Herta Müller - The Appointment

An old man hefted the ring and examined the hallmark with a magnifying glass.

It’s gold, what else would it be, I said.

What are you asking, two thousand, huh.

I’m not sure I want to sell it.

Two thousand one hundred, come on, let’s call it a deal.

That’s easy for you to say.

All right, I’ll take another walk around.

And how long will that be.

Say, a quarter of an hour.

By that time the ring’ll be gone.

Then hand it over.

Not so fast.

How much do you want.

Do you have the money on you.

Jesus Christ Almighty, you expect me to wave it about in the air.

What’s your top offer.

Two thousand two hundred, hmm. You want to sell, or would you rather go sit on Granddaddy’s lap.

I’ll think about it.

What’s a little pussycat like you hunting out here, anyway, he shouted.

I stared right past him, he put away his magnifying glass, but hesitated to leave. He would rather have made a deal than have nothing to show for his trip to the market. He stood before me in the dust wearing a freshly ironed, blue-striped shirt, hardly somebody’s granddad whose lap you could go sit on. His stomach, hands, and temples were the same as Lilli’s officer. Today the sun, which was as round as a ball, was wrapped in cotton wool.

Paul had a lot of takers, he was showing off his aerials and handing out leaflets explaining how to aim them to pick up Belgrade and Budapest. I crouched down and my skirt slid right up, I tugged at it in vain. The old man was right, I was looking up at Paul the way a cat eyes a person. Paul’s motorbike was beside him, occasionally someone would bump into it. I would flinch, expecting to see it keel over, and see my father die all over again. Paul was asking two thousand lei for an aerial and getting half that. He bowed to a young married couple who found even that price too high:

Then go on, point the antennas of your hearts toward Bucharest, and much good may it do you.

He was a good salesman, he knew how to be cheeky without offending, I on the other hand, gave my beach hat to the first gap-toothed, doubled-chinned woman who came along, and when I sold the bracelets it was to girls with hairy arms and I took whatever they offered. In the factory the pay packets appeared on the table twice a month as if by magic, mail from an unknown hand. Everybody pocketed the money and threw away the envelope without checking. There was nothing to do about how much the envelope contained, you just went on in your quiet and unprotesting way. I was desperately in need of money, but I didn’t know how to talk up the things I wanted to get rid of, nor did I know how to make money by using my wits.

Next to the fence enclosing the market was a broken concrete pipe. At one end a man sat pouring red wine from a tin container into an old frosted-glass lamp globe, which he then drained. At the other end a man was affectionately kissing the hair of a child who was sitting in his lap. Between them some rusty wire stuck out of a crack in the pipe. In my mind I switched the three of us around, so that the man with the child was drinking from the glass globe — even I could do that. Then the man with the tin container had to kiss the child, but he discovered he had forgotten how — while someone like me, with a wedding ring dangling from a piece of string, never knew how in the first place. And either one of the men would have sold the ring more quickly than I could. The dust was swirling the ground up to the sky, the day was out of joint. The only customer for the last two remaining television aerials at that moment was the wind. Paul screwed up his eyes.

Is that your wedding ring.

I don’t know whether my feeble nod gave me away or whether he had long since figured out I was a little pussycat out hunting.

Ask for six thousand, he said, and don’t go below five.

A fly settled on my big toe and stung me, I watched it from the corner of my eye and felt ashamed to kill it because I had to say straight out:

My marriage wasn’t worth that much.

Who says, you or your husband, asked Paul.

Then I had to go to the toilet, two small wooden cabins at the far end of the flea market.

Leave the ring here, said Paul.

The fact that he even took the trouble, that he even thought about me at all. He untied the string from my wrist, I stretched out my arm and looked away the way children do when they’re being undressed. But where my skin was thinnest I could feel my pulse practically leaping out at him. His fingers were busy with the knot but my interest was all in the touching. After he had untied me, I took my time putting on my shoes. Paul was wearing my wedding ring on his little finger, he stretched his hand out over the television aerials, dangling the string and making up a singsong rhyme:

A kiss on the hand

and a golden band

can rob you of your senses.

It was comic, but he was performing it seriously, a real showman, and people stopped. I laughed as I walked away down the long rows. Outside the fence, at the end of the market, was the uneasy calm of an abandoned building site. Bindweed, knotgrass, and morning glories were crawling among the cranes, pipes, and crumbled cement. The finger I had been thinking of for some time was not the ring finger.

Right after the kiss on my hand, when I was summoned the second time after the notes, the only thing I could think of was that I had to go to the toilet. Albu said:

But of course. Down the corridor to the left, the next to last door. But leave your handbag here.

I went down the corridor to the left, I didn’t want to rush, but neither did I want to overdo things by taking too long. Two doors away a telephone was ringing, and it was still ringing later when I returned, no one was answering it. In the inner courtyard there were two pumps, for diesel and gasoline, and one for water. Two gray trucks, a bus with green curtains, a minibus, a blue car, a white one. And two red ones. At the end of the corridor, behind a door, someone was crying. On the sink was a cake of soap with two black hairs stuck to it, below in the trash can was a bloody handkerchief. It was then I felt my heart stick in my throat, my footsteps quickened. No doubt I came back sooner than was necessary.

Now the tram driver is ringing his bell, there’s a dog running right across the road, a rangy, splotchy creature, all skin and bones, holding his tail between his legs, and his paws are matted with half-dried mud. God knows where he found mud in this heat. His muzzle is dripping with foam, it’s no point even bothering with the bell, the dog would be better off dead, he could finally stretch out and rest. You see more and more dogs like that, says the young man standing by the door. The man with the briefcase nods: And if they bite you, that’s it, you’re through, you barely have enough time left to send for the priest and confess. It happened to a boy on my street. He was foaming at the mouth just like that dog, nothing to be done about it, rabies, finished. The old woman with the shaky head says: It’s that artificial fertilizer they’re putting on the fields, that’s why all the dogs are turning into runts. They fertilize like mad, but the only things that actually grow are fat rats, deformed birds, and razor grass. Everything else is godforsaken and stunted. Tell me, what am I supposed to do if a dog like that comes after me, at least you young folks can still run. And just a few years back I was still the fastest thing on two legs. My son used to say: You’re like a whirlwind, take it easy. Running away is the wrong thing to do, the young man says. If a dog like that comes at you, you have to stand still and act absolutely sure of yourself, look the beast square in the eye, like you’re trying to hypnotize it. That’s if your eyes are good, but not if you wear glasses, the old woman laughs. Heavens, without my glasses I can’t tell his head from his tail. Maybe it works if you look him square in the tail, the driver laughs, anyway it’d be worth a try. A while back in the park I saw a bird with three feet, the old woman says, I swear I’m not making it up, I was wearing my glasses. I couldn’t believe it, so I asked two youngsters if it was real. And it was. How’s your headache, the man with the briefcase asks. Bad, the old woman says, it’s easy enough for your mind to forget the years you’ve lived through, they’re over and done with, but your eyes, your feet, your gallbladder, they don’t forget, and it all starts to catch up with you. The driver unbuttons his shirt from top to bottom. Next stop is the marketplace, he says, we’ll be there in a moment.