Herta Müller - The Appointment

But you tell the story the way it suits you, Lilli said.

How is it supposed to suit me, it doesn’t suit me at all.

Of course it makes you look bad, and him as well, Lilli said, but it suits you because you can talk about it however you like.

Not however I like. I tell it the way it was. You just don’t believe I’m telling you anything you wouldn’t tell me. That’s why you’re going on about shells.

The point is that no matter how often I tell these stories, they stay the same, like the secret about my stepfather.

The last thing I need is to drive myself crazy wondering about the alcoholic by the trash cans. And who knows what he’s thinking; after all, he’s been seeing me next to the window for days on end as well. Finally, since we’ve never managed to agree about the alcoholic, Paul and I have given up puzzling about the people down below. Whether they move in a square or in circles or straight ahead, it’s impossible to know them. Even if you go down to the street and walk right next to them, what can you tell. The fact that their gait looks alien, as if their toes were in back, has nothing to do with their feet, only with me. Of course we’re still constantly looking out our window. And even though there’s nothing puzzling about a car parked, to no apparent purpose, behind the shops, or else perched halfway on the sidewalk in front of our apartment house, where no normal person is allowed to park — this is more than enough to keep us busy.

I prefer looking out the kitchen window. There the swallows fly through a vast stretch of sky in circles of their own invention. This morning they were flying low, and I chewed my walnut and could tell by looking at them that it was a whole new day. Since I’ve been summoned, it will have to stay a window day, even if I can see half a tree to one side of the Major’s table. The tree must have grown the length of an arm since my first interrogation. In winter it’s the bare wood that marks the time, in summer it’s the foliage. The leaves nod or shake their head, depending on the wind, but I can’t rely on that. When the question is short, it means Albu wants the answer right away. Short questions aren’t necessarily the easiest.

I’ll have to think about it.

You mean you’ll have to think up some lie, he says. Of course you could have one all ready and waiting, but that takes brains. Which you don’t have, sad to say.

All right, so I’m dumb, but not so dumb as to say something that might hurt me. Nor am I dumb enough to let myself feel pressured when Albu’s trying to gauge if I’m lying or telling the truth. Sometimes his eyes are cool, sometimes they burn into me so that…

Sometimes Lilli is inside me and gazes too long into Albu’s eyes.

I shuffle my shoes under the table, then it’s not so quiet.

O the tree has its leaves,

the tea has its water,

money has its paper,

and my heart has snow that’s fallen astray.

A winter and summer song, but for outside. In here you can quickly fall into a trap with foliage and snow. I don’t know the tree’s name, otherwise I’d sing ash, acacia, poplar in my head, and not just tree. I twist at the button on the blouse that grows. I never get as close to the branches as the Major, not from my small table. We both look at the tree at the same time. I would like to ask:

What sort of tree is that.

It would be a distraction. He wouldn’t answer me, that’s for sure, just scrape his chair forward and, with his trouser cuffs loose about his ankles, he might fiddle with his signet ring or play with the stub of his pencil and turn the question around:

Why do you need to know that.

What could I say then. He doesn’t know why I always wear the same blouse, just as he always wears his signet ring. He also doesn’t know why I twist the large button. And I don’t know why he always keeps that chewed pencil stub, no longer than a match, lying on his table. Men wear signet rings, women wear earrings. Wedding rings make you superstitious, you never take them off until you die. If the man dies, the widow takes his ring and wears it next to hers, day and night, on her ring finger. Like all married people, Albu wears his narrow wedding ring at work. But jewelry at a job like that, tormenting people. It’s not an ugly ring by any means, and if it weren’t his it would be beautiful. The same is true of his eyes, cheeks, earlobes. I’m sure Lilli would gladly have stretched out her hands to stroke him; maybe even have introduced him to me one day as her lover.

He’s good-looking, I’d have had to say.

Lilli’s beauty was a given, what your eyes saw wasn’t to blame for dazzling them so. Her nose, the curve of her neck, her ear, her knee, in your amazement you wanted to protect them, cover them with your hand, you were afraid for them, and your thoughts turned to death. But it never occurred to me that such skin might someday wrinkle. Between her being young and being dead, it never crossed my mind that Lilli might age. With Albu’s skin, age is simply there, as if his flesh had nothing to do with it. His age is a rank to which he has been promoted in recognition of his sterling work. From this point on, nothing more will change, he will maintain his superiority, with nothing else to come but death. I wish it would come soon. Albu’s good looks are flawless, tailor-made for interrogations, his personal appearance is never at risk, not even when he’s slobbering on my hand. Perhaps it is his very distinction that forbids him to mention Lilli. The chewed pencil on his table doesn’t suit him, or anyone else his age. Surely Albu doesn’t need to save on pencils. Perhaps he’s proud that his grandson is teething. A photo of his grandson might serve instead of the pencil stub, except that here, as in all offices, it’s probably forbidden to put family pictures on display. Perhaps a stub like that works well for his upright script. Or maybe a longer pencil would rub at his signet ring. Or maybe the stub is supposed to let me know exactly how much is being written about people like me. We know everything, Albu says. Maybe so — and here I agree with Lilli — about the shells of the dead. But nothing about their secrets, nothing about the kernels, about Lilli, whom Albu never mentions. Nothing about good fortune or common sense, which together may cause something tomorrow that I cannot foresee today. And nothing about what chance may bring the day after tomorrow; after all, I am alive…

There’s nothing special about the fact that Albu and I are looking at the tree together. Our eyes fall on other things at the same time as well: my table or his, a section of wall, the door, or the floor. Or he looks at his pencil and I look at my finger. Or he looks at his ring and I look at my large button. Or he looks at my face and I look at the wall. Or I look at his face and he looks at the door. Constantly looking each other in the face is tiring, particularly for me. The only things I trust here are the ones that don’t change. But the tree is growing: it gave the blouse its name. I may leave my happiness at home, but the blouse that grows is here.

If I haven’t been summoned, I go into town on foot, taking side streets as far as the Korso. Beneath the acacias it’s raining either white flowers or yellow leaves. Or if nothing is falling, then the wind is rushing down. When I was still going to the factory, I rarely made it into town during the middle of the day — not more than twice a year. I had no idea so many people weren’t at work at that hour. Unlike me, they are all paid to run around, having made up stories of burst pipes, illness, or funerals to tell the boss, and even bask in the sympathy of their colleagues and superiors before setting off on their outing. Just once I had my grandfather die because I wanted to buy a pair of gray platform shoes when the shops opened at nine on the dot. I’d seen them in the window late the previous afternoon. I lied, went into town, bought the shoes, and then the lie came true. Four days later at dinner my grandfather fell from his chair, dead. When the telegram arrived early the next morning, I took my three-day-old gray platforms and held them under the tap to make them swell. I put them on, went to the office and said I’d need the next two days off since my kitchen was flooded. Whenever I tell a bad lie, it comes true. I took the train to attend the funeral. My shoes dried on my feet from one station to the next; I got out at the eleventh. The whole world was upside down, I carried the funeral from my lie all the way to that little town and then found myself standing in the cemetery facing the flood in the kitchen. The thump of the clods falling on the coffin lid sounded like my gray shoes on the path as I followed the procession.