The Passport

THE BOX

Rudi is an engineer. He worked in a glass factory for three years. The glass factory is in the mountains.

During those three years the skinner only visited his son once. “I’m going to visit Rudi in the mountains for a week,” the skinner had said to Windisch.

The skinner came back after three days. He had ruddy cheeks from the mountain air and tired eyes from lack of sleep. “I couldn’t sleep there,” said the skinner. “I didn’t sleep a wink. I could feel the mountains in my head at night.”

“Everywhere you look,” explained the skinner, “there are mountains. On the way to the mountains are tunnels. They are black as night. The train goes through the tunnels. The whole mountain rattles in the train. You get a buzzing in your ears and throbbing in your head. First pitch black night, then broad daylight,” said the skinner, “and constantly alternating. It’s unbearable. Everyone sits and doesn’t even look out of the window. When it’s light, they read. They take care not to let the books slip from their knees. I had to be careful, not to touch them with my elbows. They leave their books open when it gets dark. I listened, I listened in the tunnels, to hear if they shut their books. I heard nothing. When it was light again, I looked at the books first and then at their eyes. The books were open and their eyes were shut. They opened their eyes after me. I tell you, Windisch,” said the skinner, “I felt proud every time, because I opened my eyes before them. I can sense the end of the tunnel. I’ve got that from Russia,” said the skinner. He held his hand to his forehead. “I have never experienced,” said the skinner, “so many rattling nights and so many bright days. At night, in bed, I heard the tunnels. They roared. Roared like the pit waggons in the Urals.”

The skinner nodded his head. His face lit up. He looked over his shoulder to the table. He looked, in case his wife was listening. Then he whispered: “Women, Windisch, I tell you, there are women there. The way they walk. They reap faster than the men.” The skinner laughed. “It’s a pity,” he said, “that they’re Wallachians. They’re good in bed, but they can’t cook like our women.”

A tin bowl stood on the table. The skinner’s wife was whisking an eggwhite in the bowl. “I washed two shirts,” she said. “The water was black. That’s how dirty it is there. You don’t see it, because of the forests.”

The skinner looked into the bowl. “At the top, on the highest mountain,” he said, “there’s a sanatorium. That’s where the lunatics are. They walk around behind the fence in blue underpants and thick coats. One of them spends all day looking for fir cones in the grass. He talks to himself. Rudi says he’s a miner. He started a strike.”

The skinner’s wife dipped a finger into the eggwhite. “That’s what you get,” she said and licked the tip of her finger.

“Another one,” said the skinner, “was only in the sanatorium for a week. He’s back in the mine again. He had been struck by a car.”

The skinner’s wife lifted the bowl. “These eggs are old,” she said, “the snow is bitter.”

The skinner nodded. “You can see the cemeteries from the top,” he said, “clinging to the slopes of the mountains.”

Windisch laid his hands on the table beside the bowl. He said: “I wouldn’t like to be buried there.”

The skinner’s wife looked absent-mindedly at Windisch’s hands. “Yes, it must be nice in the mountains,” she said. “Only it’s so far from here. We can’t get there, and Rudi never comes home.”

“Now she’s baking cakes again,” said the skinner, “and Rudi can’t even eat them.”

Windisch drew his hands back from the table.

“The clouds hang low over the town,” said the skinner. “People walk about among the clouds. Every day there’s a thunderstorm. People are struck down by lightning in the fields.

Windisch put his hands in his trouser pockets. He stood up. He went to the door.

“I’ve brought something with me,” said the skinner. “Rudi gave me a little box for Amalie.” The skinner pulled open a drawer. He shut it again. He looked in an empty suitcase. The skinner’s wife looked in his jacket pockets. The skinner opened the cupboard.

Exhausted, the skinner’s wife raised her hands. “We’ll look for it,” she said. The skinner looked in his trouser pockets. “I had the box in my hand only this morning,” he said.