by Herta Müller
One evening my mother put on her summer dress with the tight rows of mother-of-pearl buttons and the daring low-cut back, did her hair up in a French twist, fastened it with a few barrettes, and popped a caramel into her mouth. Any time she sucked on sweets while doing herself up, she had something in mind that required some finesse. She put on her white sandals and said:
What a hot day. Now it looks like it’s cooled off a little. I think I’ll go out for a stroll along the avenue.
I’m not sure whether she managed to slip through the gap in the fence wearing that tight dress. When she arrived at the depot, her husband was fixing his engine’s cooling system. He must have kept a hold on himself, as Lilli would have said, when he saw the daring low-cut back, the hairstyle, and the white sandals. Perhaps he had her sit behind the wheel to wait until he’d finished making the repairs. They walked home arm in arm, the white sandals shimmering with the tree trunks. At supper she said:
Nobody’s paying you to spend every evening doing repairs after a long day’s work.
Are you kidding. I make more runs than anyone else, he said, that way I’ll get the bonus after New Year’s. Why else would I do it.
Mama raised her eyebrows, she even got up from her chair and cut the bread for herself and for him, although the loaf and knife were next to his plate. My grandfather and I had to cut it for ourselves.
After Papa died my mother set the table with one plate less, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She did not lose her appetite and, to judge by appearances, she slept better. The rings under her eyes disappeared. She didn’t grow any younger, but she did stand still as time passed. Apathy makes you neglect your appearance, but she wasn’t like that. Her dishevelment was more on the inside: either she had found pride in her loneliness, or else she was so cut adrift that she was no longer herself. Neither happy nor sad—merely beyond all changes of facial expression. There was more life in a glass of water. When she dried herself she became like the towel, when she cleared the dishes she became like the table, and she became like the chair when she sat down. One year after Papa’s death, Grandfather said:
You’ve got all the time in the world. You should go into town more often. Maybe you’ll meet a man you like. Having someone younger than me around for the yardwork wouldn’t be so bad, either.
Shouldn’t you be keeping me from doing that, said Mama. After all, my husband was your son.
I’m not like that, though.
But you didn’t remarry.
No, I didn’t, but then again, your husband didn’t die in the camp, Grandfather said.
It was all for nothing. Mama no longer did her hair up in a French twist, and she retired the tight dress with the daring low-cut back. She didn’t want to put a bridle on anyone else. She no longer had any curiosity, not even about her child, who had flown the coop and rarely came home.
When my grandfather died, I stayed only one night at home with her. The next afternoon I went back to the city. She could have asked me to stay longer; after all, I’d taken two days’ leave. My bed was covered with plastic bags full of her winter clothes; I slept on the couch, and she thought nothing of it. Before I had to leave to catch my train, she set the table. She laid out two plates and ate without noticing that I was only going through the motions. She used to tell me that I was just being finicky if I wasn’t hungry. Now she no longer cared.
For all those years we had had four plates on the table. That seemed normal since there were four of us living in the house. Until Mama confessed that they’d only had me because my brother had died. From then on there were five of us, and one of us was eating off my brother’s plate, although I didn’t know which one. My brother had never had a chance to eat from it.
He had his mouth clamped on her nipple but had stopped drinking, my grandfather said. We didn’t realize that he wasn’t asleep, that he . . .
Because the fifth plate was never put on the table, the other four didn’t stay there long, either. When Papa died, the first plate became redundant. My moving to the city cleared the second from the table. Grandfather’s death meant the third was no longer needed.
The tram is listing to one side. Maybe the rails have buckled from the heat. The old lady has something wrong with her nerves, her head is shaking left and right, as if she were constantly saying no. Are we almost at the market, she asks. The driver says: Not for a while yet. The young man is standing by the rear door. We’re only at the courthouse, he says, don’t you come from around here. Of course I do, says the old woman, but yesterday I broke my glasses. I went to the optician’s, but they didn’t have a thing, no lenses, no glue, not a thing. Now I have to wait two whole weeks.
If only I were as old as she is, but it’s impossible to swap places, not even with Lilli or Paul. I don’t ever want to have to get off at the courthouse. It’ll all come out at the trial, you’ll speak there all right, says Albu whenever he doesn’t like my answer. The driver pulls the third roll out of his shirt pocket, takes a bite and puts it down. He swallows and the mouthful goes tumbling down his throat. If we take too long I won’t get any eggs today, says the old lady. The tram stops to let on a man in a suit carrying a briefcase. In that case I’ll just buy plums, the old lady goes on, as she sizes up the new passenger, then giggles: The good thing about them is that they’ll make it home in one piece. After all, plums don’t break, you know. You can’t bake a cake without eggs, says the driver, and a shot of rum and a lot of sugar. I know about you men, says the old lady, with your sweet tooth.
While Mama and I were eating after Grandfather’s funeral, the broom keeled over in the corner of the room. The handle crashed against the floor. I had seen my father keel over, and it must have been the same with my grandfather. I picked up the glass of water. If Mama had been curious about how I was getting along, I would have told her about the lie in the factory, and about the death I had brought along with me in my new gray platform shoes. But the waterglass was unmoved. She stuffed a piece of bread crust into her mouth, then got up and stood the broom back in the corner.
Whenever a coat hanger dropped on the floor in the factory, or an umbrella fell in the tram, or a parked bicycle tipped over on the street, I could feel the cold vinyl, rushing in from both temples straight to the middle of my forehead. Mama was chewing and drinking a lot of water, she was more convinced than I was that she was my mother. She looked into her plate and said:
You know, once I started to send you a letter. I was sitting in the café, and it just occurred to me to write. It must have been May or July, and now, what month is it, that’s right, it’s already September. I went to the post office, put a stamp on the envelope, but then I forgot your address.
I looked into her eyes and let myself be taken in.
Do you still have it, I asked.
It’s somewhere here on a piece of paper, I just have to find it.
I never called her Mother when I spoke to her, I just said You, the way you would to a child whose name you didn’t know, anything more formal seemed inappropriate. Listening to her was tiresome, it didn’t matter whether I said anything or not, just like it hadn’t mattered when I left home for no real reason—I could just as well have stayed. After all, there were enough office jobs in our small town, even in the bread factory. As people say nowadays: that’s just the way things turned out.
On my way to the station the air smelled of flour. The gatekeeper stood at the factory entrance, brushing dandruff off his uniform jacket. He doffed his cap and greeted me, I didn’t recognize him. After I had passed, he yawned loudly. I spun around as if instead of the gatekeeper there had been a loose concrete slab gaping in the wake of my gray platforms and I was lucky to have escaped in the nick of time. Nothing was too far-fetched for that place, it could make evening come before the afternoon; it could pull the sun over and make it hang suspended in the sky behind the factory, glowing like a ball of fire, and then have it set inside the buildings, dark as a breadpan, before the day was done. I thoug
ht of the early evening hours after Papa’s funeral. We came home from the cemetery, my grandfather went into the yard, turned on the faucet, and hauled the garden hose over to the peach trees. Mama called:
Not in your best suit, go and change.
I ran after him. Because of the drought, he said, as if the peaches would have died of thirst during the next quarter of an hour. The water squirted and gathered around the tree trunks in shallow pools, full of drowned ants. The earth drank slowly. Then Grandfather said:
You go out for a walk and the world opens up for you. And before you’ve even stretched your legs properly, it closes shut. From here to there it’s all just the farty sputter of a lantern. And they call that having lived. It’s not worth the bother of putting on your shoes.
Now my grandfather had stretched his legs for the second time. I wanted to get on the train so as to ride through the cornfields before they turned black. Past the little railway stations that looked like doghouses. Be far away when Mama set the last plate on the table. Through all the years it must have been my brother’s plate and my brother’s hunger that kept her eating. That explains why she could cope so well alone, as if her table had never had more than a single plate.
When I looked at the light-blue train ticket, I knew how fortunate I’d been that my father hadn’t tangled me up inside his love. His spunk was smarter than his brain. My good fortune that the promise of forbidden flesh meant more to him than the wetness of my half-eaten pear. Even in her wildest nightmares Mama didn’t deserve to have me, in my youth, take her place and transport my father back to their first years of love, simply to secure our family against the woman with the long braid.
Things worked out differently for Lilli. Her mother’s second husband was the first man Lilli could get her hands on.
He never became repulsive to me, Lilli said, but in time he did come to seem ordinary. The fact that we’d be at it as soon as my mother left the house became more of a habit than using the door handle.
Lilli’s secret became history when she met the night porter with the war wound on the back of his neck. Until he retired, Lilli would join him after midnight and they would lie behind the wall of keys in the foyer. Later she spent her evenings in the storage room of a leather shop where the clothes were stacked up to the window, until the shopkeeper moved to the country with his wife. After that she made rounds at the hospital, until her night-duty doctor went to visit his brother-in-law in Buenos Aires and never came back. Later Lilli moved her love up to the afternoon and into the darkroom of a photographer she’d fallen for.
Having to hurry turns me on, said Lilli.
Sinning with her stepfather was ancient history, but Lilli’s eyes still sharpened like cut glass when she said:
My mother sleeps with her second husband but tucks herself in with the death of her first.
Keeping a secret and having to hurry were more important to Lilli than feelings. Except for the old officer, every man with whom she began something had a wife at home. The first year, with her stepfather, was the riskiest and most beautiful. Later Lilli admitted that there was nothing so great about things being secret. That’s just how it always turned out. The real secret is why love starts out with claws like a cat and then fades with time like a half-eaten mouse, she said.
Lilli was German. Just after he married, her father was drafted and then blown to pieces by a mine during the war. Lilli’s mother was two months pregnant. As a war widow she received two care packages every year from the German Red Cross, one of them contained the quilt she had used ever since to cover herself up in bed. Another one had the blue skirt with the accordion pleats that Lilli wore, because it was too tight for her mother. Even if nobody else had a skirt like that, it was still far from pretty. It was made of some hard thin material that glistened as if it had just been drenched in water. You expected it to start dripping around the hem. I said:
It might work for old women, a little corrugated tin around the hips to hide the widows’ flab.
So what, it’s practical, and the blue matches my eyes, said Lilli. Whenever she talked about her mother, she would also mention the dead soldier who never had the chance to be her father. Occasionally we’d be in the city, she’d take out her wallet, and I could see the white scalloped edge of a photo sticking out. Once I asked her:
Who’s that you’ve got inside there.
Lilli stashed the wallet back in her coat, then said:
My father.
Is he a secret, I asked.
Yes.
Why talk about him, then.
Because you came right out and asked.
First you talked about him and then I asked.
I never said a thing about the picture.
Well you might as well go on and show it to me, if he’s right there.
How can he be right here if he’s dead, she said.
I fanned my forehead with my hand:
Are you nuts.
Lilli took the picture out of the wallet and held it out for me to see. He wasn’t even twenty, he had a wry smile and was wearing a jagged white daisy in the buttonhole of his tunic. Lilli had the same nose and eyes. I reached for the picture, Lilli shoved my hand away:
You can look but you can’t touch.
I tapped on Lilli’s forehead with my index finger.
You’re cuckoo.
Seen enough.
No, you keep shaking it.
Then Lilli turned the photo upside down, so her father seemed to be hanging by his legs. Upside down or not I immediately noticed that the collar insignia and the front of his cap had been inked over—those places were glossy, although the picture itself was matte. Embarrassment usually makes people’s eyes go narrow, but hers were wide open and forgot how to blink. Lilli was spoiling for an argument, but not because of the inked-out spots on the uniform.
Put it away, I said.
Why, you’re slurping him up with your eyes.
I’m sorry, I shouted.
What does that mean, you’re sorry, she asked.
Are you jealous.
Maybe you are, he’s much too young for me.
Right now he’d be just right.
I never thought of that.
But I did, I said.
Every day after work I was happy to be rid of Nelu. I paced up and down the tram stop in front of the low, grimy buildings, the windows of which protruded slightly over the pavement. Behind the curtains, lights were already burning in the winter afternoon. Patches of ice gleamed in the potholes like spilt milk, trucks were rumbling past, whirling up the snow behind them, and in the whirls, I saw the boy with his dust snakes. He could run better ever since he was dead, and my father could drive better too. But the street swallowed the rumbling and the whirls of snowy dust and then forgot where it was going. I let one tram go by, then two, three. Paul worked an hour and a half longer than I did, anyway. There was nothing to go home to. Other trucks drove by, if I was in luck there’d be a bus among them as well.
Last summer after work Paul again had to ride his motorbike home barefoot, shirtless, and wearing borrowed trousers. While he was in the shower everything he’d been wearing had disappeared—shirt, trousers, underpants, socks, and sandals. Although a guard had been posted in the changing room ever since spring, it was the fourth time that summer that Paul had finished his shower and found he had nothing more than his bare skin. Stealing isn’t considered such a bad thing in the factory. The factory belongs to the people, you belong to the people, and whatever you take is collectively owned, anyway—iron, tin, wood, screws, and wire, whatever you can get your hands on. They like to say:
By day you take, by night you steal.
So one man loses his socks, another his shirt, a third his shoes. Even before the guard was there, nobody was robbed as often as Paul. And he was the only one who had everything taken all at once. His clothes were hardly worth the taking. The thief was more concerned with embarrassing Paul by leaving him stark naked in the factory than with
taking his things. Someone was out to humiliate him. Paul looked carefully at the other men as they talked, laughed, ate, he studied how they worked, watched them shuffle up and down the hall. Now they’re all going about their usual business, thought Paul, but there’ll come a time when whoever is doing this will forget himself and make a mistake. Then Paul would settle accounts in front of everybody.
How do you mean, I asked.
I’ll beat him until he squeaks like a mouse.
Some people cry out when you beat them, so it’s clear when they’ve had enough. But others just go silent, and then you go on hitting them till they’re dead. I was afraid that Paul was working himself up to a state of blindness, and I said:
The thing to do with someone who steals clothes is strip him naked and run him through the factory, then he’ll be even smaller than a mouse, and you won’t be guilty of anything.
It could be anybody. If it turns out to be one of the old fellows, or some rickety kid with ears bigger than his feet, I’ll take him outside for a little chat.
There are enough clothes around, just think if someone had stolen your precious skin, Paul’s workmates said. I heard your nipples caught cold yesterday. All soaped up and waiting and not a masseuse in sight.
Paul laughed along with the others. He preferred the few jokers to the silent herd with their sluggish tongues and dead eyes. But the difference between them was of no help to Paul in finding out the thief. Either the man made no mistakes, or else Paul didn’t notice them. Even Paul’s set of spare clothes, which, like everybody else, he kept in a tool cabinet just for this possibility, had disappeared after the shower.
Socialism sends its workers forth into the world unclad, Paul said in the factory. Every week or so it’s as if you were born anew. It keeps you young.
When the jokers showed up in the morning, they greeted him with:
