Die Drehung der Schraube

Gentle reader (i.e. dear friend Keri, assorted relatives),

It has been three months exactly since I arrived in Munich.

And three months is the amount of time an American tourist visa waiver lasts here.

But luckily, I am not on a plane home to St. Paul. No, I am still sitting happily in Studentenstadt - next to me is my passport, open to my fancy new work visa. It is a pink sheet that covers two pages; on one page is a large, intricate block of text, and on the other is a mug-shot of me in which I resemble a lady rapist.

Gentle reader, this visa is good for three years. Three... freaking... years. How did this happen?

I am employed - so employed - by a small, very persistent German woman. She is meticulously dressed, with a well-coiffed bob and tailored clothing - I've taken to calling her Lucille Bluth subconsciously. I cannot tell you her real name, nor the name of the high-profile international company of which she is the German CEO - in my work contract, it says that "the employee agrees not to disclose to any third party any information whatsoever arising from or connected in any way to the employment, including information gleaned by the employee regarding the employer and the employer's family during the course of employment". This blog is probably pushing it.

Still, I cannot keep secret the fact that I am now a governess, or tutor, or nanny, or whatever.

Nor can I conceal the fact that I work for a very, as the nannying agency called it in their newsletter, "high-profile family".

Their house is four stories tall, which is huge for Munich. They have a garden full of manicured, shaped hedges. They have a small gazebo. They have a housekeeper, who is a very kind woman who speaks English with me and shows me repeatedly how to brew a cappuccino in the Nescafe machine.

Yes, a cappuccino. This is a great job, says Nader - says facts.

I am less positive - I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop, because how can I be paid to do this? Daily I bike through the park, past the river, and down cobblestoned streets; I put my key into their front gate and show myself in. There is, as I said, coffee. If I like, I can come an hour early and eat lunch with one of the children and the aforementioned housekeeper. I did, a day ago, and it was delicious, and at the end of it the housekeeper would not let me load the dishwasher.

Ah, yes, the children - there's no catch there, either. They are not squalling babies or tempestuous seven-year-olds -- they are a bespectacled, mild-mannered teenaged boy and a gentle pre-teenaged girl who runs from room to room, skidding in her socks. Both have had multiple British and American au pairs as babies, so they already speak damn good - if rusty - English. (Theoretically, at least on the contract, my job to "instruct them in American culture", which, short of showing them the entirety of The Simpsons, I'm not sure how to do. But, being that they are good listeners, it shouldn't be hard.)

The point is that the whole gig seems much too perfect, especially if you consider what I'm being paid. The zenith is that I don't have to be at work until two, leaving mornings free for making eggs and toast and picnicking in the park.

With any other job, if it had a list of this many pluses and virtually no minuses, I would be happy to accept it at face value. However, there is just too much fiction about nannying to make this possible.

I blame Professor Bradley Deane for my discomfort. In freshman year, around this time of the year, we read The Turn of the Screw. If you don't know, this is a Henry James ghost story, written in 1898, about a young nanny who takes what seems initially to be a perfect assignment. She is at a lovely home in the country with a housekeeper and two obedient, beautiful children. But then slowly creepy stuff happens, she starts seeing ghostly figures, she learns that the previous nanny died on the premises, she becomes steadily more creeped out by the housekeeper, she winds up strangling the boy.... etcetera etcetera.

Thank you, Bradley Deane. Because of your class, I walk up and down the spiral staircase of the house, on my guard, watching out for the ghosts of previous au pairs who had affairs with the gardener and experienced an angelic fall. I attempt to concentrate on other, more cheery nanny fiction - The Sound of Music would seem a more appropriate choice, Salzburg is like an hour and a half away even - but still, I must be wary.

If I find out that a previous nanny was named Anything Jessel, I'm totally out of there, biking as fast as I can over the scenic cobblestones...

PS, all of this is just to hide how smug I feel. This job totally rocks.