The Fox Was Ever the Hunter

by Herta Müller

  A voice greets, the dwarf on his tall, half-brick shoes.

  Clara smiles. It’s cold here in town, says the dwarf. Clara nods. His head is too large, his hair is thick and looks so bright against the dark green yews, like the frozen matted grass in the park. It’s already cooled down, says the dwarf, it was still warm when I bought it. He is carrying a loaf of bread under his arm.

  There was a time and is no more

  An old man is using a handcart to haul a propane tank. Hanging from the valve cap is a bag with a loaf of bread. The cart has a broom handle for a shaft and wheels taken from a child’s tricycle. The wheels are narrow and get stuck in the cracks between the paving stones. For a few steps the man has the gait of a scrawny horse. The cap rattles. The man stops and the broom handle clatters onto the pavement. The man sits on the tank and tears off a piece of bread. As he chews he looks at the poplars, first down at the trunks and then up at the branches.

  Shoes thud in the back of her head, steps clatter in the back of her neck. Adina turns around and sees a man’s hands popping sunflower seeds into his mouth, his shoes shine, his pant legs flutter, his windbreaker scrunches. Now she feels the clatter on her cheek. It’s the man from the bus where the moving coffin drifted from one window to the next. You’ll do for me, he says, and spits a sunflower seed onto the stone, I’m sure you’re good in bed. She sees a bench, but there’s an empty bottle on the seat. I bet you’re a really good screw, he says, the next bench has bare nails sticking out where there used to be a wooden slat. Get lost, she says, and sits down in the middle of the third empty bench. He spits a sunflower seed onto the bench, she leans back. He sits down. There are plenty of other benches, she says and moves to the end. Now he leans back and looks her in the face. She sits up, get lost or I’ll scream, she says. He stands and says, that doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all. He laughs to himself, then opens his pants and holds out his penis. In that case I’ll be on my way, he says, as he pisses into the river. She gets up, so disgusted that her tongue rises to her eyes and she doesn’t see the paving stones as she starts walking. She feels cold water flowing into her ears and filling her head. He shakes the drops from his penis. I’ll pay you, he calls after her, I’ll give you a hundred lei, I’ll piss in your mouth.

  Adina stands on the bridge, the man walks slowly in the other direction, back the way he came. His pant legs flutter, his legs are thin. As he walks his hand keeps coming up to his face, he’s still eating sunflower seeds. His back is narrow.

  He walks like a quiet man.

  * * *

  How does the one go about the little Romanian who arrives in hell, Abi says to Paul and Adina. They are sitting in the café. That’s what he asked me when he came to my office, says Abi. I told him I had no idea. And yet three weeks ago you knew it well enough to tell it, he said. Then he said, but anyone can see you really believe little ones go to heaven, not hell, and that is a contradiction. I opened my desk drawer because I have a cold and wanted to get my handkerchief and he told me to close the drawer. I asked why and he said there might be something there he shouldn’t see. I said it’s just a desk drawer and he said that after four and a half years every drawer becomes an intimate place. I laughed and said I didn’t realize he was so tactful. Then he said he was a lawyer by profession and well bred. So, what does the little Romanian see when he gets to hell, he asked. Then he told the whole joke himself: A little Romanian dies and goes to hell, there’s a lot of pushing and shoving and everybody’s up to their neck in boiling mud. The devil sends the little Romanian off to the last empty space in the corner, and the man goes there and sinks up to his chin. From there he catches sight of a man close to the devil’s throne who’s also standing in boiling mud but only up to his knees. The little Romanian cranes his neck and recognizes Ceaușescu. Where’s the justice in that, he asks the devil, that man has a lot more to atone for than I do. You’re right, says the devil, but he’s standing on top of his wife.

  He laughed and laughed, then he realized he was laughing and his face got all sharp, he pulled in his shoulders and his birthmark twitched on his jugular vein. He hated me because he couldn’t help laughing. He moved his hands quickly, like a knife and fork, he took a piece of paper out of his briefcase and placed a pen on the table. Write, he said. I picked up the pen and he looked out the window at the factory yard and dictated, I, and I asked, ME or YOU, and he said, write I and then your name. My name should be enough, I said, after all that’s who I am. Then he shouted at me, write what I tell you, and then he realized he was shouting so he put his hand to his chin and clasped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger and said quietly, write I and then write your name. I did that. Then he said, WILL TELL NO PERSON, NO MATTER HOW CLOSE, OF MY COLLABORATION WITH. I put down the pen and said, I can’t write that. He asked why, and I said, I can’t live with that. I see, he said, his jaw was clenched so hard his temple pulsed but his voice stayed completely calm. I stood up and stepped away from the table, I went to the window, looked out into the yard, and said, I don’t wish to be bothered here at work ever again. Well, he said, I imagined you preferred that to being interrupted during your free time. He stuck the pen in his jacket and crumpled up the paper and stashed it in his briefcase. He opened the briefcase all the way and I saw a picture inside. All I could really make out was a wall, but that wall looked very familiar. You think that we’re chasing after you, he said, but you’ll see, you’ll end up coming to us all on your own. He shut the briefcase and then the door. After he was gone I saw my father at this wall, with sunken cheeks and large ears. It was the last picture my mother ever received from my father.

  What was this man’s name, asks Adina, and Paul says, MURGU, and Abi says PAVEL MURGU. How old, asks Adina, and Paul says, thirty-five, forty-five. He’s younger than forty-five, says Abi.

  The café is dark, the curtains on the wall of windows are dark red, the tablecloths are dark red and swallow what little light there is. All the coats and caps are black. The lightbulbs glow only for themselves, the smoke is brighter than they are and lingers like sleep lulled by voices. Outside, in the spaces between the curtains, evening settles along the river and on the empty paving stones. The poplar trunks stand for themselves on their own feet, the wind along the river path whirls for itself, herding the dried leaves together and shooing them away again. The fishermen sit in the café, drinking their fill. They drink until they can no longer distinguish the evening from the booze in their heads. Now and then, when their eyes happen to see through the window, a leaf drops from the sky. And they know it comes from far away, because the poplars by the water are already as bare as fishing rods. The fishermen don’t trust the bare poplars. In the winter, say the fishermen, the bare poplars consume all happiness, even when the fishermen are drinking.

  Who did you tell the joke to, asks Paul. If only I could remember, says Abi.

  The fisherman afraid of melons balances a bottle of brandy on his head. The bottle is half full. He stretches his arms out like wings and walks once around the table without dropping the bottle.

  The day after the concert MURGU read me a written statement, says Paul, saying that Face without Face refers to Ceaușescu. He claimed the explanation came from you, I didn’t believe him. Then he showed me the actual paper, which had your handwriting. Abi looks at Paul. There was a man screaming in the room next door, he says, I could hear the blows. He told me what to write and I wrote out everything he said. Those screams were from a recording, Paul says and looks at Adina, who is staring out between the two faces into emptiness. And inside that emptiness Abi’s face has sunken cheeks and large ears. That couldn’t have been a recording, says Abi, I don’t believe it. They kept me there until after midnight, he says. Afterward I went down the stairs and looked inside the guardhouse. There was a hand-sized mirror propped against the telephone, and next to it was an ashtray with water and a shaving brush. The guard had white lather on his face and was holding a razor. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I
looked for the birthmark on his neck. Only when I was standing right next to him and he took the razor off his cheek and yelled at me to close the door because I was letting in a draft did I realize it was just a guard shaving. By then the street was completely empty, says Abi, it was pitch-dark. But I kept seeing the white lather in front of my feet. Then the streetcar pulled up with just one car, the windows were bright but all empty except for the conductor. I saw white lather on his face too. I couldn’t bring myself to get in.

  The fisherman afraid of melons raises the bottle to his mouth, he doesn’t drink, just closes his eyes, kisses the mouth of the bottle, and hums a song. The eyes of the fisherman are floating in the booze, and the booze is floating in the smoke. The cathedral clock strikes outside, the chimes last shorter than a hummed song, but nobody counts them, not even Adina.

  Who did you tell the joke to, asks Paul.

  That night, says Abi, I dreamed I was searching for my father’s grave in a foreign city. I was led into a stone courtyard. The rear wall was the one my father was leaning against in that last picture. I had to cut a white ribbon. A tall fat man gave me a pair of scissors, and a small fat man in a white smock came next to me and stood on his tiptoes. He whispered into my ear that the courtyard was being consecrated. Then a line of men passed by one at a time. They were all very scrawny and had sightless eyes like glass balls. The small fat man asked, do you see him. I said, that can’t be him. The small fat man said, you can’t be sure, they’re all already dead.

  Paul and Abi are silent, resting their heads in their hands, the shattered minds inside their skulls. Tira-tira, tira-ta, the fisherman sings, and his mouth is in everyone’s face. The bottle passes from hand to hand around the table. Each fisherman closes his eyes and drinks.

  * * *

  Inside the café, the evening takes its own time the same way this or that person takes his own life, just in passing, as a shadow in the river. It is winter in the city, a winter grown old and slow, a winter that pricks people with its cold. A winter in which mouths freeze and hands absently drop what they pick up, because fingertips thicken into leather. A city winter in which the water refuses to turn into ice, in which old people wear their past lives like coats. A winter in which young people hate one another like poison whenever they detect the slightest hint of happiness. And who nonetheless keep their eyes peeled while they go on searching for their lives. A winter walking along the river, where laughter freezes instead of the water. Where stuttering passes for speech and half-uttered words for loud shouts. Where every question dies away in the throat while silent tongues keep beating against clenched teeth.

  * * *

  The fisherman afraid of melons kisses the mouth of the bottle again and sings:

  Once I used to sleep like a rock

  Well all of me except my cock

  Now it seems the reverse is true

  My cock sleeps more than I ever do

  Tira-tira tira-ta

  The birthmark

  The darkness is locked inside the stairwell and reeks of boiled cabbage. Even though the door to the building is open Adina cannot find the elevator. For the first few stairs the darkness clings to her legs, weighing them down. The flashlight’s pale circle catches on the banister, then leaps soundlessly through the rails onto the wall. Her shoes clatter inside her head. On the second floor is a drying room, a handful of light from outside falls on a line of white diapers. The garbage chute next to the drying room is gray, like an arm made of cloth. On the third floor is a bare geranium in a plastic pot smelling of moldy earth and boiled cabbage. On the fourth floor she hears shoes squeaking. A pair of pant legs comes down the stairs, and a shirt bright enough to provide a little gleam. Adina raises her flashlight. The pale circle jumps onto the man’s shoulder, half of his face, one eye, one ear, the white tips of his collar. And in the light, between his collar and his ear, is a birthmark. The edge of his nose. Then his chin which snaps the circle of light in two.

  The market hall, Adina thinks, two nuts, his hand squeezing one against the other, and his voice asking what’s your name. By this point he’s reached the third floor, he’s leaving and at the same time staying behind inside Adina’s head. Back then it was summer, what are we going to do now, he asked. He’s also the one who told the joke about the little Romanian. Abi said that his birthmark twitched on his jugular vein.

  On the fifth floor the doorbell rings, Adina lifts her finger off the button, the bell goes silent, I know what I know, those were Clara’s words, the door creaks, and Clara’s rumpled hair is in the doorway.

  Adina pushes in the door toward Clara’s cheek, and Clara’s hair moves back. Adina steps right past it, as though it were part of the doorway, and heads straight through the entrance hall. The door to the kitchen is open, the room smells of coffee.

  * * *

  Two cups on the tray, two spoons, grains of sugar scattered on the nightstand. The bed is unmade, the pattern in the damask pillowcase is like a breathy whisper.

  He was here, says Adina, the man in the stairwell just now, that was Pavel. Clara’s rumpled hair is dangling around her eyes, she pulls it back, her ears glow red beneath her thin fingers. You rarely see each other and rarely means every day, Adina’s breath dogs every word, I know why you’ve been hiding him, she says, don’t lie to me, your lawyer works for the Securitate. A hand towel is draped over the chair, right below Clara’s arm, her thin fingers fasten the white round buttons on her blouse. Even if you don’t say anything you’re lying, says Adina. Red carnations are soaking in the vase, their stems touching, the water murky around the leaves.

  I could never do anything to hurt you, says Clara, and neither could he. A pair of panty hose lies on the sewing machine. Adina clutches her chin and walks into the kitchen.

  Clara leans against the refrigerator, puts a finger to her mouth. Pavel is a good person, she says, with closed lips. The coffeepot is askew on the burner, the stove top flecked with drops of coffee. He gave me his word, says Clara, he knows the only way I can love him is if nothing happens to you. A dish towel lies crumpled under the table. And my fox, says Adina, did he tell you why they’re cutting up my fox. You realize that your good man is just carrying out orders, he’s fucking you on assignment, in fact he wanted both of us, she says, one in the summer and one in the winter, he wakes up every morning and has two wishes in his head just like he has two eyes—for men it’s his fist that gets hard and for women it’s his cock.

  Outside the apartment window a velvet skirt is hanging on the line, it’s red and dry on top, black and wet on the bottom from the water dripping incessantly from the hem. And I’m sure that your good person promised all the others that he’d protect them too. Clara bites her lip, stares out the window straight past Adina. You don’t know him, she says, pressing her hair against her head.

  And you go to bed with a man like that, says Adina. The lid is off the sugar bowl, the sugar rock hard where the coffee spilled on it. The wind blows through the tree outside. You don’t even know him, says Clara, the dented green ball is still stuck in the fork of the branches. I don’t know you, says Adina. The dented green ball is submitting to another winter. The person I know isn’t you, she says, I thought I knew you. Clara has scrunched up her toes, the cold rises off the floor tiles, coloring her knee blue, and passes into her stomach. You’re sleeping with a criminal, Adina shouts, you’re just like him, you’re wearing him on your face, do you hear me, you’re exactly the same. Clara warms one cold foot with the other. I don’t ever want to see you again, Adina shouts, not ever. Her hands flail about, her eyes are gaping open, her gaze is a hunter that pounces out of her eyes and hits his mark. Her wet mouth screams and spews embers from her tongue. Her anger is hate, as black as her coat.

  Stay here, says Clara. Adina brushes aside the thin fingers clutching at her coat and jerks away her sleeve. Don’t touch me, she shouts, I can’t bear the sight of your hands. Clara’s hair stays in the kitchen, the hallway doesn’t let her toes take a sin
gle step. The door slams shut.

  * * *

  The stairs race up along the wall, the flashlight tosses away its light. Adina’s hand glides down the railing, clinging to it for support, the fourth floor, the third floor. The garbage chute rumbles, she hears something falling inside the shaft, something falling inside her head. Then the shattering of glass two floors below.

  From underneath, the dented green ball in the fork of the tree is so small and dark it seems there’s nothing up there, nothing except once again the eye. Coats pass by, inside them are not people but November. It’s only the second week and already the month is so old and melancholy that evening arrives together with the morning.

  * * *

  My mother was always already my grandmother, Clara once said, not because of her age but because of how she handled it. She started to grow old, said Clara, when I was still a child. She hugged me tight and whispered in my ear, where are you my child, why are you so far away. And as she was growing old, her husband was staying young, said Clara, he got younger and younger compared to her. As if he were secretly watching her wilt away and preserving himself at her expense. And as if she, too, were allowing herself to wither for his sake. I don’t want to be that way, said Clara, no one should be that way. And then his life sped up. What worked with her became his weakness. And then summer came to the city as though it were his first. He couldn’t survive that first summer without her and died right after she did.

  * * *

  The stadium gate is open. Police and dogs are waiting in the parking lot. Men come surging out of the gate singing and shouting. Inside the stadium the Danes couldn’t stop the Romanian ball and the Romanian ball won. Light rises from the stadium’s earthen wall as though the moon had lost its way. Who the hell are the Danes now, the men shout as they carry their tricolor flags with their three distinct stripes. The hungry red, the mute yellow, and the spied-on blue stripes in the cut-off land. Who the hell’s heard of the Danes now, the men’s lips speak words like world and World Cup, their singing creeps up their throats, like the brambles on the earthen wall of the stadium. What the hell do the Danes want here. The long-distance runner looks on indifferently. When crowds go wild he stands all alone, a stranger.