The Passport by Herta Müller Read Free Book Online

watchman is sitting beside the pond and has hiccups. His larynx bounces out of his shirt. It’s the blue onions,” he says. “The Russians cut thin slices off the top of onions. They sprinkle salt on them. The salt makes the onions open like roses. They give off water. Clear, bright water. They look like water lilies. The Russians hit them with their fists. I’ve seen Russians crush onions under their heels. The women lifted their skirts and knelt on the onions. They turned their knees. We soldiers held the Russian women at the hips and helped them turn.”
    The night watchman had watery eyes. “I’ve eaten onions that were tender and sweet as butter from the knees of Russian women,” he says. His cheeks are flabby. His eyes grow young as the sheen of onions.
    Windisch carries two sacks to the edge of the pond. He covers them with canvas. The night watchman will take them to the militiaman during the night.
    The reeds are quivering. White foam sticks to the blades. “That’s what the dancer’s lace dress must be like,” thinksWindisch. “I’m not letting a crystal vase into my house.”
    “There are women everywhere. There are even women in the pond,” says the night watchman. Windisch sees their underclothes anong the reeds. He goes into the mill.

THE FLY
    Widow Kroner lies in the coffin dressed in black. Her hands are tied together with a white cord, so that they don’t slide down from her stomach. So that they are praying, when she arrives up above, at heaven’s gate.
    “She’s so beautiful, it’s as if she were asleep,” says her neighbour, Skinny Wilma. A fly settles on her hand. Skinny Wilma moves her finger. The fly settles on a small hand beside her.
    Windisch’s wife shakes the raindrops from her headscarf. They fall in transparent chains onto her shoes. Umbrellas stand beside the praying women. Water snakes and trickles under the chairs. It glistens among the shoes.
    Windisch’s wife sits down on the empty chair beside the door. She cries a large tear out of each eye. The fly settles on her cheek. The tear rolls down onto the fly. It flies into the room, the edge of its wing damp. The fly returns. It settles on Windisch’s wife. On her wrinkled index finger.
    Windisch’s wife prays and looks at the fly. The fly creeps all round the finger nail. It tickles her skin. “It’s the fly that was under the golden oriole. The fly that settled in the flour sieve,” thinks Windisch’s wife.
    Windisch’s wife finds a moving passage in the prayer. She sighs over the passage. She sighs and her hands move. And the fly on her finger nail feels the sigh. And it flies past her cheek into the room.
    Windisch’s wife’s lips softly hum, pray for us.
    The fly flies just below the ceiling. It hums a long song for the death vigil. A song of rainwater. A song of the earth as a grave.
    Windisch’s wife forces out two more small tears as she hums. She lets them run down her cheek. She lets them grow salty around her mouth.
    Skinny Wilma looks for her handkerchief. She looks among the shoes. Between the rivulets that crawl out of the black umbrellas.
    Skinny Wilma finds a rosary among the shoes. Her face is pointed and small. “Whose rosary is it?” she asks. No one looks at her. Everyone is silent. “Who knows,” she sighs, “there have already been so many here.”
    She puts the rosary in the pocket of her long black skirt.
    The fly settles on Widow Kroner’s cheek. A living thing on her dead skin. The fly buzzes in the still corner of her mouth. The fly dances on her hard chin.
    Outside the window, the sound of rain. The prayer leader bats her short eyelashes as if the rain was running into her face. As if it was washing away her eyes. Eyelashes which are broken from praying. “A cloudburst,” she says. “Over the whole country.” She closes her mouth even while she’s talking, as if the rain was running down into her throat.
    Skinny Wilma looks at the dead woman. “Only in the Banat,” she