Herta Müller - The Appointment

What do you want with the Italians, they’ll come and screw you, give you pantyhose and a little deodorant, then go back home to their fountains. For a blowjob they’ll throw in some perfume.

I watched the frilly wood peelings and the black powder spilling out of his sharpener and stood up. I held the reprimand over his head and let go. The sheet floated down and settled on the table in front of him without a sound. Nelu turned his head toward me and tried to smile, pale as a worm. Then he accidentally nudged the newly sharpened pencil with his elbow. We watched it roll off the table, and listened to it chime against the floor. Nelu bent down so that I could no longer see how tensely he was working his jaws. The pencil tip had broken off. He said:

So what. A pencil fell on the floor, it’s not like something exploded.

Who knows, I said. With someone like you, anything’s possible.

That was my first day back in the factory after three days of questioning. Nelu didn’t say another word to me. Evidently he was capable of worse than I had imagined. The three notes later found in trousers destined for Sweden read: Best wishes from the dictatorship. The notes were just like mine, but I didn’t write them. I was fired.

Even if the snow was deep, we drove to work on the Java. Paul had ridden a motorbike for eleven years and never had an accident, despite the fact that he drank. He knew the streets like the back of his hand and could have found both our factories with his eyes closed. I was all wrapped up, the streetlamps and lighted windows were glittering, the frost bit into our faces, our lips felt like frozen crusts of bread, our cheeks as smooth and cold as porcelain. Sky and street were nothing but snow, we were driving into a great big snowball. I leaned against Paul’s back and pressed my chin against his shoulder to let the snowball flow through my face. The streets are longest, the trees tallest, the sky closest when your eyes are fixed straight ahead. I wanted to go on riding and never stop. I didn’t dare blink. My ears were burning, my fingers, toes. The frost scorched me like an iron, only my eyes and mouth stayed cold. There was no time for luck or good fortune, we had to get there before we froze, and every morning we pulled up to my factory gate at half past six on the dot. Paul let me off. Using one reddish-blue finger to push up his cap, I kissed his porcelain forehead, then pulled the cap back down over his eyebrows. Afterwards he drove off to the engine works on the edge of town. When I saw hoarfrost on his eyebrows, I thought:

Now we are old.

After the business with the first notes, I put Italy out of my mind completely. It took more than linen suits for export to land a Marcello, you needed connections, couriers, and intermediaries, not trouser pockets. Instead of an Italian I landed the Major. My stupidity screamed at me, my self-reproach was sharp as a blow to the ears. I felt I was stuffed with straw. I couldn’t abide myself: that was the only way I could carry on every day, sitting in the office with Nelu, staring at columns and filling them in, until the second notes turned up. But I still liked myself: that was why I could enjoy riding the trams, having my hair cut short, buying new clothes. I also felt sorry for myself: that was why I could make it to Albu’s at precisely the right time. I felt indifferent toward myself too, as though the interrogations were a just punishment for my stupidity. But not for the reasons Albu cited:

Your behavior makes foreigners think all our country-women are whores.

I don’t see how, the notes never made it to Italy.

Thanks to the care shown by your colleagues, he said.

Why whores, anyway — I only wanted one Italian, and I wanted to marry him. Whores want money, not marriage.

The foundation of marriage is love and love alone. Do you even know what that is. You wanted to sell yourself to the Marcellos like a filthy slut.

Why like a filthy slut, I would have loved him.

It was over, I was back outside, back in the summer brightness, with everyone going about his noisy business. I could hear the straw rustling inside me. Chances are I wouldn’t have loved the Italian, but he would have taken me with him to Italy. I would have tried to love him. If I couldn’t, I would have found somebody else, after all, there’s no shortage of Italians in Italy. There’s always someone you can love if you put your mind to it. But instead of love I wound up with Albu summoning me as often as he pleased. And Nelu keeping a close watch on me at work. I put men completely out of my mind. Then I got caught up in Paul, right when I was on the defensive. I think being on the defensive sharpens my desire, much more than being actively on the lookout for someone. It had to have been that way, that’s why I clung to him so. It’s not that anybody could have transformed my defensiveness into desire, although it’s possible that someone other than Paul might have done so. Weary of life — that’s how I must have felt, without a good hold on things. And then one Sunday I met Paul. I stayed through Monday, and on Tuesday I moved in with him, lugging all my worldly possessions into the leaning tower.

Each morning I found it harder and harder to go to work. Paul would grip his Java firmly in both hands outside the factory gate, smile, wait for me to kiss his forehead and say:

You have to act like Nelu isn’t there.

Easy for him to say. But how to spend eight hours on end acting as if two mustache tips were simply floating in midair behind a desk.

Nelu’s so full of it, I said, that you can’t see through him.

And the motorbike roared, kicking up snow around the wheels, or dust. When Paul was halfway down the street I tried coaxing him back to the gate with my eyes, each morning I wanted to say something more to him, something he could take to last him the whole day among the machines. But we always repeated the same words.

Paul: You have to act like Nelu isn’t there.

Me: I’ll be thinking of you. Don’t get worked up if they steal your clothes.

The quick getaway. And the wind when he turned the corner, his jacket arching back like a cat ready to pounce. Every morning I had to force myself to step inside the factory. The mere sight of Nelu was enough to drive me crazy. Neither of us greeted the other, though after an hour or two Nelu would try to break the silence, claiming that we couldn’t possibly stay in the same room together for eight hours at a stretch without saying something. I didn’t feel the need to say anything, but he couldn’t stand the silence. He talked about the production schedule, I said:

Um-hmm.

Um-hmm, and Oh, and Ah.

When that didn’t work, I turned chatty. I picked up the little vase on his desk, peered through the thick glass on the bottom and studied the reddish-green rose stem inside the water. I said:

Come on now, why talk about the schedule when there’s no point in meeting the targets. If we ever did, they’d be raised the next day. That schedule of yours is a disease of state.

Nelu plucked a hair from his mustache and rubbed it between his fingers so that it curled up. He said:

Do you like it.

If you pull out one a day, pretty soon your face will look like a cucumber, I said.

Don’t get too excited. You’re obviously thinking of pubic hair.

But not yours, I said.

Do you know why Italians always carry a comb in their pocket — because otherwise they can’t find their pricks when they have to piss.

You’ve got a comb too, but even that won’t help you. You don’t have what it takes to be an Italian.

I’ve seen what it takes, unlike you I’ve been to Italy.

Um-hmm. And did you do a little spying there too, I asked.

It’s true I was thinking of pubic hair, Nelu forced me to think of his all the time he was talking about the schedule. He placed that hair right in the middle of my desk, too, where there was a nick in the wood. Not one I had made. He’d probably gone and measured the desk to locate the spot furthest from my reach. I didn’t want to touch that curly hair of his, but I didn’t have my ruler handy to flick it off the table right then and there. So once again I wound up doing something he really enjoyed seeing, I blew the hair away. The sight of me pursing my lips gave him something to laugh at. I had to blow three or four times before the hair flew off the table. He made me obscene.