by Herta Müller
I had decided to stay home. I couldn’t go to Mulberry Street without visiting Lilli’s grave and looking for the shoemaker’s. And that could have taken some time. I didn’t like visiting Lilli’s grave. If it had been just the two of us I could have handled it—but not those red flowers too, right there on her grave. My father-in-law had called them haemanthus. At the market they were called blood lilies. For me, they were the flowers of flesh. Red stems, leaves, blooms, each plant to its very tips was a handful of ragged flesh. Lilli was feeding them, and I would stand at the foot of the grave and put my finger in my mouth to keep my teeth from chattering. After Paul’s accident, nothing could induce me to visit any grave on earth. And what was more, I still wanted to keep the Java, even if it was no longer roadworthy.
Our love had come full circle. We had first met at the flea market, and the motorbike had been there. Paul hadn’t been to the flea market since; now he was going there to sell his Java. Paul said:
If we hold on to the bike, we’ll never get rid of this whole nasty business.
Whether or not that was true, I wanted to keep it in the apartment because it was the accident that was nasty, not the Java. And just as nasty as that was the image of Paul sitting there in the dust of the flea market, every bit as battered and bruised as his bike. I said:
You can’t go there with that scab on your face.
Paul made light of it:
Who knows, maybe your beach ball will turn up again.
What did turn up again was the old man with the marbled legs. Spic-and-span in his Sunday best, with a breezy straw hat and a silk tie. And Paul sold him the Java and decided that the old man couldn’t have been from the secret police, otherwise he wouldn’t have offered more than anybody else. I’m not so sure. Late that evening Paul came home from the flea market drunk. He got some sausage out of the fridge and bread from the cupboard. Every time he picked up a piece to eat, he asked:
What’s that.
Sausage, I said.
And that.
Tomato.
And what on earth is that.
Bread.
And what’s that.
Salt and a knife. The other thing is a fork.
As he chewed, Paul looked across at me, as if he had to find me.
Sausage, tomato, salt, and bread, he said. But you’re here too.
And where have you been, I asked.
He pointed to his chest with the knife handle:
In my shirt and right with you.
He dropped a crust of bread into his shirt pocket:
If I’m arrested anytime soon . . . or if you’re . . . His chewed-up food dragged the words down into his throat. After eating, he put the cutlery in the sink and the bread in the drawer and wiped the crumbs from the table:
We should clean up in case we have an unexpected visitor today.
A few minutes later he came into the bedroom and sat down next to me on the edge of the bed:
Aren’t we going to eat today.
But you just had something.
When.
Five minutes ago.
What did I eat.
I listed everything again.
He nodded.
So the man is full, he said.
At that I nodded.
It was good he didn’t say your man. If he wanted to drink all the money he got for the Java, that was entirely his own business. I didn’t even want to know how much he got. I’d never again be literally struck dumb with happiness when we were out for a ride, the sky would never again start flying, and never again would I hold on tight to Paul’s ribs—that was entirely my own business, as was the fact that we didn’t use the money to go to the restaurant by the game preserve, like we had after we first met at the flea market. Paul had the accident without me, his motorcycle was finished, perhaps he was trying to spare us both the feeling of a wake. For Paul it was a question of wiping away the accident, as he had wiped away the bread crumbs from the kitchen table. Just as I had wanted to wipe everything away after I separated from my first husband.
Back then I had gone to the flea market to rid myself of all the things that reminded me of him. Where the wedding ring was concerned, it was a matter of the money—I had debts. Paul was standing next to me, selling homemade television aerials designed to pick up stations from Belgrade and Budapest. The aerials were officially prohibited, but they were tolerated and could be seen on lots of roofs around the city. Here at the flea market, splayed out on Paul’s blue tarp that the wind kept tearing at, they looked like antlers. I took off my shoes and used them to anchor the newspaper on which I had laid out the items I was trying to sell. My feet got dirty, and that made me unhappy, just as it had when I played with the boy they put to sleep and his dust snakes swirling between the avenue and the bread factory. The people who shuffled by might just as well have sold the clothes off their back and wrapped themselves in any old rags they could pick up off the ground. Only soldiers and policemen would have stood out, because there were no uniforms lying on the ground. Not a single tree, not one blade of grass, just a mass of ragged people and a poor man’s summer in the whirling dust. And there I was, selling gold.
For my woolen scarf I could have gotten three times the price I was paid. The plastic bangles and brooches, my beach hat, and the beach ball would never have brought in more than a little change. In my short, narrow skirt, with my wedding ring dangling to the ground from my wrist on a length of string, I felt doubly sly—part black marketeer fallen on hard times who shows a little skin to make her goods more attractive, part rouge-cheeked whore who manages to clean out her client’s wallet during sex. A little depravity would have fit right in with the place, would have guaranteed a quick killing. I liked imagining myself depraved and desirable. I crooked my right leg a little, rested my right heel on my left foot, ran my fingers through my bangs, and gave provocative, seductive looks for all I was worth. But I was convinced that my short skirt spoiled things because of my bandy legs, that my neck wasn’t a true milky-white, and that my eyes didn’t have that petulant edge that drives men wild when a woman glances up from beneath her lashes. The most suggestive thing about me was the whirling dust. In fact, I didn’t even know what the ring weighed, nor the going price of gold. I belonged to the ring and not the other way around. Please have pity on this poor silly goose—I could have pulled that off more easily. But pity would have been out of place here.
An old man hefted the ring and examined the hallmark with a magnifying glass.
It’s gold, what else would it be, I said.
What are you asking, two thousand, huh.
I’m not sure I want to sell it.
Two thousand one hundred, come on, let’s call it a deal.
That’s easy for you to say.
All right, I’ll take another walk around.
And how long will that be.
Say, a quarter of an hour.
By that time the ring’ll be gone.
Then hand it over.
Not so fast.
How much do you want.
Do you have the money on you.
Jesus Christ Almighty, you expect me to wave it about in the air.
What’s your top offer.
Two thousand two hundred, hmm. You want to sell, or would you rather go sit on Granddaddy’s lap.
I’ll think about it.
What’s a little pussycat like you hunting out here, anyway, he shouted.
I stared right past him, he put away his magnifying glass, but hesitated to leave. He would rather have made a deal than have nothing to show for his trip to the market. He stood before me in the dust wearing a freshly ironed, blue-striped shirt, hardly somebody’s granddad whose lap you could go sit on. His stomach, hands, and temples were the same as Lilli’s officer. Today the sun, which was as round as a ball, was wrapped in cotton wool.
Paul had a lot of takers, he was showing off his aerials and handing out leaflets explaining how to aim them to pick up Belgrade and Budapest. I
crouched down and my skirt slid right up, I tugged at it in vain. The old man was right, I was looking up at Paul the way a cat eyes a person. Paul’s motorbike was beside him, occasionally someone would bump into it. I would flinch, expecting to see it keel over, and see my father die all over again. Paul was asking two thousand lei for an aerial and getting half that. He bowed to a young married couple who found even that price too high:
Then go on, point the antennas of your hearts toward Bucharest, and much good may it do you.
He was a good salesman, he knew how to be cheeky without offending, I on the other hand, gave my beach hat to the first gap-toothed, doubled-chinned woman who came along, and when I sold the bracelets it was to girls with hairy arms and I took whatever they offered. In the factory the pay packets appeared on the table twice a month as if by magic, mail from an unknown hand. Everybody pocketed the money and threw away the envelope without checking. There was nothing to do about how much the envelope contained, you just went on in your quiet and unprotesting way. I was desperately in need of money, but I didn’t know how to talk up the things I wanted to get rid of, nor did I know how to make money by using my wits.
Next to the fence enclosing the market was a broken concrete pipe. At one end a man sat pouring red wine from a tin container into an old frosted-glass lamp globe, which he then drained. At the other end a man was affectionately kissing the hair of a child who was sitting in his lap. Between them some rusty wire stuck out of a crack in the pipe. In my mind I switched the three of us around, so that the man with the child was drinking from the glass globe—even I could do that. Then the man with the tin container had to kiss the child, but he discovered he had forgotten how—while someone like me, with a wedding ring dangling from a piece of string, never knew how in the first place. And either one of the men would have sold the ring more quickly than I could. The dust was swirling the ground up to the sky, the day was out of joint. The only customer for the last two remaining television aerials at that moment was the wind. Paul screwed up his eyes.
Is that your wedding ring.
I don’t know whether my feeble nod gave me away or whether he had long since figured out I was a little pussycat out hunting.
Ask for six thousand, he said, and don’t go below five.
A fly settled on my big toe and stung me, I watched it from the corner of my eye and felt ashamed to kill it because I had to say straight out:
My marriage wasn’t worth that much.
Who says, you or your husband, asked Paul.
Then I had to go to the toilet, two small wooden cabins at the far end of the flea market.
Leave the ring here, said Paul.
The fact that he even took the trouble, that he even thought about me at all. He untied the string from my wrist, I stretched out my arm and looked away the way children do when they’re being undressed. But where my skin was thinnest I could feel my pulse practically leaping out at him. His fingers were busy with the knot but my interest was all in the touching. After he had untied me, I took my time putting on my shoes. Paul was wearing my wedding ring on his little finger, he stretched his hand out over the television aerials, dangling the string and making up a singsong rhyme:
A kiss on the hand
and a golden band
can rob you of your senses.
It was comic, but he was performing it seriously, a real showman, and people stopped. I laughed as I walked away down the long rows. Outside the fence, at the end of the market, was the uneasy calm of an abandoned building site. Bindweed, knotgrass, and morning glories were crawling among the cranes, pipes, and crumbled cement. The finger I had been thinking of for some time was not the ring finger.
Right after the kiss on my hand, when I was summoned the second time after the notes, the only thing I could think of was that I had to go to the toilet. Albu said:
But of course. Down the corridor to the left, the next to last door. But leave your handbag here.
I went down the corridor to the left, I didn’t want to rush, but neither did I want to overdo things by taking too long. Two doors away a telephone was ringing, and it was still ringing later when I returned, no one was answering it. In the inner courtyard there were two pumps, for diesel and gasoline, and one for water. Two gray trucks, a bus with green curtains, a minibus, a blue car, a white one. And two red ones. At the end of the corridor, behind a door, someone was crying. On the sink was a cake of soap with two black hairs stuck to it, below in the trash can was a bloody handkerchief. It was then I felt my heart stick in my throat, my footsteps quickened. No doubt I came back sooner than was necessary.
Now the tram driver is ringing his bell, there’s a dog running right across the road, a rangy, splotchy creature, all skin and bones, holding his tail between his legs, and his paws are matted with half-dried mud. God knows where he found mud in this heat. His muzzle is dripping with foam, it’s no point even bothering with the bell, the dog would be better off dead, he could finally stretch out and rest. You see more and more dogs like that, says the young man standing by the door. The man with the briefcase nods: And if they bite you, that’s it, you’re through, you barely have enough time left to send for the priest and confess. It happened to a boy on my street. He was foaming at the mouth just like that dog, nothing to be done about it, rabies, finished. The old woman with the shaky head says: It’s that artificial fertilizer they’re putting on the fields, that’s why all the dogs are turning into runts. They fertilize like mad, but the only things that actually grow are fat rats, deformed birds, and razor grass. Everything else is godforsaken and stunted. Tell me, what am I supposed to do if a dog like that comes after me, at least you young folks can still run. And just a few years back I was still the fastest thing on two legs. My son used to say: You’re like a whirlwind, take it easy. Running away is the wrong thing to do, the young man says. If a dog like that comes at you, you have to stand still and act absolutely sure of yourself, look the beast square in the eye, like you’re trying to hypnotize it. That’s if your eyes are good, but not if you wear glasses, the old woman laughs. Heavens, without my glasses I can’t tell his head from his tail. Maybe it works if you look him square in the tail, the driver laughs, anyway it’d be worth a try. A while back in the park I saw a bird with three feet, the old woman says, I swear I’m not making it up, I was wearing my glasses. I couldn’t believe it, so I asked two youngsters if it was real. And it was. How’s your headache, the man with the briefcase asks. Bad, the old woman says, it’s easy enough for your mind to forget the years you’ve lived through, they’re over and done with, but your eyes, your feet, your gallbladder, they don’t forget, and it all starts to catch up with you. The driver unbuttons his shirt from top to bottom. Next stop is the marketplace, he says, we’ll be there in a moment.
So you feel drawn to the south, Albu said. We’ve got pigeons and a fountain in front of the opera house here too. But girls like you want orange trees, and where do they end up, huh, tell me, where do they end up. In a sleazy hotel with rooms let by the hour, with bank robbers wearing fat gold chains and platform shoes, pimps with pockmarked faces and long teeth and—he held up the nibbled pencil—pricks no bigger than that.
So maybe Albu’s own prick is like that and the pencil stub serves as a measure of the world.
What am I taking away from this country by going to another, I asked.
The Major rolled the stub between his thumb and index finger. He spoke gently, as if he was talking to himself and I wasn’t meant to hear: People who don’t love their homeland can’t understand. And people not smart enough to think have no choice but to feel.
Lilli attached great importance to the hands of her men. She wouldn’t have been able to watch those slender fingers rolling the pencil without drawing Albu’s hand closer to her. But whatever might have happened within these walls, Lilli would not have forgotten how irresistible she was, and she would have summoned him to her—outside, somewhere in town, and there she would have had him. A floor, a
bench, some patch of grass—there’s always somewhere to lie down if your heart is being torn apart with need. Albu would have dropped all ranks and titles and thrown his reason to the wind just for a chance to prowl around Lilli’s beautiful flesh. And when he resumed being a major back at his large desk, he himself would have avoided strangers out of fear, and this fear would have caused him to comb out his hair and think up plausible excuses he could tell his boss. He would have to lie, just like I do, in a tousled state of fear. That would serve him right. Of course, I wouldn’t have understood Lilli when she would have told me what happened, looking at me with those plum-blue eyes that grew darker still for older men. She would have unpeeled a little of the secret, but kept the core silent, with that famous tobacco flower in her face. We would have hurt each other, I would have hurt her and she would have hurt me. But to the outsider seeing us together, we would simply have been sitting comfortably in a café. Or we would be out for a walk.
