The Hunger Angel: A Novel

by Herta Müller

  My family and I had been together for seventeen years before I went to the camp. We’d shared the large objects like doors, cupboards, tables, carpets. And the small things like cups and plates, salt shakers, soap, keys. And the light from the windows and the lamps. Now I was someone else. We knew each other in a way we no longer were and never would be again. Being a stranger is hard, but being a stranger when you’re so impossibly close is unbearable. My head was in my suitcase, I breathed in Russian. I didn’t want to leave the house and I smelled of far away. I couldn’t spend the whole day at home, I needed to find some work to escape the silence. I was twenty-two years old but had no training. Is nailing crates a profession—I was back to fetching and carrying.

  One late afternoon in August I came home from the crate factory and found a letter for me lying opened on the veranda table. It was from the barber Oswald Enyeter. My father watched me read it the way you watch someone eat. I read:

  Dear Leo! I hope you’re back in Hermannstadt. There was no one left for me at home, so I kept on going, all the way to Austria. Now I’m here in Vienna in the Margareten district, lots of people from our part of the world. If you get a chance to come someday I can shave you again. I found a job as a barber, the shop is owned by someone from home. Tur Prikulitsch spread a rumor that he was the barber in the camp and I was the kapo. Bea Zakel keeps on repeating it even though she broke things off with him. She christened her child Lea. Does that have anything to do with Leopold? Two weeks ago some construction workers found Tur Prikulitsch under one of the bridges over the Danube. His mouth had been gagged with his tie and his forehead split down the middle with an axe. The axe was left on his stomach, no trace of the murderers. Too bad it wasn’t me. He deserved it.

  When I folded up the letter, my father asked:

  Do you have a child in Vienna.

  I said: You read the letter, it doesn’t say that.

  He said: Who knows what you all did in the camp.

  Who knows, I said.

  My mother was holding my ersatz-brother Robert by the hand. And Robert was carrying Mopi, the dog stuffed with sawdust, on his arm. My mother took Robert to the kitchen, and when she came back, she was holding Robert by one hand and a bowl of soup in the other. And Robert was pressing Mopi to his chest and holding up a spoon for the soup—obviously for me.

  After I started my job at the crate factory, I’d roam through town when I got off work. The winter afternoons protected me since it got dark so early. The shop windows were bathed in yellow light like tram stops. Two or three plaster people, newly decked out, waited for me inside the displays. They stood close together, with price tags at their feet, as if they needed to watch where they were stepping. As if the price tags at their feet were police markers at a crime scene, as if a dead man had been taken away shortly before I showed up. Porcelain and tin dishes were crammed into smaller display windows at shoulder height, so that I carried them off as I walked past. The goods on sale waited in their sad light, all of them destined to last longer than the people who might buy them. Perhaps as long as the mountains. Crossing the main square I felt drawn to the residential streets. Lighted curtains hung in the windows—an enormous variety of lace rosettes and labyrinths of thread, all reflecting the same black tangle of branches from the bare trees. The people inside didn’t realize how alive their curtains were, as the white threads mixed with the black wood in patterns that shifted every time the wind blew. The sky kept out of sight except at the street crossings, I saw the evening star melt and hung my face on it. By then enough time had passed and I could be sure that everyone would have finished eating by the time I came home.

  I had forgotten how to eat with a knife and fork. My hands twitched, and so did my throat when I swallowed. I knew how to go hungry, how to make food last, and how to wolf it down when you finally have some. But I no longer knew how to eat politely, how long to chew, and when to swallow. My father sat across from me, and our tabletop seemed as big as half the world. He squinted as he watched me and hid his pity. The horror shone in his half-closed eyes just like the rose-quartz skin inside his lip. My grandmother understood better than anyone how to be kind to me without making a fuss. She made soup that was extra thick, probably so I wouldn’t have to agonize over knives and forks.

  On the day in August when the letter came we had a soup made with green beans and pork ribs. After the letter I lost my appetite. I cut a thick slice of bread and picked at the crumbs on the table. Then I dipped my spoon in my soup. My ersatz-brother was kneeling on the floor of the veranda, he stuck the tea sieve on the stuffed dog like a cap and set the dog astride the edge of the cabinet drawer. Everything Robert did made me uneasy.

  He was a child assembled from different parts—his eyes came from Mother, old and round and evening blue. His eyes will stay that way, I thought. His upper lip came from Grandmother, like a pointed collar under his nose. His upper lip will stay that way. His fingernails were curved like Grandfather’s and will stay that way. His ears were like mine and Uncle Edwin’s, with the turned-in folds that smooth out at the lobes. Six identical ears made of three different skins, and the ears will stay that way. His nose won’t stay the way it is, I thought. Noses change as they grow. Later it may have a bony bridge, like Father’s. If not, then Robert won’t have anything from Father. And Father won’t have contributed anything to his ersatz-child.

  Robert walked over to me at the table, holding his Mopi with the tea sieve in his left hand, and grabbed my knee with his right, as if my knee were the corner of a chair. Since that first embrace when I came back home eight months ago, no one in our house had so much as touched me. For them I was unapproachable, for Robert I was a new object in the house. He grabbed hold of me like I was a piece of furniture, to steady himself or to put something in my lap. This time he stuffed his Mopi in my coat pocket, as if I were his drawer. And I kept still, as if that’s exactly what I was. I would have pushed him away, but the disabler stopped me. Father took the stuffed dog and the tea sieve out of my pocket and said:

  Take your treasures.

  He led Robert downstairs to the courtyard. My mother took a seat across from me and stared at the fly on the bread knife. I stirred my soup and saw myself sitting in front of Oswald Enyeter’s mirror. Tur Prikulitsch came in the door. I heard him say:

  Little treasures have a sign that says, Here I am.

  Bigger treasures have a sign that says, Do you remember.

  But the most precious treasures of all will have a sign saying, I was there.

  I was there—DA WAR ICH—the German words sounded in Tur’s mouth like tovarishch. I hadn’t been shaved for four days. In the mirror of the veranda window I saw Oswald Enyeter’s black-haired hand pulling the razor through the white lather. And behind the razor a strip of skin stretched from my mouth to my ear like a rubber band. Or perhaps it was the long slit mouth from hunger already beginning to show. The reason that Father and Tur Prikulitsch could go on like that about treasures was that neither one of them had ever had a hunger mouth.

  The fly on the bread knife knew the veranda as well as I knew the barber room. It flew from the bread knife to the cabinet, from the cabinet to my slice of bread, then to the edge of the plate, and from there back to the bread knife. With each flight it rose steeply into the air, sang as it circled around, and touched down in silence. It never landed on the brass top of the salt shaker with all the little holes. And all of a sudden I understood why I hadn’t picked up the salt shaker since I came back: Tur Prikulitsch’s eyes were twinkling in the brass. I slurped my soup, and my mother listened as though I were going to read the letter from Vienna one more time. The fly’s stomach sparkled as it danced on the bread knife, now like a drop of dew, now like a drop of tar. Dew and tar and how the seconds drag, when a forehead has been split in two. Hase-veh, but how could a whole tie fit into Tur’s short snout.

  The cane

  After work, instead of going home I went in the opposite direction, away from the residen
tial streets and across the main square. I wanted to look inside the Holy Trinity Church to see if the white alcove and the saint with the sheep around his neck were still there.

  A fat boy was standing on the square, wearing white kneesocks, short houndstooth-patterned pants, and a white frilled shirt, as if he’d run away from a party. He was shredding a white bouquet of dahlias and feeding the pigeons. Eight of them were convinced it was bread: they picked at the white dahlias on the cobblestones and then gave up. A few seconds later they’d forgotten everything, they jerked their heads and started picking at the flowers all over again. How long did their hunger believe that dahlias would turn into bread. And what was the boy after. Was he playing a trick on them or was he as dumb as the pigeons’ hunger. I didn’t want to think about the tricks that hunger plays. I wouldn’t have stopped at all if the boy had been feeding bread to the pigeons instead of shredded dahlias. The church clock showed ten of six. I hurried across the square to make it to the church before it closed.

  Then I saw Trudi Pelikan walking toward me. It was the first time I’d seen her since the camp. She was using a cane. We noticed each other too late for her to avoid me, she put her cane down on the pavement and bent down over her shoe. It wasn’t even untied.

  Both of us had been back in our hometown for more than half a year. For our own sakes we preferred to act as though we didn’t know each other. There’s nothing to understand about that. I quickly turned my head, but how gladly I would have put my arms around her and and let her know that I agreed with her. How gladly I would have said: I’m sorry you had to be the one to bend down, I don’t need a cane, next time I can do it for both of us, if you’ll let me. Her cane was polished and had a rusty claw on the bottom and a white knob on top.

  Instead of going inside the church I made a sharp left onto the narrow street I’d come from. The sun stabbed at my back, the heat ran straight into my scalp as if my head were bare metal. The wind was dragging a carpet of dust, the treetops were singing. A little whirlwind formed on the sidewalk and swept through me, then touched down, leaving the pavement speckled with black. The wind droned and flung the first few drops. The storm was here, I heard the rustle of glass beads, and suddenly ropes of water went whipping past. I fled into a stationery shop.

  As I stepped inside I wiped the water off my face with my sleeve. A salesgirl came out through a narrow curtained doorway. She was wearing worn-out felt shoes with tassels that looked like paintbrushes growing out of the insteps. She went behind the counter. I stayed next to the display window for a while, watching her with one eye and looking outside with the other. Suddenly her right cheek swelled up. Her hands were resting on the counter, her signet ring—it was a man’s ring—was much too heavy for her bony fingers. Her right cheek went flat again, even hollow, and then her left cheek swelled up. I heard something clicking against her teeth and realized she was sucking on a candy. She closed one eye and then the other, her eyelids were made of paper. She said: My tea water’s boiling. She disappeared through the little door and at that moment a cat slipped out from under the curtain, came up to me, and nuzzled my pants as if it knew me. I picked it up, it weighed practically nothing. This isn’t a cat at all, I told myself, just gray-striped boredom that’s grown fur, the patience of fear on a narrow street. The cat sniffed at my wet coat. Its nose was leathery and rounded like a heel. When it set its front paws on my shoulder and peered inside my ear, it wasn’t even breathing. I pushed its head away, and the cat jumped to the ground. It jumped without making a sound and landed like a scrap of cloth. The cat was empty on the inside. The salesgirl’s hands were also empty when she came back through the door. Where was the tea, she couldn’t have drunk it that fast. And her right cheek was swollen again.

  Her signet ring scratched against the counter.

  I asked for a notebook.

  Graphed or lined, she asked.

  I said: Lined.

  Do you have something small, I can’t make change, she said. She puckered her lips and both cheeks went hollow. The candy slipped out onto the counter. It had some transparent pattern, she stuffed it quickly back in her mouth. It wasn’t candy at all, she was sucking on a polished drop of glass from a chandelier.

  Lined notebooks

  The next day was Sunday. I began to write in the lined notebooks. The first chapter was titled: FOREWORD. It began with the sentence: Will you understand me, question mark.

  By you I meant the notebook. And seven pages had to do with a man named T.P. And another man named A.G. And one named K.H. and O.E. And a woman named B.Z. I gave Trudi Pelikan the alias SWAN. I wrote out the name of the factory Koksokhim Zavod and the coal station Yasinovataya. Also the names Kobelian and Kati Sentry. I even mentioned her little brother Latzi and her bright moment. The chapter ended with a long sentence:

  In the morning after I washed up, a drop of water fell out of my hair and ran down my nose into my mouth like a drop of time—I really ought to grow a trapezoidal beard so no one in town will know who I am.

  Over the next weeks I expanded the FOREWORD into three notebooks.

  I didn’t mention the fact that Trudi Pelikan and I had traveled back home in separate cattle cars. We did this deliberately but without any prior discussion. I also left out my old gramophone suitcase. I described my new wooden trunk and my new clothes precisely: the balletki, the paneled cap, the shirt, the tie, and the suit. But I said nothing about my sobbing fit on the way home, when we arrived at the receiving camp in Sighetul Marmaţiei, the first Romanian train station. Or about the weeklong quarantine in the freight depot at the end of the platform. I had broken down because I was afraid of being sent into freedom, afraid of the abyss that loomed so close by, and my fear made the way home shorter and shorter. I sat there nested between my gramophone suitcase and my new wooden trunk, in my new body and my new clothes, with my slightly swollen hands. The cattle car wasn’t sealed, so we had the door wide open as we pulled into Sighetul Marmaţiei. The platform was covered with a film of thin snow, I stepped over sugar and salt. The puddles were frozen gray, the ice was scratched like the face of my sewn-on brother.

  When the Romanian police handed out the tickets for the rest of the trip home, I held my farewell to the camp in my hand and sobbed. Home was at most ten hours away, with two changes, one in Baia Mare and one in Klausenburg. Our singer Loni Mich snuggled up to Paul Gast the lawyer, focused her eyes on me, and thought she was whispering. But I understood every word she said:

  Look how he’s bawling, he’s falling apart.

  I thought about that sentence a lot. Then I wrote it down on an empty page. And the next day I scratched it out. The day after that I wrote it down again underneath. Scratched it out again, wrote it down again. When the page was full I tore it out. That’s memory.

  Instead of mentioning my grandmother’s sentence, I KNOW YOU’LL COME BACK, or the white batiste handkerchief or the healthy milk, I went on for pages triumphantly describing my saved bread and the cheek-bread. And my persistence in the emergency exchange with the horizon and the dusty streets. When I got to the hunger angel I went into raptures, as if he’d only saved me and not tormented me. That’s why I scratched out FOREWORD and wrote AFTERWORD above it. I was now free, but it was an immense personal disaster that I was irrevocably alone and bearing false witness against myself.

  I hid my three lined notebooks under my bed, in my new wooden trunk, which had been serving as my dresser ever since I came home.

  I’m still the piano

  I nailed crates for a whole year. I could squeeze twelve little nails between my lips and flick twelve through my fingers at the same time. I could nail as quickly as I could breathe. The boss said: You have a gift for this, because your hands are so flat.

  But they weren’t my hands, just the flat breath of the Russian quota. 1 shovel load = 1 gram bread was transformed into to 1 nail head = 1 gram bread. I thought about deaf Mitzi, Peter Schiel, Irma Pfeifer, Heidrun Gast, and Corina Marcu, all lying naked in the e
arth. As far as my boss was concerned they were butter boxes and eggplant crates, but for me they were little fir-wood coffins. For me to meet my goal the nails had to fly through my fingers. I managed 800 nails an hour, no one else even came close. Every little nail had its hard head, and every nail was under the supervision of the hunger angel.

  In the second year I enrolled in a night class on concrete manufacture. By day I was a concrete expert at a construction site on the Ucea River. That’s where I made my first design for a round house, on blotting paper. Even the windows were round, everything with corners reminded me of a cattle car. With every line I drafted, I thought about Titi, the foreman’s son.

  Late that summer, Titi came with me to the Alder Park. An old peasant woman was standing at the entrance with a basket of wild strawberries, fiery red and tiny, like tongue tips. And each had a stem on its green collar like very thin wire. A few had three-fingered serrated leaves. She gave me one to taste. I bought two large bags for Titi and myself. We walked around the carved wood pavilion. Then I lured him farther and farther along the stream and through the bushes, behind the short-grass mounds. After we’d eaten the strawberries Titi crumpled his bag and wanted to throw it away. I said: Give it to me. He reached out his hand, I took it and wouldn’t let go. He looked at me coldly and said: Hey. That couldn’t be brushed off with laughing and talking.

  The fall quickly colored its leaves and was soon over. I kept away from the Alder Park.