The moon has a red veil.
“And Rudi?” asks the night watchman.
“He’s taking a rest,” says Windisch. He can feel the lie burning on his cheeks. “In Germany it’s not like here with glass. The skinner writes that we should bring our crystal glass with us. Our porcelain, and feathers for the pillows. But not damask and underwear. They’ve got them there in abundance. Furs are very expensive. Furs and spectacles.”
Windisch chews a blade of grass. “The beginning isn’t easy,” says Windisch.
Windisch ties the blade of grass around his forefinger. “One thing is hard, says the skinner in his letter. An illness we all know from the war. Homesickness.”
The night watchman holds an apple in his hand. “I wouldn’t feel homesick,” he says. “After all, you’re among Germans there.”
Windisch ties knots in the blade of grass. “There are more foreign nations there than here, says the skinner. There are Turks and Negroes. They’re increasing rapidly,” says Windisch.
Windisch pulls the blade of grass through his teeth. The blade of grass is cold. His gums are cold. Windisch holds the sky in his mouth. The wind and the night sky. The blade of grass shreds between his teeth.
THE CABBAGE WHITE
Amalie is standing in front of the mirror. Her slip is pink. White lace points show under Amalie’s navel. Windisch sees the skin above Amalie’s knee through the holes in the lace. There are fine hairs on Amalie’s knee. Her knee is white and round. Windisch sees Amalie’s knee in the mirror yet again. He sees the holes in the lace run into one another.
Windisch’s wife’s eyes are in the mirror. The tips of Windisch’s eyelashes are beating fast, driving into his temples. A red vein swells in the corner of Windisch’s eye. It tears the tips from the lashes. A torn tip moves in the pupil of Windisch’s eye.
The window is open. The leaves on the apple tree are reflected in the panes.
Windisch’s lips are burning. They’re saying something.
But he’s only talking to himself, to the walls. Inside his own head.
“He’s talking to himself,” says Windisch’s wife in the mirror.
A cabbage white flies through the window into the room. Windisch follows it with his eyes. Its flight is flour and wind.
Windisch’s wife reaches into the mirror. With flabby fingers she straightens the straps of the slip on Amalie’s shoulder.
The cabbage white flutters over Amalie’s comb. Amalie pulls the comb through her hair with an elongated arm. She blows away the cabbage white with its flour. It alights on the mirror. It staggers over the glass, across Amalie’s stomach.
Windisch’s wife presses her fingertip against the glass. She squashes the cabbage white on the mirror.
Amalie sprays two large clouds under her armpits. The clouds run down beneath her arms and into the slip. The spray can is black. In bright green letters on the can are the words Irish Spring.
Windisch’s wife hangs a red dress across the back of the chair. She places a pair of white sandals with high heels and narrow straps under the chair. Amalie opens her handbag. She dabs on eye shadow with her fingertip. “Not too much,” says Windisch’s wife, “otherwise people will talk.” Her ear is in the mirror. It’s large and grey. Amalie’s eyelids are pale blue. Amalie’s mascara is made of soot. Amalie pushes her face very close to the mirror. Her upward glance is made of glass.
A strip of tinfoil falls out of Amalie’s handbag onto the carpet. It is full of round white warts. “What’s that you’ve got?” asks Windisch’s wife. Amalie bends down and puts the strip back in her bag. “The pill,” she says. She twists the lipstick out of its black holder.
Windisch’s wife puts her cheekbones in the mirror. “What do you need pills for?” she asks. “You’re not ill.”
Amalie pulls the red dress over her head. Her forehead slips through the white collar. Her eyes still under the dress, Amalie says: “I take it just in case.”
Windisch presses his hand against his forehead. He leaves the room. He sits down on the veranda, at the empty table. The room is dark. It is a shadowy hole in the wall. The sun crackles in the trees. Only the mirror shines. Amalie’s red mouth is in the mirror.
Small, old women are walking past the skinner’s house. The shadow of their black headscarves precedes them. The shadow will be in church before the small, old women.
Amalie walks over the cobble stones on her white heels. She holds the square folded application in her hand like a white briefcase. He red dress swings around her calves. The Irish Spring flies into the yard. Amalie’s dress is darker beneath the apple tree than in the sun.
Windisch sees that Amalie’s toes point outwards as she puts her feet on the ground.
A strand of Amalie’s hair flies over the alley gate. The gate snaps shut.
MASS
Windisch’s wife is standing in the yard behind the black grapes. “Aren’t you going to mass?” she asks. The grapes grow out of her eyes. The green leaves grow out of her chin.
“I’m not leaving the house,” says Windisch, “I don’t want people saying to me: now it’s your daughter’s turn.”
Windisch puts his elbows on the table. His hands are heavy. Windisch puts his face in his heavy hands. The veranda doesn’t grow. It’s broad daylight. For a moment the veranda falls to a place where it never was before. Windisch feels the blow. A stone hangs in his ribs.
Windisch closes his eyes. He feels his eyes. He feels his eyeballs in his hands. His eyes without a face.
With naked eyes and with the stone in his ribs, Windisch says loudly: “A man is nothing but a pheasant in the world.” What Windisch hears is not his voice. He feels his naked mouth. It’s the walls that have spoken.
THE BURNING GLOBE
The neighbour’s spotted pigs are lying in the wild carrots, sleeping. The black women come out of the church. The sun-shine is bright. It lifts them over the pavement in their small black shoes. Their hands are worn from the rosaries. Their gaze is still radiant from praying.
Above the skinner’s roof the church bell strikes the middle of the day. The sun is a great clock above the midday tolling. Mass is over. The sky is hot.
Behind the small, old women the pavement is empty. Windisch looks along the houses. He sees the end of the street. “Amalie should be coming,” he thinks. There are geese in the grass. They are white like Amalie’s white sandals.
The tear lies in the cupboard. “Amalie didn’t fill it,” thinks Windisch. “Amalie’s never at home when it rains. She’s always in town.”
The pavement moves in the light. The geese sail along. They have white sails in their wings. Amalie’s snow-white sandals don’t walk through the village.
The cupboard door creaks. The bottle gurgles. Windisch holds a wet burning globe on his tongue. The globe rolls down his throat. A fire flickers in Windisch’s temples. The globe dissolves. It draws hot threads through Windisch’s forehead. It pushes crooked furrows like partings through his hair.
The militiaman’s cap circles round the edge of the mirror. His epaulettes flash. The buttons of his blue jacket grow larger in the centre of the mirror. Windisch’s face appears above the militiaman’s jacket.
First Windisch’s face appears large and confident above the jacket. Then Windisch’s face is small and dejected above the epaulettes. The militiaman laughs between the cheeks of Windisch’s large, confident face. With wet lips he says: “You won’t get far with your flour.”
Windisch raises his fists. The militiaman’s jacket shatters. Windisch’s large, confident face has a spot of blood. Windisch strikes the two small, despondent faces above the epaulettes dead.