The Passport (2 page)

The joiner’s mother had gone into the garden with the big knife. The garden path was a furrow. The lettuce had shot up. Their leaves were stuck together by the white milk that forms in the stems. The joiner’s mother had carried the knife down the furrow. Where the fence begins and the garden ends, a white dahlia bloomed. The dahlia reached up to her shoulder. The joiner’s mother smelt the dahlia. She smelt at the white leaves for a long time. She breathed in the dahlia. She rubbed her forehead and looked into the yard.

The joiner’s mother cut the white dahlia with the big knife.

“The melon was just a pretext,” said the joiner after the funeral. “The dahlia was her misfortune.” And the joiner’s neighbour said, “The dahlia was a vision.”

“Because it was so dry that summer,” said the joiner’s wife, “all the dahlia’s leaves were white and closed up. Its flower was larger than any dahlia can be. And because there was no wind that summer, it didn’t drop off. The dahlia had long breathed its last, yet it couldn’t wither.”

“You can’t stand it,” said the joiner, “no one can stand it.”

No one knows what the joiner’s mother did with the dahlia she had cut off. She didn’t bring the dahlia into the house. She didn’t put it in the room. She didn’t leave it lying in the garden either.

“She came out of the garden. She had the big knife in her hand,” said the joiner. “There was something of the dahlia in her eyes. The whites of her eyes were dry.”

“It may be,” said the joiner, “that she was waiting for the melon and plucked the dahlia to pieces. Plucked it apart with
her hands. Not a single petal lay scattered on the ground. As though the garden were a room.”

“I believe,” said the joiner, “that she scraped a hole in the ground with the big knife. She buried the dahlia.”

The joiner’s mother had pulled the pail out of the well late in the afternoon. She carried the melon to the kitchen table. She stabbed into its green skin with the point of the knife. She turned her arm and the big knife in a circle and cut the melon through the middle. The melon cracked. It was a death rattle. In the well, on the kitchen table, until its two halves were split apart, the melon had still been alive.

The joiner’s mother had opened her eyes wide. Because her eyes were as dry as the dahlia, they did not grow large. The juice dripped from the blade of the knife. Her eyes were small and full of hate as she looked at the red flesh. The black seeds lay above one another like the teeth of a comb.

The joiner’s mother had not cut the melon into slices. She placed the two halves in front of her. She dug the red flesh out with the point of the knife. “She had the greediest eyes I’ve ever seen,” said the joiner.

The red water had dripped over the kitchen table. Dripped from the corners of her mouth. Dripped down from her elbows. The floor was sticky from the red water of the melon.

“My mother’s teeth had never been so white and cold,” said the joiner. “She ate and said: Don’t look at me like that, don’t look at my mouth. She was spitting the black seeds onto the table.”

“I looked away. I didn’t leave the kitchen. I was frightened of the melon,” said the joiner. “I looked out of the window into the street. Someone I didn’t know was walking past. He was walking quickly and talking to himself. I heard my mother digging with the knife. Heard her chewing. And
swallowing. Mother, I said without looking at her, stop eating.”

The joiner’s mother had raised her hand. “She screamed, and I looked at her, because she’d screamed so loudly,” said the joiner. “She threatened me with the knife. ‘This is no summer, and you’re no man,’ she screamed. ’My temples are throbbing. My bowels are burning. This summer is throwing out the fire of many years. Only the melon cools me down.’”

THE SEWING MACHINE

The pebbles are uneven and small. The owl cries behind the trees. It’s looking for a roof. The houses stand white and streaked with lime.

Windisch feels the obstinate member below his navel. The wind knocks on the wood. It’s sewing. The wind is sewing a sack in the earth.

Windisch hears his wife’s voice. She says: “Monster.” Every night when Windisch turns his breath towards her in bed, she says: “Monster.” For two years she has had no uterus in her stomach. “The doctor told me not to,” she says, “I’m not going to let my insides be messed about just to please you.”

When she says it, Windisch feels a cold anger between her face and his. She grasps Windisch by the shoulder. Sometimes it takes a while before she finds his shoulder. When she has found Windisch’s shoulder she says in the darkness close to Windisch’s ear, “You could be a grandfather by now. Our time has past.”

The previous summer, Windisch had been on his way home with two sacks of flour.

Windisch had knocked at a window. The mayor shone his torch through the curtain. “Why do you still knock?” said the
mayor. “Put the flour in the yard. The gate is open.” His voice was asleep. That night, there was a thunderstorm. A flash of lightning struck the grass in front of the window. The mayor switched off his torch. His voice woke up and spoke more loudly. “Another five deliveries, Windisch,” said the mayor, “then the money at New Year. And at Easter you’ll have your passport.” There was a roll of thunder and the mayor looked up to the window. “Put the flour underneath the roof,” he said, “it’s going to rain.”

“Twelve deliveries since then, and ten thousand lei, and Easter is long past,” thinks Windisch. It’s a long time since he knocked on the window. He opens the gate. Windisch presses the sack to his stomach and puts it in the yard. Even when it’s not raining, Windisch puts the sack underneath the roof.

His bicycle is light. Windisch holds it close to him, as he wheels it along. When the bicycle is going through the grass, Windisch can’t hear his footsteps.

That night, all the windows had been dark. Windisch had stood in the long hallway. A flash of lightning tore open the earth. A roll of thunder pressed the house down into the crevice. Windisch’s wife didn’t hear the key turning in the lock.

Windisch had stood in the hall. The thunder was so far above the village, beyond the gardens, that there was a cold stillness in the night. The pupils in his eyes were cold. Windisch had the feeling that the night was going to shatter, that all at once it would be dazzlingly bright above the village. Windisch stood in the hall and knew that if he had not gone into the house, he would have seen, across all the gardens, the narrow end of all things and his own end everywhere.

Behind the door Windisch heard the stubborn, regular moaning of his wife. Like a sewing machine.

Windisch flung the door open. He switched on the light. His wife’s legs, raised on the sheet, were like open window sashes. They twitched in the light. Windisch’s wife opened her eyes wide. Her gaze was not dazzled by the light. It was merely fixed.

Windisch bent down. He unlaced his shoes. He looked beneath his arm at his wife’s thighs. He saw her pulling a slimy finger out of the hair. She didn’t know where to put the hand with the finger. She laid it on her naked stomach.

Windisch looked down at his shoes and said: “So that’s how it is with your bladder, my lady.” Windisch’s wife put the hand with that finger to her face. She pushed her legs down to the foot of the bed. She pressed them closer and closer together, until Windisch could see only a single leg and the two soles of her feet.

Windisch’s wife turned her face to the wall and wept loudly. She wept for a long time with the voice of her younger years. She wept briefly and softly with the voice of her own age. She whimpered three times with the voice of another woman. Then she was silent.

Windisch switched off the light. He climbed into the warm bed. He felt her slime, as if she had emptied her stomach into the bed.

Windisch heard sleep pressing her down far below this slime. Only her breath hummed. He was tired and empty. And far from all things. The sound of her breath seemed to be at the end of all things, at his own end.

That night her sleep was so distant, that no dream could find her.

BLACK SPOTS

The skinner’s windows are behind the apple tree. They are
brightly lit. “He’s got his passport,” thinks Windisch. The windows glare and the glass is naked. The skinner has sold everything. The rooms are empty. “They’ve sold the curtains,” says Windisch to himself.

The skinner is leaning against the tiled stove. There are white plates on the floor. Cutlery is lying on the window sill. The skinner’s black coat is hanging on the door handle. The skinner’s wife bends over the large suitcases as she passes. Windisch can see her hands. They throw shadows against the empty walls of the room. They grow long and bend. Her arms are rippled like branches over water. The skinner is counting his money. He lays the bundles of notes in the pipes of the tiled stove.

The cupboard is a white rectangle, the beds are white frames. The walls in between are black patches. The floor slopes. The floor rises. It rises high against the wall. And stops at the door. The skinner is counting the second bundle of money. The floor will cover him. The skinner’s wife blows the dust from the grey fur cap. The floor will lift her to the ceiling. By the tiled stove, the clock has struck a long white patch against the wall. Windisch closes his eyes. “Time is at an end,” he thinks. He hears the white patch of the clock on the wall ticking and sees a clock-face of black spots. Time has no clock hand. Only the black spots are turning. They crowd together. They push themselves out of the white patch. Fall along the wall. They are the floor. The black spots are the floor in the other room.

Rudi is kneeling on the floor in the empty room. Before him coloured glass lies in long rows. In circles. Beside Rudi is the empty suitcase. A picture is hanging on the wall. It isn’t a picture. The frame is made of green glass. Inside the frame is frosted glass with red waves.

The owl flies over the gardens. Its cry is high. Its flight is
deep. Its flight is full of night. “A cat,” thinks Windisch, “a cat that flies.”

Rudi holds a spoon of blue glass to his eye. The white of his eye grows large. His pupil is a wet, glistening sphere in the spoon. The floor washes colours to the edge of the room. The time from the other room beats waves. The black spots float along. The light bulb flickers. The light is torn. The two windows swim into one another. The two floors push the walls in front of them. Windisch holds his head in his hand. His pulse is beating in his head. His temple beats in his wrist. The floors lift themselves. They come closer, touch. They sink down into the crack. They will be heavy, and the earth will break. The glass will glow, will become a trembling abscess in the suitcase.

Windisch opens his mouth. He feels them growing in his face, the black spots.

THE BOX

Rudi is an engineer. He worked in a glass factory for three years. The glass factory is in the mountains.

During those three years the skinner only visited his son once. “I’m going to visit Rudi in the mountains for a week,” the skinner had said to Windisch.

The skinner came back after three days. He had ruddy cheeks from the mountain air and tired eyes from lack of sleep. “I couldn’t sleep there,” said the skinner. “I didn’t sleep a wink. I could feel the mountains in my head at night.”

“Everywhere you look,” explained the skinner, “there are mountains. On the way to the mountains are tunnels. They are black as night. The train goes through the tunnels. The whole mountain rattles in the train. You get a buzzing in your ears and throbbing in your head. First pitch black night, then
broad daylight,” said the skinner, “and constantly alternating. It’s unbearable. Everyone sits and doesn’t even look out of the window. When it’s light, they read. They take care not to let the books slip from their knees. I had to be careful, not to touch them with my elbows. They leave their books open when it gets dark. I listened, I listened in the tunnels, to hear if they shut their books. I heard nothing. When it was light again, I looked at the books first and then at their eyes. The books were open and their eyes were shut. They opened their eyes after me. I tell you, Windisch,” said the skinner, “I felt proud every time, because I opened my eyes before them. I can sense the end of the tunnel. I’ve got that from Russia,” said the skinner. He held his hand to his forehead. “I have never experienced,” said the skinner, “so many rattling nights and so many bright days. At night, in bed, I heard the tunnels. They roared. Roared like the pit waggons in the Urals.”

The skinner nodded his head. His face lit up. He looked over his shoulder to the table. He looked, in case his wife was listening. Then he whispered: “Women, Windisch, I tell you, there are women there. The way they walk. They reap faster than the men.” The skinner laughed. “It’s a pity,” he said, “that they’re Wallachians. They’re good in bed, but they can’t cook like our women.”

A tin bowl stood on the table. The skinner’s wife was whisking an eggwhite in the bowl. “I washed two shirts,” she said. “The water was black. That’s how dirty it is there. You don’t see it, because of the forests.”

The skinner looked into the bowl. “At the top, on the highest mountain,” he said, “there’s a sanatorium. That’s where the lunatics are. They walk around behind the fence in blue underpants and thick coats. One of them spends all day looking for fir cones in the grass. He talks to himself. Rudi says he’s a miner. He started a strike.”

The skinner’s wife dipped a finger into the eggwhite. “That’s what you get,” she said and licked the tip of her finger.

“Another one,” said the skinner, “was only in the sanatorium for a week. He’s back in the mine again. He had been struck by a car.”

The skinner’s wife lifted the bowl. “These eggs are old,” she said, “the snow is bitter.”

The skinner nodded. “You can see the cemeteries from the top,” he said, “clinging to the slopes of the mountains.”

Windisch laid his hands on the table beside the bowl. He said: “I wouldn’t like to be buried there.”

The skinner’s wife looked absent-mindedly at Windisch’s hands. “Yes, it must be nice in the mountains,” she said. “Only it’s so far from here. We can’t get there, and Rudi never comes home.”