The Passport

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. Spectacles are 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.”