Herta Müller - The Appointment

That time he was sitting by the entrance on the steps, eating freshly washed blue grapes when I came home. He stood up and accompanied me inside, his grapes dripping all the way to the elevator. Not until I had pressed the button and the cables had begun to rumble somewhere upstairs did he tell me that he had been summoned because of me.

Why did you go, I asked. I have to go because I got summoned on my own account. I wouldn’t go because of others.

You expect me to believe that, he said.

With his thumb and middle finger he pulled the grapes off faster than I could count. His mouth was up against my ear, and every grape squirted juice when he bit it. He kept his little finger sticking out, an affectation that makes a man like him, whose false teeth squeak as he eats, even more unattractive. Did I want a few grapes, he asked, since I couldn’t take my eyes off his hand.

I’m not reproaching you for anything, he said.

What do you want, then.

I also have children.

Never take children into your confidence, I said.

The elevator came and the door opened. It was empty, but Herr Micu stuck his head inside as if to double-check whether someone wasn’t standing on the ceiling. He wedged his foot against the door.

I waited to catch you because I had no idea when you come and when you go. I have to write it down.

I could see the last mailbox on the wall reflected in one of his eyes, or was that just his pupil turning white and square. I didn’t compare it with his other eye, because he whispered:

I’ve already filled two school notebooks, I have to buy them myself.

He’d torn off all the grapes, scraps of blue peel were still stuck to each thin stalk on the cluster. Then he looked along the mailboxes toward the entrance.

I haven’t said anything to you, I swore I wouldn’t, what do I mean swore, it’s all written down in black and white.

Frau Micu’s been playing the lottery for half her life. After she retired, she started gambling more and more. She’s always known that one day she’d win a huge fortune. And the further off that day gets, the more fervent her belief. Every Wednesday when the numbers are drawn she waits in her red flowery Sunday dress. Her brown patent-leather shoes are standing by in the hall so she can slip them on when the lottery man rings the bell. Usually no one rings at all on Wednesdays, because by now everyone in the block is well aware what a significant day it is. And if the bell does ring, then it’s only the postman or a forgetful neighbor. Then Frau Micu, dressed in her Sunday best, slowly closes the door and feels that, once again, she has been betrayed. Her world collapses, she buries her face in the armchair and sobs. Herr Micu smashes a couple of plates against the wall and sweeps up the pieces. Then he gets a grip on himself and comforts her. Soon the local radio station starts its pop music hit parade. The week goes by and it all blows over, until the following Wednesday, when the whole cycle begins once again. Paul’s often heard her crying inside the apartment and has asked Herr Micu how he stands it. Herr Micu talked about another cross he has to bear. Just like earlier, when he was still a chauffeur and she was a secretary, he got used to her poking around the school and searching all over town for what she called rubies but were really just broken pieces of red glass. She’s always had an artistic streak, he said. Once she’d filled her first box of rubies, she took it to the city museum and then to a goldsmith. Ultimately she threatened to commit suicide, so Herr Micu sent her to a watchmaker, after having first bought the man a few drinks at the tavern, so that someone would finally confirm to his wife that it really was rubies in her box. The business with the Sunday dress will never change, Wednesday evening it will be hung back up in silence and now and then tears will be shed. But there’s no more talk of suicide. The watchmaker was worth it, Herr Micu says, I’d have spared myself a good deal of trouble if I’d thought of that earlier.

Shortly after I moved to the tower block, I saw Frau Micu leaning against the wall behind the entrance. She was in her stocking feet, wearing a housecoat. Her cheeks were shining with a fuzzy down that thickened into a belt of tattered fur around her chin: a thin mustache ran above her lips and curled upward under each nostril. Frau Micu was sucking on her index finger and wiping spittle around her eyes, the way cats wash themselves. I walked to the elevator. Without moving from the spot she called out:

Miss.

She showed me a piece of red glass.

Have you ever seen such a big ruby.

Never, I said.

That would be something for the Queen of England, I think I’ll send it to her, what do you think.

What if it gets stolen in the mail.

You’re right, she said, and put it away in the pocket of her dress.

She must have known something about Herr Micu’s written observations. Long before her husband took me into his confidence, I came home from town one afternoon and found her standing right in the entrance hall. She was wearing a dishcloth as a shawl. She held out an arm to block my way and said:

First you went out and then Paul. But then only Paul showed up.

And now I’m back too, I said.

After Paul showed up, she said, and when Radu showed up he weighed four kilos, and then Emil weighed four and a quarter. I’m not counting Mara, my husband didn’t want her. And then I had Emil again, twice, that’s not possible, but back then you were allowed to have twins separately.

She no longer knew the difference between a dishcloth and a shawl. But she knew what her children had weighed at birth, just as my grandfather knew the measurements of the bricks in the camp.

Partly out of spite because he was writing down my comings and goings and heaven knows what else, and partly out of gratitude that he had confided in me, I bought a school notebook for Herr Micu. I wanted him to feel jittery by making him write down his observations in something I had given him. I wanted to throw a monkey wrench in the works, politely, because quarreling got you nowhere. It wasn’t Wednesday, so I rang the bell and Herr Micu opened the door, holding a slice of bread and drippings, sprinkled with gleaming grains of salt. He shook his head.

Much too big.

I didn’t know.

Mine are smaller and thicker.

Why can’t you write in a bigger one, I said.

It has to fit into my jacket pocket, he said, no, no.

Since then I’ve used the notebook to record whatever Albu says to me while kissing my hand, or how many paving stones, fence slats, telegraph poles, or windows there are between one spot and another. I don’t like writing, because something that’s written down can be discovered, but I have to do it. Often the same things, in the same place, change their number from one day to the next. At first glance everything looks exactly the same, but not when you count it. Or when you play the sketching game, closing your eyes and using your finger to outline clouds, roofs, the leaves trembling on trees, or the forks in branches if the trees are bare. The higher the object, the easier it is to trace. I’ve often drawn the church steeple this way, all the way to the very tip, and the tall tenements right up to the weather vanes. I sketch Paul’s aerials, which look like antlers even when they’re on the roofs, without leaving out a single branch. But I only focus on his and no others. I used to pick up little stones from the edge of the path to help me practice sketching. Ever since I found the parcel wrapped like candy in my bag, I use my forefinger, crooking and twisting it to follow the contours. I didn’t check whether the severed finger could be bent.

I once sketched Lilli this way. She was standing in the entrance stairwell at the factory, a whole flight of stairs above me, and turned so I could see her profile. I showed her how straight her forehead was, the way her nose stood above the world, the milky white color of her chin and throat — like frosted glass. Even at that distance my finger could feel the difference between Lilli’s skin and other objects. When I reached the angle of her shoulder, Lilli placed her hands on her breasts: