Herta Müller - The Appointment

I’m not sure whether she managed to slip through the gap in the fence wearing that tight dress. When she arrived at the depot, her husband was fixing his engine’s cooling system. He must have kept a hold on himself, as Lilli would have said, when he saw the daring low-cut back, the hairstyle, and the white sandals. Perhaps he had her sit behind the wheel to wait until he’d finished making the repairs. They walked home arm in arm, the white sandals shimmering with the tree trunks. At supper she said:

Nobody’s paying you to spend every evening doing repairs after a long day’s work.

Are you kidding. I make more runs than anyone else, he said, that way I’ll get the bonus after New Year’s. Why else would I do it.

Mama raised her eyebrows, she even got up from her chair and cut the bread for herself and for him, although the loaf and knife were next to his plate. My grandfather and I had to cut it for ourselves.

After Papa died my mother set the table with one plate less, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She did not lose her appetite and, to judge by appearances, she slept better. The rings under her eyes disappeared. She didn’t grow any younger, but she did stand still as time passed. Apathy makes you neglect your appearance, but she wasn’t like that. Her dishevelment was more on the inside: either she had found pride in her loneliness, or else she was so cut adrift that she was no longer herself. Neither happy nor sad — merely beyond all changes of facial expression. There was more life in a glass of water. When she dried herself she became like the towel, when she cleared the dishes she became like the table, and she became like the chair when she sat down. One year after Papa’s death, Grandfather said:

You’ve got all the time in the world. You should go into town more often. Maybe you’ll meet a man you like. Having someone younger than me around for the yardwork wouldn’t be so bad, either.

Shouldn’t you be keeping me from doing that, said Mama. After all, my husband was your son.

I’m not like that, though.

But you didn’t remarry.

No, I didn’t, but then again, your husband didn’t die in the camp, Grandfather said.

It was all for nothing. Mama no longer did her hair up in a French twist, and she retired the tight dress with the daring low-cut back. She didn’t want to put a bridle on anyone else. She no longer had any curiosity, not even about her child, who had flown the coop and rarely came home.

When my grandfather died, I stayed only one night at home with her. The next afternoon I went back to the city. She could have asked me to stay longer; after all, I’d taken two days’ leave. My bed was covered with plastic bags full of her winter clothes; I slept on the couch, and she thought nothing of it. Before I had to leave to catch my train, she set the table. She laid out two plates and ate without noticing that I was only going through the motions. She used to tell me that I was just being finicky if I wasn’t hungry. Now she no longer cared.

For all those years we had had four plates on the table. That seemed normal since there were four of us living in the house. Until Mama confessed that they’d only had me because my brother had died. From then on there were five of us, and one of us was eating off my brother’s plate, although I didn’t know which one. My brother had never had a chance to eat from it.

He had his mouth clamped on her nipple but had stopped drinking, my grandfather said. We didn’t realize that he wasn’t asleep, that he…

Because the fifth plate was never put on the table, the other four didn’t stay there long, either. When Papa died, the first plate became redundant. My moving to the city cleared the second from the table. Grandfather’s death meant the third was no longer needed.

The tram is listing to one side. Maybe the rails have buckled from the heat. The old lady has something wrong with her nerves, her head is shaking left and right, as if she were constantly saying no. Are we almost at the market, she asks. The driver says: Not for a while yet. The young man is standing by the rear door. We’re only at the courthouse, he says, don’t you come from around here. Of course I do, says the old woman, but yesterday I broke my glasses. I went to the optician’s, but they didn’t have a thing, no lenses, no glue, not a thing. Now I have to wait two whole weeks.

If only I were as old as she is, but it’s impossible to swap places, not even with Lilli or Paul. I don’t ever want to have to get off at the courthouse. It’ll all come out at the trial, you’ll speak there all right, says Albu whenever he doesn’t like my answer. The driver pulls the third roll out of his shirt pocket, takes a bite and puts it down. He swallows and the mouthful goes tumbling down his throat. If we take too long I won’t get any eggs today, says the old lady. The tram stops to let on a man in a suit carrying a briefcase. In that case I’ll just buy plums, the old lady goes on, as she sizes up the new passenger, then giggles: The good thing about them is that they’ll make it home in one piece. After all, plums don’t break, you know. You can’t bake a cake without eggs, says the driver, and a shot of rum and a lot of sugar. I know about you men, says the old lady, with your sweet tooth.

While Mama and I were eating after Grandfather’s funeral, the broom keeled over in the corner of the room. The handle crashed against the floor. I had seen my father keel over, and it must have been the same with my grandfather. I picked up the glass of water. If Mama had been curious about how I was getting along, I would have told her about the lie in the factory, and about the death I had brought along with me in my new gray platform shoes. But the waterglass was unmoved. She stuffed a piece of bread crust into her mouth, then got up and stood the broom back in the corner.

Whenever a coat hanger dropped on the floor in the factory, or an umbrella fell in the tram, or a parked bicycle tipped over on the street, I could feel the cold vinyl, rushing in from both temples straight to the middle of my forehead. Mama was chewing and drinking a lot of water, she was more convinced than I was that she was my mother. She looked into her plate and said:

You know, once I started to send you a letter. I was sitting in the café, and it just occurred to me to write. It must have been May or July, and now, what month is it, that’s right, it’s already September. I went to the post office, put a stamp on the envelope, but then I forgot your address.

I looked into her eyes and let myself be taken in.

Do you still have it, I asked.

It’s somewhere here on a piece of paper, I just have to find it.

I never called her Mother when I spoke to her, I just said You, the way you would to a child whose name you didn’t know, anything more formal seemed inappropriate. Listening to her was tiresome, it didn’t matter whether I said anything or not, just like it hadn’t mattered when I left home for no real reason — I could just as well have stayed. After all, there were enough office jobs in our small town, even in the bread factory. As people say nowadays: that’s just the way things turned out.

On my way to the station the air smelled of flour. The gatekeeper stood at the factory entrance, brushing dandruff off his uniform jacket. He doffed his cap and greeted me, I didn’t recognize him. After I had passed, he yawned loudly. I spun around as if instead of the gatekeeper there had been a loose concrete slab gaping in the wake of my gray platforms and I was lucky to have escaped in the nick of time. Nothing was too far-fetched for that place, it could make evening come before the afternoon; it could pull the sun over and make it hang suspended in the sky behind the factory, glowing like a ball of fire, and then have it set inside the buildings, dark as a breadpan, before the day was done. I thought of the early evening hours after Papa’s funeral. We came home from the cemetery, my grandfather went into the yard, turned on the faucet, and hauled the garden hose over to the peach trees. Mama called: