The Passport Read Online Free PDF Page B

Amalie’s hair. “You have a crown of thorns,” he said. “You are enchanted. I love you. You must suffer.”
    Rudi’s pockets were full of shards of coloured glass. He laid the shards around the edge of the barrel. The shards gleamed. Amalie sat down on the floor of the barrel. Rudi knelt in front of her. He pushed up her dress. “I’m drinking milk from you,” said Rudi. He sucked Amalie’s nipples. Amalie closed her eyes. Rudi bit into the small, brown knots.
    Amalie’s nipples were swollen. Amalie cried. Rudi went through the end of the garden and into the fields. Amalie ran into the house.
    The burs stuck in her hair. They were tangled up. Windisch’s wife cut the knots out with her scissors. She washed Amalie’s nipples with camomile tea. “You mustn’t play with him again,” she said. “The skinner’s son is crazy. He has a deep hole in his head from all the stuffed animals.”
    Windisch shook his head. “Amalie will bring disgrace down on us,” he said.

THE GOLDEN ORIOLE
    There were grey cracks between the blinds. Amalie had a temperature. Windisch couldn’t sleep. He was thinking about her chewed nipples.
    Windisch’s wife sat down on the edge of the bed. “I had a dream,” she said. “I went up to the loft. I had the flour sieve in my hand. There was a dead bird on the steps up to the loft. It was a golden oriole. I lifted the bird up by the feet. Under it was a clump of fat, black flies. The flies flew up in a swarm. They settled in the flour sieve. I shook the sieve in the air. The flies didn’t move. Then I tore open the door. I ran into the yard. I threw the sieve with the flies into the snow.

THE CLOCK ON THE WALL
    The skinner’s windows have fallen into the night. Rudi is lying on his coat, sleeping. The skinner is lying on a coat with his wife, sleeping.
    Windisch sees the white patch of the clock on the wall. He sees it on the empty table. A cuckoo lives in the clock. It feels the hour hand. It calls. The skinner gave the clock to the militiaman as a present.
    Two weeks ago the skinner showed Windisch a letter. The letter was from Munich. “My brother-in-law lives there,” the skinner said. He laid the letter on the table. With the tip of his finger he looked for the lines he wanted to read out. “You should bring your crockery and cutlery with you. Spectaclesare expensive here. Fur coats are very expensive.” The skinner turned over.
    Windisch hears the cuckoo’s call. It can smell the stuffed birds through the ceiling. The cuckoo is the only living bird in the house. Its cry breaks up time. The stuffed birds stink.
    Then the skinner laughed. He pointed to a sentence at the bottom of the letter. “The women here are worth nothing,” he read. “They can’t cook. My wife has to slaughter the landlady’s hens. The lady refuses to eat the blood or liver. She throws away the stomach and spleen. Apart from that she smokes all day and lets any man at her.”
    “The worst Swabian woman,” said the skinner, “is still worth more than the best German woman from there.”

SPURGE LAUREL
    The owl no longer calls. It has settled on a roof. “Widow Kroner must have died,” thinks Windisch.
    Last summer, Widow Kroner plucked linden blossom from the cooper’s tree. The tree stands on the left-hand side of the churchyard. Grass grows there. Wild narcissi bloom in the grass. There’s a pool in the grass. Around the pool are the graves of the Romanians. They’re flat. The water drags them under the earth.
    The cooper’s linden smells sweet. The priest says that the graves of the Romanians don’t belong in the churchyard. That the graves of the Romanians smell different from the graves of the Germans.
    The cooper used to go from house to house. He had a sack with many small hammers. He hammered hoops onto barrels. He was given food in return. He was allowed to sleep in the barns.
    It was autumn. One could see the coldness of winter through the clouds. One morning the cooper did