by Herta Müller
Smoke billows out of the hut’s tin pipe. The man in the blue overalls brushes up the mud around the shed. His eyes follow Windisch.
The windows of the house are shut. The white curtains make him blind. Two rows of barbed wire are stretched between rusty hooks along the top of the fence. The stack of wood has white ends. It’s freshly cut. The blade of the axe glints. The red car stands in the middle of the yard. The roses bloom in the misty vapour.
Windisch walks past the chin of the man with the yellow helmet again.
The barbed wire ends. The man in the blue overalls is sitting in the hut. He follows Windisch with his eyes.
Windisch turns round. He stands by the gate.
Windisch opens his mouth. The head with the yellow helmet is above the ground. Windisch shivers. He has no voice in his mouth.
The tramcar rumbles. Its windows are misted up. The conductor follows Windisch with his eyes.
The bell is on the doorpost. It has a white fingertip. Windisch presses it. It rings in his finger. It rings in the yard. It rings far away inside the house. On the far side of the walls, the ringing is muffled as if buried.
Windisch presses the white fingertip fifteen times. Windisch counts. The shrill notes in his finger, the loud notes in the yard, the notes buried in the house all flow into one another.
The gardener is buried in the glass, in the fence, in the walls.
The man in the blue overalls rinses out the tin bowl. He looks. Windisch walks past the chin of the man in the yellow helmet. Windisch follows the rails with the money in his jacket.
Windisch’s feet are sore from the asphalt.
THE SECRET WORD
Windisch rides home from the mill. Noon is bigger than the village. The sun scorches its path. The pot hole is cracked and dry.
Windisch’s wife is sweeping the yard. Sand lies around her toes like water. The ripples around the broom are still. “It’s not yet autumn, and the acacias are turning yellow,” says Windisch’s wife. Windisch unbuttons his shirt. “It’s going to be a hard winter,” he says, “if the trees are already dry in the summer.”
The hens turn their heads under their wings. With their beaks they’re seeking out their own shadows, which offer no cool. The neighbour’s spotted pigs root among the wild, white-flowering carrots behind the fence. Windisch looks through the wire. “They don’t give these pigs anything to eat,” he says. “Wallachians. They don’t even know how to feed pigs.”
Windisch’s wife holds the broom to her stomach. “They should have rings in their noses,” she says. “They’ll root up the house by the time winter comes.”
Windisch’s wife carries the broom into the shed. “The postwoman was here,” she says. “She belched and stank of schnaps. The militiaman thanks you for the flour, she said, and Amalie should come for the hearing on Sunday morning. She should bring an application with her and sixty lei’s worth of revenue stamps.”
Windisch bites his lip. His mouth expands into his face, into his forehead. “What good are thanks?” he says.
Windisch’s wife raises her head. “I knew it,” she says, “you won’t get far with your flour.” “Far enough,” shouts Windisch into the yard “for my daughter to become a mattress.” He spits in the sand: “It’s disgusting, the shame of it.” A drop of saliva hangs on his chin.
“You won’t get far with ‘it’s disgusting’ either,” says Windisch’s wife. Her cheek bones are two red stones. “It’s not a question of shame now,” she says, “it’s a question of the passport.”
Windisch slams the door shut. “You should know,” he shouts, “you should know from Russia. You weren’t bothered about shame then.”
“You pig,” cries Windisch’s wife. The shed door opens and shuts, as if the wind was in the wood. Windisch’s wife searches for her mouth with a fingertip. “When the militiaman sees that our Amalie is still a virgin, he won’t want to do it,” she says.
Windisch laughs. “A virgin like you were a virgin, in the churchyard after the war,” he says. “People starved to death in Russia, and you lived from whoring. And after the war you would have gone on whoring, if I hadn’t married you.”
Windisch’s wife lets her mouth fall open. She raises her hand. She raises her forefinger into the air. “You make everybody bad,” she shouts, “because you’re no good yourself and not right in the head either.” She walks across the sand. Her heels are full of cuts.
Windisch follows her heels. She stops on the veranda. She lifts her apron and wipes the empty table with the apron. “You did something wrong at the gardener’s,” she says. “Everybody is let in. Everybody sees about their passport. Except you, because you’re so clever and honest.”
Windisch goes into the hall. The refrigerator hums. “There was no electricity all morning,” says Windisch’s wife. “The refrigerator defrosted. The meat will go off if this continues.”
There’s an envelope on the refrigerator. “The postwoman brought a letter,” says Windisch’s wife. “From the skinner.”
Windisch reads the letter. “Rudi isn’t mentioned in the letter,” says Windisch. “He must be back in the sanatorium.”
Windisch’s wife looks into the yard. “He sends greetings to Amalie. Why doesn’t he write himself.”
“He wrote this sentence here,” says Windisch. “This sentence with PS.” Windisch lays the letter on the refrigerator.
“What does PS mean?” asks Windisch’s wife.
Windisch shrugs. “It must be a secret word.”
Windisch’s wife stands in the doorway. “That’s what happens when children study,” she sighs.
Windisch stands in the yard. The cat is lying on the paving stones. It’s asleep. It’s lying in the sun. Its face is dead. The stomach breathes weakly beneath the fur.
Windisch sees the skinner’s house, caught in the midday light. The sun gives it a yellow radiance.
THE PRAYER HOUSE
“The skinner’s house is going to become a prayer house for the Wallachian Baptists,” says the night watchman to Windisch in front of the mill. “The ones with small hats are Baptists. They howl when they pray. And their women groan when they sing hymns, as if they were in bed. Their eyes get big, like my dog’s.”
The night watchman is whispering, although only Windisch and his dog are by the pond. He’s looking into the night, in case a shadow comes to listen and look. “They’re all brothers and sisters,” he says. “On their festival days they pair off. With whoever they catch in the dark.”
The night watchman follows a water rat with his eyes. The rat cries with a child’s voice and throws itself into the reeds. The dog doesn’t hear the night watchman’s whispers. It stands at the edge and barks at the rat.
“They do it on the carpet in the prayer house,” says the night watchman. “That’s why they have so many children.”
Windisch feels a burning salty sneeze in his nose and forehead from the pond water and the whispering of the night watchman. And Windisch has a hole in his tongue. From being astounded and staying silent.
“This religion comes from America,” says the night watchman. Windisch breathes through his salty sneeze. “That’s across the water.”
“The devil crosses the water too,” says the night watchman. “They’ve got the devil in their bodies. My dog can’t stand them either. He barks at them. Dogs can scent the devil.”
The hole in Windisch’s tongue slowly fills up. “The skinner always said,” says Windisch, “that the Jews run America.” “Yes,” says the night watchman, “the Jews are the ruin of the world. Jews and women.”
Windisch nods. He’s thinking of Amalie. “Every Saturday, when she walks home,” he thinks, “I have to look and see how her toes point outwards when she puts her feet on the ground.”
The night watchman eats a third green apple. His jacket pocket is full of green apples. “It’s true about the women in Germany,” says Windisch. “That’s what the skinner wrote. The worst one here is still worth more than the
best one there.”
Windisch looks at the clouds. “Women there follow the latest fashions,” says Windisch. “They would prefer to walk naked on the street if they could. The skinner says, even schoolchildren read magazines full of naked women.”
The night watchman rummages among the green apples in his jacket pocket. The night watchman spits out a bite. “There have been worms in the fruit since the cloudburst,” he says. The dog licks the spat-out piece of apple. It eats the worm.
“There’s something rotten about this whole summer,” says Windisch. “My wife sweeps the yard every day. The acacias are withering. There are none in our yard. The Wallachians have three in their yard. They are far from bare. And every day there are enough yellow leaves in our yard for ten trees. My wife doesn’t know where all the leaves are coming from. There have never been so many dry leaves in our yard before.” “The wind brings them,” says the night watchman. Windisch locks the mill door.
“There isn’t any wind,” he says. The night watchman holds a finger in the air: “There’s always wind, even if one doesn’t feel it.”
“In Germany the forests are drying up in the middle of the year too,” says Windisch.
“The skinner told us,” he says. He looks at the broad, low sky. “They’ve settled in Stuttgart. Rudi’s in another town. The skinner doesn’t write where. The skinner and his wife have been given a subsidized flat with three rooms. They have a kitchen with a dining area and a bathroom with mirrored walls.”
The night watchman laughs. “At their age they still like looking at themselves naked in the mirror,” says the night watchman.
“Some rich neighbours have given them furniture,” says Windisch. “And a television as well. Their next door neighbour is a woman who lives by herself. She’s a squeamish old lady, says the skinner, she doesn’t eat any meat. It would be the death of her, she says.”
“They’ve got it too easy,” says the night watchman “They should come to Romania, then they’ll eat anything.”
“The skinner has a good pension,” says Windisch. “His wife is a cleaner in an old people’s home. The food there is good. When one of the old people has a birthday they have a dance.”
The night watchman laughs. “That would be the life for me,” he says. “Good food and a few young women.”
He bites into the core of his apple. The white pips fall onto his jacket. “I don’t know,” he says, “I can’t make up my mind whether to apply.”
Windisch sees time standing still in the night watchman’s face. Windisch sees the end on the night watchman’s cheeks, and he sees that the night watchman will stay there beyond the end.
Windisch looks at the grass. His shoes are white with flour. “Once you’ve started,” he says, “things just keep going.”
The night watchman sighs. “It’s difficult if you’re alone,” he says. “It takes a long time and we’re not getting any younger.”
Windisch puts his hand on his trouser leg. His hand is cold, and his thigh is warm. “It’s getting worse and worse here,” he says. “They’re taking our hens, our eggs. They take our maize too, before it even ripens. They’ll take your house too and the holding.”
The moon is large. Windisch can hear the rats going into the water. “I feel the wind,” he says. “The knots in my legs are sore. It must be going to rain soon.”
The dog is beside the stack of straw and barking. “The wind from the valley doesn’t bring rain,” says the night watchman, “only dust and clouds.” “Perhaps a storm is coming,” says Windisch, “which will bring the fruit down from the trees again.”
The moon has a red veil.
“And Rudi?” asks the night watchman.
“He’s taking a rest,” says Windisch. He can feel the lie burning on his cheeks. “In Germany it’s not like here with glass. The skinner writes that we should bring our crystal glass with us. Our porcelain, and feathers for the pillows. But not damask and underwear. They’ve got them there in abundance. Furs are very expensive. Furs and spectacles.”
Windisch chews a blade of grass. “The beginning isn’t easy,” says Windisch.
Windisch ties the blade of grass around his forefinger. “One thing is hard, says the skinner in his letter. An illness we all know from the war. Homesickness.”
The night watchman holds an apple in his hand. “I wouldn’t feel homesick,” he says. “After all, you’re among Germans there.”
Windisch ties knots in the blade of grass. “There are more foreign nations there than here, says the skinner. There are Turks and Negroes. They’re increasing rapidly,” says Windisch.
Windisch pulls the blade of grass through his teeth. The blade of grass is cold. His gums are cold. Windisch holds the sky in his mouth. The wind and the night sky. The blade of grass shreds between his teeth.
THE CABBAGE WHITE
Amalie is standing in front of the mirror. Her slip is pink. White lace points show under Amalie’s navel. Windisch sees the skin above Amalie’s knee through the holes in the lace. There are fine hairs on Amalie’s knee. Her knee is white and round. Windisch sees Amalie’s knee in the mirror yet again. He sees the holes in the lace run into one another.
Windisch’s wife’s eyes are in the mirror. The tips of Windisch’s eyelashes are beating fast, driving into his temples. A red vein swells in the corner of Windisch’s eye. It tears the tips from the lashes. A torn tip moves in the pupil of Windisch’s eye.
The window is open. The leaves on the apple tree are reflected in the panes.
Windisch’s lips are burning. They’re saying something.
But he’s only talking to himself, to the walls. Inside his own head.
“He’s talking to himself,” says Windisch’s wife in the mirror.
A cabbage white flies through the window into the room. Windisch follows it with his eyes. Its flight is flour and wind.
Windisch’s wife reaches into the mirror. With flabby fingers she straightens the straps of the slip on Amalie’s shoulder.
The cabbage white flutters over Amalie’s comb. Amalie pulls the comb through her hair with an elongated arm. She blows away the cabbage white with its flour. It alights on the mirror. It staggers over the glass, across Amalie’s stomach.
Windisch’s wife presses her fingertip against the glass. She squashes the cabbage white on the mirror.
Amalie sprays two large clouds under her armpits. The clouds run down beneath her arms and into the slip. The spray can is black. In bright green letters on the can are the words Irish Spring.
Windisch’s wife hangs a red dress across the back of the chair. She places a pair of white sandals with high heels and narrow straps under the chair. Amalie opens her handbag. She dabs on eye shadow with her fingertip. “Not too much,” says Windisch’s wife, “otherwise people will talk.” Her ear is in the mirror. It’s large and grey. Amalie’s eyelids are pale blue. Amalie’s mascara is made of soot. Amalie pushes her face very close to the mirror. Her upward glance is made of glass.
A strip of tinfoil falls out of Amalie’s handbag onto the carpet. It is full of round white warts. “What’s that you’ve got?” asks Windisch’s wife. Amalie bends down and puts the strip back in her bag. “The pill,” she says. She twists the lipstick out of its black holder.
Windisch’s wife puts her cheekbones in the mirror. “What do you need pills for?” she asks. “You’re not ill.”
Amalie pulls the red dress over her head. Her forehead slips through the white collar. Her eyes still under the dress, Amalie says: “I take it just in case.”
Windisch presses his hand against his forehead. He leaves the room. He sits down on the veranda, at the empty table. The room is dark. It is a shadowy hole in the wall. The sun crackles in the trees. Only the mirror shines. Amalie’s red mouth is in the mirror.
Small, old women are walking past the skinner’s house. The shadow of their black headscarves precedes them. The shadow will be in church before the small, old women.
Amalie wal
ks over the cobble stones on her white heels. She holds the square folded application in her hand like a white briefcase. He red dress swings around her calves. The Irish Spring flies into the yard. Amalie’s dress is darker beneath the apple tree than in the sun.
Windisch sees that Amalie’s toes point outwards as she puts her feet on the ground.
A strand of Amalie’s hair flies over the alley gate. The gate snaps shut.
MASS
Windisch’s wife is standing in the yard behind the black grapes. “Aren’t you going to mass?” she asks. The grapes grow out of her eyes. The green leaves grow out of her chin.
“I’m not leaving the house,” says Windisch, “I don’t want people saying to me: now it’s your daughter’s turn.”
Windisch puts his elbows on the table. His hands are heavy. Windisch puts his face in his heavy hands. The veranda doesn’t grow. It’s broad daylight. For a moment the veranda falls to a place where it never was before. Windisch feels the blow. A stone hangs in his ribs.
Windisch closes his eyes. He feels his eyes. He feels his eyeballs in his hands. His eyes without a face.
With naked eyes and with the stone in his ribs, Windisch says loudly: “A man is nothing but a pheasant in the world.” What Windisch hears is not his voice. He feels his naked mouth. It’s the walls that have spoken.
THE BURNING GLOBE
The neighbour’s spotted pigs are lying in the wild carrots, sleeping. The black women come out of the church. The sun-shine is bright. It lifts them over the pavement in their small black shoes. Their hands are worn from the rosaries. Their gaze is still radiant from praying.
Above the skinner’s roof the church bell strikes the middle of the day. The sun is a great clock above the midday tolling. Mass is over. The sky is hot.
Behind the small, old women the pavement is empty. Windisch looks along the houses. He sees the end of the street. “Amalie should be coming,” he thinks. There are geese in the grass. They are white like Amalie’s white sandals.