You expect me to believe that, he said.
With his thumb and middle finger he pulled the grapes off faster than I could count. His mouth was up against my ear, and every grape squirted juice when he bit it. He kept his little finger sticking out, an affectation that makes a man like him, whose false teeth squeak as he eats, even more unattractive. Did I want a few grapes, he asked, since I couldn’t take my eyes off his hand.
I’m not reproaching you for anything, he said.
What do you want, then.
I also have children.
Never take children into your confidence, I said.
The elevator came and the door opened. It was empty, but Herr Micu stuck his head inside as if to double-check whether someone wasn’t standing on the ceiling. He wedged his foot against the door.
I waited to catch you because I had no idea when you come and when you go. I have to write it down.
I could see the last mailbox on the wall reflected in one of his eyes, or was that just his pupil turning white and square. I didn’t compare it with his other eye, because he whispered:
I’ve already filled two school notebooks, I have to buy them myself.
He’d torn off all the grapes, scraps of blue peel were still stuck to each thin stalk on the cluster. Then he looked along the mailboxes toward the entrance.
I haven’t said anything to you, I swore I wouldn’t, what do I mean swore, it’s all written down in black and white.
Frau Micu’s been playing the lottery for half her life. After she retired, she started gambling more and more. She’s always
known that one day she’d win a huge fortune. And the further off that day gets, the more fervent her belief. Every Wednesday when the numbers are drawn she waits in her red flowery Sunday dress. Her brown patent-leather shoes are standing by in the hall so she can slip them on when the lottery man rings the bell. Usually no one rings at all on Wednesdays, because by now everyone in the block is well aware what a significant day it is. And if the bell does ring, then it’s only the postman or a forgetful neighbor. Then Frau Micu, dressed in her Sunday best, slowly closes the door and feels that, once again, she has been betrayed. Her world collapses, she buries her face in the armchair and sobs. Herr Micu smashes a couple of plates against the wall and sweeps up the pieces. Then he gets a grip on himself and comforts her. Soon the local radio station starts its pop music hit parade. The week goes by and it all blows over, until the following Wednesday, when the whole cycle begins once again. Paul’s often heard her crying inside the apartment and has asked Herr Micu how he stands it. Herr Micu talked about another cross he has to bear. Just like earlier, when he was still a chauffeur and she was a secretary, he got used to her poking around the school and searching all over town for what she called rubies but were really just broken pieces of red glass. She’s always had an artistic streak, he said. Once she’d filled her first box of rubies, she took it to the city museum and then to a goldsmith. Ultimately she threatened to commit suicide, so Herr Micu sent her to a watchmaker, after having first bought the man a few drinks at the tavern, so that someone would finally confirm to his wife that it really was rubies in her box. The business with the Sunday dress will never change, Wednesday evening it will be hung back up in silence and now and then tears will be shed. But there’s no
more talk of suicide. The watchmaker was worth it, Herr Micu says, I’d have spared myself a good deal of trouble if I’d thought of that earlier.
Shortly after I moved to the tower block, I saw Frau Micu leaning against the wall behind the entrance. She was in her stocking feet, wearing a housecoat. Her cheeks were shining with a fuzzy down that thickened into a belt of tattered fur around her chin: a thin mustache ran above her lips and curled upward under each nostril. Frau Micu was sucking on her index finger and wiping spittle around her eyes, the way cats wash themselves. I walked to the elevator. Without moving from the spot she called out:
Miss.
She showed me a piece of red glass.
Have you ever seen such a big ruby.
Never, I said.
That would be something for the Queen of England, I think I’ll send it to her, what do you think.
What if it gets stolen in the mail.
You’re right, she said, and put it away in the pocket of her dress.
She must have known something about Herr Micu’s written observations. Long before her husband took me into his confidence, I came home from town one afternoon and found her standing right in the entrance hall. She was wearing a dishcloth as a shawl. She held out an arm to block my way and said:
First you went out and then Paul. But then only Paul showed up.
And now I’m back too, I said.
After Paul showed up, she said, and when Radu showed up he weighed four kilos, and then Emil weighed four and a quarter.
I’m not counting Mara, my husband didn’t want her. And then I had Emil again, twice, that’s not possible, but back then you were allowed to have twins separately.
She no longer knew the difference between a dishcloth and a shawl. But she knew what her children had weighed at birth, just as my grandfather knew the measurements of the bricks in the camp.
Partly out of spite because he was writing down my comings and goings and heaven knows what else, and partly out of gratitude that he had confided in me, I bought a school notebook for Herr Micu. I wanted him to feel jittery by making him write down his observations in something I had given him. I wanted to throw a monkey wrench in the works, politely, because quarreling got you nowhere. It wasn’t Wednesday, so I rang the bell and Herr Micu opened the door, holding a slice of bread and drippings, sprinkled with gleaming grains of salt. He shook his head.
Much too big.
I didn’t know.
Mine are smaller and thicker.
Why can’t you write in a bigger one, I said.
It has to fit into my jacket pocket, he said, no, no.
Since then I’ve used the notebook to record whatever Albu says to me while kissing my hand, or how many paving stones, fence slats, telegraph poles, or windows there are between one spot and another. I don’t like writing, because something that’s written down can be discovered, but I have to do it. Often the same things, in the same place, change their number from one day to the next. At first glance everything looks exactly the same, but not when you count it. Or when you play the sketching game, closing your eyes and using your finger to outline clouds, roofs, the leaves trembling on trees, or the forks in branches if the
trees are bare. The higher the object, the easier it is to trace. I’ve often drawn the church steeple this way, all the way to the very tip, and the tall tenements right up to the weather vanes. I sketch Paul’s aerials, which look like antlers even when they’re on the roofs, without leaving out a single branch. But I only focus on his and no others. I used to pick up little stones from the edge of the path to help me practice sketching. Ever since I found the parcel wrapped like candy in my bag, I use my forefinger, crooking and twisting it to follow the contours. I didn’t check whether the severed finger could be bent.
I once sketched Lilli this way. She was standing in the entrance stairwell at the factory, a whole flight of stairs above me, and turned so I could see her profile. I showed her how straight her forehead was, the way her nose stood above the world, the milky white color of her chin and throat—like frosted glass. Even at that distance my finger could feel the difference between Lilli’s skin and other objects. When I reached the angle of her shoulder, Lilli placed her hands on her breasts:
Make me transparent, she said, I’m sure you can do that.
I couldn’t, I only sketched the side closest to me, her rear arm was hidden when Lilli said:
Now it’s your turn.
We never got around to it, we heard steps in the corridor, Lilli ran down the stairs. Her sandals had only two slender straps, her ankles were nimble, her dress fluttered. From below, Lilli’s thighs went all the way up to her throat. In the yard we giggled, she louder than me, but then she was crying, in fact she might have been crying from the moment she started giggling. I took a gulp of air and she laughed for real, dried her eyes, and said:
It’s only water. Do you remember Anton, who sold leather goods.
The one with the wart on the side of his nose.
No, that was the photographer.
The one who moved to the country.
Yes. He had water in his lungs, and it didn’t clear up. He died here in the hospital, the day before yesterday, I didn’t know a thing about it. Do you remember how we were caught.
No, I’d even forgotten his name was Anton.
There was a knock at the door, it was two inspectors, I was in my underwear. They gulped just like you did right now. They sat down on a pile of leather jackets, rested their chins on their hands, and whispered to each other. And Anton started holding leather skirts up to me as if I was a customer. He kept trying bigger and bigger skirts, making sure none of them actually fit me. Then he measured my hip size in hand spans, my backside, and the length halfway down to my knee. If you’re as slim as this one, you only need one calfskin to make a skirt, he said, winking at the inspectors. He wrote down the measurements in centimeters on a chocolate box that had been lying there ever since I knew him, and he shoved the pencil behind his ear. You don’t have any stomach to speak of, two darts in back will do it, that’s it, no other seam. Then he passed around the chocolates. One of the inspectors took a handful, and his companion told Anton to take a walk for an hour. As for me, they wanted me to stay. Anton closed the chocolate box and threw the two of them out, saying:
I’d sooner kill the pair of you.
That’s why he had to move out to the country.
Would you have liked to keep on going.
Yes.
But at the time you said, Now I’ve got him off my back.
And that was true.
But then you missed him after all.
Not in the slightest, Lilli said.
The cherry eater
sitting next to me found a space in her crowded bag where she could drop all the stones, she crumpled up the newspaper cone and crammed it inside. She wiped her hands against each other and then on her dress. The stains don’t show against the red flower pattern. I see an arm reaching up toward the handrail, holding the briefcase, now I see a head as well. Where has he been hiding all this time—he obviously managed to make it back onto the tram after all. So he doesn’t have as much free time as I thought. Or maybe the pushing and shoving doesn’t bother him. Some people get pushy in the hope of starting a fight. And there are plenty of dodderers who just let people walk right over them without saying a word. The cherry eater has stood up and squeezed herself into the aisle. I have to get off at the next stop too, a lot of people are getting off there. The long-distance buses are waiting around the corner. All the people with baskets, cans, and bags are getting out at the Central Bus Station to travel on to their villages. The man with the briefcase is getting out there as well, either to continue on to the country or else because he lives in the neighborhood. It’s possible we’re headed in the same direction, he may even work at the place where I’ve been summoned. Or maybe he’s just moving to the door now in order to get out several stops later—a lot of people do that. The cherry eater smiles at me with dark blue gums. She pushes through to the door at the back. If I have to I’ll push my way to the front door, it’s a little closer. Is the woman planning to plant her cherry stones. My grandfather said there are wild seeds in the Baragan Steppe
that won’t germinate unless a bird eats them and shits them out. But cherry stones have to dry in the sun before they’re planted, otherwise they won’t grow into trees. If all her stones were to grow, she’d be carrying a cherry orchard home in her bag. The passengers are leaning forward, backward, all together, the bag with the stones right in their middle. The driver rings the bell and shouts out the window: You want to die, why don’t you go to your bedroom instead of loafing around here on the tracks. Then he shouts into the car: Does every idiot have to get up in the morning. Is the driver talking to himself or to all of us. Besides, what does he know: I for one would be happy to stay in bed, although there’s no question that Albu gets up in the morning.
In the evenings
when I’d walk home from the bus depot it would be so dark I couldn’t make out anything beyond the avenue at first, then my eyes would grow used to the night and I would see more and more. I would count the entryways to the apartment buildings, blended together and then separated as the same long building went on and on and the numbers above the entrances grew and grew. When I turned onto our street, I would outline the roof of the bread factory, holding a little stone in my hand, recovering every weather vane and chimney from the falling night, in order to counter the deceit of the entryways. I had tried counting to distract myself from the dark, out of boredom. But the numbers preferred my being confused to my being secure. So before they could turn the entire street against me I played at tracing things. After I saw the woman with the braid on the bus, I stopped distracting myself by counting entryways, and the time passed anyway. Except that one day, after I’d already been away from the small
town so long that I no longer recognized the weather vanes on the bread factory, I turned onto a side street behind the post office and said to myself:
Keep those stubs on the table.
It started to rain. A man walking in front of me opened his umbrella, and I stopped where I was. When the umbrella reached the other end of the street and dwindled to the size of a hat, I traced it with my finger and the sketching started all over again. Keep those stubs on the table, Albu had said, because I’d been twisting the large button on my blouse. I placed my hands on the table but forgot to keep them there and he said it again. That was the day Albu found a hair on my shoulder. He grazed his fingers across my cheek as he took it. His cologne smelled very close, the smoothly shaven pores under his chin, with smaller and smaller specks running up his cheeks like polished wood. He held the hair in two fingers and stretched out his three others and was about to let it fall to the floor. He can do what he wants to any hair on my head, wrap them around his index finger and pull me wherever he wants. But if a hair has fallen out it should stay where it is. Albu was almost certainly after something else when he stood up and pulled his shirt cuff over his watch. He would never have even seen a hair on Lilli’s shoulder. Has he finally forgotten what he’s after, as I have the name of his bitter perfume, or has he decided on a different tactic. But I could never mistake the smell of his cologne, whether it’s called Avril or Septembre, I twisted my large button again and said: