by Herta Müller
“It has its advantages,” the skinner thought. “Rudi earns a lot of money in the factory. He has a good relationship with the man from the secret police. A big blond man with blue eyes. He looks like a German. Rudi says that he’s highly educated. He knows all the different kinds of glass. Rudi gave him a glass tie-pin and cufflinks. It paid off,” said the skinner. “The man helped us a lot with the passport.”
Rudi gave the man all the glass objects he had in his flat. Glass flower pots. Combs. A rocking chair of blue glass. Glass cups and plates. Glass pictures. A glass night light with a red shade.
The ears, the lips, the eyes, the fingers, the toes of glass Rudi brought home in a suitcase. He laid them on the floor. He laid them in rows and circles. He looked at them.
THE CRYSTAL VASE
Amalie is a kindergarten teacher in town. She comes home every Saturday. Windisch’s wife waits for her at the station. She helps her carry the heavy bags. Every Saturday, Amalie brings a bag of food and a bag with glass. “Crystal glass,” she says.
The cupboards are full of crystal glass. The glass is arranged according to colour and size. Red wineglasses, blue wineglasses, white schnaps glasses. On the tables are glass fruit bowls, vases and flower baskets.
“Presents from the children,” says Amalie, when Windisch asks: “Where did you get the glass from?”
For a month Amalie has been talking about a crystal floor vase. She points from the floor to her hips. “That’s how tall it is,” says Amalie. “It’s dark red. On the vase is a dancer in a white lace dress.”
Windisch’s wife’s eyes grow large when she hears about the crystal vase. Every Saturday she says: “Your father will never understand what a crystal vase is worth.”
“Ordinary vases used to be good enough,” says Windisch. “Now people need floor vases.”
Windisch’s wife talks about the crystal vase when Amalie is in town. Her face smiles. Her hands become soft. She lifts her fingers into the air as if to stroke someone’s cheek. Windisch knows she would spread her legs for a crystal vase. She would spread her legs, just as she strokes the air softly with her fingers.
Windisch becomes hard, when she talks about the crystal vase. He thinks about the years after the war. “In Russia she spread her legs for a piece of bread,” the people in the village said after the war.
At the time Windisch thought: “She is beautiful, and hunger hurts.”
AMONG THE GRAVES
Windisch had come back to the village from being a prisoner of war. The village was raw from the many dead and wounded.
Barbara had died in Russia.
Katharina had returned from Russia. She wanted to marry Josef. Josef had died in the war. Katharina’s face was pale. Her eyes were deep.
Like Windisch, Katharina had seen death. Like Windisch, Katharina had held on to life. Windisch quickly tied his life to her.
Windisch had kissed her on his first Saturday in the stricken village. He pressed her against a tree. He felt her young stomach and her round breasts. Windisch walked through the gardens with her.
The gravestones stood in white rows. The iron gate creaked. Katharina crossed herself. She wept. Windisch knew that she was weeping for Josef. Windisch shut the gate. He wept. Katharina knew that he was weeping for Barbara. Katharina sat down in the grass behind the chapel. Windisch bent down to her. She grasped his hair. She smiled. He pushed up her skirt. He unbuttoned his trousers. He laid himself on her. Her fingers clutched the grass. She panted. Windisch looked up past her hair. The gravestones were bright. She trembled.
Katharina sat up. She smoothed her skirt over her knees. Windisch stood in front of her and buttoned up his trousers. The churchyard was large. Windisch knew that he hadn’t died. That he was home. That this pair of trousers had waited for him here in the village, in the wardrobe. That in the war and as a prisoner, he hadn’t known where the village was and how long he would continue to live.
Katharina had a stalk of grass in her mouth. Windisch pulled her by the hand. “Let’s get away from here,” he said.
THE COCKS
The bells of the church strike five times. Windisch feels cold knots in his legs. He goes into the yard. Above the fence, the night watchman’s hat passes by.
Windisch goes to the gate. The night watchman is holding on tightly to the telegraph pole. He’s talking to himself. “Where is she, where has she gone, the fairest of roses,” he says. The dog is sitting on the ground. It’s eating a worm.
Windisch says, “Konrad.” The night watchman looks at him. “The owl is sitting behind the stack of straw in the meadow,” he says. “Widow Kroner is dead.” He yawns. His breath smells of schnaps.
The cocks crow in the village. Their cries are harsh. The night is in their beaks.
The night watchman steadies himself against the fence. His hands are dirty. His fingers are bent.
THE DEATH MARK
Windisch’s wife stands barefoot on the stone floor of the hallway. Her hair is dishevelled, as if there were a wind in the house. Windisch sees the goose-pimples on her calves. The raw skin on her ankles.
Windisch smells her night shirt. It’s warm. Her cheek bones are hard. They twitch. Her mouth tears open. “What time do you call this?” she shouts. “I looked at the clock at three. Now it’s already struck five.” She waves her hands about in the air. Windisch looks at her finger. It’s not slimy.
Windisch crushes a dry apple leaf in his hand. He hears his wife shouting in the hall. She slams the doors. She goes into the kitchen shouting. A spoon clatters on the stove.
Windisch is standing at the kitchen door. She lifts the spoon. “Fornicator,” she shouts. “I’ll tell your daughter what you get up to.”
There’s a green bubble above the teapot. Above the bubble is her face. Windisch goes up to her. Windisch strikes her in the face. She says nothing. She lowers her head. Crying, she places the teapot on the table.
Windisch sits in front of the tea cup. The steam eats his face. The peppermint steam drifts into the kitchen. Windisch sees his eye in the tea. The sugar trickles from the spoon into his eye. The spoon stands in the tea.
Windisch drinks a mouthful of tea. “Widow Kroner has died,” he says. His wife blows into the cup. She has small red eyes. “The bell is ringing,” she says.
There’s a red mark on her cheek. It is the mark of Windisch’s hand. It is the mark of steam from the tea. It is the death mark of Widow Kroner.
The bell rings through the walls. The lamp rings. The ceiling rings. Windisch breathes deeply. He finds his breath at the bottom of the cup.
“Who knows, when and where we die,” says Windisch’s wife. She clutches at her hair. She works another strand loose. A drop of tea runs down her chin.
Grey light dawns on the street. The skinner’s windows are bright. “The funeral takes place this afternoon,” says Windisch.
THE LETTERS
Windisch is riding to the mill. His bicycle tyres squeak in the wet grass. Windisch watches the wheel turning between his knees. The fences drift past in the rain. The trees are dripping. The gardens rustle.
The war memorial is swathed in grey. The small roses have brown edges.
The pot hole is full of water. It drowns the bicycle tyre. Water splashes on Windisch’s trouser legs. Earthworms wriggle on the cobble stones.
One of the joiner’s windows is open. The bed is made. It’s covered with a red plush bedspread. The joiner’s wife is sitting alone at the table. A pile of green beans lies on the table.
The lid of Widow Kroner’s coffin is no longer leaning against the wall. The joiner’s mother smiles from the picture above the bed. Her smile stretches from the death of the white dahlia to the death of Widow Kroner.
The floor is bare. The joiner has sold the red carpets. He has the big form now. He’s waiting for the passport.
The rain falls on the back of Windisch’s neck. His shoulders are wet.
Sometimes the joiner’s wife is summoned to the priest becau
se of the baptismal certificate, sometimes to the militiaman because of the passport.
The night watchman has told Windisch that the priest has an iron bed in the sacristy. In this bed he looks for baptismal certificates, with the women. “If things go well,” said the night watchman, “he looks for the baptismal certificates five times. If he’s doing the job thoroughly, he looks ten times. With some families the militiaman loses and mislays the applications and the revenue stamps seven times. He looks for them on the mattress in the post office store room with the women who want to emigrate.”
The night watchman laughed. “Your wife,” he said to Windisch, “is too old for him. He’ll leave your Kathi in peace. But then it’ll be your daughter’s turn. The priest makes her Catholic, and the militiaman makes her stateless. The postwoman gives the militiaman the key when he’s got work to do in the store room.”
Windisch kicked the mill door with his foot. “Let him try,” he said. “He may get flour, but he won’t get my daughter.”
“That’s why our letters don’t arrive,” said the night watchman. “The postwoman takes the envelopes from us and money for the stamps. She buys schnaps with the money for the stamps. And she reads the letters and throws them into the wastepaper basket. And if the militiaman doesn’t have any work to do in the store room, he sits behind the counter with the postwoman and swigs schnaps. Because the postwoman is too old for him and the mattress.”
The night watchman stroked his dog. “The postwoman has already drunk away hundreds of letters,” he said. “And has read the militiaman hundreds of letters.”
Windisch unlocks the mill door with the big key. He counts two years. He turns the small key in the lock. Windisch counts the days. Windisch walks to the mill pond.
The surface of the pond is disturbed. There are waves on it. The willows are wrapped in leaves and wind. The stack of straw throws its moving, everlasting picture on the pond. Frogs crawl round the stack. They drag their white bellies through the grass.
The night watchman is sitting beside the pond and has hiccups. His larynx bounces out of his shirt. It’s the blue onions,” he says. “The Russians cut thin slices off the top of onions. They sprinkle salt on them. The salt makes the onions open like roses. They give off water. Clear, bright water. They look like water lilies. The Russians hit them with their fists. I’ve seen Russians crush onions under their heels. The women lifted their skirts and knelt on the onions. They turned their knees. We soldiers held the Russian women at the hips and helped them turn.”
The night watchman had watery eyes. “I’ve eaten onions that were tender and sweet as butter from the knees of Russian women,” he says. His cheeks are flabby. His eyes grow young as the sheen of onions.
Windisch carries two sacks to the edge of the pond. He covers them with canvas. The night watchman will take them to the militiaman during the night.
The reeds are quivering. White foam sticks to the blades. “That’s what the dancer’s lace dress must be like,” thinks Windisch. “I’m not letting a crystal vase into my house.”
“There are women everywhere. There are even women in the pond,” says the night watchman. Windisch sees their underclothes anong the reeds. He goes into the mill.
THE FLY
Widow Kroner lies in the coffin dressed in black. Her hands are tied together with a white cord, so that they don’t slide down from her stomach. So that they are praying, when she arrives up above, at heaven’s gate.
“She’s so beautiful, it’s as if she were asleep,” says her neighbour, Skinny Wilma. A fly settles on her hand. Skinny Wilma moves her finger. The fly settles on a small hand beside her.
Windisch’s wife shakes the raindrops from her headscarf. They fall in transparent chains onto her shoes. Umbrellas stand beside the praying women. Water snakes and trickles under the chairs. It glistens among the shoes.
Windisch’s wife sits down on the empty chair beside the door. She cries a large tear out of each eye. The fly settles on her cheek. The tear rolls down onto the fly. It flies into the room, the edge of its wing damp. The fly returns. It settles on Windisch’s wife. On her wrinkled index finger.
Windisch’s wife prays and looks at the fly. The fly creeps all round the finger nail. It tickles her skin. “It’s the fly that was under the golden oriole. The fly that settled in the flour sieve,” thinks Windisch’s wife.
Windisch’s wife finds a moving passage in the prayer. She sighs over the passage. She sighs and her hands move. And the fly on her finger nail feels the sigh. And it flies past her cheek into the room.
Windisch’s wife’s lips softly hum, pray for us.
The fly flies just below the ceiling. It hums a long song for the death vigil. A song of rainwater. A song of the earth as a grave.
Windisch’s wife forces out two more small tears as she hums. She lets them run down her cheek. She lets them grow salty around her mouth.
Skinny Wilma looks for her handkerchief. She looks among the shoes. Between the rivulets that crawl out of the black umbrellas.
Skinny Wilma finds a rosary among the shoes. Her face is pointed and small. “Whose rosary is it?” she asks. No one looks at her. Everyone is silent. “Who knows,” she sighs, “there have already been so many here.”
She puts the rosary in the pocket of her long black skirt.
The fly settles on Widow Kroner’s cheek. A living thing on her dead skin. The fly buzzes in the still corner of her mouth. The fly dances on her hard chin.
Outside the window, the sound of rain. The prayer leader bats her short eyelashes as if the rain was running into her face. As if it was washing away her eyes. Eyelashes which are broken from praying. “A cloudburst,” she says. “Over the whole country.” She closes her mouth even while she’s talking, as if the rain was running down into her throat.
Skinny Wilma looks at the dead woman. “Only in the Banat,” she says. “Our weather comes from Austria, not from Bucharest.”
The water lingers on the streets. Windisch’s wife sniffles away a last small tear. “The old people say that anyone whose coffin it rains into was a good person,” she says to the room.
There are bunches of hydrangea above Widow Kroner’s coffin. They are wilting, heavy and violet. Death, skin and bones, lying in the coffin is taking them. And the prayer of the rain is taking them.
The fly crawls into the scentless hydrangea buds.
The priest comes through the door. His step is heavy, as if his body was full of water. The priest gives the altar boy the black umbrella and says, “Jesus Christ be praised.” The women hum, and the fly hums.
The joiner brings the coffin lid into the room.
A hydrangea leaf trembles. Half violet, half dead, it falls onto the praying hands joined by the white cord. The joiner lays the coffin lid on the coffin. He nails the coffin shut with black nails and short hammer blows.
The hearse gleams. The horse looks at the trees. The coachman lays the grey blanket across the horse’s back. “The horse will catch cold,” he says to the joiner.
The altar boy holds the large umbrella over the priest’s head. The priest has no legs. The hem of his black cassock trails in the mud.
Windisch feels the water gurgling in his shoes. He knows the nail in the sacristy. He knows the long nail on which the cassock hangs. The joiner steps in a puddle. Windisch watches his laces drown.
“The black cassock has already seen a lot,” thinks Windisch. “It has seen the priest looking for baptismal certificates on the iron bed with women.” The joiner asks something. Windisch hears his voice. Windisch doesn’t understand what the joiner is saying. Windisch hears the clarinet and the big drum behind him.
Rain fringes the brim of the night watchman’s hat. The shroud flaps on the hearse. The bunches of hydrangea quiver in the pot holes. They strew leaves in the mud. The mud glistens under the wheels. The hearse turns in the glass puddle.
The music is cold. The big drum sounds dull and wet. Above the village, the roofs are leaning
towards the water.
The cemetery glows with white crosses. The bell hangs over the village with its stuttering tongue. Windisch sees his hat in the puddle. “The pond will grow,” he thinks. “The rain will pull the militiaman’s sacks into the water.”
There’s water in the grave. The water is yellow like tea. “Widow Kroner can drink now,” whispers Skinny Wilma.
The prayer leader steps on a marguerite lying on the path between the graves. The altar boy holds the umbrella at an angle. The incense is drawn into the earth.
The priest lets a handful of mud drip onto the coffin. “Earth, take what is thine. God takes what is his,” he says. The altar boy sings a long wet “Amen”. Windisch can see his back teeth.
Water eats at the shroud. The night watchman is holding his hat against his chest. He’s crushing the brim in his hand. The hat is wrinkled. The hat is rolled up like a black rose.
The priest closes his prayerbook. “We shall meet again on the other side,” he says.
The grave digger is a Romanian. He leans the shovel against his stomach. He makes the sign of the cross on his shoulders. He spits in his hands. He shovels.
The band plays a cold funeral song. The song has no end. The tailor’s apprentice blows into his French horn. He has white spots on his blue fingers. He glides into the song. The big yellow horn is by his ear. It shines like the horn of a gramophone. The funeral song explodes as it tumbles out of the horn.
The big drum booms. The prayer leader’s throat hangs between the ends of her headscarf. The grave fills with earth.
Windisch closes his eyes. They hurt from the wet, white marble crosses. They hurt from the rain.
