The Fox Was Ever the Hunter (11 page)

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It was on an August day like that when Ilie stood by the stove squashing cockroaches. But maybe it wasn’t him at all, maybe it was the brutality of the heat inside his head. Death came with a crack for the large ones and silently for the small ones. Ilie counted only the large reddish-brown cockroaches that cracked.

When they’re fully grown they turn red, said Ilie. Cockroaches will outlive everything, cities and villages and the endlessly plowed fields that have no lanes or trees. The miserable maize and the Carpathians and the wind on the stones, and sheep and dogs and humans. They will eat up all this socialism and lug it down to the Danube inside their fattened bellies. And the people on the other side will stand there horrified, blinking in the heat. And they’ll shout across the water, that’s the Romanians for you, they deserved it.

Then Ilie started sobbing and grabbed his face with hands that smelled of cockroach, and Adina dragged him out of the kitchen and gave him a glass of water. He held it in his hand but didn’t drink. Disgusted and freezing despite the heat, he broke out in a cold sweat and pushed Adina away. He was so far removed from himself that he practically choked on his tongue when he said, the world is lucky to have the Danube.

*   *   *

Adina chews on a nut and looks out the window. The nut tastes bitter at first and then sweet. The sky is not looking down but is turned upward, its vast emptiness clinging to little spots of white, to letters that have all been read by the time it flees the city and escapes—a refugee above the city, bound for the Danube.

A child cries on the street below. Adina’s tongue searches for the bits of nut stuck between her teeth. The shells lie scattered beneath the table.

A different silence

Where are the ball bearings, says the director. A brown moth the size of a fly flits out of his shirt collar and flutters past the geranium on the windowsill, looking for the factory yard below and behind the glass. Mara says, the ball bearings are on order. Outside the director’s curtained window, on the other side of the geranium, shoes go clattering by. Heads of brown hair bob past. The potted geranium hovers first on one head then on the next. The geranium doesn’t wave its red flowers, it just lets its leaves dangle motionless over the hair and point down into the sunken factory yard, into the rust, into the wire. The director doesn’t see the heads of the people passing, only the tops of their hair. And he sees the moth at the windowpane. So, says the director, assuming the ball bearings are on order where are they. He steps so close to the glass that the open curtain brushes his forehead and the geranium grazes his chin. And the moth flips over and flutters past his shorn temples toward the meeting table. The ball bearings are on their way, Comrade Director, says Mara.

The director catches himself looking at the wire, out of habit, but quickly pulls his face back away from the window. He isn’t surprised by the moth. But he had not reckoned with a pair of tall shoes hitting the asphalt like a couple of broken bricks. Nor had he reckoned with short legs that don’t bend as they walk. Or with a back so erect as if stiffened by wire.

These shoes, these legs, this back—all unsettle eyes that wish to remain blank. No matter how many years pass in the factory, no eye looks at the dwarf without seeing some reflection of itself. Without getting in its own way.

The director pulls back his head, his routine broken by the clatter walking with the dwarf.

A dwarf, and still he’s made something of himself, says the director. Another person in his place would be begging on the street. He points at the small picture of the dictator in a frame on the table. A larger portrait hangs on the wall. Both show the black inside the eye. The two pictures look at each other, and their gazes meet between the wall and the table, right in front of the white curtain. Everyone who comes from HIS part of the country, says the director, has a strong will.

*   *   *

He means the south, the part of the country cut off by the Danube. The flat plain where the stony summers wither among the corn while it grows, and the stony winters freeze among the corn once it’s forgotten. Where cushions of faded thistle fluff drift on the water. Where people count the floating cushions and know that for every person shot trying to escape, the Danube carries a cushion on its waves for three days, and for three nights shows a gleaming light under its waves, like a candle. The people in the south know the number of the dead, even if they don’t know their names or faces.

*   *   *

Send a notice saying they’re overdue, says the director. The ball bearings are on their way, says Mara. He rubs his neck against his shirt, his collar scratches. Every now and then, says the director, there’s a knock at the door. Not very loud, I can barely hear it. And when I open the door I don’t see anyone unless I look down right away. Then it turns out the foreman has sent the dwarf, and he doesn’t say a word, just hands me a piece of paper. And then he leaves before I can say anything. I don’t call after him because I can’t ever remember his name. After all I can’t call out, HEY DWARF. Mara smiles. You have nice legs, Mara, says the director. The geranium shakes. The director kneels on the carpet. Inside Mara’s skirt his voice is deep. His hands are hard. Her thighs are hot. His teeth on her right thigh are distinct and wet and sharp. And from the portrait on the table, the black inside the eye watches. And blurs. Or is it the moth in the air, just a handbreadth away from Mara’s eyes. Ouch, that hurts, Comrade Director, she says.

*   *   *

Every week the director comes to the gatehouse, the gatewoman told Clara. He doesn’t come inside, doesn’t cross the threshold. He just sticks his head in the door and pulls it right back out. He looks at the spools of wire and asks, what’s the name of that dwarf. The gateman also looks at the wire because the director’s eyes pull his own there, and because he believes that the director’s head is completely entangled in the wire. Because whoever looks at the wire can’t help getting fully entangled and is no longer able to listen. Everyone that is except for the gateman and myself, she told Clara, we look at the wire but don’t see it anymore. So the gateman always gives the same answer: Comrade Director, the dwarf’s name is CONSTANTIN. He says it so loud I can hear him even if they’re both off in the yard somewhere, said the gatewoman. And the director always says the same thing back, I try to memorize the name but I always forget it a second later, I can keep track of everything else but I never manage to hold on to the name of that dwarf. The gateman says, the dwarf belongs to the devil, otherwise he wouldn’t be a dwarf. You know, the gatewoman told Clara, whenever the director’s out in the yard a moth comes fluttering out of his shirt collar. As a young man he used to be the director of a hat factory, on the other side of the Carpathians. That’s where the moths come from. After that he was director of a waterworks in the south and then a housing construction firm here in the city. But he’s never managed to get rid of the moths from the hat factory. Anyway every time he asks about the dwarf’s name he reaches into his bag and takes out a pen and a piece of paper and writes it down. He holds the paper and writes the name in big letters that fill the whole sheet, said the gatewoman. Then he puts pen and paper back in his bag and says, now I’ve got it. And the moth flies deep into the yard and gets lost in the wire. Then a week later the director once again sticks his head inside and says, what’s the dwarf’s name, I try to memorize the name but I always forget it a second later. And he takes out an identical piece of paper, and the same moth flies out of his shirt collar, and he writes down the same name all over again. And the moth flies deep into the yard, into the wire.

One time, the gatewoman told Clara, the director said that the same thing happens to the piece of paper as with the name of the dwarf—it disappears on its own.

*   *   *

Everybody in the factory knows the dwarf’s name, said the gatewoman, because the name doesn’t suit him at all. The director is the only one who can’t remember that. He’s always amazed that the dwarf’s name is
CONSTANTIN
, and every time he says, that name doesn’t suit the dwarf. It’s because of the director I know the name CONSTANTIN doesn’t suit him, she said. That never struck me before. But it strikes the director every time, she said. Which is why he ought to remember the name.

My son’s also named Constantin, the gatewoman said to Clara, but I’d never connect his name with the dwarf because my child isn’t a dwarf. And because the same name for a dwarf really isn’t the same name at all. I’ve told my son he’s not allowed to come looking for me in the factory, said the gatewoman. I’d never let him get caught up in all this wire. Because I know that if he ever started looking at the wire he’d never listen to me anymore. I’ll never let my child become a worker here, not even for a single day.

*   *   *

The director kneels on the rug in front of Mara’s knees that are no longer there. He sees the legs of the meeting table. He takes in more breath than his lungs can hold, he hyperventilates. His forehead feels salty and moist as though his face had two mouths, with the second feeling hot and in the wrong place, where his forehead reaches into his hair.

The striped cat sits under the meeting table and yawns. Her face is covered with fur. Sleep races through her dark stripes, her back, her stomach all the way into her paws. Her nose is black from the machine oil, blunt and old. But her teeth are sharp, white and young. Her face is furry, with thin stripes. Her eyes are alert, with the image of Mara’s thigh fixed inside. And of a bite on the inner side, as large as a man’s mouth.

The director stands up. The moth perches on the back of the chair. The director stands in front of the mirror. He doesn’t know why, but he combs his hair.

*   *   *

In the workroom a worker is sprawled out on the oily floor. His eyes are half shut, his pupils have slid into his forehead. A puddle of blood has collected next to the press. The blood does not congeal, it is absorbed by the oil. The striped cat sniffs at the puddle. She twitches her whiskers and does not lick. Inside the worker’s oily sleeve is a wrist without a hand. The hand is in the press. The foreman ties off the sleeve with a filthy rag.

The dwarf cradles the victim’s head, warm and unconscious, in his hands. He keeps his hands still, because the hair on the man’s head feels dead, and so does the skull under the hair and the brain under the skull. The upturned eyes peek out from under the lids, white like the rim of a cup. And under the eyes is a crease, which the dwarf stares at so long it seems to divide the unconscious face in two. And the cat’s face, as well as his own face. Because when he keeps his hands so still, what feels dead creeps all the way up to his neck. The cat sniffs at the dwarf’s hands and at his motionless chin. Her whiskers are tipped with red. But her eyes stay big and calm and do not squeeze out the image of Mara and the mouth-sized bite.

*   *   *

Someone calls out that the director is coming. Then Grigore and another man enter, a man no one knows. The man has clean hands and doesn’t work at the factory. He asks for the name of the victim. The foreman says CRIZU.

The stranger kicks the cat out of the way and Grigore yells at the dwarf to get out of the way. The dwarf sticks his empty hands in his pockets and stands where the worker lay sprawled, out of the way for the others but not himself, and watches as Grigore and the stranger carry the unconscious man to the dressing room at the end of the floor. The body is heavy and soft. The smock hangs half open and billows out underneath.

*   *   *

Then the director comes through the open door and heads straight across the slippery floor to the dressing room. As he walks he shouts, don’t just stand there, get back to work. A moth flies from his collar and gets lost by the windows where acacias hold back the light, because their trunks are already sprouting thin wooden shoots and random leaves. The director shuts the dressing room door behind him.

Then the stranger grasps the head of the worker while Grigore pries open his mouth and the director takes a hand flask out of his coat and pours brandy inside. After that the director washes his hands and turns the door handle and kicks open the dressing room door. The director and the stranger take the shortest slippery way out of the workroom into the yard, the spools of wire.

Grigore follows them out. And stops at the door and bumps against the dwarf. And shouts onto the shop floor, Crizu has been drunk since early this morning, Crizu was intoxicated at the workplace.

*   *   *

The dwarf leans out the workroom doorway and peers at the wire and eats a pear. His eyes are empty, his head is too big. Juice comes trickling out of his mouth as he utters the words, Crizu doesn’t drink. Then the sun pulls a see-through cloud across its belly and the dwarf bites deep into the pear and chews. He chews the skin, the flesh, the core. His fingers are sticky, his shoes spattered. His hand is empty. But he doesn’t swallow. His cheeks are full of chewed-up pear. Full up to the eyes.

Someone in the workroom says out loud, that doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all, then walks past the window and says, there’s nothing anyone can do.

*   *   *

Disaster dangles from the mouth of whoever says those words like the leaves dangle from the tree outside the window. Whether summer green or autumn yellow, disaster is a branch in his face. The color is there, but not the leaves. Because disaster is always unadorned and as bare as winter wood. Whoever speaks like that has to avert his eyes from naked life. Has to close his mouth to naked speech before a thought forms in his head. Has to keep quiet and does not complain. And the dwarf has to eat and does not swallow. And Crizu has to swallow and does not drink.

But when the doctor comes and smells the brandy he says, it was Crizu’s own fault that he fell down like that, drunk and unconscious.

*   *   *

A flock of sparrows shimmers through the yard. One bird separates and perches on a wire spool before settling on the ground. Then he hops until his wings have folded onto his back and his feathers are all smoothed out. After that the bird walks through the open door and heads straight across the slippery floor. The workers stand and watch. No one says a word.