there.”

Homesickness was not reason enough to break a marriage, Sushma Reza decided. There had to be something else. They concealed their worry as best as they could and welcomed their daughter home. When their friends wanted to know what had happened, they said, “It didn’t work out between them” and knew from the nods elicited that the worst had been imagined. It had been scandal enough that the Reza girl had gone and married a foreigner, eight years her senior and of unknown lineage but now she was back in less than two years without any acceptable explanation to offer.

The Hopfenbergs had not come to India for the wedding. Hans and Anu had decided to marry at short notice after Hans learnt that he was required to return to head office within the month. Nevertheless, the Rezas had organized a spectacular wedding for their only daughter. Hans had said it would not be possible for his parents to attend since they kept indifferent health and had never travelled by air before. India might prove to be too much for them. Surely he had a relative, an uncle perhaps, someone to represent the family, Sam and Sushma wanted to know. No, said Hans cheerfully, I’m all there is. They went ahead with the arrangements anyway but the tongues had started wagging right then and there.

While Anu slipped easily and gratefully into the diurnal rhythms of her parents’ home, she was reluctant to go out. For almost two years she had led a solitary life in Frankfurt. The initial excitement of being with Hans in a foreign country had dissipated after the first few months. When they first arrived, Hans had taken three weeks off and they had spent that time going to museums and cafes. In those days they had worn their happiness on their faces in bright, little newlywed signs. But with Hans back at work, Anu had begun to falter. Six visits to the Museum der Kunst and Anu decided she had seen all there was to see. Even the PalmenGarten, which she had declared to be the most beautiful in the world had become commonplace. It was impossible to sustain a tourist identity, equally impossible to assimilate into a culture for which she felt no affinity. When she walked about alone, Anu realized that people stared at her. Perhaps they had always stared at her, but with Hans by her side, she hadn’t noticed. Sometimes they spoke to her in their valiant English and asked her where she came from. When she said “India” they nodded their heads and responded immediately with “Gandhi” or “Nehru”. Yes, that’s me in a nutshell, thought Anu. Why don’t you wear a dot in the middle of your forehead, they wanted to know, why do you wear trousers? Anu shrugged and they seemed disappointed. She felt like a picture walking about in its frame. It made her faintly derisive.

Two months after her arrival in Frankfurt, Hans took Anu to Duisberg to meet his parents. From the moment Anu entered the small, dark and severe parlour that was home to Hans’s parents, she was seized by a wave of claustrophobia. She took in the showcases dressed with lace and porcelain. Everywhere she looked, something small and fragile stared back at her, accusing her of being large and ungraceful. She allowed her backpack to slide silently to the floor and there it sat, ugly and prominent on the hand-embroidered rug whose tufted edges sprang back in horror. Hans towered like a giant in the tiny house but the glass figurines of cats and geese and ballerinas seemed to tolerate his presence as he did theirs.

Hans’s parents did not speak a word of English, and Anu spoke no more than two salutary words in German. She said those words and they nodded at each other and for the rest of the evening, took one another in without affection. Hans’s parents were both small and grey and Anu wondered how they had produced such a large, blond child. Mrs Hopfenberg seemed to have sized her up and reached a disappointing conclusion. It was clear that she did not consider her pretty. As for Hans’s father, he seemed interested only in the newspaper which he read with the aid of a magnifying glass. When Hans asked him a question he answered in monosyllables. They seemed so little interested in her that Anu wondered if Hans had even told them that he had married.

Hans seemed to have grown larger since he entered this house. His voice was louder than usual and authoritative and he spoke to his parents as if they were in his charge. His mother hung on to his every word. She never interrupted while he spoke and when he fell silent, she asked more questions, listening attentively but without comment. Hans sometimes looked at Anu and then she figured he was saying something about her. Hans’s mother looked briefly at her then turned away.

Anu counted eight cuckoo clocks in the room. There was nothing to do so she waited for the hour to strike to see what would happen. Six o’clock. One set off immediately and soon they were all out, chirruping and chiming to different rhythms. The conversation ceased and the parlour succumbed to an almost religious silence as brightly painted beaks fussed, fluttered and flit. An image of her home in Delhi burst briefly upon her soul, the careless disarray of sprawling rugs and cushions, a Bach fugue filtering from her father’s study, Toby splayed in disreputable abandon on the kitchen floor. Anu was doused with aching.

They had brought their bags with them with the intention of spending the weekend but Hans seemed to have reached the conclusion that the meeting was not going well. As the evening opened narrowly and without warmth in the only window in the parlour, Hans said that they would have to head back to Frankfurt as he was working the next morning. His mother did not protest. She silently laid out a supper of cold chicken, potato salad and sauerkraut which they ate in the kitchen. They left soon after. They drove straight back to Frankfurt and Hans was quiet and cool with her. All he said was, “You should start taking German lessons.” Anu nodded. She had intended to enroll in German classes as early as possible but when the time came, had found herself searching for excuses. Her terrible migraines had returned, she said, the cold had never suited her. She told Hans she would wait for warmer weather and enroll in the spring. Spring turned to summer and before long it was winter again.