Herta Müller - The Appointment

Bungled again, I’d say to him, when he messed something up.

Every few days he’d bang his head against the cabinet door. Or else he’d drop his freshly sharpened pencil, bend to pick it up, and forget that the drawer above his head was still open. He’d have a fresh bruise, and I would say:

Another violet coming into bloom.

And laugh until he left me with my contempt and skipped out to the factory yard, where he still counted as somebody in the eyes of others. No matter how long he stayed away, I’d still be laughing when he came back, or else I’d start up again. He would massage his fresh bruise, next to the greenish-blue ones from before.

It’s possible that my laughing fits over Nelu were similar to those with Paul. But the contempt I felt for Nelu was important, my laughter was sheer schadenfreude. As far as I was concerned, Nelu deserved whatever happened to him. And whatever happened was nowhere near enough. Fine with me if Nelu couldn’t stand my ass-backward happiness. But mine wasn’t filthy — his was. He maneuvered me into a corner until I wound up getting the sack. Because being able to shave smoothly or tie your shoelaces or sew on a button doesn’t mean much in the factory. The abilities that count there are completely different…

Of course I enjoyed my ass-backward happiness all the more after Nelu had done his worst. After the first notes, my laughter sounded as though I couldn’t care less about his denunciation. Even so, I was powerless to ward off the harm he inflicted.

When we had finished dancing, Paul drove into town on his Java to buy two pairs of shoes: one to put on now and a spare to stash in the tool cabinet. I watched him take off, the red Java down on the street looked as beautiful as the red enamel coffee tin on the kitchen table. I stepped through the patch of sunlight in the hall, at a loss for what to do with myself. Inside the storage closet I came across my first pair of wedding shoes, they were white. My second pair were brown. They were lying underneath Paul’s sandals with the worn-out soles, the ones from last summer. Autumn had come overnight, a low sky, rain pressing the rotting leaves down into the earth. And overnight we stopped wearing our summer things and needed what money we had for buying winter clothes rather than spending it on expensive new half-soles for the sandals. The weather alone was reason enough not to take summer sandals to the shoemaker’s. They’d have to wait a while before it was their turn. We could scarcely manage the barest necessities.

The patch of sunlight was now entirely on the floor, but it still refused to touch the borrowed trousers. I didn’t touch them, either. The silence in our apartment was the kind that makes you feel you’re filling the whole space, from the floor all the way to the ceiling, which isn’t possible. Even a plate falling off the table or a picture falling off the wall — as if my father were dying all over again — would have been better. I crossed the patch of sunlight into the room and with wary hands I shut the window, although not without first looking out: there on the sidewalk, where no ordinary person is allowed to park, two people were sitting in a red car. One was gesticulating, the other was smoking. I walked out of the room into the hall, into the kitchen, back into the hall. I know what it’s like when you’re pacing back and forth, unable to remember what it was you had just set out to do — until it finally occurs to you. Back and forth on the floor, shuffling or stepping too deliberately, just getting away from wherever you happen to be. I tossed the wedding shoes into the storage closet and closed the door. But I kept Paul’s sandals and wiped off the cobwebs. A squashed blackberry was stuck to the right sole. Either that or the red car suddenly brought everything back: last summer at the river, Paul naked after showering at the factory, dancing together in the hall, the rough way Paul had grabbed the scissors from my hand.

Instead of these thoughts we’re constantly mulling over, it would be better to have the actual things inside your head, so you could reach in and touch them. People you want, or people you want to be rid of. Objects you’ve held on to or lost. There would be an order to things in my head: in the center would be Paul, but not my clutching at him and running away from him and loving him all at the same time. The sidewalks would run along my temples, as far as they like, and under my cheeks might be the shops with their glass display cases, though not my pointless destinations in the city. Of course there’s no escaping Albu’s lackey, who’s probably sitting out there in the red car, waiting to ring our doorbell and give me my summons — not deliver, it’s never in writing, so that I’m always left to worry whether Paul or I might have misheard the date. Albu’s lackey would be lurking somewhere in the back of my head — and I’d prefer to have him there in person instead of his soft voice that eats right into me and is still stuck somewhere inside from the last time, and which pops right up the minute he’s back at my door. The bridge over the river and my first husband with his suitcase would be in the back of my head, but not my suggestion that he go ahead and jump. And in my cerebellum, where we supposedly keep our sense of balance, would be a fly resting on a table, instead of an evening meal chewed and swallowed with no appetite. Surfaces and contours would be divided into friends and foes, easy to tell apart. And in between there’d still be some space for happiness.

I took some newspaper and wrapped up the sandals, but then changed my mind and put them in a plastic bag, since I didn’t want to walk past the red car carrying a bundle of papers. I wanted to do something special for Paul, because I had laughed too long. And I wanted to know what the two faces in the car looked like. In the end I couldn’t say whether it was the faces or Paul’s sandals that drew me out into the street.

There are people who distinguish not only between objects and thoughts, but also between thoughts and feelings. I wonder how. It’s inconceivable that the swallows strung out among the clouds above the beanfield should have exactly the same wingtips as Nelu’s mustache, but that’s only a misperception. As with all misperceptions, I can’t tell whether it’s the objects themselves or the thoughts about them that account for the error. But since that’s the way it is, the mind has to share in the burden and take on as many misperceptions as the earth has trees. I folded two fifty-leu notes into small squares, and picked them up in one hand along with the plastic bag. The elevator door opened, my face bounced into the mirror before I followed with my feet. The floor clanked as the elevator started down.

I walked right up to the red car, I wanted both of them to see that the world is full of misperceptions and that I could come down to them instead of their coming up. Through the open window of the car I asked:

Have you got a light.

I wanted to add: That’s okay, I don’t really smoke, I just wanted to know if you had a light. I had imagined they would both give me a light right away, in order to get rid of me, but I was wrong. Everything turned out differently. The man shook his head, and the woman snapped at me:

Can’t you see we’re not smoking.

He pounded the steering wheel and laughed as if she’d scored a big hit. The letters A and N flashed on his signet ring, and the woman’s hair gleamed crow-black in the sun while she whispered something in his ear. Her face was an oily tan from sunbathing, and around her neck hung a speckled seashell necklace. I said:

You could have been smoking before, and you might light up again after I’m gone. Or perhaps I should say you might go on necking.