The Fox Was Ever the Hunter (25 page)

Authors: Herta Müller

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.

ALSO BY
HERTA MÜLLER

The Passport

Traveling on One Leg

Nadirs

The Land of Green Plums

The Appointment

The Hunger Angel

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

H
ERTA
M
ÜLLER
is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the European Literature Prize. She is the author of
The Hunger Angel
,
The Appointment
, and
The Land of Green Plums
, among other books. Born in Romania in 1953, Müller lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats after refusing to cooperate with Ceauşescu’s secret police. She succeeded in emigrating in 1987 and now lives in Berlin. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Philip Boehm has won numerous awards for his translations from German and Polish, including works by Franz Kafka, Christoph Hein, Hanna Krall, and Stefan Chwin. He also works as a theater director and playwright: produced plays include
Mixtitlan, The Death of Atahualpa,
and
Return of the Bedbug
. He lives in St. Louis, where he is the artistic director of Upstream Theater.

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