Herta Müller: The Appointment

Some things aren’t bad until you start talking about them. I’ve learned how to hold my tongue before it gets me into trouble, but usually it’s already too late, because sooner or later I always want to have my say. Whenever Paul and I don’t understand something that troubles other people, we start to quarrel. Things quickly escalate until they get out of hand, and every salvo calls for an even more thunderous one in return. I think we see in that alcoholic man the things that most torment us, and these things are different for each of us, despite our common love. Evidently drinking troubles Paul more than my being summoned. He drinks the most whenever I’m summoned, and on those days especially I have no right to reproach him for his drinking, even though his being drunk troubles me more than…

My first husband also had a tattoo. He returned home from the army with a rose threaded through a heart inked on his chest. My name beneath the stem. But I left him nevertheless.

Why in the world have you gone and ruined your skin. The only place that rosy heart might possibly look right is on your gravestone.

Because the days were long and I was thinking of you, he explained, and everybody else was getting one. Apart from the chickenhearts. We had our share of those, just like anywhere else.

I didn’t leave him for some other man, as he suspected, I just wanted to leave him. He wanted an itemized list of the reasons why. I couldn’t spell out a single one.

Are you disappointed in me, he asked. Or have I changed.

No, we were both exactly the same as when we met. Love can’t go on just running in place, but that’s what our love had been doing for two and a half years. He looked at me, and when I said nothing, he declared:

You’re one of those who needs a good beating now and then, only I wasn’t up to giving it to you.

He meant it, since he knew he could never raise a hand against me. I believed it too. Up to that day on the bridge he wasn’t even capable of slamming a door in anger.

It was already half past seven in the evening. He asked me to dash out with him to buy a suitcase before the shops closed. He was planning to leave the next day for a two-week trip to the mountains. He expected me to miss him. But two weeks is nothing. Even our two and a half years weren’t much.

We left the store and walked through the city in silence. He was carrying the new suitcase. The shop had been about to close and the salesgirl hadn’t cleaned out the case, it was stuffed full of paper and had a price tag dangling from the handle. The previous day there had been a downpour, the high, silty water was tearing at the willows along the river. Halfway across the bridge he stopped and squeezed my arm. He was kneading my flesh so hard, down to the bone, that I shuddered, and he said:

Look at all that water. If I come back from the mountains and find you’ve left me, I’ll jump right in.

The suitcase was suspended between us; behind him I could see water, and branches, and muddy scum. I yelled:

You can jump right now, with me watching. Then you won’t have to bother going to the mountains.

I took a deep breath and lowered my head. It wasn’t my fault if he thought I wanted a kiss. He parted his lips, but I repeated:

Go on and jump. I’ll take full responsibility.

Then I jerked my arm away so both his hands were free and he could jump. I was numb with the fear that he’d actually do it. Then I walked on, taking short steps, without looking back, so he wouldn’t have to feel awkward, and so I’d be far enough away from the body. I’d nearly reached the far side of the bridge when he came panting after me and shoved me up against the railing, crushing my belly. He grabbed me by the back of my neck and forced my head down toward the water as far as his arm would let him. The whole weight of my body was hanging over the railing, my feet were off the ground, he kept his knees clamped tight around my calves. I shut my eyes and waited for a final word before I plummeted. He kept it short and said:

All right.

Who can say why instead of loosening his knees to let me drop he relaxed his grip on my neck, lowered me to the ground, and took a step away. I opened my eyes and slowly they rolled back down from my forehead and into my face. The sky hung there reddish blue, no longer firmly anchored, and the river was spooling brown eddies of water. I started to run before he registered that I was still alive. I never wanted to stop again. The terror came jolting up into my mouth, giving me the hiccups. A man wheeled his bike past me, ringing the bell, and called out:

Hey, sweetie, keep your mouth closed or else your heart’ll catch a chill.

Reeling, I stopped in my tracks, my legs shaking, my hands heavy. I was burning and freezing and hadn’t run far at all, just a short distance, but I felt as though I’d raced halfway around the globe. I could still feel his viselike grip cutting into my neck. The man wheeled his bike into the park, the tires left long ripples snaking through the sand behind him, the tarmac ahead was completely deserted. The park was a sheer wall of blackish green, the sky clutching at the trees. The bridge made me horribly anxious and I couldn’t help looking back. And there stood the suitcase, right in the middle of the bridge, exactly where it had been left. And he was standing right on the spot where I had run away from death, his face turned to the water. Between hiccups I could hear him whistling. Very melodically, without missing a beat, a tune he had learned from me. My hiccups vanished, frozen between one wave of terror and the next. I raised a hand to my throat and felt my larynx bobbing. Everything happened in a twinkling, the time it takes for one person to assault another. And there he stood on the bridge, whistling

O the tree has its leaves,

the tea has its water,

money has its paper,

and my heart has snow that’s fallen astray.

Now I think it was a lucky thing that he grabbed me by the neck. That way no one could accuse me of provoking him. But he came very close to committing murder. All because he wasn’t up to giving me a good beating, and because he despised himself for that.

The father had nodded off and was holding the child so loosely I could see him falling any moment. Then the boy kicked him in the stomach with his shoes. The father gave a start and pulled the boy back onto his lap. The boy’s little sandals are dangling like little toys, as if his parents had dressed him that morning in some of his playthings. Their new soles had yet to step on the street. The father has handed the boy a handkerchief to play with. It’s knotted, and must have a hard object wrapped into the knot, which the child is now using to hit the windowpane. Coins maybe, keys, nails, or else screws the father doesn’t want to lose. The driver hears the banging; he turns around and says: Go on, keep it up, those windows cost money, you know. Don’t worry, says the father, we’re not going to break it. He taps on the pane and points outside and says to the boy: See that, there’s a baby inside there who’s even smaller than you. The boy drops the handkerchief and says: Mami. He sees a woman with a stroller. And the father says: Our Mami doesn’t wear sunglasses. If she did, she wouldn’t be able to see how blue your eyes are.

Whenever Paul asks me about my first husband, I say:

I’ve forgotten all that, I don’t remember a thing.

I think I have more secrets from Paul than he does from me. Lilli once said that secrets don’t go away when you tell them, what you can tell are the shells, not the kernel. That may have been true for her, but for me, if I don’t keep something concealed, then I’ve already exposed the kernel.

You call it shells, I said, when something goes as far as it did on the bridge.