Herta Müller - The Appointment

Georgiana.

But nobody was answering. A few trees farther down, though, I saw a girl standing next to a large trash bin. She was wearing a red ribbon in her hair and was singing a song. The old lady seemed at a loss, caught between the adults who were walking at a pace set by their chatting, and the child who didn’t come when she was called. I turned to look back as we rode past until I ran out of neck to twist. The black clothes disappeared, and I felt the thrumming of the motorbike in every finger.

My father went to church every Sunday his whole life long. If Mama or Grandfather or I didn’t go with him, he went by himself. On his way home, Papa would stop at the bar behind the park and treat himself to a brandy and a foreign cigarette. By one o’clock on the dot he’d be sitting at the table ready for Sunday dinner. He kept going to church even in the last years of his life, when his very bones were rotten with sin. In his place I would have stayed at home, if I had that much sin to account for. I can’t believe that on Sunday he’d promise God he’d finish with the woman with the braid — given that he’d already arranged to meet her the very next day. I’d seen it: on Mondays the woman came to the market without her child. She had spent Sunday with her husband, just as my father did with his wife, counting the hours. But by Monday evening neither God Almighty nor the devil himself could keep them apart. For Sunday dinner we had two chickens, whatever was left over we saved for supper. My father ate the combs from both chickens because he needed them for his Monday sin. And I shared the brain with Grandfather, so that I’d learn to hold my tongue like him. It’s possible that Papa prayed to God for indulgence, since the Lord had to know there wasn’t much going on with Mama. Jesus was hanging just to the right of the church door, high enough for the grown-ups to kiss his feet as they came in and out of the church. Children were lifted by their hips. For as long as it was necessary, my mother or my grandfather held me up, but never my father. Jesus had lost his toes, they’d been completely kissed away. When I was little my father said to me:

These kisses don’t go away. They light up around your mouth when you die, on Judgment Day. Then it’s easy to see who you are and you can enter Paradise.

What color do they light up, I asked.

Yellow.

And the kisses we give each other.

They don’t light up, because they go away, he said.

Everyone who lived near St. Theodore’s church was carrying a little dust from Jesus’ toes on their lips. When I wanted to take the place of the woman with the braid, and my father clove to her flesh, I hoped her kisses wouldn’t go away. That on Judgment Day they would light up darkly among all the glowing toe-kisses and give away the deceiver.

Lilli once said her mother no longer went to church because nowadays the masses all began with an intercession for the Head of State.

That’s all well and good, I said, but she puts up with her husband taking his old bones to his weekly meeting next to the newsstand.

She puts up with it, said Lilli, because she has to.

My head was still flooded with the ride, even though Paul and I had been sitting for some time at the park. On the last stretch where the road ran through the forest the lower branches snatched at our hair. The trees were humming with green, the whole sky was made of leaves. I had scrunched up my neck and implored him:

Not so fast.

Paul brought his chair up close to mine and kissed me with his mouth ringed with beer froth. I was dazed from the ride and now this kiss on top of that. My heart was swinging back and forth by the thinnest of threads. I wanted to keep a clear head, but happiness didn’t give me enough time. Much too slowly I began to grasp that happiness can be found even at a flea market — no matter that the place was filthy and full of junk and people from whom all I wanted was their money. That happiness doesn’t need time so much as luck. One moment my fingers were cradling Paul’s warm chin, the next they were clasping the cold neck of the beer bottle. Since we knew so little about each other we talked a lot, although mostly not about ourselves. Paul downed six whole bottles and was able to put away even more later that afternoon as families started coming into the woods. After eating Sunday dinner in their apartment blocks they wanted to hold on to the sky for just a little while longer, before the next week of confinement in the factories. An elderly couple took the two free seats at our table. Their wedding rings were thick and engraved with floral patterns, after the current fashion.

I’m asking you for the last time, said the woman.

I don’t know, said the man.

Who does, then.

Not me.

What do you mean you don’t. Don’t pretend to be dumber than you are.

Don’t spit when you’re talking. I’ve forgotten, for God’s sake.

What you’ve forgotten is your mind. You forgot that the day you were born.

That’s for sure, otherwise I wouldn’t have hooked up with your little birdbrain.

No, you’d still be in a mud hut with your mother.

You’re a fine one to talk, sweetie.

Don’t you sweetie me. Nobody else would put up with you.

Heavens, next thing you’ll start crying for me.

What were you thinking just now.

What do you want me to say.

You must’ve been thinking of something.

No, I wasn’t thinking of anything.

I don’t believe you.

It’s true.

You lie every time you open your mouth.

That’s right, even when I’m fucking you.

That goes without saying.

All the same, you seem to want me often enough.

Because that’s all you’re good for.

Listen to you, you’re nothing but a hole with a perm.

So tell me what happened, or keep quiet.

Stop it, I don’t know.

Then who does…

After that it started all over again, round and round like a whirlpool, the tone became sharper, the mud hut became a chicken coop and the hole with a perm became a mattress with fringe. Their eyes shot poison at each other. The woman interrogated him as if they were the only two people there, while the man stared off into space as if he were all alone. The sun was still milky-white, you could hear the tall trees rustling, the sky was bearing down so low there was barely room for it among all the foliage, shoes were crunching through the gravel. He was clearly sick of her and at the same time completely dependent on her. And she never let any of us out of her sight. Even Paul and I were trapped, we said nothing, we refrained from looking at each other so she wouldn’t think we were exchanging signals. Cut off from each other like that, listening and at the same time acting as if we were deaf, we couldn’t imagine what she expected of him. Paul took his hand off the table, the woman noted the movement, glanced at me and waited to see what I would do. I leaned in Paul’s direction, and he put his hand on my knee and said:

Come on.

I sat up straight. The woman was waiting for Paul’s hand to reappear on the table. Paul must have sensed that and left his hand on my knee. With the other he beckoned the waiter over.

This is on me, for selling the wedding ring — may it have a happy future, I said.

I wanted to downplay my happiness. By chance the other two were quiet just then, they were listening to us the way Paul and I had listened to them. I was glad that they too were hearing something they didn’t understand. Paul took some money out of his pocket, he wouldn’t touch any of mine. The woman looked at her wedding ring, and Paul and I said in unison:

Goodbye.

We sounded like two wind-up talking dolls. The woman waved in reply, barely lifting her hand off the table. The man looked as if he needed us as allies and said: