Herta Müller: The Appointment

People who are summoned develop routines that help them out a little. Whether these routines really work or not is beside the point. It’s not people, though, it’s me who’s developed them; they came sneaking up on me, one by one.

Paul says:

The things you waste your time on.

What he does, instead, is consider what questions they’ll ask me when I’m summoned. This is absolutely necessary, he claims, whereas what I do is crazy. He’d be right if the questions he’s preparing me for really were the ones I was asked. Up to now they’ve always been completely different.

It’s too much to expect my routines to really help me. Actually they don’t help me so much as help move life along from one day to the next. There’s no point expecting them to fill your head with lucky thoughts. There’s a lot to be said for moving life along, but there’s essentially nothing to say when it comes to luck, because as soon as you open your mouth you jinx it away. Not even the luck you’ve missed out on can bear being talked about. The routines I’ve developed are about moving from one day to the next, and not about luck.

I’m sure Paul’s right: the walnut and the blouse that grows only add to the fear. And what sense is there in shooting for good fortune when all that does is add to the fear. I am constantly dwelling on this, and as a result I don’t expect as much as other people. Nobody covets the fear that others make for themselves. But with luck it’s just the opposite, which is why good fortune is never a very good goal.

On the green blouse that grows there’s a large mother-of-pearl button which I picked out from a great many buttons at the factory and took for Lilli.

At the interrogation I sit at the small table, twisting the button in my fingers, and answer calmly, even though every one of my nerves is jangling. Albu paces to and fro; having to formulate the right questions wears at his calm, just as having to give the right answers wears at mine. As long as I keep my composure there’s the chance he’ll get something wrong — maybe everything. Back home I change into my gray blouse. This one’s called the blouse that waits. It’s a gift from Paul. Of course I often have misgivings about these names. But they’ve never done any harm, not even on days when I haven’t been summoned. The blouse that grows helps me, and the blouse that waits may be helping Paul. His fear on my behalf is as high as the ceiling, just as mine is for him when he sits around the flat, waiting and drinking, or when he’s barhopping in town. It’s easier if you’re the one going out, if you’re the one taking your fear away and leaving your fortune at home, and if there’s someone waiting for you to come back. Sitting at home, waiting, stretches time to the brink and tightens fear to the point of snapping.

The powers I’ve bestowed on my routines verge on the superhuman. Albu yells:

You see, everything is connected.

And I twist the large button on my blouse and say: In your mind they are, in my mind they aren’t.

Shortly before he got off, the old man in the straw hat turned his watery eyes away from me. Now there’s a father with a child on his lap sitting on the seat facing me, his legs stretched out into the aisle. Watching the city go by outside the window isn’t something he can be bothered with. The child sticks a forefinger up his father’s nose. Crooking a finger and hunting for snot is something kids learn early. Later they’re told not to pick anyone’s nose but their own, and then only if no one’s watching. This father doesn’t think that later has arrived yet; he smiles, perhaps he’s enjoying it. The tram halts in the middle of the tracks, between stops, the driver gets out. Who knows how long we’ll be stranded. It’s early in the morning and already he’s sneaking a break when he should be driving his route. Everyone here does what he wants. The driver strolls over to the shops, tucking in his shirt and adjusting his trousers so no one will notice he’s abandoned his tram in mid-route. He acts like someone who’s so bored that he finally got up off his couch just to poke his nose into the sunshine. If he’s planning to buy anything in one of the shops over there, he’ll either have to say who he is or else he’ll have to wait in line. If all he’s after is a cup of coffee, I hope he doesn’t sit down to drink it. He doesn’t dare touch brandy, even if he does keep his window open. Every one of us sitting on the tram has the right to reek of brandy except for him. But he’s behaving as if it were the other way round. My summons puts me in the same position as far as brandy is concerned. I’d rather have his reason for abstaining than my own. Who knows when he’ll be back.

Ever since I began leaving my good fortune at home, the kiss on my hand doesn’t paralyze me as much as it used to. I crook up my finger joints so that my knuckles keep Albu from speaking. Paul and I have rehearsed this kiss. In order to approximate the importance of the signet ring on Albu’s middle finger, to see how it affects the finger-squeeze, I made a ring out of a strip of rubber and a coat button. We took turns wearing it, and we laughed so much we completely forgot why we were going through the exercise in the first place. I learned not to crook my hand up all at once but gradually. That way the knuckles can block his gums and keep him from speaking. Sometimes when Albu is kissing my hand, I think of my rehearsal with Paul. Then the pain at my fingernails and the slobber on my hand aren’t so humiliating. You learn as you go, but I can’t show that I’m learning, and whatever happens I cannot laugh.

If you’re walking or driving around the leaning tower, where Paul and I live, you can’t really keep more than the entranceway and the lower stories under surveillance. From the sixth floor up the flats are too high, so that you’d need sophisticated technology to see anything in detail. What’s more, about halfway up the building, the façade angles out toward the front. If you stare up at it long enough you’ll feel your eyes rolling back into your forehead. I’ve tried it often; your neck grows tired. The leaning tower has looked like that for twelve years now, says Paul, from the day it was built. Whenever I want to explain where I live, all I have to do is say: In the leaning tower. Everyone in the city knows where it is. They ask:

Aren’t you afraid it might collapse.

I’m not afraid, I say, it was built with reinforced concrete. Whenever I refer to the tower, people look down at the floor, as if looking at me might make them dizzy, so I say:

Everything else in this city will collapse first.

At that they nod, to relax the veins that are twitching in their necks.

The fact that our flat is high up is an advantage for us, but it also has the disadvantage that Paul and I can’t see exactly what’s going on down below. From the seventh floor you can’t make out anything smaller than a suitcase, and when do you see anyone carrying a suitcase. Individual items of clothing blur into big splotches of color, and faces turn into little pale patches between the hair and the clothes. You could guess at what the nose, eyes, or teeth inside those patches might look like, but why bother. Old people and children can be recognized by the way they walk. There are dumpsters located on the grass between our building and the shops, with a walkway running alongside them. Two narrow footpaths leave the paved sidewalk and circle around the group of bins, without quite meeting. From up here the bins look like ransacked cupboards with the doors torn off. Once a month someone sets them on fire, the smoke rises and the garbage is consumed. If your windows aren’t shut, your eyes start stinging and your throat gets sore. Most things happen outside the entrances to the shops, but unfortunately all we can see are the rear service doors. No matter how often we count them, we can never match up the twenty-seven doors in back with the eight front doors belonging to the grocer, the bread shop, the greengrocer, the pharmacy, the bar, the shoemaker, the hairdresser, and the kindergarten. The whole rear wall is riddled with doors; nevertheless, the delivery trucks stop mostly in the street, out front.