Herta Müller: The Passport

“When she walks,” thinks Windisch, “Amalie’s toes point outwards when she puts her feet on the ground.”

When Amalie was seven years old, Rudi pulled her through the maize. He pulled her to the end of the garden. “The maize is a forest,” he said. Rudi took Amalie into the barn. He said: “The barn is a castle.”

There was an empty wine-barrel in the barn. Rudi and Amalie crawled into the wine-barrel. “The barrel is your bed,” said Rudi. He put dry burs on Amalie’s hair. “You have a crown of thorns,” he said. “You are enchanted. I love you. You must suffer.”

Rudi’s pockets were full of shards of coloured glass. He laid the shards around the edge of the barrel. The shards gleamed. Amalie sat down on the floor of the barrel. Rudi knelt in front of her. He pushed up her dress. “I’m drinking milk from you,” said Rudi. He sucked Amalie’s nipples. Amalie closed her eyes. Rudi bit into the small, brown knots.

Amalie’s nipples were swollen. Amalie cried. Rudi went through the end of the garden and into the fields. Amalie ran into the house.

The burs stuck in her hair. They were tangled up. Windisch’s wife cut the knots out with her scissors. She washed Amalie’s nipples with camomile tea. “You mustn’t play with him again,” she said. “The skinner’s son is crazy. He has a deep hole in his head from all the stuffed animals.”

Windisch shook his head. “Amalie will bring disgrace down on us,” he said.

There were grey cracks between the blinds. Amalie had a temperature. Windisch couldn’t sleep. He was thinking about her chewed nipples.

Windisch’s wife sat down on the edge of the bed. “I had a dream,” she said. “I went up to the loft. I had the flour sieve in my hand. There was a dead bird on the steps up to the loft. It was a golden oriole. I lifted the bird up by the feet. Under it was a clump of fat, black flies. The flies flew up in a swarm. They settled in the flour sieve. I shook the sieve in the air. The flies didn’t move. Then I tore open the door. I ran into the yard. I threw the sieve with the flies into the snow.

The skinner’s windows have fallen into the night. Rudi is lying on his coat, sleeping. The skinner is lying on a coat with his wife, sleeping.

Windisch sees the white patch of the clock on the wall. He sees it on the empty table. A cuckoo lives in the clock. It feels the hour hand. It calls. The skinner gave the clock to the militiaman as a present.

Two weeks ago the skinner showed Windisch a letter. The letter was from Munich. “My brother-in-law lives there,” the skinner said. He laid the letter on the table. With the tip of his finger he looked for the lines he wanted to read out. “You should bring your crockery and cutlery with you. Spectacles are expensive here. Fur coats are very expensive.” The skinner turned over.

Windisch hears the cuckoo’s call. It can smell the stuffed birds through the ceiling. The cuckoo is the only living bird in the house. Its cry breaks up time. The stuffed birds stink.

Then the skinner laughed. He pointed to a sentence at the bottom of the letter. “The women here are worth nothing,” he read. “They can’t cook. My wife has to slaughter the landlady’s hens. The lady refuses to eat the blood or liver. She throws away the stomach and spleen. Apart from that she smokes all day and lets any man at her.”

“The worst Swabian woman,” said the skinner, “is still worth more than the best German woman from there.”

The owl no longer calls. It has settled on a roof. “Widow Kroner must have died,” thinks Windisch.

Last summer, Widow Kroner plucked linden blossom from the cooper’s tree. The tree stands on the left-hand side of the churchyard. Grass grows there. Wild narcissi bloom in the grass. There’s a pool in the grass. Around the pool are the graves of the Romanians. They’re flat. The water drags them under the earth.

The cooper’s linden smells sweet. The priest says that the graves of the Romanians don’t belong in the churchyard. That the graves of the Romanians smell different from the graves of the Germans.

The cooper used to go from house to house. He had a sack with many small hammers. He hammered hoops onto barrels. He was given food in return. He was allowed to sleep in the barns.

It was autumn. One could see the coldness of winter through the clouds. One morning the cooper did not wake up. No one knew who he was. Where he came from. “Someone like that is always on the move,” the people in the village said.

The branches of the lime tree hang down onto the grave. “You don’t need a ladder,” said Widow Kroner. “You don’t get dizzy.” She sat on the grass and plucked the blossom into a basket.

All winter long Widow Kroner drank linden blossom tea. She emptied cups of it into her mouth. Widow Kroner became addicted to the tea. Death was in the cups.

Widow Kroner’s face shone. People said: “Something is blooming in Widow Kroner’s face.” Her face was young. Its youthfulness was weakness. As one grows young before dying, so was her face. As one grows younger and younger, until the body breaks. Beyond birth.

Widow Kroner always sang the same song. “By the well at the gate there stands a lime tree.” She added new verses to it. She sang linden blossom verses.

When Widow Kroner drank the tea without sugar, the verses became sad. She looked in the mirror while she sang. She saw the linden blossoms in her face. She could feel the wounds on her stomach and on her legs.

Widow Kroner picked spurge laurel in the fields. She boiled it. She rubbed her wounds with the brown juice. The wounds grew larger and larger. They smelt sweeter and sweeter.

Widow Kroner had picked all the spurge laurel from the fields. She boiled more and more spurge laurel and made more and more tea.

Rudi was the only German in the glass factory. “He’s the only German in the whole district,” said the skinner. “At first the Romanians were amazed that there were still Germans after Hitler. ‘Still Germans,’ the manager’s secretary had said, ‘still Germans. Even in Romania.’ “

“It has its advantages,” the skinner thought. “Rudi earns a lot of money in the factory. He has a good relationship with the man from the secret police. A big blond man with blue eyes. He looks like a German. Rudi says that he’s highly educated. He knows all the different kinds of glass. Rudi gave him a glass tie-pin and cufflinks. It paid off,” said the skinner. “The man helped us a lot with the passport.”

Rudi gave the man all the glass objects he had in his flat. Glass flower pots. Combs. A rocking chair of blue glass. Glass cups and plates. Glass pictures. A glass night light with a red shade.

The ears, the lips, the eyes, the fingers, the toes of glass Rudi brought home in a suitcase. He laid them on the floor. He laid them in rows and circles. He looked at them.

Amalie is a kindergarten teacher in town. She comes home every Saturday. Windisch’s wife waits for her at the station. She helps her carry the heavy bags. Every Saturday, Amalie brings a bag of food and a bag with glass. “Crystal glass,” she says.

The cupboards are full of crystal glass. The glass is arranged according to colour and size. Red wineglasses, blue wineglasses, white schnaps glasses. On the tables are glass fruit bowls, vases and flower baskets.

“Presents from the children,” says Amalie, when Windisch asks: “Where did you get the glass from?”

For a month Amalie has been talking about a crystal floor vase. She points from the floor to her hips. “That’s how tall it is,” says Amalie. “It’s dark red. On the vase is a dancer in a white lace dress.”