Herta Müller: The Appointment

Paul drinks and is no longer himself, then he sleeps it off and is back to being himself. Around noon it looks as if everything could turn out all right, but once again it turns out ruined. Paul goes on protecting his soul until the buffalo grass is high and dry, while I brood over who he and I really are until I can no longer think straight. At lunchtime we’re sitting at the kitchen table, and any mention of his having been drunk yesterday is the wrong thing to say. Even so, I occasionally toss out a word or two:

Drink won’t change a thing.

Why are you making my life so difficult.

You could paint this entire kitchen with what you put away yesterday.

True, the flat is small, and I don’t want to avoid Paul; but when we stay at home, we spend too much of the day sitting in the kitchen. By mid-afternoon he’s already drunk, and in the evening it gets worse. I put off talking because it makes him grumpy. I keep waiting through the night, until he’s sober again and sitting in the kitchen with eyes like onions. But then whatever I say goes right past him. I’d like for Paul to admit I’m right, just for once. But drinkers never admit anything, not even silently to themselves — and they’re not about to let anyone else squeeze it out of them, especially somebody who’s waiting to hear the admission. The minute Paul wakes up, his thoughts turn to drinking, though he denies it. That’s why there’s never any truth. If he’s not sitting silently at the table, letting my words go right past him, he says something like this, meant to last the entire day:

Don’t fret, I’m not drinking out of desperation. I drink because I like it.

That may be the case, I say, since you seem to think with your tongue.

Paul looks out the kitchen window at the sky, or into his cup. He dabs at the drops of coffee on the table, as if to confirm that they’re wet and really will spread if he smears them with a finger. He takes my hand, I look out the kitchen window at the sky, into the cup, I too dab at the odd drop of coffee on the table. The red enamel tin stares at us and I stare back. But Paul does not, because that would mean doing something different today from what he did yesterday. Is he being strong or weak when he remains silent instead of saying for once: I’m not going to drink today. Yesterday Paul again said:

Don’t you fret, your man drinks because he likes it.

His legs carried him down the hall — at once too heavy and too light — as if they contained a mix of sand and air. I placed my hand upon his neck and stroked the stubble I love to touch in the mornings, the whiskers that grow in his sleep. He drew my hand up under his eye, it slid down his cheek to his chin. I didn’t take away my fingers, but I did think to myself:

I wouldn’t count on any of this cheek-to-cheek business after you’ve seen that picture of the two plums.

I like to hear Paul talk that way, so late in the morning, and yet I don’t like it either. Whenever I take a step away from him, he nudges his love up to me, so naked, so close that he doesn’t need to say anything else. He doesn’t have to wait, I’m ready with my approval, not a single reproach on the tip of my tongue. The one in my head quickly fades. It’s good I can’t see myself, since my face feels stupid and pale. Yesterday morning, Paul’s hangover once again yielded up an unexpected pussycat gentleness that came padding on soft paws. Your man —the only people who talk like that have shallow wits and too much pride tucked around the corners of their mouths. Although the noontime tenderness paves the way for the evening’s drinking, I depend on it, and I don’t like the way I need it.

Major Albu says: I can see what you’re thinking, there’s no point in denying it, we’re just wasting time. Actually, it’s only my time being wasted; after all, he’s doing his job. He rolls up his sleeve and glances at the clock. The time is easy to see, but not what I’m thinking. If Paul can’t see what I’m thinking, then certainly this man can’t.

Paul sleeps next to the wall, while my place is toward the front edge of the bed, since I’m often unable to sleep. Still, whenever he wakes up he says:

You were taking up the whole bed and shoved me right up against the wall.

To which I reply:

No way, I was on this little strip here no wider than a clothesline, you were the one taking up the middle.

One of us could sleep in the bed and the other on the sofa. We’ve tried it. For two nights we took turns. Both nights I did nothing but toss around. My brain was grinding down thought after thought, and toward morning, when I was half asleep, I had a series of bad dreams. Two nights of bad dreams that kept reaching out and clutching at me all day long. The night I was on the sofa, my first husband put the suitcase on the bridge over the river, gripped me by the back of my neck, and roared with laughter. Then he looked at the water and whistled that song about love falling apart and the river water turning black as ink. The water in my dream was not like ink, I could see it, and in the water I saw his face, turned upside down and peering up from the depths, from where the pebbles had settled. Then a white horse ate apricots in a thicket of trees. With every apricot it raised its head and spat out the stone like a human being. And the night I had the bed to myself, someone grabbed my shoulder from behind and said:

Don’t turn around, I’m not here.

Without moving my head, I just squinted out of the corners of my eyes. Lilli’s fingers were gripping me, her voice was that of a man, so it wasn’t her. I raised my hand to touch her and the voice said:

What you can’t see you can’t touch.

I saw the fingers, they were hers, but someone else was using them. Someone I couldn’t see. And in the next dream, my grandfather was pruning back a hydrangea that had been frost-burnt by the snow. He called me over: Come take a look, I’ve got a lamb here.

Snow was falling on his trousers, his shears were clipping off the heads of the frost-browned flowers. I said:

That’s not a lamb.

It’s not a person, either, he said.

His fingers were numb and he could only open and close the shears slowly, so that I wasn’t sure whether it was the shears that were squeaking or his hand. I tossed the shears into the snow. They sank in so that it was impossible to tell where they had fallen. He combed the entire yard looking for them, his nose practically touching the snow. When he reached the garden gate I stepped on his hands so he’d look up and not go wandering off through the gate, searching the whole white street. I said:

Stop it, the lamb’s frozen and the wool got burnt in the frost.

By the garden fence was another hydrangea, one that had been pruned bare. I gestured to it:

What’s wrong with that one.

That one’s the worst, he said. Come spring it’ll be having little ones. We can’t have that.

The morning after the second night, Paul said:

If we’re in each other’s way, at least it means we each have someone. The only place you sleep alone is in your coffin, and that’ll happen soon enough. We should stay together at night. Who knows the dreams he had and promptly forgot.

He was talking about sleeping, however, not dreaming. At half past four in the morning I saw Paul asleep in the gray light, a twisted face above a double chin. And at that early hour, down by the shops, people were cursing out loud and laughing. Lilli said:

Curses ward off evil spirits.

Idiot, get your foot out of the way. Move, or do you have shit in your shoes. Open those great flapping ears of yours and you’ll hear what I’m saying, but watch you don’t blow away in this wind. Never mind your hair, we haven’t finished unloading. A woman was clucking, short and hoarse like a hen. A van door slammed. Lend a hand, you moron. If you want a rest you should check into a sanatorium.