Herta Müller: The Passport

The night watchman stroked his dog. “The postwoman has already drunk away hundreds of letters,” he said. “And has read the militiaman hundreds of letters.”

Windisch unlocks the mill door with the big key. He counts two years. He turns the small key in the lock. Windisch counts the days. Windisch walks to the mill pond.

The surface of the pond is disturbed. There are waves on it. The willows are wrapped in leaves and wind. The stack of straw throws its moving, everlasting picture on the pond. Frogs crawl round the stack. They drag their white bellies through the grass.

The night watchman is sitting beside the pond and has hiccups. His larynx bounces out of his shirt. It’s the blue onions,” he says. “The Russians cut thin slices off the top of onions. They sprinkle salt on them. The salt makes the onions open like roses. They give off water. Clear, bright water. They look like water lilies. The Russians hit them with their fists. I’ve seen Russians crush onions under their heels. The women lifted their skirts and knelt on the onions. They turned their knees. We soldiers held the Russian women at the hips and helped them turn.”

The night watchman had watery eyes. “I’ve eaten onions that were tender and sweet as butter from the knees of Russian women,” he says. His cheeks are flabby. His eyes grow young as the sheen of onions.

Windisch carries two sacks to the edge of the pond. He covers them with canvas. The night watchman will take them to the militiaman during the night.

The reeds are quivering. White foam sticks to the blades. “That’s what the dancer’s lace dress must be like,” thinks Windisch. “I’m not letting a crystal vase into my house.”

“There are women everywhere. There are even women in the pond,” says the night watchman. Windisch sees their underclothes anong the reeds. He goes into the mill.

Widow Kroner lies in the coffin dressed in black. Her hands are tied together with a white cord, so that they don’t slide down from her stomach. So that they are praying, when she arrives up above, at heaven’s gate.

“She’s so beautiful, it’s as if she were asleep,” says her neighbour, Skinny Wilma. A fly settles on her hand. Skinny Wilma moves her finger. The fly settles on a small hand beside her.

Windisch’s wife shakes the raindrops from her headscarf. They fall in transparent chains onto her shoes. Umbrellas stand beside the praying women. Water snakes and trickles under the chairs. It glistens among the shoes.

Windisch’s wife sits down on the empty chair beside the door. She cries a large tear out of each eye. The fly settles on her cheek. The tear rolls down onto the fly. It flies into the room, the edge of its wing damp. The fly returns. It settles on Windisch’s wife. On her wrinkled index finger.

Windisch’s wife prays and looks at the fly. The fly creeps all round the finger nail. It tickles her skin. “It’s the fly that was under the golden oriole. The fly that settled in the flour sieve,” thinks Windisch’s wife.

Windisch’s wife finds a moving passage in the prayer. She sighs over the passage. She sighs and her hands move. And the fly on her finger nail feels the sigh. And it flies past her cheek into the room.

Windisch’s wife’s lips softly hum, pray for us.

The fly flies just below the ceiling. It hums a long song for the death vigil. A song of rainwater. A song of the earth as a grave.

Windisch’s wife forces out two more small tears as she hums. She lets them run down her cheek. She lets them grow salty around her mouth.

Skinny Wilma looks for her handkerchief. She looks among the shoes. Between the rivulets that crawl out of the black umbrellas.

Skinny Wilma finds a rosary among the shoes. Her face is pointed and small. “Whose rosary is it?” she asks. No one looks at her. Everyone is silent. “Who knows,” she sighs, “there have already been so many here.”

She puts the rosary in the pocket of her long black skirt.

The fly settles on Widow Kroner’s cheek. A living thing on her dead skin. The fly buzzes in the still corner of her mouth. The fly dances on her hard chin.

Outside the window, the sound of rain. The prayer leader bats her short eyelashes as if the rain was running into her face. As if it was washing away her eyes. Eyelashes which are broken from praying. “A cloudburst,” she says. “Over the whole country.” She closes her mouth even while she’s talking, as if the rain was running down into her throat.

Skinny Wilma looks at the dead woman. “Only in the Banat,” she says. “Our weather comes from Austria, not from Bucharest.”

The water lingers on the streets. Windisch’s wife sniffles away a last small tear. “The old people say that anyone whose coffin it rains into was a good person,” she says to the room.

There are bunches of hydrangea above Widow Kroner’s coffin. They are wilting, heavy and violet. Death, skin and bones, lying in the coffin is taking them. And the prayer of the rain is taking them.

The fly crawls into the scentless hydrangea buds.

The priest comes through the door. His step is heavy, as if his body was full of water. The priest gives the altar boy the black umbrella and says, “Jesus Christ be praised.” The women hum, and the fly hums.

The joiner brings the coffin lid into the room.

A hydrangea leaf trembles. Half violet, half dead, it falls onto the praying hands joined by the white cord. The joiner lays the coffin lid on the coffin. He nails the coffin shut with black nails and short hammer blows.

The hearse gleams. The horse looks at the trees. The coachman lays the grey blanket across the horse’s back. “The horse will catch cold,” he says to the joiner.

The altar boy holds the large umbrella over the priest’s head. The priest has no legs. The hem of his black cassock trails in the mud.

Windisch feels the water gurgling in his shoes. He knows the nail in the sacristy. He knows the long nail on which the cassock hangs. The joiner steps in a puddle. Windisch watches his laces drown.

“The black cassock has already seen a lot,” thinks Windisch. “It has seen the priest looking for baptismal certificates on the iron bed with women.” The joiner asks something. Windisch hears his voice. Windisch doesn’t understand what the joiner is saying. Windisch hears the clarinet and the big drum behind him.

Rain fringes the brim of the night watchman’s hat. The shroud flaps on the hearse. The bunches of hydrangea quiver in the pot holes. They strew leaves in the mud. The mud glistens under the wheels. The hearse turns in the glass puddle.

The music is cold. The big drum sounds dull and wet. Above the village, the roofs are leaning towards the water.

The cemetery glows with white crosses. The bell hangs over the village with its stuttering tongue. Windisch sees his hat in the puddle. “The pond will grow,” he thinks. “The rain will pull the militiaman’s sacks into the water.”

There’s water in the grave. The water is yellow like tea. “Widow Kroner can drink now,” whispers Skinny Wilma.

The prayer leader steps on a marguerite lying on the path between the graves. The altar boy holds the umbrella at an angle. The incense is drawn into the earth.

The priest lets a handful of mud drip onto the coffin. “Earth, take what is thine. God takes what is his,” he says. The altar boy sings a long wet “Amen”. Windisch can see his back teeth.

Water eats at the shroud. The night watchman is holding his hat against his chest. He’s crushing the brim in his hand. The hat is wrinkled. The hat is rolled up like a black rose.

The priest closes his prayerbook. “We shall meet again on the other side,” he says.

The grave digger is a Romanian. He leans the shovel against his stomach. He makes the sign of the cross on his shoulders. He spits in his hands. He shovels.