I focused my mind, ignored my insecurity about tense and word choice and sentence order, about whether it would properly be wohin or woher, tag or morgen, die or der or das. . . . I had made so many mistakes. How do you play baseball? You take nine human beings. . . . my teacher had grinned at that one, he couldn’t help himself. But if you got your meaning across, Mario had said, that’s all that matters.

Where to today did you wander?

Rüchi, the wife replied.

Rüchi! The mountain?

Yes, the mountain. Rüchi is a mountain.

It was the peak at the end of the question mark, one of those looming over the Muttseehutte.

Wow, I said.

They had gone up there for lunch, she explained.

I got out my topo map, and she twisted around to show me their route. From the cable car they had traversed the Muttenwandli-then climbed the south slope of the Nüschenstock at the end of the question mark-then run the ridge from there up to Rüchi. Ah genau, I said as she named every point, g enau. Exactly. This was what my Swiss teammates always said when other people were telling them things. It was something like our uh huh, or I see, or yeah yeah, or you bet. Genau: it’s a word the Swiss love to say and to hear. It may be the national anthem all by itself.

Pretty? I asked, being careful not to say Already?

They both nodded. Very pretty, the wife said.

Then she said, And where did you go?

Kistenpass.

Keesh-tee-pahsss!

That must be what one always said. Some kind of surprise about it. Well, maybe so. Yes, I said. Keee-stee-pahss.

And was it pretty?

Very pretty. The Alps, I said, are very, very pretty.

They nodded again, glowing with quiet pride, with love. Genau, the husband murmured.