Herta Müller - The Appointment

All the best.

In his position he seemed more in need of luck than we were. We rode back through the trees to the leaning tower. That night was the first I spent at Paul’s, and from then on I stayed.

We made love that first night until our bodies felt both older and younger, panting to the point of bursting and sighing calmly. Afterwards I heard barking, as if stray dogs were roaming the heavens. Then the street slumbered on to the ticking of the clock and everything below was silent. A gray dawn broke, still no light on the clock dial. Soon the trucks began making deliveries to the shops in the street. I got up and sneaked out of the room, carrying my clothes. I felt goose bumps as I stood in the hall, pulling my clothes over skin that was still warm from the bed. I wanted to put my shoes on quickly and leave before Paul woke up. But I didn’t. Stay here just like the shoes, just like the cupboard hanging on the wall in the kitchen, and the sharp, bright swath of sunlight that’s growing by the minute and crawling up the back of the chair onto the table. Stay here because all the papers being drafted, stamped, and signed, inside the factory dictate that every Saturday is followed by a Monday. I poured myself a glass of water and drank the mealy taste of my tongue. But I was not going to stay here like some bargain picked up at the flea market, in that case it would better to get up and get out. If you leave you can always come back. A red enameled tin can was standing on the table, I opened it, smelled the ground coffee, closed the lid, put the can back down and saw my greasy fingerprints, as well as what I had dreamed during the night:

My father was lying on a wooden table in the yard at home, he was wearing a white Sunday shirt, next to his left ear was a peach from one of the trees he had planted years before. A barrel-chested man with a birdlike face who in the dream was not my landlord was cutting out a square between the tips of my father’s collar and his stomach, he was cutting through my father’s shirt, from the third to the fifth button, very precisely as though the man had measured my father’s chest with a ruler. He lifted a small whitewashed door of flesh.

I said: He’s starting to bleed.

The man said: That’s from his wife’s melon. You see, she’s crippled, she can’t grow anymore and isn’t any bigger than an egg. We’re taking her out and putting in a peach.

He removed the melon from Papa’s chest and replaced it with the peach. The peach was ripe, with red cheeks, but you could tell from the fuzzy hair it hadn’t been washed.

It belongs to the woman with the braid, I said, it will never grow, she doesn’t keep it fresh.

You’ve got to admit if there’s one thing she knows about it’s vegetables.

A peach is a fruit, I said.

We’ll see, he said.

The man put the small door back on Papa’s chest, it fit perfectly. He walked to the wall of the house, turned on the faucet and washed his hands with the garden hose.

Isn’t the small door going to be stitched in, I asked.

No, he said.

What if it falls out.

The seal’s airtight, it will heal over, I’ve done this before, he said; after all, I am a professional cabinetmaker.

After Paul and I had made love past all the waves of weariness, he fell into a peaceful slumber, while I fell into a sleep that was brimming with images. The small door of flesh might have come from the removable toilet door, the surgeon-landlord may have appeared since I now had money to pay what I owed. My father and the woman with the braid had no business here, and my wish to take her place had no right to show up on my first night with Paul.

The red coffee can was sparkling too much, the sun was making it giddy, the tin must be the one that’s daydreaming instead of me.

Paul sneaked up behind me and clapped his hands over my eyes.

I’ve been thinking, you should move in with me.

I hadn’t heard him coming and felt as if I’d been caught with my father.

No, I said.

But inside I had accepted, as if I had no choice. When he uncovered my eyes, a woman was shaking out two white pillows in the window across the way, and I said:

Yes.

I had my doubts. And the very next moment I took four heaping spoonfuls of coffee from the tin and put them in the pot, and Paul said:

Good.

It was a beautiful word to say, because it couldn’t be bad. Paul put a jar of apricot marmalade on the table and cut far too many slices of bread.

In the mornings I usually grab something to eat as I’m heading out the door, so that I can get something in my stomach without actually sitting down to a real breakfast. But this time I remained seated. I told him about my father and the small door of skin, and about the melon and the peach. I left out the woman with the braid. Nor did I mention the fact that the red coffee tin reflected the dream. Nor that I was wary of the tin just as I would be of a stranger. With people to whom I take an immediate dislike, the wariness soon wears off unless I talk about it, that’s how it was with Nelu when I started work at the factory. But the reason I’m shy of objects is because I like them. I transfer the thoughts that are against me onto them. Then these thoughts go away, unless I talk about them — just like my wariness of people. Maybe it all collects in your hair.

After I separated from my husband, in the quiet days when no one was shouting at me anymore, I started noticing other people’s wariness of strangers. I saw how they combed their hair in public. In the factory, in the city, in the streets, and trams, buses, and trains, while waiting in front of a counter or standing in a line for milk and bread. People comb their hair at the movies before the light goes out, and even in the cemetery. While they’re parting their hair you can see their wariness of others collecting in their combs. But they can’t comb it out completely if they go on talking about it. The fear of strangers sticks to the comb and makes it greasy. People who talk about it can’t get rid of their fear of strangers; their combs are always clean. I thought back: Mama, Papa, Grandfather, my father-in-law, my husband — all had filthy combs, Nelu too, and Albu. Lilli and I sometimes had clean ones and sometimes they were sticky. That’s right, that’s exactly how it was with our fear of strangers, our talking and our keeping quiet.

Paul and I were drinking coffee, the sun was sprawled across the table. I had told him my dream and nothing more, nothing at all about the combs. Paul was wary of my dream, he avoided my gaze and stared out the window.

Weak nerves, he said. At any rate, your surgeon promised the door would heal over.

Out beyond the glass in the window three swallows flew across a patch of sky. Either they were flying an advance party or they were a separate unit and had nothing to do with the countless birds that followed. I should never have started counting but already I was moving my lips.

Are you wondering how many there are, Paul asked.

I do a lot of counting. Cigarette butts, trees, fence slats, clouds, or the number of paving stones between one phone pole and the next, the windows along the way to the bus stop in the morning, the pedestrians I see from the bus between one stop and the next, red ties on an afternoon in the city. How many steps from the office to the factory gate. I count to keep the world in order, I said.

Paul fetched a picture from the other room, it hadn’t been on the wall, otherwise I would have seen it. Still, it was framed, and a cockroach lay pressed under the glass.

When my father died I had the photo framed and hung it in the room. After only two days the cockroach showed up and joined the family. The cockroach is right, when somebody dies you start acting out of fear for yourself, as if you’d loved the deceased more than the living. Then I took it down.