The Passport

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 not wake up. No one knew who he was. Where he came from. “Someone like that is always on the move,” the people in the village said.

The branches of the lime tree hang down onto the grave. “You don’t need a ladder,” said Widow Kroner. “You don’t get dizzy.” She sat on the grass and plucked the blossom into a basket.

All winter long Widow Kroner drank linden blossom tea. She emptied cups of it into her mouth. Widow Kroner became addicted to the tea. Death was in the cups.

Widow Kroner’s face shone. People said: “Something is blooming in Widow Kroner’s face.” Her face was young. Its youthfulness was weakness. As one grows young before dying, so was her face. As one grows younger and younger, until the body breaks. Beyond birth.

Widow Kroner always sang the same song. “By the well at the gate there stands a lime tree.” She added new verses to it. She sang linden blossom verses.

When Widow Kroner drank the tea without sugar, the verses became sad. She looked in the mirror while she sang. She saw the linden blossoms in her face. She could feel the wounds on her stomach and on her legs.

Widow Kroner picked spurge laurel in the fields. She boiled it. She rubbed her wounds with the brown juice. The wounds grew larger and larger. They smelt sweeter and sweeter.

Widow Kroner had picked all the spurge laurel from the fields. She boiled more and more spurge laurel and made more and more tea.