Nightmare or Reality?(Review)

Much of post-Communist Europe appears to be suffering from an acute case of selective amnesia. Preoccupied with new problems and new traumas, many people remember only the alleged "stability" of the old system, the guarantees of full employment and social-welfare benefits, no matter how meager. The wholesale shortages of food and consumer goods are conveniently forgotten. So is the atmosphere of political oppression, the paralyzing fear that the mere glance of a secret or ordinary policeman could trigger. But Herta Muller remembers, and her novel "The Appointment" (214 pages. Metropolitan Books.) deftly recaptures the gloomy, claustrophobic feel of Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania of the 1980s, the daily humiliations, tribulations and desperate struggles for some semblance of a normal life. It's a slim, masterfully written tale.

A former teacher who now lives in Berlin, Muller knows her subject: she had her own run-ins with the secret police before managing to emigrate from Romania in 1987. Her protagonist and narrator, a nameless young woman who has been fired from her job at a clothing factory, is summoned for an interrogation. She makes her way to her dreaded rendezvous by tram, and her entire story unfolds during that one, long ride. She anticipates the revolting kiss on the hand by Major Albu, her interrogator, who "lifts my hand by the fingertips, squeezing my nails so hard I could scream." And she recalls how she felt during her first interrogation--"the way the roof of your mouth rises up and glues itself onto your brain. That's how it feels the second time as well, and every time after that..."

As the young woman reflects during the tram ride, the offense that got her fired was to slip notes into men's suits destined for Italy with the appeal "marry me." Recently separated from her first husband, who bemoans the fact that he never gave her a good beating, she is desperate enough to think that she'd be happy with the first Italian who would respond to her cry for help. But a co-worker, whom she slept with during a business trip, takes revenge on her when she spurns him. He not only turns her in for her "crime" but also plants other notes in trousers bound for Sweden with the message "Best wishes from the Dictatorship."

What prompts the narrator to take the seemingly ...