by Herta Müller
The dog looks at Adina every day, its eyes mirror the grass. Every day Adina says OLGA, so the dog won’t bark.
Yellow leaves lie strewn on the grass beneath the poplars in front of the school, which change color long before the poplars in town do. And in March the poplars in front of the school turn green, before all the other poplars in the city. The poplars in front of the school have a mind of their own. The teachers claim this is because the school is on the edge of town, with no protection from the weather coming off the open fields. The director says the leaves turn yellow so early because the children piss on the trunks, like dogs.
But really the poplars by the school turn yellow so early because of the factory where women make red chamber pots and green clothespins. The women who work there cough and turn barren, and the poplars turn yellow. Even in summer the women wear thick knee-length underwear with elastic bands. Every day they pad their legs and stomachs with clothespins, sticking so many in their underwear that nothing rattles when they walk. In the center of town, on the plaza by the opera, the women’s children loop strings of clothespins over their shoulders and trade them for panty hose, cigarettes or soap. In the winter the women hide whole chamber pots full of clothespins in their underwear. Nothing can be seen beneath their coats.
* * *
The bell rings across the school yard and through the poplars. No one is walking through the yard, no one is hurrying through the halls. No class is about to begin. The children are sitting on a truck under the poplars in front of the school. They are being driven far past the city, out to the tomatoes ripening in the field.
Their shoes are sticky with bits of squashed tomato from yesterday, the day before, whole weeks from morning to evening. Their pockets are sticky with squashed tomato, as are their water bottles, their jackets and shirts and pants. Also with grass seed, nightshade, and withered clumps of thistle fluff.
* * *
Thistle fluff is for the pillows of the dead, say the mothers, when their children return home late from the fields. Machine oil eats away at the skin, they say, but thistle fluff devours the mind. They stroke their children’s hair for several moments, and then, without warning, they slap them in the face. After that both children and mothers stare in silence at the candlelight. The eyes are full of guilt, but this can’t be seen by the light of the candles.
* * *
Dust sticks to the children’s hair, it makes their heads stubborn and their hair kinked, their eyelashes short and their eyes hard. The children on the truck don’t talk much. They look at the poplars and eat the fresh bread that has been counted. Their wart-clustered fingers are quick and nimble, the first thing they do is bore a hole in the crust. The children eat the inside first. It’s white and unbaked, the dough has scarcely been numbed by the heat of the oven, it sticks to their teeth. The children chew and say they are eating the HEART. They soften the crust with spit and form it into hats, noses and ears. This leaves their fingers tired and their mouths empty.
* * *
The driver closes the tailgate. His shirt is missing a button, so the steering wheel touches his navel. Four loaves of bread are lying on the dashboard. Next to the steering wheel is the picture of a blond Serbian singer. A streetcar comes too close, the bread scrapes against the windshield, the driver curses, mother of all streetcars.
Far past the city is not a direction. Wheat stubble without end, until the eyes can no longer make out its pale color. Only the undergrowth and the dust on the leaves.
* * *
The harvesters are pretty big, says the driver, and that’s a good thing because when you’re perched up there in the seat you can’t see the dead bodies lying in the wheat field. His throat is covered with hair, his Adam’s apple is a mouse hopping between his shirt and his chin. The wheat’s pretty high, too, he says, high enough that you can’t see the soldiers’ dogs, just their eyes. Except it’s not high enough to hide the people trying to sneak across the border. Adina grips her knees tightly, they pass a bird sitting in a rosebush by the edge of the field and pecking at a hip on the topmost branch. A red kite, says the driver. You know, when they say GOD’S ACRE they mean the cemetery. I spent three summers running the harvester near the border, all by myself on the field at harvesttime, and then two winters plowing, only at night. The field has a sweet kind of stink, when you think about it GOD’S ACRE really ought to mean a wheat field. They say a good person is as good as a piece of bread, at least that’s what the teachers teach the children.
The red kite sits motionless on the field as though its belly were impaled on the stubble. The sky sees that the stubble field is empty and hard and that the bird’s belly is soft, and rolls out two white clouds while the stubble sucks the bird’s belly dry. The driver’s eyes twitch in the corners, the blackthorn is studded with bluish green spheres and isn’t afraid of the bus wheels.
But you can’t tell children that a person is as good as a piece of bread, says the driver, otherwise they’ll believe it and won’t be able to grow anymore. And you can’t tell that to old people either, they can sense when you’re lying and then they’ll shrink until they’re as small as the children because they never forget anything. His Adam’s apple hops from his chin into his shirt. My wife and I, he says, the only time we talk is at night, when we can’t sleep. My wife wants to be good, so she doesn’t buy bread. The driver laughs, the potholes jerk his gaze onto the field, but I end up buying it anyway, he says. We eat it and like it, my wife too. She eats and cries and is getting older and fat. She’s a better person than me, but who’s really good these days. When she can’t bear it anymore instead of screaming she goes to throw up. He tucks his shirt in his pants. She vomits quietly, so the neighbors don’t hear anything, he says.
* * *
The road turns into the field and the truck comes to a stop, the children hop off into the grass. The wheatgrass is deep and swallows them up to the waist. Flies come buzzing out of the tomato crates. The sun has a red belly, the tomato field stretches far into the valley.
The agronomist is waiting by the crates, his tie flapping in front of his mouth. He bends over, inspects his pants and picks off the blades of wheatgrass. But the blades cling to his sleeves and back, they hike up his body faster than he can pick them off. Mother of all grass, he curses. He checks his watch, the dial burns in the sun and so does the wheatgrass. The blades shine with greed, the grass will stop at nothing to extend its reach. It even attaches itself to the wind. If it weren’t in the field, it would be in the clouds, and the world would be smothered with wheatgrass.
The children pick up the crates, flies settle on the wart clusters. The flies are drunk from fermented tomatoes, they sparkle and they sting. The agronomist raises his head, closes his eyes and shouts, today’s the last time I’m saying it, you’re here to work, every day ripe tomatoes are left hanging and green ones are picked and red ones get trampled on the ground. A blade of wheatgrass dangles from the corner of his mouth, he tries to find it with his hand but can’t, you’re a disgrace to your school, he screams, you’re doing more harm than good to our national agriculture. He locates the blade with the tip of his tongue and spits it out, fifteen crates a day, he says, that’s the quota. You can’t drink water all day, there’s a half-hour break at twelve o’clock, that’s when you can eat, drink, and go to the bathroom. A clump of thistle fluff is stuck in his hair.
The children set off into the field two by two, the empty crates swaying between them. The handles are slippery from squashed tomatoes, the plants themselves are poisonous green spotted with red. Even the smallest suckers. The wart clusters pick themselves bloody, the red tomatoes stupefy the children’s eyes, the crates are deep and never full. Red juice oozes from the corners of the children’s mouths, tomatoes fly around the heads and explode and color even the thistle clumps.
A girl sings:
I walked along a path above
And chanced upon a maid below
* * *
The girl puts a
frog in her pocket, I’m taking it home with me, she says, covering her pocket with her hand. It will die, says Adina. The girl laughs, that doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all, she says. The agronomist looks up at the sky, catches a bit of thistle fluff with his hand and whistles the song about the maid. Two boys sit on a half-full crate, twins, nobody can tell them apart, they are two times one boy.
One twin sticks two thick red tomatoes under his shirt, the other fondles the tomato breasts with both hands, then crooks his fingers, squashes the tomatoes inside the shirt and looks with empty eyeballs at the girl with the frog. The shirt turns red, the girl with the frog laughs. The twin with the squashed tomatoes scratches the other in the face, they fall in a tangle onto the ground. Adina holds her hand out to help them up, but then pulls it back, which one started it, she asks. The girl with the frog shrugs her shoulders.
A necktie
With one hand the cyclist wheels his bike along the sidewalk, the gear chain rattles. His steps stay between the wheels as he walks past the park and toward the bridge.
The man with the reddish-blue flecked tie is coming off the bridge headed into the park. He holds a long white cigarette down by his knee, a wedding ring shines next to the filter. The man blows smoke into the shrubbery, and into the park which in the breath of fear causes people to lift their feet high. The man has a fingernail-sized birthmark between his ear and his collar.
The cyclist stops, pulls a cigarette from his pocket. He doesn’t say a word, but the man with the tie raises his long white cigarette and gives the other a light. The cyclist spits out tobacco, the flame consumes a red ring on the tip of the cigarette. The cyclist blows smoke and walks on, wheeling his bicycle.
* * *
A branch cracks in the park. The cyclist turns his head, it’s merely a blackbird in the shade that can only move by hopping. The cyclist draws in his cheeks and blows smoke into the park.
* * *
The man with the reddish-blue flecked tie stands at the crossing, waiting for the light. When it turns green he will hurry, because Clara has crossed the street.
* * *
Inside the store Clara stands next to the fur coats, the man’s eyes watch her through the display window. He tosses his half-smoked cigarette onto the asphalt and blows a shred of smoke into the shop.
The man turns the tie rack. All the lamb fur coats are white except for one, which is green, as though the pasture had nibbled through the coat after it had been stitched together. The woman who buys it will certainly stand out in winter. She’ll bring summer with her even in the middle of the snow.
The man with the reddish-blue flecked tie carries three ties to the window, the colors look different in this light, he says, which suits me the best. Clara holds a finger to her mouth, you or what you’re wearing, she asks. Me, he says, as her hand squeezes the green lamb collar. None of them, she says, the one you have on is nicer. His shoes are polished, his chin is smooth, his hair has a part like a white thread, PAVEL, he says, reaching for her hand. Instead of shaking it he squeezes her fingers. She sees the seconds ticking on his watch, says her name, sees his thumbnail, then his ironed creases, he holds her hand too long under his thumb, LAWYER, he says. Behind the man is an empty shelf, dusty and full of fingerprints. You have a beautiful name, says Pavel, and a beautiful dress, that can’t be from here. I got it from a Greek woman, says Clara.
* * *
Her eyes are empty and her tongue is hot, she can tell from the dust on the shelf that it’s darker in the store and brighter on the street, that the midday hour is dividing the light between inside and out. She wants to go, but he is holding her hand. She feels a small shiny wheel spinning in her throat. He walks her through the door. And once outside, where his nose casts a slender shadow, she doesn’t know whether the shiny wheel is her desire for the green lamb or for the man with the reddish-blue flecked tie. But she has the feeling that if the wheel in her throat is spinning for the green coat it’s also catching on this man.
* * *
An old woman is sitting on the cathedral steps, she wears thick woolen stockings, a thick pleated coat and a white linen blouse. Beside her is a wicker basket covered with a damp cloth. Pavel lifts the cloth. Autumn crocuses, finger-thin bouquets, laid out in rows, each wound with white twine up to the flowers. Underneath, another cloth, more flowers, then another cloth, many layers of flowers and cloths and twine. Pavel picks out ten bouquets, one for each finger, he says, the old woman pulls a coin purse out of her blouse that’s tied to a string. Clara sees the woman’s nipples hanging on her skin like two screws. In Clara’s hand the flowers smell of iron and grass. The same smell as the grass behind the wire factory after a rain.
* * *
When Pavel raises his head, the sidewalk drops out of the reflection in his sunglasses. On the streetcar tracks are the remnants of a run-over watermelon, sparrows pick at the red flesh. When the workers leave their food on the table, the sparrows eat the bread, says Clara, she can see his temples, and the trees moving away inside the glass lenses. He looks at her with the moving trees, brushes away a wasp, and talks. That’s nice, he says to Clara. What makes you say that, what’s nice about working in a factory, says Clara.
* * *
Once inside the car Pavel ties his shoe while Clara sniffs at the crocuses. The car moves, the street is made of dust, a garbage bin is smoldering. A dog is lying on the road, Pavel honks, the dog gets up and slowly lies down in a patch of grass.
Clara is holding her keys, Pavel takes her hand and smells the crocus, she shows him which window is hers, I haven’t seen your eyes, she says. He raises his fingers to his temple, she notices his wedding ring. He doesn’t take off his sunglasses.
Summer entrails
There are no poplars on the plaza by the opera, so Opera Square isn’t striped, only splotched by the shadows of pedestrians and passing streetcars. The yew trees keep their needles tightly bundled on top, sheltering the wood within against the sky and against the clock in the cathedral tower. Anyone who wants to sit down on the benches in front of the yews must first cross the hot asphalt. The needles on the lower branches in back of the benches have either fallen off or were never there, behind the benches the wood within the yews is open to the world.
Old men sit on the benches, seeking shade that will stay in one place. But the yew trees play tricks, they pretend the moving shadows of the streetcars are part of their shade. Then once the old men have sat down the yews let the streetcar shadows move on. The old men open their newspapers, the sun shines through their hands, and the miniature red roses planted by the benches glow through the newspaper into the dictator’s forelock. The old men sit by themselves. They do not read.
* * *
Now and then a man who hasn’t yet found an empty bench asks a friend who has, what are you doing, and the one sitting down fans his face with his newspaper, lays his hand on his knee and shrugs. You mean you’re just sitting here thinking, asks the man standing. The other points to two empty milk bottles next to him and says, sitting, just sitting. That doesn’t matter, says the man who’s standing, doesn’t matter at all. Then he shakes his head and walks on while the sitting man shakes his head and watches him leave.
* * *
Now and then lumber and planing tools pass through the minds of the old men and settle so close to the yew tree that the wooden tool handles can’t be distinguished from the wood within the yew. Or from standing in line in the store where there wasn’t enough milk and where the bread was counted.
* * *
Five white-gloved policemen stand on the plaza, their whistling throws the steps of the pedestrians out of sync. Nothing holds back the sun, and those who look up at the white balcony of the opera in the middle of the day feel their whole faces falling into the void. The policemen’s whistles sparkle between their fingers. The whistles have deep, bulging bellies, it looks like each policeman is holding a large, handleless spoon. Their uniforms are dark blue, their faces young and pa
le. The heat swells the faces of the pedestrians, and they are so exposed in the sunlight they seem naked. The women cross the square carrying clear plastic bags with vegetables from the market. The men carry bottles. Anyone with empty hands, anyone not carrying fruit or vegetables or bottles, has eyes that rock back and forth and stare at the fruit and vegetables in the clear plastic bags as though they were the entrails of summer. Tomatoes, onions, apples under the women’s ribs. Bottles under the ribs of the men. And the white balcony in the middle of it all. And eyes that are empty.
* * *
The square has been cordoned off, the streetcars are stopped behind the yew trees. Funeral music creeps through the narrow streets behind the plaza, where it leaves its echo, and the sky stretches above the city. The women and men set down their see-through bags in front of their shoes. A truck comes out of one of the narrow streets and slowly crosses the plaza. Its side panels are down and draped with red flag cloth, the policemen’s whistles fall silent, white cuffs glow on the sleeves of the driver.
The truck is carrying an open coffin.
The dead man’s hair is white, his face fallen in, his mouth deeper than his eye sockets. Fronds of green fern quiver around his chin.
A man takes a brandy bottle out of his plastic bag. As he drinks one eye is focused on the brandy trickling into his mouth and the other on the dead man’s uniform. When I was in the military, a lieutenant told me that dead officers become monuments, he says. The woman next to him takes an apple out of her bag. As she bites, one eye is focused on the dead man’s face and the other on his huge portrait being carried behind the coffin. The face on the picture is twenty years younger than the face in the coffin, she says. The man sets his bottle down in front of his shoes and says, a man who’s mourned a lot when he dies becomes a tree, and a man who isn’t mourned at all becomes a stone. But what if somebody dies in one place, says the woman, and the people doing the mourning are somewhere else, then it doesn’t do any good, the person still becomes a stone.
