Excerpts

I've been summoned . Thursday, at ten sharp.Lately I'm being summoned more and more often: ten sharpon Tuesday, ten sharp on Saturday, on Wednesday, Monday. Asif years were a week, I'm amazed that winter comes so close onthe heels of late summer.On my way to the tram stop, I again pass the shrubs with thewhite berries dangling through the fences. Like buttons madeof mother-of-pearl and sewn from underneath, or stitched rightdown into the earth, or else like bread pellets. They remind meof a flock of little white-tufted birds turning away their beaks,but they're really far too small for birds. It's enough to makeyou giddy. I'd rather think of snow sprinkled on the grass, butthat leaves you feeling lost, and the thought of chalk makes yousleepy.The tram doesn't run on a fixed schedule.1It does seem to rustle, at least to my ear, unless those arethe stiff leaves of the poplars I'm hearing. Here it is, alreadypulling up to the stop: today it seems in a hurry to take meaway. I've decided to let the old man in the straw hat get onahead of me. He was already waiting when I arrived--whoknows how long he'd been there. You couldn't exactly call himfrail, but he's hunchbacked and weary, and as skinny as his ownshadow. His backside is so slight it doesn't even fill the seat ofhis pants, he has no hips, and the only bulges in his trousers arethe bags around his knees. But if he's going to go and spit,right now, just as the door is folding open, I'll get on beforehe does, regardless. The car is practically empty; he gives thevacant seats a quick scan and decides to stand. It's amazing howold people like him don't get tired, that they don't save theirstanding for places where they can't sit. Now and then you hearold people say: There'll be plenty of time for lying down onceI'm in my coffin. But death is the last thing on their minds, andthey're quite right. Death never has followed any particularpattern. Young people die too. I always sit if I have a choice.Riding in a seat is like walking while you're sitting down. Theold man is looking me over; I can sense it right away inside theempty car. I'm not in the mood to talk, though, or else I'd askhim what he's gaping at. He couldn't care less that his staringannoys me. Meanwhile half the city is going by outside thewindow, trees alternating with buildings. They say old peoplelike him can sense things better than young people. Old peoplemight even sense that today I'm carrying a small towel, a toothbrush,and some toothpaste in my handbag. And no handkerchief,since I'm determined not to cry. Paul didn't realize howterrified I was that today Albu might take me down to the cellbelow his office. I didn't bring it up. If that happens, he'll findout soon enough. The tram is moving slowly. The band on the2old man's straw hat is stained, probably with sweat, or else therain. As always, Albu will slobber a kiss on my hand by way ofgreeting. Major Albu lifts my hand by the fingertips, squeezing my nailsso hard I could scream. He presses one wet lip to my fingers, sohe can keep the other free to speak. He always kisses my handthe exact same way, but what he says is always different:Well well, your eyes look awfully red today.I think you've got a mustache coming. A little young forthat, aren't you.My, but your little hand is cold as ice today--hope there'snothing wrong with your circulation.Uh-oh, your gums are receding. You're beginning to looklike your own grandmother.My grandmother didn't live to grow old, I say. She neverhad time to lose her teeth. Albu knows all about my grandmother'steeth, which is why he's bringing them up.As a woman, I know how I look on any given day. I alsoknow that a kiss on the hand shouldn't hurt, that it shouldn'tfeel wet, that it should be delivered to the back of the hand.The art of hand kissing is something men know even betterthan women--and Albu is hardly an exception. His entire headreeks of Avril, a French eau de toilette that my father-in-law,the Perfumed Commissar, used to wear too. Nobody else Iknow would buy it. A bottle on the black market costs morethan a suit in a store. Maybe it's called Septembre, I'm not sure,but there's no mistaking that acrid, smoky smell of burningleaves.Once I'm sitting at the small table, Albu notices me rubbingmy fingers on my skirt, not only to get the feeling back3into them but also to wipe the saliva off. He fiddles with hissignet ring and smirks. Let him: it's easy enough to wipe offsomebody's spit; it isn't poisonous, and it dries up all by itself.It's something everybody has. Some people spit on the pavement,then rub it in with their shoe since it's not polite to spit,not even on the pavement. Certainly Albu isn't one to spit onthe pavement--not in town, anyway, where no one knows whohe is and where he acts the refined gentleman. My nails hurt,but he's never squeezed them so hard my fingers turned blue.Eventually they'll thaw out, the way they do when it's freezingcold and you come into the warm. The worst thing is this feelingthat my brain is slipping down into my face. It's humiliating,there's no other word for it, when your whole body feelslike it's barefoot. But what if there aren't any words at all, whatif even the best word isn't enough. I've been listening to the alarm clock since three in the morningticking ten sharp, ten sharp, ten sharp. Whenever Paul isasleep, he kicks his leg from one side of the bed to the other andthen recoils so fast he startles himself, although he doesn't wakeup. It's become a habit with him. No more sleep for me. I liethere awake, and I know I need to close my eyes if I'm goingback to sleep, but I don't close them. I've frequently forgottenhow to sleep, and have had to relearn each time. It's eitherextremely easy or utterly impossible. In the early hours justbefore dawn, every creature on earth is asleep: even dogs andcats only use half the night for prowling around the dumpsters.If you're sure you can't sleep anyway, it's easier to think ofsomething bright inside the darkness than to simply shut youreyes in vain. Snow, whitewashed tree trunks, white-walledrooms, vast expanses of sand--that's what I've thought of to4pass the time, more often than I would have liked, until it grewlight. This morning I could have thought about sunflowers,and I did, but they weren't enough to dislodge the summons.And with the alarm clock ticking ten sharp, ten sharp, tensharp, my thoughts raced to Major Albu even before theyshifted to me and Paul. Today I was already awake when Paulstarted thrashing in his sleep. By the time the window startedturning gray, I had already seen Albu's mouth looming on theceiling, gigantic, the pink tip of his tongue tucked behind hislower teeth, and I had heard his sneering voice:Don't tell me you're losing your nerve already--we're justwarming up.Paul's kicking wakes me only when I haven't been summonedfor two or three weeks. Then I feel happy, since it meansI've learned how to sleep again.Whenever I've relearned how to sleep, and I ask Paul in themorning what he was dreaming, he can't remember anything.I show him how he tosses about and splays his toes, and thenhow he jerks his legs back and crooks his toes. Moving a chairfrom the table to the middle of the kitchen, I sit down, stickmy legs in the air, and demonstrate the whole procedure. Itmakes Paul laugh, and I say:You're laughing at yourself.Who knows, maybe I dreamed I was taking you for a ride onmy motorcycle.His thrashing is like a forward charge disrupted by animmediate call to retreat. I presume it comes from drinking.Not that I say this to him. Nor do I explain that it's the nightdrawing the shakes out of his legs. That's what it must be--thenight, seizing him by the knees and tugging at the shakes,pulling them down through his toes into the pitch-black room,and finally tossing them out into the blackness of the street5below, in the early hours just before daybreak, when the wholecity is slumbering away. Otherwise Paul wouldn't be able tostand up straight when he woke. But if night wrenches theshakes out of every drunk in the city, it must be tanked up tohigh heaven come morning, given the number of drinkers.Just after four, the trucks begin delivering goods to the rowof shops down below. They completely shatter the silence,making a huge racket for the little they deliver: a few crates ofbread, milk, and vegetables, and large quantities of plum brandy.Whenever the food runs out, the women and children manageto cope: the lines disperse, and all roads lead home. But whenthe brandy runs out, the men curse their lot and pull out theirknives. The salespeople say things to calm them down, but thatonly works while the customers are still inside the store. Themoment they're out the door they continue prowling the cityon their quest. The first fights break out because they can't findany brandy, and later because they're stone drunk.The brandy comes from the hilly region between theCarpathians and the arid plains. The plum trees there are sodense you can barely make out the tiny villages hiding in theirbranches. Whole forests of plum trees, drenched with blue inlate summer, the branches sagging with the weight of the fruit.The brandy is named after the region, but nobody calls it by itsproper name. It doesn't really even need a name, since there'sonly one brand in the whole country. People just call it TwoPlums, from the picture on the label. Those two plums leaningcheek to cheek are as familiar to the men as the Madonna andChild are to the women. People say the plums represent thelove between bottle and drinker. The way I see it, those cheekto-cheek plums look more like a wedding picture than aMadonna and Child. None of the pictures in church shows theChild's head level with his mother's. The Child's forehead is6always resting against the Virgin's cheek, with his own cheek ather neck, and his chin on her breast. Moreover, the relationshipbetween drinkers and bottles is more like the one between thecouples in wedding pictures: they bring each other to ruin, andstill they won't let go.In our wedding picture, I'm not carrying flowers and I'mnot wearing a veil. The love in my eyes is gleaming new, butthe truth is, it was my second wedding. The picture shows Pauland me standing cheek to cheek like two plums. Ever since hestarted drinking so much, our wedding picture has provenprophetic. Whenever Paul's out on the town, barhopping lateinto the night, I'm afraid he'll never come home again, and Istare at our wedding picture until it starts to change shape.When that happens our two faces start to swim, and our cheeksshift around so that a little bit of space opens up between them.Mostly it is Paul's cheek that swims away from mine, as if hewere planning to come home late. But he does come home. Healways has, even after the accident.Occasionally a shipment of buffalo-grass vodka comes infrom Poland--yellowish and bittersweet. That gets sold first.Each bottle contains a long, sodden stem that quivers as youpour the vodka but never buckles or slips out of the bottle.Drinkers say:That stem sticks in its bottle just like your soul sticks inyour body, that's how the grass protects your soul.Their belief goes together with the burning taste in yourmouth and the roaring drunk inside your head. The drinkersopen the bottle, the liquid glugs into their glasses, and the firstswallow slides down their throats. The soul begins to feel protected;it quivers but never buckles and never slips out of thebody. Paul keeps his soul protected too; there's never a daywhere he feels like giving up and packing it all in. Maybe7things would be fine if it weren't for me, but we like beingtogether. The drink takes his day, and the night takes his drunkenness.When I worked the early morning shift at the clothingfactory, I heard the workers say: With a sewing machine, youoil the cogs, with a human machine, you oil the throat.Back then Paul and I used to take his motorcycle to workevery morning at five on the dot. We'd see the drivers withtheir delivery trucks parked outside the stores, the porters carryingcrates, the vendors, and the moon. Now all I hear is thenoise; I don't go to the window, and I don't look at the moon. Iremember that it looks like a goose egg, and that it leaves thecity on one side of the sky while the sun comes up at the other.Nothing's changed there; that's how it was even before I knewPaul, when I used to walk to the tram stop on foot. On the wayI thought: How bizarre that something so beautiful could beup in the sky, with no law down here on earth forbiddingpeople to look at it. Evidently it was permissible to wanglesomething out of the day before it was ruined in the factory. Iwould start to freeze, not because I was underdressed, but simplybecause I couldn't get enough of the moon. At that hourthe moon is almost entirely eaten away; it doesn't know whereto go after reaching the city. The sky has to loosen its grip onthe earth as day begins to break. The streets run steeply up anddown, and the streetcars travel back and forth like rooms ablazewith light.I know the trams from the inside too. The people getting onat this early hour wear short sleeves, carry worn leather bags,and have goose pimples on both arms. Each newcomer ismeasured and judged with a casual glance. This is a strictlyworking-class affair. Better people take their cars to work. Buthere, among your own, you make comparisons: that person'sbetter off than me, that one looks worse. No one's ever in the8exact same boat as you--that would be impossible. There's notmuch time, we're almost at the factories, and now all the peoplewho've been sized up leave the tram, one after the other. Shoespolished or dusty, heels new and straight or worn down to anangle, collars freshly ironed or crumpled, hair parted or not,fingernails, watchstraps, belt buckles: every single detail provokesenvy or contempt. Nothing escapes this sleepy scrutiny,even in the pushing crowd. The working class ferrets out thedifferences: in the cold light of morning there is no equality.The sun is in the streetcar, along for the ride, and outside aswell, pulling back the white and red clouds in anticipation ofthe scorching midday heat. No one is wearing a jacket: the freezingcold in the morning counts as fresh air, because with noonwill come the clogging dust and infernal heat.If I haven't been summoned, we can sleep in for severalhours. Daytime sleep is not deep black; it's shallow and yellow.Our sleep is restless, the sunlight falls on our pillows. But itdoes make the day a little shorter. We'll be under observationsoon enough; the day's not going to run away. They can alwaysaccuse us of something, even if we sleep till nearly noon. As itis, we're always being accused of something we can no longerdo anything about. You can sleep all you want, but the day'sstill out there waiting, and a bed is not another country. Theywon't let us rest till we're lying next to Lilli.Of course Paul also has to sleep off his drunk. It takes himuntil about noon to get his head square on his shoulders andrelocate his mouth so he can actually speak and not just slur hiswords in a voice thick with drink. His breath still smells,though, and when he steps into the kitchen I feel as if I werepassing the open door of the bar downstairs. Since spring,drinking hours have been regulated, and consumption of liquoris prohibited before eleven. But the bar still opens at9six--brandy is served in coffee cups before eleven; after thatthey bring out the glasses.Paul drinks and is no longer himself, then he sleeps it offand is back to being himself. Around noon it looks as if everythingcould turn out all right, but once again it turns outruined. Paul goes on protecting his soul until the buffalo grassis high and dry, while I brood over who he and I really are untilI can no longer think straight. At lunchtime we're sitting atthe kitchen table, and any mention of his having been drunkyesterday is the wrong thing to say. Even so, I occasionally tossout a word or two:Drink won't change a thing.Why are you making my life so difficult.You could paint this entire kitchen with what you put awayyesterday.True, the flat is small, and I don't want to avoid Paul; butwhen we stay at home, we spend too much of the day sitting inthe kitchen. By mid-afternoon he's already drunk, and in theevening it gets worse. I put off talking because it makes himgrumpy. I keep waiting through the night, until he's soberagain and sitting in the kitchen with eyes like onions. But thenwhatever I say goes right past him. I'd like for Paul to admitI'm right, just for once. But drinkers never admit anything, noteven silently to themselves--and they're not about to let anyoneelse squeeze it out of them, especially somebody who'swaiting to hear the admission. The minute Paul wakes up, histhoughts turn to drinking, though he denies it. That's whythere's never any truth. If he's not sitting silently at the table,letting my words go right past him, he says something likethis, meant to last the entire day:Don't fret, I'm not drinking out of desperation. I drinkbecause I like it.10That may be the case, I say, since you seem to think withyour tongue.Paul looks out the kitchen window at the sky, or into hiscup. He dabs at the drops of coffee on the table, as if to confirmthat they're wet and really will spread if he smears them with afinger. He takes my hand, I look out the kitchen window at thesky, into the cup, I too dab at the odd drop of coffee on thetable. The red enamel tin stares at us and I stare back. But Pauldoes not, because that would mean doing something differenttoday from what he did yesterday. Is he being strong or weakwhen he remains silent instead of saying for once: I'm notgoing to drink today. Yesterday Paul again said:Don't you fret, your man drinks because he likes it.His legs carried him down the hall--at once too heavy andtoo light--as if they contained a mix of sand and air. I placedmy hand upon his neck and stroked the stubble I love to touchin the mornings, the whiskers that grow in his sleep. He drewmy hand up under his eye, it slid down his cheek to his chin. Ididn't take away my fingers, but I did think to myself:I wouldn't count on any of this cheek-to-cheek businessafter you've seen that picture of the two plums.I like to hear Paul talk that way, so late in the morning, andyet I don't like it either.Whenever I take a step away from him,he nudges his love up to me, so naked, so close that he doesn'tneed to say anything else. He doesn't have to wait, I'm readywith my approval, not a single reproach on the tip of mytongue. The one in my head quickly fades. It's good I can't seemyself, since my face feels stupid and pale. Yesterday morning,Paul's hangover once again yielded up an unexpected pussycatgentleness that came padding on soft paws. Your man --the onlypeople who talk like that have shallow wits and too much pridetucked around the corners of their mouths. Although the11noontime tenderness paves the way for the evening's drinking,I depend on it, and I don't like the way I need it.Major Albu says: I can see what you're thinking, there's nopoint in denying it, we're just wasting time. Actually, it's onlymy time being wasted; after all, he's doing his job. He rolls uphis sleeve and glances at the clock. The time is easy to see, butnot what I'm thinking. If Paul can't see what I'm thinking,then certainly this man can't.Paul sleeps next to the wall, while my place is toward thefront edge of the bed, since I'm often unable to sleep. Still,whenever he wakes up he says:You were taking up the whole bed and shoved me right upagainst the wall.To which I reply:No way, I was on this little strip here no wider than aclothesline, you were the one taking up the middle.One of us could sleep in the bed and the other on the sofa.We've tried it. For two nights we took turns. Both nights I didnothing but toss around. My brain was grinding down thoughtafter thought, and toward morning, when I was half asleep, Ihad a series of bad dreams. Two nights of bad dreams that keptreaching out and clutching at me all day long. The night I wason the sofa, my first husband put the suitcase on the bridgeover the river, gripped me by the back of my neck, and roaredwith laughter. Then he looked at the water and whistled thatsong about love falling apart and the river water turning blackas ink. The water in my dream was not like ink, I could see it,and in the water I saw his face, turned upside down and peeringup from the depths, from where the pebbles had settled.Then a white horse ate apricots in a thicket of trees.With everyapricot it raised its head and spat out the stone like a human12being. And the night I had the bed to myself, someone grabbedmy shoulder from behind and said:Don't turn around, I'm not here.Without moving my head, I just squinted out of the cornersof my eyes. Lilli's fingers were gripping me, her voice was thatof a man, so it wasn't her. I raised my hand to touch her and thevoice said:What you can't see you can't touch.I saw the fingers, they were hers, but someone else was usingthem. Someone I couldn't see. And in the next dream, mygrandfather was pruning back a hydrangea that had been frostburntby the snow. He called me over: Come take a look, I'vegot a lamb here.Snow was falling on his trousers, his shears were clipping offthe heads of the frost-browned flowers. I said:That's not a lamb.It's not a person, either, he said.His fingers were numb and he could only open and close theshears slowly, so that I wasn't sure whether it was the shearsthat were squeaking or his hand. I tossed the shears into thesnow. They sank in so that it was impossible to tell where theyhad fallen. He combed the entire yard looking for them, hisnose practically touching the snow. When he reached the gardengate I stepped on his hands so he'd look up and not go wanderingoff through the gate, searching the whole white street. Isaid:Stop it, the lamb's frozen and the wool got burnt in thefrost.By the garden fence was another hydrangea, one that hadbeen pruned bare. I gestured to it:What's wrong with that one.13That one's the worst, he said. Come spring it'll be havinglittle ones. We can't have that.The morning after the second night, Paul said:If we're in each other's way, at least it means we each havesomeone. The only place you sleep alone is in your coffin, andthat'll happen soon enough. We should stay together at night.Who knows the dreams he had and promptly forgot.He was talking about sleeping, however, not dreaming. Athalf past four in the morning I saw Paul asleep in the graylight, a twisted face above a double chin. And at that earlyhour, down by the shops, people were cursing out loud andlaughing. Lilli said:Curses ward off evil spirits.Idiot, get your foot out of the way.Move, or do you have shitin your shoes. Open those great flapping ears of yours andyou'll hear what I'm saying, but watch you don't blow away inthis wind. Never mind your hair, we haven't finished unloading.A woman was clucking, short and hoarse like a hen. A vandoor slammed. Lend a hand, you moron. If you want a rest youshould check into a sanatorium.Paul's clothes were strewn on the floor. The new day wasalready in the wardrobe mirror, the day on which I have beensummoned, today. I got up, careful to place my right foot onthe floor before my left, as I always do when I've been summoned.I can't say for sure I really believe in it, but how couldit hurt.What I'd like to know is whether other people's brains controltheir good fortune as well as their thoughts. My brain'sonly good for a little fortune. It's not up to shaping a whole life.At least not mine. I've already come to terms with what fortuneI have, even though Paul wouldn't consider it very good at all.Every other day or so I declare:14I'm doing just fine.Paul's face is right in front of me, quiet and still, gaping atwhat I've just said, as if our having each other didn't count. Hesays:You feel fine because you've forgotten what that means forother people.Others might mean their life as a whole when they say: I'mdoing just fine. All I'm talking about is my good fortune. Paulrealizes that life is something I haven't come to terms with--and I don't simply mean I haven't done so yet, that it's only amatter of time.Just look at us, says Paul, how can you go on about beingfortunate.Quick as a handful of flour hitting a windowpane, the bathroomlight cast a face into the mirror, a face with froggy creasesover its eyes which looked like me. I held my hands in thewater, it felt warm; on my face it felt cold. Brushing my teeth,I look up and see toothpaste come frothing out of my eyes--it'snot the first time I've had this happen. I feel nauseous, I spitout what's in my mouth and stop. Ever since my first summons,I've begun to distinguish between life and fortune. When I goin for questioning, I have no choice but to leave my good fortuneat home. I leave it in Paul's face, around his eyes, hismouth, amid his stubble. If it could be seen, you'd see it on hisface like a transparent glaze. Every time I have to go, I want tostay behind in the flat, like the fear I always leave behind andwhich I can't take away from Paul. Like the fortune I leave athome when I'm away. He doesn't know how much my goodfortune has come to rely upon his fear. He couldn't bear toknow that.What he does know is obvious to anyone with eyes:that whenever I've been summoned, I put on my green blouseand eat a walnut. The blouse is one I inherited from Lilli, but15its name comes from me: the blouse that grows. If I were totake my good fortune with me, it would weaken my nerves.Albu says:You don't mean you're losing your nerve already--we'rejust warming up.I'm not losing my nerve, not at all: in fact, I'm overloadedwith nerves. And every one of them is humming like a movingstreetcar.They say that walnuts on an empty stomach are good foryour nerves and your powers of reason. Any child knows that,but I'd forgotten it. What sparked my memory wasn't the factthat I was being summoned so often--it was sheer chance. Onetime I had to be at Albu's at ten sharp, like today; by half pastseven I was all set to go. Getting there takes an hour and a halfat most. I give myself two hours, and if I'm early I walk a whilearound the neighborhood. I prefer it that way. I've alwaysarrived on time: I can't imagine they'd put up with any lateness.It was because I was all set to go by half past seven that I gotto eat the walnut. I'd been ready that early for previous summonses,but on that particular morning the walnut was lyingthere on the kitchen table. Paul had found it in the elevator theday before. He'd put it in his pocket, since you don't just leavea walnut sitting there. It was the first one of the year, with alittle of the moist fuzz left from the green husk. I weighed it inmy hand: it seemed a little light for a good fresh nut, as if itmight be hollow. I couldn't find a hammer, so I split it openwith the stone that used to be in the hall but has since movedto a corner of the kitchen. The brain of the nut was loose inside.It tasted of sour cream. That day my interrogation was shorterthan usual, I kept my nerve, and once I was back on the street,I thought to myself:That was thanks to the nut.16Ever since then I've believed in nuts, that nuts help. I don'treally believe it, but I want to have done whatever I can thatmight help. That's why I stick to my stone for cracking nuts,and always do it in the morning. Once the nut's been cracked,it loses its power if it lies open overnight. Of course it would beeasier on Paul and the neighbors--not to mention myself--if Isplit them open in the evening, but I can't have people tellingme what time to crack nuts.I brought the stone from the Carpathians. My first husbandhad been on military service since March. Every week he wroteme a whining letter and I responded with a comforting card.Summer came, and I tried to figure out exactly how many lettersand cards we would have to exchange before he returned.My father-in-law wanted to take his place and sleep with me, soI soon had enough of his house and garden. I packed my rucksackand early one morning, after he'd gone to work, I stashedit in the bushes near a gap in the fence. A few hours later Istrolled out to the road, with nothing in my hands.My motherin-law was hanging out the laundry and had no idea what I wasup to. Without saying a word, I pushed the rucksack throughthe gap in the fence and walked to the station. I took a traininto the mountains and joined up with some people who'd justgraduated from the music academy. Every day we trekked andstumbled from one glacial lake to the next until it grew dark.Each shoreline was marked by wooden crosses set in the rocks,bearing the dates on which people had drowned. Cemeteriesunderwater and crosses all around--portents of dangeroustimes to come. As if all those round lakes were hungry andneeded their yearly ration of meat delivered on the datesinscribed. Here no one dived for the dead: the water wouldsnuff out life in an instant, chilling you to the bone in a matterof seconds. The music graduates sang as the lake pictured17them, upside down, taking their measure as potential corpses.Hiking, resting, or eating, they sang in chorus. It wouldn'thave surprised me to hear them harmonize while they slept atnight, just as they did at those bleak altitudes where the skyblows into your mouth. I had to stay with the group becausedeath makes no allowance for the wanderer who strays alone.The lakes made our eyes grow bigger by the day; in every faceI could see the circles widening, the cheeks losing ground. Andevery day our legs grew shorter. Nevertheless, on the last day Iwanted to take something back home with me, so I pickedthrough the scree until I found a rock that looked like a child'sfoot. The musicians looked for small flat pebbles they could rubin their hands as worry-stones. Their stones looked like coatbuttons, and I had more than enough of those every day in thefactory. But those musicians put their faith in worry-stones theway I now put mine in nuts.I can't help it: I've put on the blouse that grows, I bangtwice with the stone, rattling all the dishes in the kitchen, andthe walnut is cracked. And as I'm eating it, Paul comes in, startledby the banging. He's wearing his pajamas and downs oneor two glasses of water, two if he was as blind drunk as he waslast night. I don't need to understand each individual word. Iknow perfectly well what he says while drinking water:You don't really believe that nut helps, do you.Of course I don't really believe it, just as I don't reallybelieve in all the other routines I've developed. ConsequentlyI'm all the more stubborn.Let me believe what I want.Paul lets that one go, since we both know it's not right toquarrel before the interrogation, you need to keep a clear head.Most of the sessions are torturously long despite the nut. But18how do I know they wouldn't be worse if I didn't eat the nut?Paul doesn't realize that the more he pooh-poohs all my routines,with that wet mouth of his and the glass he's drainingbefore clearing it off the table, the more I rely on them.People who are summoned develop routines that help themout a little.Whether these routines really work or not is besidethe point. It's not people, though, it's me who's developedthem; 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'llask me when I'm summoned. This is absolutely necessary, heclaims, whereas what I do is crazy. He'd be right if the questionshe's preparing me for really were the ones I was asked. Upto now they've always been completely different.It's too much to expect my routines to really help me. Actuallythey don't help me so much as help move life along fromone day to the next. There's no point expecting them to fillyour head with lucky thoughts. There's a lot to be said for movinglife along, but there's essentially nothing to say when itcomes to luck, because as soon as you open your mouth you jinxit away. Not even the luck you've missed out on can bear beingtalked about. The routines I've developed are about movingfrom one day to the next, and not about luck.I'm sure Paul's right: the walnut and the blouse that growsonly add to the fear. And what sense is there in shooting forgood fortune when all that does is add to the fear. I am constantlydwelling on this, and as a result I don't expect as muchas other people. Nobody covets the fear that others make forthemselves. But with luck it's just the opposite, which is whygood fortune is never a very good goal.19On the green blouse that grows there's a large mother-ofpearlbutton which I picked out from a great many buttons atthe factory and took for Lilli.At the interrogation I sit at the small table, twisting thebutton in my fingers, and answer calmly, even though everyone of my nerves is jangling. Albu paces to and fro; having toformulate the right questions wears at his calm, just as havingto give the right answers wears at mine. As long as I keep mycomposure 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. Ofcourse I often have misgivings about these names. But they'venever done any harm, not even on days when I haven't beensummoned. The blouse that grows helps me, and the blousethat waits may be helping Paul. His fear on my behalf is ashigh as the ceiling, just as mine is for him when he sits aroundthe flat, waiting and drinking, or when he's barhopping intown. It's easier if you're the one going out, if you're the onetaking your fear away and leaving your fortune at home, and ifthere's someone waiting for you to come back. Sitting at home,waiting, stretches time to the brink and tightens fear to thepoint of snapping.The powers I've bestowed on my routines verge on thesuperhuman. Albu yells:You see, everything is connected.And I twist the large button on my blouse and say: In yourmind they are, in my mind they aren't. Shortly before he got off, the old man in the straw hat turned hiswatery eyes away from me. Now there's a father with a child onhis lap sitting on the seat facing me, his legs stretched out into20the aisle. Watching the city go by outside the window isn'tsomething he can be bothered with. The child sticks a forefingerup his father's nose. Crooking a finger and hunting for snotis something kids learn early. Later they're told not to pick anyone'snose 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 thetracks, between stops, the driver gets out. Who knows howlong we'll be stranded. It's early in the morning and alreadyhe's sneaking a break when he should be driving his route.Everyone here does what he wants. The driver strolls over tothe shops, tucking in his shirt and adjusting his trousers so noone will notice he's abandoned his tram in mid-route. He actslike someone who's so bored that he finally got up off his couchjust to poke his nose into the sunshine. If he's planning to buyanything in one of the shops over there, he'll either have to saywho he is or else he'll have to wait in line. If all he's after is acup of coffee, I hope he doesn't sit down to drink it. He doesn'tdare touch brandy, even if he does keep his window open. Everyone of us sitting on the tram has the right to reek of brandyexcept for him. But he's behaving as if it were the other wayround. My summons puts me in the same position as far asbrandy is concerned. I'd rather have his reason for abstainingthan my own.Who knows when he'll be back. Ever since I began leaving my good fortune at home, the kiss onmy hand doesn't paralyze me as much as it used to. I crook upmy finger joints so that my knuckles keep Albu from speaking.Paul and I have rehearsed this kiss. In order to approximate theimportance of the signet ring on Albu's middle finger, to seehow it affects the finger-squeeze, I made a ring out of a strip of21rubber and a coat button. We took turns wearing it, and welaughed so much we completely forgot why we were goingthrough the exercise in the first place. I learned not to crook myhand up all at once but gradually. That way the knuckles canblock his gums and keep him from speaking. Sometimes whenAlbu is kissing my hand, I think of my rehearsal with Paul.Then the pain at my fingernails and the slobber on my handaren't so humiliating. You learn as you go, but I can't show thatI'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 theentranceway and the lower stories under surveillance. From thesixth floor up the flats are too high, so that you'd need sophisticatedtechnology to see anything in detail. What's more,about halfway up the building, the façade angles out towardthe front. If you stare up at it long enough you'll feel your eyesrolling back into your forehead. I've tried it often; your neckgrows tired. The leaning tower has looked like that for twelveyears now, says Paul, from the day it was built. Whenever Iwant to explain where I live, all I have to do is say: In the leaningtower. 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 intheir necks.The fact that our flat is high up is an advantage for us, butit also has the disadvantage that Paul and I can't see exactlywhat's going on down below. From the seventh floor you can'tmake out anything smaller than a suitcase, and when do you22see anyone carrying a suitcase. Individual items of clothingblur into big splotches of color, and faces turn into little palepatches between the hair and the clothes. You could guess atwhat the nose, eyes, or teeth inside those patches might looklike, but why bother. Old people and children can be recognizedby the way they walk. There are dumpsters located on thegrass between our building and the shops, with a walkway runningalongside them. Two narrow footpaths leave the pavedsidewalk and circle around the group of bins, without quitemeeting. From up here the bins look like ransacked cupboardswith the doors torn off. Once a month someone sets them onfire, the smoke rises and the garbage is consumed. If your windowsaren't shut, your eyes start stinging and your throat getssore. Most things happen outside the entrances to the shops,but unfortunately all we can see are the rear service doors. Nomatter how often we count them, we can never match up thetwenty-seven doors in back with the eight front doors belongingto 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, thedelivery trucks stop mostly in the street, out front.The old shoemaker was complaining he had too little roomand too many rats. His shop consists of a workbench enclosedin a small space that is partitioned from the rest of the room bya makeshift wall of wooden planks. The man I took over fromwas the one who fixed the place up, the shoemaker said. Backthen the building was new. The space was boarded off then too,but he couldn't think of anything to do with all those planks,or maybe he just didn't want to; anyway, he didn't use them atall. I knocked in a few nails and ever since I've been hangingthe shoes up by their laces, thongs, or heels, they don't getgnawed on anymore. I can't have the rats eating everything--23after all, I have to pay for the damage. Especially in winter,when they're hungrier. Behind those planks there's a great bighall. Once, back in the early days, during a holiday, I camedown to the shop, loosened two of the boards behind the bench,and squeezed through with a flashlight. There's nowhere youcan put your feet, the whole floor skitters and squeaks, he said,it's full of rats' nests. Rats don't need a door, you know, theyjust tunnel through the ground. The walls are covered withelectrical sockets, and the back wall has four doors leading outto the bins. But you can't budge them so much as an inch todrive the rats out even for a couple hours. The door to myworkplace is just a cheap piece of tin--in fact, more than halfthe doors in back of the shops aren't doors at all, they're just tinplates they built into the wall to save on concrete. The socketsare probably there in case of war. There'll always be war allright, he laughed, but not here. The Russians've got us wherethey want us with treaties, they won't be showing up here.Whatever they need, they've shipped off to Moscow: they eatour grain and our meat and leave us to go hungry and fight overthe shortages.Who'd want to conquer us, all it would do is costthem money. Every country on earth is happy not to have us,even the Russians. 24 Excerpted from The Appointment: A Novel by Herta Müller, Philip Boehm All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.