Herta Müller - The Appointment

Was it his fault, I asked.

He looked up.

You’re asking the wrong question.

Was it my fault, I asked.

Is there anything he can do about it, said my grandfather. No, there isn’t.

When I went back into the hall I felt I needed someone to help me crawl out of my skin. But nobody did, so I just wolfed something down. The wedding cake still had two windows left in half a wall, I ate a curtain. My husband was dancing with his mother and her white patent leather bag that dangled down his back. My father was dancing with my mother’s white French twist. My father-in-law was dancing with his daughter and her white shoes. I looked down at myself and saw that white was taking over my family. Who could do anything about it. Someone should be able to.

A horse is coming into camp

with a window in its head.

Do you see the tower looming high and blue…

my grandfather would sometimes sing as he worked in the garden. It was not a wedding song.

The tram has stopped at the signal pole. Another red light, says the driver. Who’s it for, anyway. Nobody sets foot in the street for days on end, but they go and put in traffic lights and sit in their offices on their big fat asses. None of them bothers to come into town to look at their lights. They even get bonuses for having them installed, and I lose mine because I can’t make the route on time.

The people standing in the car watch the light but don’t say anything. One of them sneezes. Once, twice, three times. Traffic lights don’t make you sneeze — it’s the sun, that’s what’s set him off, four times, five. I can’t stand it when someone sneezes so many times, it’s always these small, scrawny men who can’t stop and don’t have any manners. With clods like these you’re lucky if they cover their mouth the first time; after that you can forget it. You hope each sneeze is the last one, but then you can’t help waiting for the next. Your brain gets addled, you start counting the sneezes, and that only encourages them. Now this guy’s sneezing for the sixth time, why doesn’t he hold his nose and take seven quick breaths, or hold his breath and count to sixty, then it’ll all be over. He apparently doesn’t know that trick, but I can’t exactly tell him how by shouting from one end of the car to the other. Actually, holding your breath doesn’t work for sneezing, that’s for hiccups. He ought to rub his nose until it doesn’t tickle anymore, that’s the cure for sneezing. His eyes are as big as chestnuts, they’ll pop out if he doesn’t stop. But what do I care. His neck is bulging and turning red, his ears are burning. Here’s number seven, atchoo, my head’s spinning just from watching him… and why can’t he make some other sound than atchoo. Finally he’s stopped. No, here comes number eight. There won’t be anything left of him, he’ll sneeze himself away until all that remains is a ball of snot.

Paul placed the photo in the drawer and asked:

What did your father-in-law do back in the fifties.

He was a Party operative, I said, in charge of expropriation. My grandfather owned some vineyards on the hills in the neighboring village. The Perfumed Commissar confiscated my grandfather’s gold coins and jewelry and placed him and my grandmother on the list for deportation to the Baragan Steppe. When my grandfather came back, his house belonged to the state. He had to go to court several times until they let him move back in, the bread factory had converted the rooms into offices. There was always a lot of talk about the house, mostly over dinner, but very little about my grandmother, things like:

She decided to die quickly, she didn’t live past that horrible first summer. She couldn’t wait, so she didn’t live to see the mud hut.

The Perfumed Commissar didn’t go back to that town until my wedding. And that was a rash thing to do, as it turned out. He probably thought no one would remember him, or maybe he just didn’t think at all. After all, to him the deportees were nothing more than a nuisance. He might have remembered some of the people who’d worked for him. But the rest of the rabble he only knew from the lists and not by their faces. For him my grandmother was simply a name; he selected her and then she died, just like many others. When he came back it was to celebrate the wedding. My grandfather recognized him immediately from his walk and from his voice — despite the new name. The name he’d used in the fifties was for official purposes, later he went back to his real name. The commissar’s father had been a coachman who made his living with a cart and two bay horses. He delivered wood and coal as well as lime and cement. On occasion he also delivered coffins to the cemetery, if people couldn’t afford the elegantly carved hearse. He swept up more horse manure in one day than he saw money in his lifetime. Whenever the cart was fully loaded, his sons had to run along behind him, to spare the horses, and when the cart stopped they had to unload or shovel or carry sacks. That white horse was a sign that my father-in-law had left the world of draft horses behind, he climbed out of the muck straight onto its back. Looking extremely out of place, he used to ride through the village, hating anyone richer than a carter. The perfume became his second skin. A perfumed Communist, who ever heard of such a thing, I asked Paul. What’s a Communist, anyway.

Me, said Paul. I was well brought up, I did my homework like a good boy, and one day my father called me into the kitchen. His shaving bowl was on the table, and there was hot water on the stove. He lathered up my face until the soap got in my nostrils and then he fetched his razor. I could have counted all the whiskers on my face with one hand. But I was proud of myself, I started shaving and I joined the Party; as far as my father was concerned the two things went together. He explained that he had been born before his time and had no choice but to go along with whatever came. First he was a fascist; later he said he’d been in the Communist underground. As for me, he said, I was born when I was born and I had to stay ahead of my time. The few who really were Communists back then are right when they say: There used to be so few of us, but many are left. They needed these many, who hatched out of their old lives like wasps. Anyone poor enough became a Communist. So did many rich people who didn’t want to end up in a camp. Now my father’s dead, and if there’s a heaven up there, you can be sure he’s claiming to be a Christian. The motorcycle belonged to him. My mother was a machine fitter. Now she’s retired and every Wednesday she meets her wrinkly old brigade in the café next to the hardware store in the marketplace. When I was little I used to walk through town with my father and he showed me his picture as a Hero of Labor on the plaque of honor in the People’s Park. I preferred to look at the squirrels. The squirrels were all named Mariana and had to shell pumpkin seeds because people didn’t have any nuts to feed them. You could buy pumpkin seeds at the entrance to the park. That’s extortion, said my father, one whole leu for a handful of pumpkin seeds. He didn’t buy me any.

Squirrels know how to feed themselves, he said.

I had to call Mariana with empty hands, and the squirrels came in vain. As I called I kept my hands in my trouser pockets. At the plaque of honor by the main pathway, my father said:

Don’t look left and don’t look right, son, just keep your eyes fixed straight ahead but remember to stay flexible.

Then he gave my cap a tug to one side so it slanted across my left ear, leaving my right uncovered, and we went on our way. At the crossroads he blinked and said:

First look left and then look right, son, to see if a car’s coming. That’s important when you’re crossing a street but it’s a dangerous way to think.