by Herta Müller
One winter evening two black cars arrived in the village. They were coming from an inspection at the border. People said there were three high party functionaries, a border officer and three bodyguards. They were all completely plastered. One of them knocked on the mailman’s window and asked who had the key to the swing ride. The mailman pointed to the other end of the village, where Mihai lived.
Mihai was already asleep when they knocked on the window. He didn’t want to get up, but they insisted. Yes, said Mihai, I have the key, only there isn’t any oil in the motor, and I don’t have any here, it’s over at the People’s Council office. But he ended up getting the key anyway and went off with the bodyguard. After looking into the motor he said there was enough oil for one ride. And what happens then, asked the bodyguard. Then the motor will stop, said Mihai.
The bodyguard waved to the others, and they all climbed out of the cars and took their places in the seats, the bodyguards between the functionaries, the border officer last. Mihai waited beside the motor until they’d buckled themselves in. Start it up, said the bodyguard, once it gets going you can go home.
The motor ran, the seats flew, the chains angled out into the air. Mihai went home, the moon shone and it was very cold. But the motor hummed, and the seats flew all night long.
The next morning the carousel was still there, says the lamb, and the seats were hanging in the air, and the seven men were hanging strapped in the seats, frozen to death.
The lamb wipes two tears from her eyes, her mouth opens and closes. The next day a commission came to the village. The carousel was no longer allowed, it was torn down and taken away. The road was never paved. Mihai and the mailman were arrested as class enemies. At the trial Mihai said it was night and the diesel oil was black. He must have made a mistake, the motor was probably full. And the mailman testified that he’d heard the motor running all night long, it didn’t get quiet until it was almost morning. Once he’d even looked out the window and seen the comrades flying through the air. Yes, he’d heard their howling, he said, but he hadn’t given it a second thought, they looked like they were having a good time.
Frozen raspberries
The black and white sky stayed empty, the forbidden song spread throughout the country in trains, in buses, on horse-drawn carts. In tattered coat pockets and shoes worn down to the point of listing. Also in the car, between Adina and Paul as they drive back to the city.
The sky in the roadside village is blue, the forbidden song has howled it empty. The village policeman put his pants back on but left his cap on the tree. He didn’t clear out his desk, just grabbed the pictures of his wife and two children and stashed them in his jacket. Then he cut across the field at the end of the village, looking to get as far away as possible.
The old lady next door carries her pillows and down covers into the house, because evening is lurking behind the village as it does every day, only louder.
* * *
At the border, at the other end of the country, where the plain juts into Hungary like the tip of a nose, there is a little crossing. The barrier is dark. A car is waiting by the barrier, the driver is wearing a thick sweater. He hands his passport through the window. The border officer reads:
KARÁCSONYI ALBERT
Mother MAGDA née FURÁK
Father KARÁCSONYI ALBERT
As the man returns his passport to the glove compartment a birthmark the size of a fingertip pops out of his shirt collar. The barrier swings up.
* * *
Adina and Paul look up at the window, the curtains have been drawn. The apartment is unlocked, the key has been left in the door from the inside. Abi is not at home and there is no note. The wardrobe is open, a matchbox is lying on the carpet. A chair has been knocked over on the kitchen floor. On the kitchen table is a half-empty bottle of brandy and a full glass. The soup in the pot on the stove has a layer of mold.
No one leaves home like that, says Paul, unless they’re forced to.
* * *
At the café behind the quiet streets of power the glass panes have been shattered by bullets. The red curtains have been torn down. Soldiers sit at the tables. The poplars rise pointed and tall and peer into the water. Where fishermen stood during the striped summer, soldiers now stand day and night. They don’t care what time it is, the bell tolls in the cathedral tower and doesn’t even hear itself.
The dark green yews between the opera and the cathedral have been torn apart, the display windows splintered and empty. The bullet holes on the walls are as dense as skipping black rocks.
The cathedral steps are crammed with thin yellow candles. They flicker at a slant, like the wind. The long red carnations and short white cyclamens have been trampled but are not yet wilted. The steps are guarded by tanks and soldiers. The dwarf is wearing a black armband and sitting on the curb next to a wooden cross. He stretches out his legs so that his brick shoes face the sidewalk. He is selling yellow candles. Attached to the cross is a photograph of a dead man, a young face with a pimple. The mouth smiles and smiles. Adina closes her eyes and an angel with a bullet wound smiles from out of the picture. Paul moves his face close to the photograph. At his feet a woman is sitting behind a cloth spread with candles. She is all muffled up and eating a soft-boiled egg. She bores her fingertip into the yolk and licks it. Her finger and the corner of her mouth and the yolk are yellow just like the candles. The woman wipes her finger on her coat and holds two candles out to Adina and Paul.
Praying is something I just can’t do, says Adina, Paul lights one of the candles.
At the opera, a whole gallery of photographs has been posted on the heavy wooden doors. Paul reaches over an old man in a fur cap and points at one of them. His finger touches the picture, it’s a photograph of Pavel, mouth smiling, his birthmark just above his shirt collar. Farther down, Adina’s finger touches a different face, it’s the man who pissed in the river and right afterward was able to walk along the bank like a quiet man. Underneath the pictures are the words: THESE ARE THE ONES WHO FIRED.
They all fired into the air, no doubt about it, said the old man with the fur cap, but it was the air that happened to be in people’s lungs.
* * *
The curtains have been drawn. They were here all right, says Paul. The door to his apartment is closed. But the doors to the wardrobe are open, the clothes strewn on the floor, the books, the bedspread, the pillow, the blanket. His records are lying on the kitchen tiles, trampled to pieces.
* * *
They come to Adina’s apartment, she unlocks the front door. The bathroom door is ajar, the sink is empty, no sunflower seed is floating in the toilet. The wardrobe is closed.
The fox tail slides away under the tip of Adina’s shoe. Then the first, second and third paw.
And then the fourth.
Adina slides the tail back to the fur with her fingers. Then the right hind paw, then the left, the right forepaw, and the left. That’s the right order, she says. Paul inspects the floor. No hair.
Can I stay here, asks Paul.
* * *
Adina stands in front of the bathtub, hot water runs out of the pipe, steam coats the mirror. She takes off her blouse, checks the temperature with her hand. Then she turns off the faucet and puts her blouse back on. The TV is talking in the other room.
I looked in the mirror and saw my white shoulders, I saw the bathtub, the white steam, I can’t bring myself to get undressed, she says, I can’t manage to take a bath. She rummages through her travel bag. The nail clipper is on the bottom.
* * *
Before the sheets are warm, sleep has filled their heads. Because both Adina and Paul have gone to bed with the same bullet-pierced image that swells until it bursts through the skull because the image is bigger than their heads.
I loved you like my own children, the dictator’s wife had spoken right into the room. The dictator nodded, his eyes saw the nail clipper on the table next to Adina’s hand and he pulled his black fur cap down onto his
forehead. He’d been wearing the same cap for several days. After that bullets shot through the screen and hit the wall of a barrack, in the filthiest bare corner of the courtyard.
The wall stayed there, empty and riddled with bullet holes.
And then two old peasants were lying on the ground, and the soles of their shoes peered into the room, while heavy soldiers’ boots stood in a circle around their heads. Her silk scarf had slid off her head onto her neck. His black fur cap had not. Which one was it, the same, the last.
How about them, would you cut their corpses open, asked Adina. Paul squeezed and released the nail clipper. That would be worse than having to look inside my mother and father, he said. My father often beat me, I was afraid of him. When I saw the way he held his bread while he ate my fear went away. In those moments he and I were the same, we were equal. But when he beat me, I couldn’t believe he used the same hand to eat his bread.
Paul was breathing deeply after all the exhaustion of the past days. Where other people have a heart, those two have a cemetery, said Adina, and between their temples there’s nothing but dead people, small and bloody like frozen raspberries. Paul rubbed some tears out of his eyes, I am repulsed by them and still I have to cry for them. Where does it come from, he asked, this sympathy.
Two heads on the same pillow, separated by sleep, ears under hair. And above their sleep, behind the city, a lighter but sad day is waiting. Winter and warm air, and the dead are cold. In Abi’s kitchen the full glass remains untouched.
* * *
A few streets farther on, Clara falls asleep with the same bullet-riddled image. The telephone rings through her sleep. The red-swollen carnations are standing in the dark, the water in the vase casts a gleam. I’m in Vienna, says Pavel, someone is going to drop by soon and give you my address and a passport, you have to come right away, otherwise I won’t be here anymore.
I don’t know you
The glowing windows sway back and forth as the streetcar rolls ahead on the tracks. Here and there lights appear in the dark streets. Anyone who is awake behind the walls has light in their windows. Anyone who’s awake at this hour has to go to the factory. The hand grips dangle from their rails, the dwarf is sitting next to the door. The tracks squeal. A woman with a child on her arm is seated next to Clara. The door bangs at every stop, and the child sighs, and the dwarf closes his eyes, and the door opens. And no one comes in, just sand blown inside by the wind. The sand is like flour, only dark. It can’t be seen, it can only be heard scratching on the floor.
The streetcar reaches the corner where the fence is right next to the tracks. A branch grazes the brightly lit window, and the child sings with an absent voice:
The worries refuse to leave me alone
Must I sell my field and my house and my home
* * *
The child’s mother lowers her head and looks at the empty floor, the dwarf lowers his head, Clara lowers her head. The rails sing along below their shoes. The grip handles listen as they swing.
* * *
The loudspeaker at the factory gate is mute, the striped cat is sitting beside the entrance. The slogans have moved from the halls into the courtyard. The dwarf walks into the yard, his brick shoes clatter. The striped cat goes padding behind him.
Grigore is now the director, the director is the foreman, the gateman is the warehouse supervisor, the foreman is the gateman.
Crizu is dead.
* * *
And an hour later, when it’s brighter outside and the housing blocks are huddled together under the gray sky, Adina passes through the same morning on her way to school. Inside the broken phone booth is a crust of bread. At the end of the street is the large spool of wire. In the yard outside the wooden shack is an empty chain. Olga the dog is no longer there.
* * *
In the filthiest bare corner of the school yard, in front of a wall, is a mountain. Half of the mountain is cloth, woven cords, yellow tassels, epaulettes. The other half is paper, slogans, provincial emblems, brochures and newspapers with speeches and pictures.
The child with eyes set far apart and narrow temples is carrying a picture in front of him. The picture shows the forelock and the black inside the eye. The picture is on its side, the forelock reaches down to the child’s shoes. We’re not burning the frame, says the servant’s daughter. She tears the forelock out of the frame, my mother’s in the officer’s house all by herself, she says, the officer has been arrested, and his wife is in hiding. The twins bring a basket with youth pioneer kerchiefs and red pioneer flags with yellow fringes.
The servant’s daughter holds a match to the half of the mountain made of paper. The fire quickly eats its way higher and higher, the hard paper curls like gray ears. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this, says the servant’s daughter. The soft paper disintegrates, I’d never have guessed, says Adina. The twins skewer burning silk fringe onto a couple sticks and go running through the school yard. What was I supposed to do, says the servant’s daughter, I had to keep quiet, I have a child. The wind blows the smoke over the wall. The child with eyes set far apart stands next to Adina and listens.
I know, says Adina, the men had wives, the wives had children, the children were hungry. The servant’s daughter pulls a strand of hair through her mouth, looks at the half-burned mountain, anyway now it’s over, she says, and we’re alive. Next week I’ll come visit you.
* * *
The servant’s daughter is the director of the school, the director is the coach, the coach is the union leader, the physicist is in charge of transition and democracy.
The cleaning woman wanders through the halls with a broom and dusts the empty walls where the pictures used to hang.
* * *
Adina leans against the gate, the smoke is still rising from the school yard. There are pictures posted downtown, says Adina, your good person was one of the ones who fired. And you had a birthday. Even if I’d been here, I wouldn’t have been able to give you anything, no shoes, no dress, no blouse. Not even an apple. If you can’t give someone something then that person is a stranger.
He didn’t fire at anyone, says Clara, he’s out of the country. Her eyelids have a blue shimmer, I have a passport, she says, what should I do. Her eyelashes are long and thick and calm.
I don’t know you, says Adina, you have no business here.
* * *
From the sixth floor Adina and the servant’s daughter watch as a warm winter afternoon passes behind the stadium. On the table is a bottle of brandy and two glasses. Adina and the servant’s daughter clink and drain their glasses. A single drop trickles back to the bottom of each glass.
The servant’s daughter has brought her daughter who is two and a half years old. The girl sits on the rug and rubs her cheek with the tail of the fox. She talks to herself. Adina refills the glasses. The neighbor with the chestnut-red hair done up in big waves is standing by her open window.
Look, this cat has a mustache, says the child. Under her fingertips the fox’s head slides away from the neck. The child lays the fox head on the table.
For the second time, Adina feels a noise in her head like a branch breaking. Only different.
The servant’s daughter raises her glass.
That doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all
Past the last bridge there are no flagstones along the riverbank, no benches, no poplars, no soldiers.
At the bottom of the box are the fox’s paws, on top of them the body, and the tail. On the very top is the head. Clara gave me this box, says Adina. We were coming from town, she bought a pair of shoes and put them on right away.
Paul closes the box.
You know, I had planned on keeping that fox, says Adina. Sitting at the table or standing at the wardrobe or lying in bed, I wasn’t afraid of it anymore. Paul sticks his finger through the middle of the lid, for the candle, he says, and sets the candle inside the hole. And now they’ve cut off the head as well, she says, but the fox is still the
hunter. The candle burns, Paul sets the box on the water.
He lets it go.
Then he looks up at the sky, Abi is up there, he says, looking down on us. That doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all, he says, crying. The burning candle looks like a finger. Maybe Ilie really does know what he’s doing, he says.
Night spreads, the shoe box floats.
* * *
And far off in the country, near where the plain comes to an end, where everyone knows every little path, a place so far away that it’s barely reached by the same night, Ilie is cutting across a field. He is wearing his soldier’s uniform and his clunky boots and he’s carrying a small suitcase. The train station is off by itself, and where the sky stops, the lights of the small town are glowing, one next to another like the stripes on a border barrier. Now the border isn’t so far away.
Inside the waiting room there are no wall newspapers, the cabinets are empty except for the dust left from summer. The station attendant is eating sunflower seeds.
Timişoara, says Ilie.
The attendant spits some seeds through the window at the counter. Round-trip, he asks.
Just one way, says Ilie. His heart is pounding.
* * *
The earthen wall of the stadium pulls the bare brush closer. The last goal has been forgotten, the forbidden song has sung itself throughout the country, and now, as it spreads, it presses against the throat and turns mute. Because the tanks are still scattered throughout the town, and the bread line in front of the store is still long. Above the earthen wall the long-distance runner dangles his naked legs over the city, and one coat slinks into another.
