My Beautiful Wife

Some months ago, a woman who lives in our apartment complex encountered my wife and recognized her as "the person married to that foreigner." What the woman particularly wanted to know was:

"Why did he marry you? You're not beautiful."

I suppose that there's always a story to tell . . . I met my wife in Germany, on a train. I hadn't noticed her standing on the platform before boarding, but she had already observed me, perceived the danger, and kept her distance.

Despite her effort to avoid me, I happened to sit down beside her. Pure chance -- it was the only empty seat. (My wife says fate.)

"Hello," I said, noticing her for the first time, and liking what I saw.

"Hello," she responded, in a low, wary, but husky and thereby enticing voice.

"I'm Jeff Hodges," I told her.

"I'm Sun-Ae," she told me.

"What does your name mean?" I asked.

"Good Love," she revealed.

I took it as a sign and decided to marry her. But I had to win her heart. So, I asked her what she was studying.

"Robert Musil," she said, still wary.

Now, I don't know that "Musil" derives from "muse," and it may be just a variant of "mueseli," but I took him as my inspiration:

"Oh," I noted, "The Man Without Qualities."

By chance (or was it fate?), I had recently begun reading that novel.

In German.

In fact, the entire conversation with this unexpected love of my life was taking place in German.

I am terrible at foreign languages, not particularly eloquent in my own, and was having to woo in a tongue suited less to expressing passionate love than to explaining the mechanical workings of an internal combustion engine. Even the German title of Musil's book sounds mechanical: Der Man ohne Eigenschaften.

Rather like a piston, isn't it: Ei-gen-shaft-en. Ei-gen-shaft-en. Ei-gen-shaft-en. Ei-gen-shaft-en. Ei-gen-shaft-en . . .

She, however, was impressed. Especially when I related the opening story, which introduces the main character, Ulrich, who meets a beautiful, mysterious woman through a series of unfortunate events and accidentally wins her heart.

This introductory part of the novel ends with the dry observation that:

"One week later, she was already seven days his beloved."

Which I quoted.

I may not have won her heart with that, but I caught her attention. And over poetry the following evening, I captured her heart.

When I took her to my Ozark home to meet my family, everyone was impressed with her but also baffled. My youngest brother put it succinctly:

"How did Jeff ever get such a beautiful girlfriend?"

How indeed. I owe it all to a man without qualities.