“Sagen Sie das bitte noch einmal,” Werner politely said. (“Please say that again.”) I saw that the ski patroller and the snowshoer were almost back to the village; the lights of Wengen shone brightly below us. We were close enough to town that I thought I could make out the lights of our hotel—we would be there, in just a few minutes. In my bad German, there wasn’t enough time for me to tell the Swiss policemen the story of what it meant for me to ski with my mother.

“Meine Mutter…” I began, in German. I told them how she’d taught me to ski, but how much I hated skiing, and then I stopped skiing with her. Now I believed I should ski with her, I said, but God knows what a mess I made of this (in German) or if the Swiss cops could understand me.

By now I knew that Werner wouldn’t tell me his opinion, if he ever expressed one. “Was denkst du?” Werner asked Möglich again. By now I knew this was their routine, and I was tired of it. From the mother-and-son story I’d described—no matter how briefly, or how badly—the possible word simply didn’t apply.

If Möglich replied with the möglich word, that would just be bullshit, I was thinking, but the taciturn policeman surprised me. Möglich spoke in English; he’d heard enough of my bad German to doubt my capabilities at speaking or understanding his language. “With our mothers, we are always alone,” Möglich told me. I realize that this sounds like a translation. In German, what Möglich meant might have been clearer. But what he said was clear enough, and it still sounds true to me.

“There were two women with you, the big one and the small one who spoke German—which one was your mother?” Werner asked me. Taking his cue from Möglich, Werner was also speaking English.

Before I could answer Werner, Möglich interrupted us. The formerly one-word cop had become quite talkative. “There are three women with him, counting the one back at the hotel,” Möglich pointed out to his partner. We were in Wengen, in the village; we were almost back at the hotel. Before I could tell them who my mom was, Werner wanted to know what Möglich thought.

“Was denkst du?” Werner asked Möglich.

This time, there was no hesitation. Möglich didn’t need or pretend to think about it. “You’re a lucky man—those three women love you,” the Swiss policeman said. “But the one back at the hotel loves you the most—you should ski with that one,” Möglich said.