The Passport

THE TEAR

Amalie came out of the skinner’s yard. She walked through the grass. She held the small box in her hand. She smelt it. Windisch saw the hem of Amalie’s dress. It threw a shadow onto the grass. Her calves were white. Windisch saw how Amalie swayed her hips.

The box was tied with silver string. Amalie stood in front of the mirror. She looked at herself. She looked for the silver string in the mirror and tugged at it. “The box was lying in the skinner’s hat,” she said.

White tissue paper rustled in the box. On the white paper lay a glass tear. It had a hole at its tip. Inside, in its stomach, the tear had a groove. Under the tear lay a note. Rudi had written: “The tear is empty. Fill it with water. Preferably with rain water.”

Amalie couldn’t fill the tear. It was summer and the village was parched. And water from the well wasn’t rain water.

Amalie held the tear up to the light at the window. Outside it was hard. But inside, along the groove, it quivered.

For seven days the sky burned itself dry. It had wandered to the end of the village. It looked at the river in the valley. The sky drank water. It rained again.

Water flowed over the paving stones in the yard. Amalie stood by the gutter with the tear. She watched as water flowed into the stomach of the tear.

There was wind in the rain water too. It drove glassy bells through the trees. The bells were dull; leaves whirled inside them. The rain sang. There was sand in the rain’s voice too. And tree-bark.

The tear was full. Amalie brought it into the room with her wet hands and bare, sandy feet.

Windisch’s wife took the tear in her hand. Water shone in it. There was a light in the glass. The water from the tear dripped between Windisch’s wife’s fingers.

Windisch stretched out his hand. He took the tear. The water crawled down his elbow. Windisch’s wife licked her wet fingers with the tip of her tongue. Windisch watched as she licked the finger which she had pulled out of her hair on the night of the thunderstorm. He looked out at the rain. He felt the slime in his mouth. A knot of vomit rose in his throat.

Windisch laid the tear in Amalie’s hand. The tear dripped. The water in it did not fall. “The water is salty. It burns your lips,” said Windisch’s wife.

Amalie licked her wrist. “The rain is sweet,” she said. “The salt has been wept by the tear.”