The Appointment Read Online Free PDF Page B

side.
     
    Now the driver
has scratched the salt off his second crescent roll. The coarse grains burn your tongue and ruin the enamel on your teeth. And salt makes you thirsty, maybe he doesn’t want to be drinking water all the time, because he can’t go to the toilet while he’s on duty, and because the more you drink the more you sweat. My grandfather told me that in the camp they used salt from evaporated water to clean their teeth. They would take it in their mouth and rub it over their teeth with the tip of their tongue. But that salt was as fine as dust. After the driver finished his first roll he swigged something from a bottle. Water, I hope.
    A truck full of sheep crosses the intersection. The sheep are crammed in so tight they can’t fall over no matter how bumpythe ride. No heads, no bellies, just black and white wool. Only when we take the turn do I notice a dog’s head in their midst. And a man in a small green climbing cap, the kind that shepherds wear, sitting in the cab, next to the driver. They’re probably moving the flock to a new pasture—you don’t need a dog at the slaughterhouse.
     
    Some things aren’t bad
until you start talking about them. I’ve learned how to hold my tongue before it gets me into trouble, but usually it’s already too late, because sooner or later I always want to have my say. Whenever Paul and I don’t understand something that troubles other people, we start to quarrel. Things quickly escalate until they get out of hand, and every salvo calls for an even more thunderous one in return. I think we see in that alcoholic man the things that most torment us, and these things are different for each of us, despite our common love. Evidently drinking troubles Paul more than my being summoned. He drinks the most whenever I’m summoned, and on those days especially I have no right to reproach him for his drinking, even though his being drunk troubles me more than . . .
    My first husband also had a tattoo. He returned home from the army with a rose threaded through a heart inked on his chest. My name beneath the stem. But I left him nevertheless.
    Why in the world have you gone and ruined your skin. The only place that rosy heart might possibly look right is on your gravestone.
    Because the days were long and I was thinking of you, he explained, and everybody else was getting one. Apart from the chickenhearts. We had our share of those, just like anywhere else.
    I didn’t leave him for some other man, as he suspected, I just wanted to leave him. He wanted an itemized list of the reasons why. I couldn’t spell out a single one.
    Are you disappointed in me, he asked. Or have I changed.
    No, we were both exactly the same as when we met. Love can’t go on just running in place, but that’s what our love had been doing for two and a half years. He looked at me, and when I said nothing, he declared:
    You’re one of those who needs a good beating now and then, only I wasn’t up to giving it to you.
    He meant it, since he knew he could never raise a hand against me. I believed it too. Up to that day on the bridge he wasn’t even capable of slamming a door in anger.
    It was already half past seven in the evening. He asked me to dash out with him to buy a suitcase before the shops closed. He was planning to leave the next day for a two-week trip to the mountains. He expected me to miss him. But two weeks is nothing. Even our two and a half years weren’t much.
    We left the store and walked through the city in silence. He was carrying the new suitcase. The shop had been about to close and the salesgirl hadn’t cleaned out the case, it was stuffed full of paper and had a price tag dangling from the handle. The previous day there had been a downpour, the high, silty water was tearing at the willows along the river. Halfway across the bridge he stopped and squeezed my arm. He was kneading my flesh so hard, down to the bone, that I shuddered, and he said:
    Look at all that water.