Excerpts From the Writings of Herta Müller

By BLAKE WILSON

The New York Times - October 9, 2009

Herta Müller “is more interested in examining the fallout among personal relationships under totalitarianism than she is the wrongs of the regime itself," wrote Peter Filkins in his review of “The Appointment” in The New York Times Book Review in 2001. Below are excerpts from a few of her works. BLAKE WILSON

“THE LAND OF GREEN PLUMS” (1993)

As I wandered, I didn’t only see the demented and their dried-up belongings. I also saw the guards walking up and down the streets. Young men with yellowish teeth standing guard at the entrances of big buildings, outside shops, on squares, at tramstops, in the scruffy park, in front of the dormitories, in bodegas, outside the station. Their suits fitted them badly; they were either too loose or too tight. They knew where the plum trees were in every precinct they policed. They even took roundabout routes to pass by the plum trees. The boughs drooped. The guards filled their pockets with green plums. They picked them fast, their pockets bulged. One picking was supposed to last them a long time. After they had filled their jacket pockets, they quickly left the trees behind. Plumsucker was a term of abuse. Upstarts, opportunists, sycophants, and people who stepped over dead bodies without remorse were called that. The dictator was called a plumsucker, too.

“THE PASSPORT” (1986)

Amalie hangs the map of Romania on the wall.

“All children live in blocks of flats or in houses,” says Amalie. “Every house has rooms. All the houses together make one big house. This big house is our country. Our fatherland.”

Amalie points at the map. “This is our Fatherland,” she says. With her fingertip she searches for the black dots on the map. “These are the towns of our Fatherland,” says Amalie. “The towns are the rooms of this big house, our country. Our fathers and mothers live in our houses. They are our parents. Every child has its parents. Just as the father in the house in which we live is our father, so Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu is the father of our country. And just as the mother in the house in which we live is our mother, so Comrade Elena Ceausescu is the mother of our country. Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu is the father of all the children. And Comrade Elena Ceausescu is the mother of all the children. All the children love comrade Nicolae and comrade Elena, because they are their parents.”

“THE APPOINTMENT” (1997)

How often have I had to lie or keep my mouth shut to protect the people I love most — at the very times I could stand them least — to keep them from plunging headlong into some disaster. Whenever I wanted my hatred to last forever, a feeling of disgust would soften it up. With a hint of love on the one hand, and a heap of self-reproach on the other, I was already surrendering to the next hatred. I’ve always had just enough sense to spare others, but never enough to save myself from misfortune.

“TRAVELING ON ONE LEG” (1989)

Irene had met Thomas through Stefan. On the banks of the Landwehrkanal. The sun had been warm. But its light was already turned towards another season.

The voices of the junk dealers came on the wind through the trees from the direction of the flea market. And the wind smelled like old clothes and dust.

The flea market was one of the many places forgotten by the city, where poverty disguised itself as business.

Weeds from regions where nobody lives grew in those places: stinging nettles, thistles, yarrows. They were the other country’s weeds for Irene.

Irene got frightened when she saw the other country’s weeds here in the city. She had the suspicion that she had brought the weeds over in her head. Irene touched the weeds to make sure they were not her imagination.

Irene had another suspicion, too. That she kept her homesickness small and tightly woven in her head so she wouldn’t recognize it. That she undercut her melancholy as it manifested itself. And that she built constructions of thoughts on her senses to overwhelm them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/books/09excerpts.html?ref=books