Herta Müller - The Appointment

I took my old ring to the goldsmith, it was too small for me.

I felt a lump in my throat. My husband gave me a fixed stare through his keyhole eyes, the way he always did to silence me. Then I whispered in his ear:

That’s half-true what your mother is saying, the cuff link alone wouldn’t have been enough for your father’s tie pin, her ring is gone as well.

A fat fly is buzzing in circles just above the driver’s head. It settles on his arm, he tries to swat it. Then it lands on the back of his neck, he swats again. He swats himself just below his ear with a loud clap. The fly escapes and perches on the window frame. The driver tries to shoo it out the open window into the street. It drifts away, its buzzing drowned out by the rattle of the tracks. What’s the matter, asks the old woman, you seem desperate. A fly, says the driver. Oh, without my glasses I can’t see anything as small as that. He’ll be heading your way in a minute, the driver says. Why didn’t you kill it, she asks. He tried to but missed, says the man with the briefcase, he has a tram to drive, he can’t go chasing flies. That would be something, a whole tram derailed because of a fly. Well, it won’t be bothering me, laughs the old lady, since I shake so much. Count your blessings, says the driver. You’re wrong there, she says, it’s not a blessing, you’ll find out soon enough when you get old. But the mosquitoes don’t mind the shaking, they sure don’t, and neither do the fleas. My blood is type A, that’s the best one for fleas, the doctor told me. I’m AB, says the man with the briefcase. And the young lady, asks the old woman, sealing her lips in a crooked smile while she waits for the answer. O, I say. O, that’s gypsy blood, says the old woman. People with type O can give blood to anybody, but they can only take from other O’s. The driver slaps himself on the temple. You son of a whore, he shouts, go bother somebody else, I’m not dead yet, and I’m not a pile of shit, either. He shoos the fly in our direction. I’m not dead yet, either. I’m the youngest in the car, so when it comes to dying, I should be last in line. I’m type O too, says the driver. The fly flits around the windowpane like a floater in your eye. Its abdomen is shiny and green and large as the trembling stones dangling from the old lady’s ears.

I liked to visit the workshop to see the old shoemaker because he liked to talk.

Music is my life, he would say, but I also need it here to drown out the noise the rats make. I listen to music at home too, until I fall asleep. In the old days my Vera used to sing along, day in, day out. By night she’d often be so hoarse she’d have to drink a cup of hot tea with honey.

Every summer his wife would plant dahlias along the wire fence that caught the morning sun.

She sure had a green thumb, my Vera, he said, she got everything to bloom. But the last summer she was home, her dahlias started sprouting strange leaves — leaves that really belonged on fritillarias, zinnias, delphiniums, and phlox. The same thing happened when the dahlias began to flower, each single stem seemed to have everything imaginable. The dahlias looked absolutely amazing, but they were a little crazy too. People would stop at the fence to look. Before the flowers started to fade, my daughter dug them all up so the wind wouldn’t scatter the crazy seeds around. Vera had always been a pretty quiet person, but after those dahlias bloomed she scarcely said a word. Physically she was fit as a fiddle but she wasn’t much use around the house, so my daughter sent her out shopping every day. Vera’d come back with beans instead of potatoes, vinegar instead of fizzy water, matches instead of toilet paper. When Vera didn’t get any better, my daughter wrote out a shopping list for her. My poor forgetful Vera showed the list to the people in the shop, but she still came home with shoelaces instead of toothpaste, or thumbtacks instead of cigarettes. So my daughter went straight down to the shop. The shop assistant and the cashier remembered the lady with the list perfectly. No, they said, she hadn’t bought any shoelaces or thumbtacks, just toothpaste and cigarettes, exactly as it said on the list. Besides, we don’t even have any shoelaces, they’ve been on order for weeks but haven’t been delivered yet. And we don’t carry thumbtacks at all. From that point on, Vera was only allowed out for an hour’s walk every morning. But she started coming back with a handbag that belonged to someone else. Usually there was an I.D. card inside, so my daughter could return the bag to its proper owner and recover her mother’s. Then one day we weren’t able to track down Vera’s own purse, and meanwhile she was bringing home more and more handbags belonging to other women, so after that she could go out only if she left the house with nothing in her hands and came back with nothing. But then she’d come back wearing a hat instead of her headscarf. During the winter we couldn’t let her out because of the cold, but the following spring Vera went out three times wearing a dress and showed up all out of breath dressed in a skirt and blouse. At that point I agreed to put her in a mental home. There’s not a clothing store anywhere in the neighborhood, said the old shoemaker, so she definitely wasn’t stealing. One thing’s for sure, Vera would never have stolen anything. Even the people in the neighborhood said that much. Out on the street she always looked fairly normal. Almost too self-effacing, people said. She never returned their greetings, though; she’d just pass by and say:

I left the rice on, so I’ve got to run.

The old shoemaker pinched the corners of his mouth with his thumb and index finger. But now it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s neither here nor there, like so much in life.

For my part, I told the old shoemaker about my dead grandmother, and that after my father died my grandfather had said that life was just the farty sputter of a lantern, not even worth the bother of putting your shoes on.

He’s right about that, the old man said, your grandfather must be a bit of a philosopher, you can’t be dumb and come up with something like that.

Then he pointed to the boards where shoes were hanging on every nail:

But look there. When it comes to shoes, I have to see things a little differently, else I wouldn’t have any bread to eat.

Stretched out under his lips, the skin between the old man’s thumb and index finger, yellowed from the leather wax, looked like webbing from a duck’s foot.

My Vera, at least she wound up that way by herself. But there are two young women in the mental home with her who lost their wits after what the police did to them. These women hadn’t done anything, either — one swiped a little candle wax from the factory, the other took a sack of corncobs that was lying in a field. Now, you tell me, what kind of crime is that.

The young shoemaker said: I don’t have any rubber or any leather for the soles. He slid his hands into Paul’s sandals as if they were mittens, turned them upside down, and stared at the blackberry that was crushed into the sole. His teeth stuck out as his mouth opened and closed; in my thoughts I was somewhere else. The boy who made the dust snakes was dead because I didn’t stay to play with him. My father died because he didn’t want to go on hiding from me. My grandfather, because I had lied about his death. And Lilli, because I had said that her officer’s stomach was round as a ball, like the setting sun. Now the old shoemaker had died because I had danced my fill of the world. The young man with the crooked mouth wrapped the sandals back inside the newspaper.

Check in ten days and we’ll see what’s what. I could already see what was what. I nodded and left.

Outside the wind was flying through the street, clusters of little green peas were dropping from the lindens. Each cluster had a small leathery wing — that had nothing to do with the sawtoothed, heart-shaped leaves on the boughs. A sofa of white clouds was floating high in the evening summer sky. A woman slipped out of the pharmacy carrying a small vial. The contents, the rubber stopper, and the woman’s thumb were the color of indigo. I asked her for the time. The woman said: