Free The Appointment by Herta Müller Page B

to be an officer too, butthat’s long ago now. I managed to visit Lilli’s officer in prison. I didn’t know him earlier, only his name, from years ago. Did you know him.
    By sight, I said.
    He had better luck than Lilli, he said, or maybe not, depending. Things look pretty bad for him.
    He flattened a crumpled acacia leaf with his index finger, it tore down the middle, he threw it onto the ground, spluttered, coughed, cleared his throat, looked in the ashtray, and said:
    It’s almost fall.
    That’s something I can talk about with anyone, I thought, and said:
    Pretty soon.
    You asked at the funeral what Lilli looked like. Are you sure you want to know.
    I gripped my cup so he couldn’t see how my hand was shaking. More and more drops were falling onto the tablecloth, nevertheless he pulled his straw hat down over his eyes and went on:
    The officer paid a fortune. A man with a motorbike and sidecar was supposed to be waiting on the Hungarian side. And he did wait, the week before, but only long enough to get his money; after that he didn’t wait to go to the police and pick up another nice little bundle. Look over there, said Lilli’s stepfather, it’s clearing up again behind the park.
    Lilli had loved a hotel porter, a doctor, a dealer in leather goods, a photographer. Old men, to my way of thinking, at least twenty years older than she was. She didn’t call any of them old. She’d say:
    He isn’t exactly young.
    But until the old officer, none of the men had ever come between Lilli and me, had ever caused me to feel one way or theother. He was the only one who made her neglect me. It was the first time I’d been left to my own devices—as happened that day in the officers’ mess—for an extended period. Here this man comes shuffling along, having already enjoyed the best years of his life, and snaps up Lilli. I was sad and jealous, but not in the obvious way. It wasn’t the old man I envied, but Lilli for having him. I didn’t find the old man the least bit attractive, but there was something about him that made you sorry for not liking him. Even sorry that he didn’t care for you. Between the old officer and myself I felt regret, but it was regret about something I neither would have wanted nor allowed. He was a man who aroused no desire and who left you no peace. That’s why I had to say his stomach was round as a ball, like the setting sun. The remark was directed at Lilli, not him. And that makes me, too, part of his coming to terms with her death.
    Lilli liked old men, her stepfather was the first. She forced herself on him; she wanted to sleep with him and told him so. He kept her on tenterhooks, but she refused to give up. One day, when Lilli’s mother had gone to the hairdresser’s, Lilli asked him how much longer he was going to go on avoiding her. He sent her out to buy bread. There was no line in the shop: she got her bread and was back in no time.
    Where do you want me to go now so you can get a grip on yourself, she asked.
    And he asked in return whether she was sure she could keep so huge a secret.
    Even a child has secrets, Lilli said to me, and I wasn’t a child anymore. I put the loaf down on the kitchen table and pulled my dress over my head as if it were a handkerchief. That’s how it all started. It went on for over two years, nearly every dayexcept Sundays, and always in a rush, always in the kitchen, we never touched the beds. He’d send my mother to the shop, sometimes there’d be a long line, sometimes a short one, she never caught us.
    Apart from me, only three others from the factory dared attend Lilli’s funeral. Two girls from the packing department came of their own accord. The rest refused to have anything to do with an escape attempt and the way it had ended. The third person was Nelu, he came on orders. One of the two girls pointed out Lilli’s stepfather to me. He was carrying a black umbrella on his arm. That day it didn’t look like rain, the sky was soaring in