by Herta Müller
Paul hears these children now and then because they climb over three rows of barbed wire into the hospital yard to get to the rusty windowless ambulance cars, and what they’re looking for is pain.
The smallest man carries the biggest cane
The windshield is covered with thick dust.
Her hair is caught under his elbow. His mouth pants as his belly thrusts. She presses her face against the back of the seat. She can hear his watch ticking. The ticking smells of hurried roads, lunch breaks, gasoline. His underwear is on the floor, his pants are draped over the steering wheel. The cornstalks outside are leaning into the window, peering at her face. Her panties are under his shoe.
The silk on the ears is torn and brittle. The leaves give off a dry rattle, the stalks are twiggy and lean and knock against one another. Between the tassels grows colorless sky.
She closes her eyes. The colorless sky above the cornfield breaks into her forehead.
Something clatters outside the car.
She opens her eyes at once and sees a bicycle propped against a cornstalk. A man in the field shoulders a sack and carries it to the bicycle. Someone’s coming, she says.
The cornstalks knock against the man’s head.
Clara’s panties have a tread mark left by the shoe. She puts them on. He won’t bother us, says Pavel, he’s stealing corn. Clara looks at his watch. The man wheels his bicycle through the dry cornstalks.
I have to get back to the factory, says Clara. Pavel tugs his pants off the steering wheel, sunflower seeds drop from his pocket onto his bare knee, how long can you be gone from the courthouse, asks Clara.
The car hums, gray from all the dust. I don’t work at the courthouse, says Pavel. Clara’s dress is crumpled, her back wet with sweat. Aren’t you a lawyer, asks Clara. Yes, he says, but not at the courthouse. The sky broadens because the corn is now running in the opposite direction, what’s left is a low, rattling field that stretches to the horizon. I saw you in a different car, says Clara. He looks out the window and asks, where. By the cathedral, on the street next to the park, the car was black. She sees the sunflower seeds scattered between his shoes. Pavel turns the wheel so lightly his hands don’t seem to do a thing. There are black cars in every factory, he says. She sees the seconds ticking on his watch, but you don’t work in a factory.
He says nothing and shrugs his shoulders. And Clara says nothing and looks out the window.
* * *
In Clara’s factory there is a corner where the sky closes all vision, where a bright weariness lurks day after day, waiting to climb into the city. Into the lunch breaks and the empty afternoon days. A weariness that closes the eyes somewhere between the wire and the rust. That throbs in the head when the gateman’s hand is rummaging through a bag. A weariness that places the same aged faces opposite each other in the streetcar between the stops. A weariness that enters an apartment before the person returning home, the way eyes can enter before the head. And that stays in the apartment until the day comes to an end, somewhere between the door to the apartment and the window that looks outside.
Clara looks at Pavel’s temples. And what if I think the worst, she says.
* * *
Caught in the glass, Pavel’s birthmark is black like the fresh molehills in the grass outside the windshield.
The car searches out the potholes in the road. Pavel tugs on his reddish-blue flecked tie. One of Clara’s hairs is caught on his collar. She picks it off with her fingertips. Pavel presses his neck against her hand and asks, what is it. She says, nothing, a hair. What will you tell your wife. The lane of poplars flies up along the roadside. He says, nothing. How old is your daughter. He says, eight. The poplars drop yellow leaves on both sides of the road. Clara’s fingers become uncertain and drop the hair.
I know what I know, says Pavel.
A crow sits in the wheatgrass, glossy, gleaming.
* * *
Next to the room with the loudspeaker is a little escape ladder leading up to the attic. The ladder has thin iron rungs. Clara follows Eva’s heels as they climb. Mara, Anca and Maria are already there. The undersized attic window isn’t fully closed, just ajar. Eva pushes it all the way open. Down below, on the other side of the yard, are three stairs and an open door. Behind the door is a corridor that connects the men’s changing room on the left with their showers on the right.
Mara’s hair is right in Eva’s face. Anca’s shoulder is digging into Maria’s back, Maria’s barrette is scratching Clara’s ear.
The men climb up the stairs in their work smocks like they do every day, then they walk down the corridor and go into the door on the left. A while later they reemerge naked and walk across the corridor to the door on the right that leads to the showers. The steam from the hot water clouds the corridor. But from May through September the late afternoon sun falls across the factory yard at just the right angle to hit both the stairs and the corridor. Then the light pierces the steam and the naked men are fully visible as they pass from one door to the other.
The naked men scrunch their feet as they walk, stepping gingerly with knotty toes, because the concrete floor is always wet and cold and slippery. They have fat stomachs and withered backs and hunch their shoulders. Their bellies are covered with hair, their thighs thin. Their pubic hair forms thick knots. Their testicles cannot be seen from the attic window. Only their dangling penises.
Blond men have such white cocks, says Mara. Eva leans on Mara’s back and says, all Moldavians have white cocks. Not old George, says Maria. I haven’t seen his yet, says Clara. Her bangs get in her eye, she brushes them back and discovers a thread of corn silk. Eva says, George just went up the stairs, he’ll come out soon. Mara raises her face above Eva’s. Her eyes are big. Clara lets the corn silk fall to the floor.
The dwarf, says Maria, my God, the dwarf has the biggest of all. The shortest man carries the biggest cane.
Clara stands on her tiptoes.
The grass straw in the mouth
A woman stands in the window in the apartment opposite Adina’s, watering her petunias. She’s no longer young but not yet old, Paul said about her years ago, when he still lived with Adina. Even then the woman had chestnut-red hair done up in big waves. And the windowpane already had a slanted crack. Five years have passed without leaving any mark on the woman’s face. Her hair hasn’t stiffened or grown paler. And every year the white petunias are different and yet the same.
Back then the white petunias were already drooping, all the woman could see when she watered were their bent stems. She couldn’t see their white funnels.
People who looked up from the street and saw little spots of white high among the windows and didn’t know they were petunias thought they were seeing children’s socks or handkerchiefs, fluttering in the summer breeze all the way into the fall.
Adina stands on the fox pelt in front of her half-opened wardrobe. She’s looking for her gray wool skirt. Her skirts are all on hangers, the thin summer ones in front of the winter skirts. When the seasons change, the clothes switch places in the wardrobe, and Adina can see how long Ilie’s been away. His clothes don’t change hangers or drawers or shelves. They just lie there as though he were no longer alive. A picture on the wall shows him standing with his shoes in the grass. But the grass doesn’t belong to him and the shoes don’t belong to him. Nor do his pants, jacket or cap.
* * *
One day two summers ago a loud voice called up to Adina from down below. Adina went to the window. Ilie was standing on the other side of the housing settlement, below the apartment with the petunias. He lifted his head and shouted: who are they blooming for. And Adina shouted back: for themselves.
* * *
Adina steps into her gray skirt. Her foot slips on the fox’s tail, which slides away from the rest of the fur. The tail has come off where the stripe running down the back is the lightest, right where it tapers into a narrow point. Adina turns the fur over and examines the underside, the skin is as white and wr
inkled as old dough. The fur on top and the skin below are warmer than the floor, and warmer than her hands.
It’s rotted off, decayed, thinks Adina. She shoves the tail against the fur so it looks like the tail has grown back. From the picture frame, in the clothes that don’t belong to him, with eyes that aren’t his own, Ilie watches her hands. In his mouth he has a grass straw.
Rot and decay are wet, thinks Adina. But a fur dries out, just like a grass straw. In the picture the grass straw is the only thing that belongs to Ilie. The grass straw makes his face look old. Adina goes into the kitchen. From that window too she sees the woman watering her white petunias.
The petunias open in the morning when the light comes and close in the evening when the sky turns gray. They have a clock inside that measures dark and light. Every day they wind their funnels open and shut, until finally they overwind them right into October.
A knife is lying on the kitchen table, next to some quince peels and half a quince. The side that’s cut open has dried in the air just like the underside of fox fur, and the flesh is as brown as the hairs from the fox. A cockroach is nibbling at the snake made of quince peels.
* * *
To peel a quince like that you would have to hold the quince in one hand and a knife in the other, Adina thinks. You’d have to peel a quince and then you would have to eat some of the peeled quince, which would pucker your gums. You would have to bite, chew, swallow and close your eyes until the quince traveled all the way from your hand into your stomach.
Adina lays her hands on the kitchen table and lays her face on top of them. She holds her breath.
You’d have to remember that no one would ever leave half a quince just lying there, otherwise it would dry out like a fur, or like a grass straw. And if you ate a whole quince, if an entire quince had traveled from hand to stomach, Adina says to her hands on the table, then you would open your eyes and be a different person.
A woman who never eats quince like that.
Face without face
The tape plays in one room what is being recorded in another. A deep voice comes through the speaker on the desk. The deep voice says, so, KACHONI, how do you pronounce that. KARÁCSONYI, says a quiet voice. So it’s Hungarian, says the deep voice, does it mean something in Hungarian. Christmas, says the quiet voice. The deep voice laughs.
Pavel leafs through a file, tilts a photograph into the light, and laughs. He laughs longer and louder than the deep voice.
First name, says the deep voice. ALBERT, says the quiet voice. What about ABI, asks the deep voice. That’s what my friends call me, says the quiet voice. And your father, says the deep voice. He called me ABI too, he’s no longer alive, says the quiet voice. And the deep voice becomes like the quiet one and says, I see. When did he die. And the quiet voice becomes like the deep voice and says, you already know when. The deep voice asks, what makes you think that. And the quiet voice says, because you are asking. It’s the other way around, says the deep voice, if we already know something then we don’t ask. A lighter clicks in the speaker. Back then I was in kindergarten, says the deep voice, just like you. Your father was also named ALBERT, just like you. Do you remember him. No, says the quiet voice. First you said your father called you ABI, says the deep voice, and now you say you don’t remember him. That’s a contradiction. That’s not a contradiction, says the quiet voice, my mother also calls me ABI. What do you want from me.
But right at the beginning you said that only your friends call you ABI, says the deep voice. That’s also a contradiction. You see, KACHONI, I can’t pronounce your last name. You see, ALBERT, all these contradictions are connected. The deep voice becomes like the quiet one. Or can I call you ABI like your friends, says the deep voice. No, says the quiet voice. Well there was nothing uncertain about that, says the deep voice. What do you want from me, asks the quiet voice.
Pavel holds a photo under the lamp. It’s old, not shiny, with just a few stripes of light that fade off into a sky where everything is empty. Because where the sky stops is a wall, and leaning against the wall is a man with sunken cheeks and large ears. Pavel writes a date on the back of the photo.
The deep voice coughs. Paper crinkles in the speaker. For instance here, says the deep voice, which now becomes like the quiet voice: I’ve gone completely crazy, I went and fell in love, with someone who loves me, but my beloved’s stupid, since she does and since she doesn’t, really love me yet. That’s also a contradiction, all these contradictions are connected. That’s just a song, the quiet voice says, now a little louder.
Pavel glances at his watch and puts the photo back in the file. He turns the speaker off and shoves the drawer shut. He picks up the phone, just beyond the window is a poplar. He looks outside, his eyes are small, his gaze as wet as the poplar. His eyes pierce through the poplar branches but don’t see them. He turns the dial twice and says, we’re not getting anywhere, it’s almost four o’clock.
Pavel remains silent for a moment, he looks through the poplar, the wind blows, the leaves are wet, his lighter clicks. The cigarette glows. He blows smoke in front of him and shuts the door.
* * *
Write, says the voice. The eyes in the forehead are light brown. They shift back and forth and go dark. The eyes are reading from a sheet of paper on top of a finger-thick folder. The poplar tree is swaying outside. The mouth between the telephone and the desk lamp is moving. Abi’s gaze latches on to the windowpane. Rain is falling outside the window, but Abi can’t see the raindrops hitting the poplar, as though the poplar wasn’t there. All he can see are the little balls of water dripping off the leaves and dropping to the ground. Abi squeezes the pen with his fingers. The bulb hanging from the ceiling is so bright it sends threads of light thrashing this way and that. Abi stares at the bare tabletop. The pen doesn’t belong to him nor does the blank sheet of paper. The voice screams and thrashes just like the light threads. Below the voice, in the fold of the chin, is a small razor cut. The cut is a few days old.
The door opens slowly. The eyes between the telephone and the desk lamp are half-closed. They don’t look up because they know who’s entering.
From the edge of the desk Abi does look up from the blank paper without letting go of the pen. The man with the reddish-blue flecked tie walks to the desk, looks at the blank paper and holds out his hand. As Abi extends his own hand, still wrapped around the pen, he sees a birthmark between the man’s shirt collar and his ear. The man says, PAVEL MURGU and shakes Abi’s hand together with the pen.
Face without face, in other words he lost his face, says the razor cut, raising his hand to his forehead. Forehead of sand, in other words a head with no brains. Voice without voice, so no one is listening, says the razor cut. The birthmark takes a seat next to the razor cut and gazes out through the windowpane.
Maybe the man with the birthmark is looking at the poplar, after all he can afford to do that, his mind is free to leave here and go somewhere else, thinks Abi. Because the man’s light brown eyes are wide open and hard and they shine as they look at Abi, taking in the face that belongs to Abi and not them, Abi’s cheeks, Abi’s fingertips, the little breaths that Abi’s mouth snatches from the glaring light.
* * *
It’s a contradiction, Abi thinks, that someone dies but doesn’t have a grave. And it’s also a contradiction that he would be the one to have to say that. And that his throat is pounding but his mouth doesn’t move. And it’s a contradiction when you’re the son of a dead man and you arrive in a city that really is a prison and when you look for something callused or something broken in everyone who lives there—but find nothing but the ordinary. Ordinary eyes, ordinary steps, ordinary hands, ordinary bags. In the display windows the ordinary wedding photos, the bridal veil cascading over the grass in the park like foam from a waterfall. And next to it the white shirt in the black suit like snow on slate. And it’s a contradiction when the son of a dead man gets frightened because these ordinary men and women meet each other on the stre
ets of this city and instead of asking HOW ARE YOU they ask HOW ARE YOU GETTING ALONG WITH LIFE.
* * *
Face without face, who does that refer to, asks the man with the birthmark.
And it’s a contradiction, Abi thinks, that between being starved and being beaten the prisoners were forced to fashion their guilty verdict into cabinets and chairs for a furniture factory when they had no beds themselves, only knotty wood and knotty fingers. And that newlyweds bought cabinets and chairs that had been glazed and upholstered by those hands, whether they knew it or not. The dizzying height of the sky above the prison is a contradiction as well. And the fact that it was there back then, looking straight down on the city in a cold swath of sunlight, where crows dive quietly and slowly into the roofs.
* * *
It doesn’t refer to anybody, says Abi, it’s just a song. And the razor cut says, then why do you sing it if it doesn’t refer to anybody. Because it’s a song, says Abi.
It refers to our country’s president, says the birthmark. No, says Abi.
The walls are full of outlets. The outlets have mouths. The base of the lamp has yellow numerals, inventory numbers.
I see you aren’t informed, says the birthmark. You see, your friend Paul has confessed, and he should know. After all he’s the one who wrote the song, says the chin cut.
There are yellow inventory numbers marking the side of the desk and the door to the cabinet. Paul can’t have confessed, says Abi, because it isn’t true. The birthmark laughs and the telephone rings. The razor cut holds the receiver to his cheek and says: no, yes, what, how’s that. Fine. The mouth whispers something to the birthmark, whose face is bright in the light but shows no emotion.
