The Appointment (23 page)

Has the sun given you a headache.

No, I was going to pick some daisies.

Are you really all right.

Yes, how about you.

How about me, my nose is still in the middle of my face, isn’t it.

So is mine, but you ask me all the same.

I can’t complain, he said.

I wondered whether there were two versions of him—one close up and peaceful, the other far off and full of dead people murmuring. To chase them away he had to shake off his burden.
In secret, if he could. Or if that wasn’t possible, then openly, but in terms designed to make people admire rather than pity him. And the best way to manage that was dancing. There were only the two of us at home, he and I. My husband and mother-in-law had gone into town on some errand that afternoon. I never did pick any more daisies, not for fear of him, but because I was afraid of the white daisies.

He worked in the garden but all the Latin names in the world couldn’t give him a green thumb; apart from grafting roses, he hadn’t learned a thing from working in the nursery. Two years ago they received an important order, a factory director had died and there was a big state funeral, the nursery was to furnish twenty wreaths as big as cartwheels. My father-in-law wanted to make an impression and use something special. So he prescribed tiger lilies and ferns instead of the traditional carnation and ivy wreaths. But what they unloaded from the car at the Heroes’ Cemetery was nothing but a lot of wilted brown stalks. Thirty years in the business and he didn’t even know that tiger lilies wilt within half an hour. He should have been sacked, but he had the chief engineer on his side. Twenty-eight years younger than he, she was well-built, fresh out of school, full of energy, and could run around nonstop and give orders better than he could. The working days were long, the sky warm, the summer green. As June turned to July and the foliage grew thick on the shrubs, my father-in-law started fondling the new chief engineer. She didn’t protest, either. There weren’t very many aphids or mites that year, so they had time for each other. Comrade Louse Inspector convinced the director of the funeral service that tiger lilies generally have a long life. She said that all the talk in specialist circles that summer was of a form of mildew from the south of France that attacked cemeteries, since graves aren’t sprayed out of respect
for the dead. When freshly cut flowers come into contact with this mildew, they wither in no time at all, every last one of them. Exactly the same thing would have happened with carnations, she told the director. And he put his faith in her expertise, for his own, although he was about to retire, also barely extended beyond the difference between chamomiles and carnations.

I’d really like
to know how many people from our apartment block, from the shops down below, from the factory, or from the whole city have ever been summoned. Albu’s office building must have something going on every day of the week, behind every door in the corridor. I can’t see the man with the briefcase who ran off to find his aspirin. Maybe the tram left without him, or maybe it was too full for him to get back on. He’ll just have to wait for the next one—if he has the time. A woman has sat down beside me, her behind is broader than the seat, what’s more she’s sitting with her legs astride a bag. Her thigh is rubbing against me, she rummages in her bag and pulls out a little cone made of newspaper. It’s soggy and full of blood-red bumps—cherries, of all things, cherries. She reaches in with one hand and spits the stones into the other. She doesn’t linger over each individual cherry, she doesn’t suck them clean, she leaves a little meat on every stone. What’s her rush, nobody’s going to swipe her cherries and gobble them up. I wonder if she’s ever been summoned for questioning, or whether she might be sometime in the future. Her hand is soon so full of cherry stones she can’t close her fingers. She can drop them inconspicuously on the floor, even spit them out for all I care. There are people standing in the aisle all the way up to the driver, it probably wouldn’t bother them, either. The driver
won’t discover the stones until this evening, he’ll be annoyed because he has to sweep out the car, but there’ll be plenty of other things left over from the day’s run, too. What on earth was the old officer thinking of with Lilli. Cherry season comes every year and lasts from May through September, and it’ll be that way as long as the world exists, no matter what. How does that help him, there aren’t any cherries in prison. It’s good the car’s so crowded, I’ll have more than enough space when I get to Albu’s. And on the way back, if I do come home today. The trams don’t run so often in the evening. I’ll wait, climb on board along with a few others, and sit down in that awful yellow light. Maybe some of them will have a few cherries later on, a few after dessert, for instance. As far as I’m concerned, they can go right ahead.

It wasn’t until
two days later that I went to my landlord. I paid him what I owed, two thousand lei. The skin on his hands was as thin as the skin on his face. I counted the notes right into the palm of his hand, and he pretended he was counting them in his head but in fact you could hear him whispering. One crumpled note fell on the floor, I picked it up but didn’t smooth it out. I put it back in his hand, upside down, and noticed that the landlord had a weak grip. The old man was even worse at taking than I had been at the flea market. What was he thinking about when he said:

Oh Lord, my hands are dirty from peeling potatoes, I’m making mashed potatoes today. Do you like mashed potatoes.

I’ve already eaten.

With schnitzel and salad.

At that moment I saw he had a wooden handle sticking out of his jacket pocket, it belonged to a knife. When I’d rung the
bell, he’d slipped the potato knife in his pocket instead of leaving it in the kitchen. Either because he was expecting somebody and wanted to keep the knife handy or because he forgot he was holding it and only when he was about to open the door did he realize that a knife could alarm a visitor. I quickly handed him the money so I could be on my way. But then we struck a deal. He smiled and chirped and bought the refrigerator and carpets off me for a hundred more than I had paid him. He went back to the kitchen for the extra money. And when he returned with the additional hundred lei, the knife was still in his jacket, either because he’d forgotten it or wanted to keep it handy.

I’m moving in with a man and a motorcycle, I said.

The one from the flea market, he said.

You know him, I asked.

If it’s the same one.

Were you at the flea market too.

And at the game preserve, he said. I won’t look for a new tenant until winter, the room will be more expensive then. Not for you, if it doesn’t work out, you can come back.

Is that why you bought the carpets and the refrigerator.

I bought them because I needed to.

For a moment I thought he said: Because I needed you. I said:

I’ll be living in the leaning tower.

He knew where that was.

My first morning in the leaning tower, Paul and I talked and talked till the sun was at high noon. I was amazed at all the mothers and fathers we had to bring in just to explain where we were each coming from on our way to meeting the other. Handkerchiefs, strollers, baby carriages, peach trees, cuff links, ants—even dust and wind carried weight. It’s easy to talk
about bad years if they are past. But when you have to say who you are right at this very moment, it’s hard to get more out than an uneasy silence.

That afternoon Paul went to the shop and bought himself a bottle of yellow-green buffalo-grass vodka. The sun was going west, the vodka was going straight to Paul’s head. An ant scurried across the kitchen table, Paul waved a match over it.

Where do the ants go, to the forest.
Where has the forest gone, into wood.
Where has the wood gone, into fire.
Where has the fire gone, into my heart.

Suddenly the match flared alight. It was black magic, because Paul was holding the box in his other hand under the table. The match curled up, the flame licked at his thumb. Paul blew, looked into the thread of smoke.

My heart has stopped,
and the ants keep going.

Paul wasn’t drunk, only tipsy. He was high, but it was more an external thing. Having ants go marching through your heart is no laughing matter as far as I’m concerned, but Paul laughed out loud so that even my tongue started to tickle. Paul’s light-headedness was contagious, back then there wasn’t any trace of darkness in the vodka, and I wasn’t afraid of his drinking. Paul didn’t drink that much during the first six months—by the end of the evening half the blade of grass would still be wet. And during the first few weeks, when he came home from work he went straight out onto the balcony and his aerials: the sparks that fly when you’re welding and how quickly they fade.
Where has the fire gone, I always saw the match and the ants in our hearts. Now and then Paul would whistle to himself, a song so out of tune it sounded more like grinding metal than music. Each week he’d finish a whole antler of an aerial—and then there were nearly enough for a Sunday at the flea market and a heap of money. But Paul never got the chance to sell them. Two young men came knocking at the door.

Black-marketeering, they said. And infiltration of the state through foreign TV channels.

Without asking, they packed all the tools and iron tubing into some sacks they’d brought along and carried them down on the elevator to a small truck that we could see from the kitchen window. They left the finished aerials out in the stairwell. Paul said:

Once you’ve got everything, close the door behind you.

He took the brandy into the kitchen and locked himself in. I sat leaning against the wall in the stairwell so as not to be in the way and watched the two men at work. They carried the aerials down the stairs, without taking the elevator, two at a time, one in each hand. A quick clatter of steps and then the echo, wary poachers with stolen antlers. They never left each other’s side, together they came and went three times. On their last trip one of them snorted with exertion, I saw his shirt was sticking to his back, and he said:

We have to.

Do your job, I said, just don’t tell me any stories.

I let them take away all the antlers, then they were gone and I had to pound on the kitchen door before Paul opened it. The brandy was gone and Paul was pacing back and forth between the main room and the balcony with more feet than he had, and shouted:

That spy is sitting over there and watching.

In the apartment tower opposite, two stories down, a woman was sitting on the balcony and sewing.

Let her sew, she can’t see up to here.

She can sew wherever she likes, but not on the balcony.

That’s her balcony, she’s not interested in you.

We’ll see about that, said Paul.

He staggered back into the room and fetched a chair. He stood on it like an ungainly child. While I was wondering what he was doing and holding on to him so he wouldn’t fall, he dropped his trousers and began pissing off the balcony down into the street. The woman gathered up her sewing and went inside.

At the motor factory there was a meeting because of Paul’s stolen iron tubing, he got the sack. His fellow workers from the assembly division sat silently in the back—like piles of shit in the bushes, as Paul put it. They’ve all stolen things and they still do. At home they make watering cans, coffee grinders, immersion coils, irons, crimping irons, curling tongs, and sell them for good money. Every other one of them is a Nelu, you don’t have to write notes, they have other ways.

Paul wasn’t summoned, but neither was he spared. When I moved in with him it was like breaking and entering into his daily rhythm. They would have tracked down anything carrying my scent, and nobody who was connected with me would be overlooked. Paul was being punished together with me. Even on the days when I wasn’t summoned, they trampled on my heart, because they were after Paul. It was he who had the accident and not me. The outcome might be the same regardless of whether they were threatening his life because of me or because they felt he deserved it. But it isn’t the same. Before the accident, Paul found it harder to take the waiting than I did. I used to wait for him to come home from his drinking. He, on the
other hand, would wait for me to return from being summoned. Since the accident, however, the waiting is the same for us both.

If I search my brain for all the people I know with combs, there are just two I could really trust. In Lilli’s case it no longer matters. Only Paul is left. I can see what you’re thinking, the Major says. In that case I ought to be able to tell by looking whether somebody’s been summoned, at least whether my neighbors have. Maybe they know all about my connection with Albu and just don’t want to reveal what they know.

Old Micu who lives downstairs by the entrance told me last September that he’d been summoned in April.

Because of you, he said.

As if it was my fault. When I moved into the leaning tower with Paul, he was very formal with me, calling me Miss and by my last name. Ever since he was summoned, and because it was my fault, he just calls me You. He used to work as a chauffeur for the director of the shoe factory. Because he’s so muscular Paul thinks he was some sort of bodyguard as well. Frau Micu was a secretary at the music school. They have two sons who rarely write and never visit. Paul frequently talks to Herr Micu, more about Frau Micu than about himself or Herr Micu. She’s the same age as her husband and since they retired is always at home. Herr Micu spends all day hanging around the entrance or walking up and down the row of shops looking for people to talk to.

That time he was sitting by the entrance on the steps, eating freshly washed blue grapes when I came home. He stood up and accompanied me inside, his grapes dripping all the way to the elevator. Not until I had pressed the button and the cables had begun to rumble somewhere upstairs did he tell me that he had been summoned because of me.

Why did you go, I asked. I have to go because I got summoned on my own account. I wouldn’t go because of others.