Herta Müller - The Appointment

Maybe we’re on a trip after all, the floor is shaking just like in a dining car. You people could dance to anything — a squeaky door or crickets chirping or whatever. Actually I shouldn’t have said you people, including him with everyone else, seeing that he had to content himself with looking on and was suffering. He shoved his wineglass to the middle of the table, looked at me with long, narrow eyes, fixed so hard the corners looked like keyholes. He pursed his lips, whistled, and beat out the rhythm on the table with both hands. I said:

Now it’s worse than a dining car, you must be going through withdrawal.

In a moment he’d need me to dance. In fact, he needed me now. The way he unpursed his lips, smiled briefly, and then went right on whistling. This compulsion to be so dashingly polite. His restraint, his avoiding any argument, just so I’ll do what I’m told. The waiter cleared the table. Only our two glasses remained, trembling and transparent, as if they weren’t really there, while we sat behind them, tingling with anticipation — I was spoiling for a fight, he was waiting for a dance. Eventually he won because he kept control of himself and because he let pass all the moments that could have led to an argument, in the end the whole thing seemed too stupid to me, anyway. Why had we spent all that money — we’d be missing it the very next day. He might as well get some compensation for the awful meal. I took his hand and led him onto the dance floor. We danced a path for ourselves through the couples, until we were right up next to the orchestra. He spun me around, the keys of the accordion blurred together like a Venetian blind.

You’re dragging, my arm is falling asleep, he said.

I can’t weigh less than I do.

Even the fattest women are light when they dance. But you’re not dancing, you’re just letting yourself droop.

He pointed out the fattest dancer in the restaurant, a matronly woman whom I had already noticed when we were eating. While she was at the table, I couldn’t see much of her white dress with the black chess pieces, only that she pushed her plate practically to the middle of the table in order to be able to see it past her breasts. At the ends of her short, fat arms, her knife and fork barely reached the food.

That dress is billowing because it has deep pleats down the sides, not because she’s so light on her feet. After all, I do know a thing or two about clothes, I said.

But not about women, he said.

The chess pieces came flying away from the white pleats. Snow and thistledown, my father-in-law’s white horse, the wedding cake, the icing that scratched the tip of my nose. My head felt heavy. Even if I had to dance, I had no right to reproach my husband with his father, the Perfumed Commissar. I pulled myself together, but I did what I had not intended not to do. It’s easy to tell other people not to do certain things, especially your nearest and dearest, but it’s harder to tell yourself. As we danced past the swimming accordion keys, my brain went on tormenting me with scenes from the past, while my husband was enjoying being so near to the matronly woman. He touched the arm of the man who was leading the chess pieces and crowing out loud: Your partner dances well.

You bet she does. And I lead well, he said.

Then the matronly woman’s dancing partner crowed once more, the matronly woman purred, and my husband crowed along with them.

If you crow like that once more, I said, I’m going to take off and run as far away as I can.

He crowed once again, but I kept my feet on the floor, and the matronly woman purred, and I didn’t budge.

People were constantly switching partners. They paired off without a word being spoken. They were either following some intimate law between man and woman or else leaving it all up to chance. No requests were made and no consents were given. I lost the rhythm.

You’re nothing more than a wisp but your bones turn to lead whenever you dance, said my husband.

Why don’t you grab that tank, I said, then you’ll have something to hold on to.

The old woman with the doddering head nudges me with her finger: Tell me, maybe you have an aspirin. No. But the driver has water, doesn’t he, or maybe I didn’t see right — no, he has a bottle. He has a bottle, I say. Her eyes had once been larger. As is often the case with old people, hers are webbed over with a very thin membrane like raw egg white growing in from the sides. Her two oval earrings, set with green stones, tremble along with her head. The constant shaking has stretched the holes in her earlobes into long slits that have practically been torn open. Toothpaste and a toothbrush are about all I could give her. The driver might have some aspirin, I say. The man with the briefcase reaches into his pocket: I think I have one left. A shriveled strip of cellophane crackles as he smoothes it flat: No — they’re all gone, now I remember, I took the last one this morning. There’s a pharmacy at the market, says the young man by the door. The old woman turns her head, I need the tablet now, not when we get to the marketplace. She moves up the tram from one row of seats to the next, steadying herself with both hands, until she reaches the middle of the car. The driver sees her in his mirror: Sit down, Grandma, you’ll cause an accident. You should have taken the tram going the other way, it would have been quicker. The old woman totters up to him. What do you mean, I asked you and you said this was the right way. Do you at least have an aspirin.

If you’re not in love, then dancing is worse than the crowd of people in the tram, I had said to my father-in-law. And if you are in love, then you have something better to do, a different way of stretching your legs, which can make you just as dizzy.

What do you mean, something better to do, he said, dancing isn’t work, it’s pleasure, if not an innate gift, a predisposition. And it’s part of your culture. In the Carpathians they have different dances than they do in the hill country, and the ones by the sea are different from those along the Danube, and in the city they dance differently than they do in the country. You’re supposed to learn to dance as a child. Your parents and family are supposed to teach you. Yours must have neglected their duty, and if you didn’t learn you’ve really missed out.

No, I said, with my family it was more melancholy than neglect, after the camp nobody in our house had much zest for things like that.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, that was before you were born, he said. Some people’s lives just don’t work out and they’re always coming up with excuses. Once upon a time they had some bad luck, and they blame everything on that. Come on, you might be too young to realize it, but I’m not. Believe me, even without the camp, life wouldn’t have worked out for them.

It was New Year’s Eve. The paraputch, as my father-in-law called the extended family, was celebrating in my in-laws’ living room. I’ll never know exactly what paraputch means. For me it sounded like a gang, because the family was so large and each member was shady in his own way. And although they couldn’t stand one another, they were forever getting together. My father-in-law himself was at least two different people. He had the habit of making a nest for himself inside a person’s breast, so as to be better able to kick him in the ribs later on.

David, Olga, Valentin, Maria, George, and a few others were there. I had no idea which name went with whom. Everybody had taken off their shoes, I counted ten pairs beside the door. My father-in-law’s youngest brother came with a fat wife; his oldest brother had come with a wizened one. The middle brother was laid up at home in bed, but his wife was here with her brother and her — or his — eldest daughter and a son-in-law. The son-in-law was drunk as a skunk. No sooner had my father-in-law taken his coat than the man had to throw up in the bathroom, still wearing his hat and scarf. I did manage to fix two names in my mind that evening: Anastasia and Martin. Anastasia — like my late grandmother — was my father-in-law’s cousin. She was about fifty years old, supposedly still a virgin, and had worked as an accountant in the cookie factory for thirty years. Martin was my father-in-law’s colleague, a widowed gardener. He was supposed to make a conquest of Anastasia that New Year’s Eve.