Summary

From the winner of the IMPAC Award and the Nobel Prize comes a fierce novel about a young Romanian woman's discovery of betrayal in the most intimate reaches of her life.

Author Biography

Born in Romania in 1953, Herta Mnller lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats after refusing to cooperate with Ceaucescu's secret police. She succeeded in emigrating in 1987 and now lives in Berlin. The recipient of the European Literature Prize, she has also won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for her previous novel, The Land of Green Plums.

I’ve been summoned. Thursday, at ten sharp.

Lately I’m being summoned more and more often: ten sharp

on Tuesday, ten sharp on Saturday, on Wednesday, Monday. As

if years were a week, I’m amazed that winter comes so close on

the heels of late summer.

On my way to the tram stop, I again pass the shrubs with the

white berries dangling through the fences. Like buttons made

of mother-of-pearl and sewn from underneath, or stitched right

down into the earth, or else like bread pellets. They remind me

of a flock of little white-tufted birds turning away their beaks,

but they’re really far too small for birds. It’s enough to make

you giddy. I’d rather think of snow sprinkled on the grass, but

that leaves you feeling lost, and the thought of chalk makes you

sleepy.

The tram doesn’t run on a fixed schedule.

It does seem to rustle, at least to my ear, unless those are

the stiff leaves of the poplars I’m hearing. Here it is, already

pulling up to the stop: today it seems in a hurry to take me

away. I’ve decided to let the old man in the straw hat get on

ahead of me. He was already waiting when I arrived—who

knows how long he’d been there. You couldn’t exactly call him

frail, but he’s hunchbacked and weary, and as skinny as his own

shadow. His backside is so slight it doesn’t even fill the seat of

his pants, he has no hips, and the only bulges in his trousers are

the 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 before

he does, regardless. The car is practically empty; he gives the

vacant seats a quick scan and decides to stand. It’s amazing how

old people like him don’t get tired, that they don’t save their

standing for places where they can’t sit. Now and then you hear

old people say: There’ll be plenty of time for lying down once

I’m in my coffin. But death is the last thing on their minds, and

they’re quite right. Death never has followed any particular

pattern. Young people die too. I always sit if I have a choice.

Riding in a seat is like walking while you’re sitting down. The

old man is looking me over; I can sense it right away inside the

empty car. I’m not in the mood to talk, though, or else I’d ask

him what he’s gaping at. He couldn’t care less that his staring

annoys me. Meanwhile half the city is going by outside the

window, trees alternating with buildings. They say old people

like him can sense things better than young people. Old people

might 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 how

terrified I was that today Albu might take me down to the cell

below his office. I didn’t bring it up. If that happens, he’ll find

out soon enough. The tram is moving slowly. The band on the

old man’s straw hat is stained, probably with sweat, or else the

rain. As always, Albu will slobber a kiss on my hand by way of

greeting.

Major Albu lifts my hand by the fingertips, squeezing my nails

so hard I could scream. He presses one wet lip to my fingers, so

he can keep the other free to speak. He always kisses my hand

the 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 for

that, aren’t you.

My, but your little hand is cold as ice today—hope there’s

nothing wrong with your circulation.

Uh-oh, your gums are receding. You’re beginning to look

like your own grandmother.

My grandmother didn’t live to grow old, I say. She never

had time to lose her teeth. Albu knows all about my grandmother’s

teeth, which is why he’s bringing them up.

As a woman, I know how I look on any given day. I also

know that a kiss on the hand shouldn’t hurt, that it shouldn’t

feel wet, that it should be delivered to the back of the hand.

The art of hand kissing is something men know even better

than women—and Albu is hardly an exception. His entire head

reeks of Avril, a French eau de toilette that my father-in-law,

the Perfumed Commissar, used to wear too. Nobody else I

know would buy it. A bottle on the black market costs more

than a suit in a store. Maybe it’s called Septembre, I’m not sure,

but there’s no mistaking that acrid, smoky smell of burning

leaves.

Once I’m sitting at the small table, Albu notices me rubbing

my fingers on my skirt, not only to get the feeling back

into them but also to wipe the saliva off. He fiddles with his

signet ring and smirks. Let him: it’s easy enough to wipe off

somebody’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 on

the pavement—not in town, anyway, where no one knows who

he 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 freezing

cold and you come into the warm. The worst thing is this feeling

that my brain is slipping down into my face. It’s humiliating,

there’s no other word for it, when your whole body feels

like it’s barefoot. But what if there aren’t any words at all, what

if even the best word isn’t enough.

I’ve been listening to the alarm clock since three in the morning

ticking ten sharp, ten sharp, ten sharp. Whenever Paul is

asleep, he kicks his leg from one side of the bed to the other and

then recoils so fast he startles himself, although he doesn’t wake

up. It’s become a habit with him. No more sleep for me. I lie

there awake, and I know I need to close my eyes if I’m going

back to sleep, but I don’t close them. I’ve frequently forgotten

how to sleep, and have had to relearn each time. It’s either

extremely easy or utterly impossible. In the early hours just

before dawn, every creature on earth is asleep: even dogs and

cats only use half the night for prowling around the dumpsters.

If you’re sure you can’t sleep anyway, it’s easier to think of

something bright inside the darkness than to simply shut your

eyes in vain. Snow, whitewashed tree trunks, white-walled

rooms, vast expanses of sand—that’s what I’ve thought of to

pass the time, more often than I would have liked, until it grew

light. 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, ten

sharp, my thoughts raced to Major Albu even before they

shifted to me and Paul. Today I was already awake when Paul

started thrashing in his sleep. By the time the window started

turning gray, I had already seen Albu’s mouth looming on the

ceiling, gigantic, the pink tip of his tongue tucked behind his

lower teeth, and I had heard his sneering voice:

Don’t tell me you’re losing your nerve already—we’re just

warming up.

Paul’s kicking wakes me only when I haven’t been summoned

for two or three weeks. Then I feel happy, since it means

I’ve learned how to sleep again.

Whenever I’ve relearned how to sleep, and I ask Paul in the

morning what he was dreaming, he can’t remember anything.

I show him how he tosses about and splays his toes, and then

how he jerks his legs back and crooks his toes. Moving a chair

from the table to the middle of the kitchen, I sit down, stick

my legs in the air, and demonstrate the whole procedure. It

makes Paul laugh, and I say:

You’re laughing at yourself.

Who knows, maybe I dreamed I was taking you for a ride on

my motorcycle.

His thrashing is like a forward charge disrupted by an

immediate call to retreat. I presume it comes from drinking.

Not that I say this to him. Nor do I explain that it’s the night

drawing the shakes out of his legs. That’s what it must be—the

night, 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 street

below, in the early hours just before daybreak, when the whole

city is slumbering away. Otherwise Paul wouldn’t be able to

stand up straight when he woke. But if night wrenches the

shakes out of every drunk in the city, it must be tanked up to

high heaven come morning, given the number of drinkers.

Just after four, the trucks begin delivering goods to the row

of shops down below. They completely shatter the silence,

making a huge racket for the little they deliver: a few crates of

bread, milk, and vegetables, and large quantities of plum brandy.

Whenever the food runs out, the women and children manage

to cope: the lines disperse, and all roads lead home. But when

the brandy runs out, the men curse their lot and pull out their

knives. The salespeople say things to calm them down, but that

only works while the customers are still inside the store. The

moment they’re out the door they continue prowling the city

on their quest. The first fights break out because they can’t find

any brandy, and later because they’re stone drunk.

The brandy comes from the hilly region between the

Carpathians and the arid plains. The plum trees there are so

dense you can barely make out the tiny villages hiding in their

branches. Whole forests of plum trees, drenched with blue in

late summer, the branches sagging with the weight of the fruit.

The brandy is named after the region, but nobody calls it by its

proper name. It doesn’t really even need a name, since there’s

only one brand in the whole country. People just call it Two

Plums, from the picture on the label. Those two plums leaning

cheek to cheek are as familiar to the men as the Madonna and

Child are to the women. People say the plums represent the

love between bottle and drinker. The way I see it, those cheekto-

cheek plums look more like a wedding picture than a

Madonna and Child. None of the pictures in church shows the

Child’s head level with his mother’s. The Child’s forehead is

always resting against the Virgin’s cheek, with his own cheek at

her neck, and his chin on her breast. Moreover, the relationship

between drinkers and bottles is more like the one between the

couples in wedding pictures: they bring each other to ruin, and

still they won’t let go.

In our wedding picture, I’m not carrying flowers and I’m

not wearing a veil. The love in my eyes is gleaming new, but

the truth is, it was my second wedding. The picture shows Paul

and me standing cheek to cheek like two plums. Ever since he

started drinking so much, our wedding picture has proven

prophetic. Whenever Paul’s out on the town, barhopping late

into the night, I’m afraid he’ll never come home again, and I

stare at our wedding picture until it starts to change shape.

When that happens our two faces start to swim, and our cheeks

shift 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 he

were planning to come home late. But he does come home. He

always has, even after the accident.

Occasionally a shipment of buffalo-grass vodka comes in

from Poland—yellowish and bittersweet. That gets sold first.

Each bottle contains a long, sodden stem that quivers as you

pour the vodka but never buckles or slips out of the bottle.

Drinkers say:

That stem sticks in its bottle just like your soul sticks in

your body, that’s how the grass protects your soul.

Their belief goes together with the burning taste in your

mouth and the roaring drunk inside your head. The drinkers

open the bottle, the liquid glugs into their glasses, and the first

swallow slides down their throats. The soul begins to feel protected;

it quivers but never buckles and never slips out of the

body. Paul keeps his soul protected too; there’s never a day

where he feels like giving up and packing it all in. Maybe

things would be fine if it weren’t for me, but we like being

together. The drink takes his day, and the night takes his drunkenness.

When I worked the early morning shift at the clothing

factory, I heard the workers say: With a sewing machine, you

oil the cogs, with a human machine, you oil the throat.

Back then Paul and I used to take his motorcycle to work

every morning at five on the dot. We’d see the drivers with

their delivery trucks parked outside the stores, the porters carrying

crates, the vendors, and the moon. Now all I hear is the

noise; I don’t go to the window, and I don’t look at the moon. I

remember that it looks like a goose egg, and that it leaves the

city 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 knew

Paul, when I used to walk to the tram stop on foot. On the way

I thought: How bizarre that something so beautiful could be

up in the sky, with no law down here on earth forbidding

people to look at it. Evidently it was permissible to wangle

something out of the day before it was ruined in the factory. I

would start to freeze, not because I was underdressed, but simply

because I couldn’t get enough of the moon. At that hour

the moon is almost entirely eaten away; it doesn’t know where

to go after reaching the city. The sky has to loosen its grip on

the earth as day begins to break. The streets run steeply up and

down, and the streetcars travel back and forth like rooms ablaze

with light.

I know the trams from the inside too. The people getting on

at this early hour wear short sleeves, carry worn leather bags,

and have goose pimples on both arms. Each newcomer is

measured and judged with a casual glance. This is a strictly

working-class affair. Better people take their cars to work. But

here, among your own, you make comparisons: that person’s

better off than me, that one looks worse. No one’s ever in the

exact same boat as you—that would be impossible. There’s not

much time, we’re almost at the factories, and now all the people

who’ve been sized up leave the tram, one after the other. Shoes

polished or dusty, heels new and straight or worn down to an

angle, collars freshly ironed or crumpled, hair parted or not,

fingernails, watchstraps, belt buckles: every single detail provokes

envy or contempt. Nothing escapes this sleepy scrutiny,

even in the pushing crowd. The working class ferrets out the

differences: in the cold light of morning there is no equality.

The sun is in the streetcar, along for the ride, and outside as

well, pulling back the white and red clouds in anticipation of

the scorching midday heat. No one is wearing a jacket: the freezing

cold in the morning counts as fresh air, because with noon

will come the clogging dust and infernal heat.

If I haven’t been summoned, we can sleep in for several

hours. Daytime sleep is not deep black; it’s shallow and yellow.

Our sleep is restless, the sunlight falls on our pillows. But it

does make the day a little shorter. We’ll be under observation

soon enough; the day’s not going to run away. They can always

accuse us of something, even if we sleep till nearly noon. As it

is, we’re always being accused of something we can no longer

do anything about. You can sleep all you want, but the day’s

still out there waiting, and a bed is not another country. They

won’t let us rest till we’re lying next to Lilli.

Of course Paul also has to sleep off his drunk. It takes him

until about noon to get his head square on his shoulders and

relocate his mouth so he can actually speak and not just slur his

words in a voice thick with drink. His breath still smells,

though, and when he steps into the kitchen I feel as if I were

passing the open door of the bar downstairs. Since spring,

drinking hours have been regulated, and consumption of liquor

is prohibited before eleven. But the bar still opens at

six—brandy is served in coffee cups before eleven; after that

they bring out the glasses.

Paul drinks and is no longer himself, then he sleeps it off

and is back to being himself. Around noon it looks as if everything

could turn out all right, but once again it turns out

ruined. Paul goes on protecting his soul until the buffalo grass

is high and dry, while I brood over who he and I really are until

I can no longer think straight. At lunchtime we’re sitting at

the kitchen table, and any mention of his having been drunk

yesterday is the wrong thing to say. Even so, I occasionally toss

out 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 away

yesterday.

True, the flat is small, and I don’t want to avoid Paul; but

when we stay at home, we spend too much of the day sitting in

the kitchen. By mid-afternoon he’s already drunk, and in the

evening it gets worse. I put off talking because it makes him

grumpy. I keep waiting through the night, until he’s sober

again and sitting in the kitchen with eyes like onions. But then

whatever I say goes right past him. I’d like for Paul to admit

I’m right, just for once. But drinkers never admit anything, not

even silently to themselves—and they’re not about to let anyone

else squeeze it out of them, especially somebody who’s

waiting to hear the admission. The minute Paul wakes up, his

thoughts turn to drinking, though he denies it. That’s why

there’s never any truth. If he’s not sitting silently at the table,

letting my words go right past him, he says something like

this, meant to last the entire day:

Don’t fret, I’m not drinking out of desperation. I drink

because I like it.

That may be the case, I say, since you seem to think with

your tongue.

Paul looks out the kitchen window at the sky, or into his

cup. He dabs at the drops of coffee on the table, as if to confirm

that they’re wet and really will spread if he smears them with a

finger. He takes my hand, I look out the kitchen window at the

sky, into the cup, I too dab at the odd drop of coffee on the

table. The red enamel tin stares at us and I stare back. But Paul

does not, because that would mean doing something different

today from what he did yesterday. Is he being strong or weak

when he remains silent instead of saying for once: I’m not

going 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 and

too light—as if they contained a mix of sand and air. I placed

my hand upon his neck and stroked the stubble I love to touch

in the mornings, the whiskers that grow in his sleep. He drew

my hand up under his eye, it slid down his cheek to his chin. I

didn’t take away my fingers, but I did think to myself:

I wouldn’t count on any of this cheek-to-cheek business

after you’ve seen that picture of the two plums.

I like to hear Paul talk that way, so late in the morning, and

yet 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’t

need to say anything else. He doesn’t have to wait, I’m ready

with my approval, not a single reproach on the tip of my

tongue. The one in my head quickly fades. It’s good I can’t see

myself, since my face feels stupid and pale. Yesterday morning,

Paul’s hangover once again yielded up an unexpected pussycat

gentleness that came padding on soft paws. Your man—the only

people who talk like that have shallow wits and too much pride

tucked around the corners of their mouths. Although the

noontime 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 no

point in denying it, we’re just wasting time. Actually, it’s only

my time being wasted; after all, he’s doing his job. He rolls up

his sleeve and glances at the clock. The time is easy to see, but

not 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 the

front 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 up

against the wall.

To which I reply:

No way, I was on this little strip here no wider than a

clothesline, 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 did

nothing but toss around. My brain was grinding down thought

after thought, and toward morning, when I was half asleep, I

had a series of bad dreams. Two nights of bad dreams that kept

reaching out and clutching at me all day long. The night I was

on the sofa, my first husband put the suitcase on the bridge

over the river, gripped me by the back of my neck, and roared

with laughter. Then he looked at the water and whistled that

song about love falling apart and the river water turning black

as 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 peering

up from the depths, from where the pebbles had settled.

Then a white horse ate apricots in a thicket of trees.With every

apricot it raised its head and spat out the stone like a human

being. And the night I had the bed to myself, someone grabbed

my shoulder from behind and said:

Don’t turn around, I’m not here.

Without moving my head, I just squinted out of the corners

of my eyes. Lilli’s fingers were gripping me, her voice was that

of a man, so it wasn’t her. I raised my hand to touch her and the

voice said:

What you can’t see you can’t touch.

I saw the fingers, they were hers, but someone else was using

them. Someone I couldn’t see. And in the next dream, my

grandfather was pruning back a hydrangea that had been frostburnt

by the snow. He called me over: Come take a look, I’ve

got a lamb here.

Snow was falling on his trousers, his shears were clipping off

the 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 the

shears slowly, so that I wasn’t sure whether it was the shears

that were squeaking or his hand. I tossed the shears into the

snow. They sank in so that it was impossible to tell where they

had fallen. He combed the entire yard looking for them, his

nose practically touching the snow. When he reached the garden

gate I stepped on his hands so he’d look up and not go wandering

off through the gate, searching the whole white street. I

said:

Stop it, the lamb’s frozen and the wool got burnt in the

frost.

By the garden fence was another hydrangea, one that had

been pruned bare. I gestured to it:

What’s wrong with that one.

That one’s the worst, he said. Come spring it’ll be having

little 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 have

someone. The only place you sleep alone is in your coffin, and

that’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. At

half past four in the morning I saw Paul asleep in the gray

light, a twisted face above a double chin. And at that early

hour, down by the shops, people were cursing out loud and

laughing. Lilli said:

Curses ward off evil spirits.

Idiot, get your foot out of the way.Move, or do you have shit

in your shoes. Open those great flapping ears of yours and

you’ll hear what I’m saying, but watch you don’t blow away in

this wind. Never mind your hair, we haven’t finished unloading.

A woman was clucking, short and hoarse like a hen. A van

door slammed. Lend a hand, you moron. If you want a rest you

should check into a sanatorium.

Paul’s clothes were strewn on the floor. The new day was

already in the wardrobe mirror, the day on which I have been

summoned, today. I got up, careful to place my right foot on

the 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 could

it hurt.

What I’d like to know is whether other people’s brains control

their good fortune as well as their thoughts. My brain’s

only 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 fortune

I have, even though Paul wouldn’t consider it very good at all.

Every other day or so I declare:

I’m doing just fine.

Paul’s face is right in front of me, quiet and still, gaping at

what I’ve just said, as if our having each other didn’t count. He

says:

You feel fine because you’ve forgotten what that means for

other people.

Others might mean their life as a whole when they say: I’m

doing just fine. All I’m talking about is my good fortune. Paul

realizes 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 a

matter of time.

Just look at us, says Paul, how can you go on about being

fortunate.

Quick as a handful of flour hitting a windowpane, the bathroom

light cast a face into the mirror, a face with froggy creases

over its eyes which looked like me. I held my hands in the

water, 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’s

not the first time I’ve had this happen. I feel nauseous, I spit

out what’s in my mouth and stop. Ever since my first summons,

I’ve begun to distinguish between life and fortune. When I go

in for questioning, I have no choice but to leave my good fortune

at home. I leave it in Paul’s face, around his eyes, his

mouth, amid his stubble. If it could be seen, you’d see it on his

face like a transparent glaze. Every time I have to go, I want to

stay behind in the flat, like the fear I always leave behind and

which I can’t take away from Paul. Like the fortune I leave at

home when I’m away. He doesn’t know how much my good

fortune has come to rely upon his fear. He couldn’t bear to

know that.What he does know is obvious to anyone with eyes:

that whenever I’ve been summoned, I put on my green blouse

and eat a walnut. The blouse is one I inherited from Lilli, but

its name comes from me: the blouse that grows. If I were to

take my good fortune with me, it would weaken my nerves.

Albu says:

You don’t mean you’re losing your nerve already—we’re

just warming up.

I’m not losing my nerve, not at all: in fact, I’m overloaded

with nerves. And every one of them is humming like a moving

streetcar.

They say that walnuts on an empty stomach are good for

your nerves and your powers of reason. Any child knows that,

but I’d forgotten it. What sparked my memory wasn’t the fact

that I was being summoned so often—it was sheer chance. One

time I had to be at Albu’s at ten sharp, like today; by half past

seven I was all set to go. Getting there takes an hour and a half

at most. I give myself two hours, and if I’m early I walk a while

around the neighborhood. I prefer it that way. I’ve always

arrived 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 got

to eat the walnut. I’d been ready that early for previous summonses,

but on that particular morning the walnut was lying

there on the kitchen table. Paul had found it in the elevator the

day before. He’d put it in his pocket, since you don’t just leave

a walnut sitting there. It was the first one of the year, with a

little of the moist fuzz left from the green husk. I weighed it in

my hand: it seemed a little light for a good fresh nut, as if it

might be hollow. I couldn’t find a hammer, so I split it open

with the stone that used to be in the hall but has since moved

to a corner of the kitchen. The brain of the nut was loose inside.

It tasted of sour cream. That day my interrogation was shorter

than usual, I kept my nerve, and once I was back on the street,

I thought to myself:

That was thanks to the nut.

Ever since then I’ve believed in nuts, that nuts help. I don’t

really believe it, but I want to have done whatever I can that

might 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 be

easier on Paul and the neighbors—not to mention myself—if I

split them open in the evening, but I can’t have people telling

me what time to crack nuts.

I brought the stone from the Carpathians. My first husband

had been on military service since March. Every week he wrote

me a whining letter and I responded with a comforting card.

Summer came, and I tried to figure out exactly how many letters

and cards we would have to exchange before he returned.

My father-in-law wanted to take his place and sleep with me, so

I soon had enough of his house and garden. I packed my rucksack

and early one morning, after he’d gone to work, I stashed

it in the bushes near a gap in the fence. A few hours later I

strolled out to the road, with nothing in my hands.My motherin-

law was hanging out the laundry and had no idea what I was

up to. Without saying a word, I pushed the rucksack through

the gap in the fence and walked to the station. I took a train

into the mountains and joined up with some people who’d just

graduated from the music academy. Every day we trekked and

stumbled 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. Cemeteries

underwater and crosses all around—portents of dangerous

times to come. As if all those round lakes were hungry and

needed their yearly ration of meat delivered on the dates

inscribed. Here no one dived for the dead: the water would

snuff out life in an instant, chilling you to the bone in a matter

of seconds. The music graduates sang as the lake pictured

them, upside down, taking their measure as potential corpses.

Hiking, resting, or eating, they sang in chorus. It wouldn’t

have surprised me to hear them harmonize while they slept at

night, just as they did at those bleak altitudes where the sky

blows into your mouth. I had to stay with the group because

death makes no allowance for the wanderer who strays alone.

The lakes made our eyes grow bigger by the day; in every face

I could see the circles widening, the cheeks losing ground. And

every day our legs grew shorter. Nevertheless, on the last day I

wanted to take something back home with me, so I picked

through the scree until I found a rock that looked like a child’s

foot. The musicians looked for small flat pebbles they could rub

in their hands as worry-stones. Their stones looked like coat

buttons, and I had more than enough of those every day in the

factory. But those musicians put their faith in worry-stones the

way I now put mine in nuts.

I can’t help it: I’ve put on the blouse that grows, I bang

twice with the stone, rattling all the dishes in the kitchen, and

the walnut is cracked. And as I’m eating it, Paul comes in, startled

by the banging. He’s wearing his pajamas and downs one

or two glasses of water, two if he was as blind drunk as he was

last night. I don’t need to understand each individual word. I

know 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 really

believe in all the other routines I’ve developed. Consequently

I’m all the more stubborn.

Let me believe what I want.

Paul lets that one go, since we both know it’s not right to

quarrel before the interrogation, you need to keep a clear head.

Most of the sessions are torturously long despite the nut. But

how 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 draining

before clearing it off the table, the more I rely on them.

People who are summoned develop routines that help them

out a little.Whether these routines really work or not is beside

the point. It’s not people, though, it’s me who’s developed

them; 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’ll

ask me when I’m summoned. This is absolutely necessary, he

claims, whereas what I do is crazy. He’d be right if the questions

he’s preparing me for really were the ones I was asked. Up

to now they’ve always been completely different.

It’s too much to expect my routines to really help me. Actually

they don’t help me so much as help move life along from

one day to the next. There’s no point expecting them to fill

your head with lucky thoughts. There’s a lot to be said for moving

life along, but there’s essentially nothing to say when it

comes to luck, because as soon as you open your mouth you jinx

it away. Not even the luck you’ve missed out on can bear being

talked about. The routines I’ve developed are about moving

from one day to the next, and not about luck.

I’m sure Paul’s right: the walnut and the blouse that grows

only add to the fear. And what sense is there in shooting for

good fortune when all that does is add to the fear. I am constantly

dwelling on this, and as a result I don’t expect as much

as other people. Nobody covets the fear that others make for

themselves. But with luck it’s just the opposite, which is why

good fortune is never a very good goal.

On the green blouse that grows there’s a large mother-ofpearl

button which I picked out from a great many buttons at

the factory and took for Lilli.

At the interrogation I sit at the small table, twisting the

button in my fingers, and answer calmly, even though every

one of my nerves is jangling. Albu paces to and fro; having to

formulate the right questions wears at his calm, just as having

to give the right answers wears at mine. As long as I keep my

composure 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. Of

course I often have misgivings about these names. But they’ve

never done any harm, not even on days when I haven’t been

summoned. The blouse that grows helps me, and the blouse

that waits may be helping Paul. His fear on my behalf is as

high as the ceiling, just as mine is for him when he sits around

the flat, waiting and drinking, or when he’s barhopping in

town. It’s easier if you’re the one going out, if you’re the one

taking your fear away and leaving your fortune at home, and if

there’s someone waiting for you to come back. Sitting at home,

waiting, stretches time to the brink and tightens fear to the

point of snapping.

The powers I’ve bestowed on my routines verge on the

superhuman. Albu yells:

You see, everything is connected.

And I twist the large button on my blouse and say: In your

mind they are, in my mind they aren’t.

Shortly before he got off, the old man in the straw hat turned his

watery eyes away from me. Now there’s a father with a child on

his lap sitting on the seat facing me, his legs stretched out into

the aisle. Watching the city go by outside the window isn’t

something he can be bothered with. The child sticks a forefinger

up his father’s nose. Crooking a finger and hunting for snot

is something kids learn early. Later they’re told not to pick anyone’s

nose 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 the

tracks, between stops, the driver gets out. Who knows how

long we’ll be stranded. It’s early in the morning and already

he’s sneaking a break when he should be driving his route.

Everyone here does what he wants. The driver strolls over to

the shops, tucking in his shirt and adjusting his trousers so no

one will notice he’s abandoned his tram in mid-route. He acts

like someone who’s so bored that he finally got up off his couch

just to poke his nose into the sunshine. If he’s planning to buy

anything in one of the shops over there, he’ll either have to say

who he is or else he’ll have to wait in line. If all he’s after is a

cup of coffee, I hope he doesn’t sit down to drink it. He doesn’t

dare touch brandy, even if he does keep his window open. Every

one of us sitting on the tram has the right to reek of brandy

except for him. But he’s behaving as if it were the other way

round. My summons puts me in the same position as far as

brandy is concerned. I’d rather have his reason for abstaining

than my own.Who knows when he’ll be back.

Ever since I began leaving my good fortune at home, the kiss on

my hand doesn’t paralyze me as much as it used to. I crook up

my finger joints so that my knuckles keep Albu from speaking.

Paul and I have rehearsed this kiss. In order to approximate the

importance of the signet ring on Albu’s middle finger, to see

how it affects the finger-squeeze, I made a ring out of a strip of

rubber and a coat button. We took turns wearing it, and we

laughed so much we completely forgot why we were going

through the exercise in the first place. I learned not to crook my

hand up all at once but gradually. That way the knuckles can

block his gums and keep him from speaking. Sometimes when

Albu is kissing my hand, I think of my rehearsal with Paul.

Then the pain at my fingernails and the slobber on my hand

aren’t so humiliating. You learn as you go, but I can’t show that

I’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 the

entranceway and the lower stories under surveillance. From the

sixth floor up the flats are too high, so that you’d need sophisticated

technology to see anything in detail. What’s more,

about halfway up the building, the façade angles out toward

the front. If you stare up at it long enough you’ll feel your eyes

rolling back into your forehead. I’ve tried it often; your neck

grows tired. The leaning tower has looked like that for twelve

years now, says Paul, from the day it was built. Whenever I

want to explain where I live, all I have to do is say: In the leaning

tower. 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 in

their necks.

The fact that our flat is high up is an advantage for us, but

it also has the disadvantage that Paul and I can’t see exactly

what’s going on down below. From the seventh floor you can’t

make out anything smaller than a suitcase, and when do you

see anyone carrying a suitcase. Individual items of clothing

blur into big splotches of color, and faces turn into little pale

patches between the hair and the clothes. You could guess at

what the nose, eyes, or teeth inside those patches might look

like, but why bother. Old people and children can be recognized

by the way they walk. There are dumpsters located on the

grass between our building and the shops, with a walkway running

alongside them. Two narrow footpaths leave the paved

sidewalk and circle around the group of bins, without quite

meeting. From up here the bins look like ransacked cupboards

with the doors torn off. Once a month someone sets them on

fire, the smoke rises and the garbage is consumed. If your windows

aren’t shut, your eyes start stinging and your throat gets

sore. Most things happen outside the entrances to the shops,

but unfortunately all we can see are the rear service doors. No

matter how often we count them, we can never match up the

twenty-seven doors in back with the eight front doors belonging

to 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, the

delivery trucks stop mostly in the street, out front.

The old shoemaker was complaining he had too little room

and too many rats. His shop consists of a workbench enclosed

in a small space that is partitioned from the rest of the room by

a makeshift wall of wooden planks. The man I took over from

was the one who fixed the place up, the shoemaker said. Back

then 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 at

all. I knocked in a few nails and ever since I’ve been hanging

the shoes up by their laces, thongs, or heels, they don’t get

gnawed on anymore. I can’t have the rats eating everything—

after all, I have to pay for the damage. Especially in winter,

when they’re hungrier. Behind those planks there’s a great big

hall. Once, back in the early days, during a holiday, I came

down to the shop, loosened two of the boards behind the bench,

and squeezed through with a flashlight. There’s nowhere you

can 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, they

just tunnel through the ground. The walls are covered with

electrical sockets, and the back wall has four doors leading out

to the bins. But you can’t budge them so much as an inch to

drive the rats out even for a couple hours. The door to my

workplace is just a cheap piece of tin—in fact, more than half

the doors in back of the shops aren’t doors at all, they’re just tin

plates they built into the wall to save on concrete. The sockets

are probably there in case of war. There’ll always be war all

right, he laughed, but not here. The Russians’ve got us where

they want us with treaties, they won’t be showing up here.

Whatever they need, they’ve shipped off to Moscow: they eat

our grain and our meat and leave us to go hungry and fight over

the shortages.Who’d want to conquer us, all it would do is cost

them money. Every country on earth is happy not to have us,

even the Russians.

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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 liftsmy 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 listeningto 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 hegot 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 Ibegan 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.