The Fox Was Ever the Hunter (6 page)

At the top of the street the clematis creeps into the broken phone booth, it lies down on the glass splinters but does not get cut. It twines around the dial and stops it from spinning.

The one-eyed numbers on the dial pronounce their own names when Adina passes slowly by: one, two, three.

A fool’s summer during marches, a soldier’s summer beyond the long plain in the south. Ilie is wearing a uniform. In his mouth he has a straw of summer grass, and in his pocket a calendar with a winter full of crossed-out days. And a picture of Adina. On the plain are a hill, a wall, and the barracks. The grass straw comes from the hill, wrote Ilie on the back of the picture.

Whenever Adina sees tall grass, she thinks about Ilie and looks for his face. In her head she carries a mailbox. Whenever she opens it, the box is empty, Ilie seldom writes letters. Writing letters makes me remember where I am, he wrote. Paul said, people seldom write letters when they know for sure that they are loved.

*   *   *

For as long as the clematis was green, a man lay in the telephone booth. His forehead was so short that his hair began right above his eyebrows. Because his forehead’s so empty, said the passersby, because his brain’s made of brandy and brandy evaporates, and when it does there’s nothing left.

The man lay in the booth, and his shoes rested on their heels. Anyone walking by could see the soles but not the shoes. The man drank and talked out loud to himself when he wasn’t sleeping. People sped up when they came to the booth, and kept a distance from its shadow. They clutched their hair as though not to lose their thoughts. They spit absentmindedly on the sidewalk or into the grass because their mouths had a bitter taste. When the man talked to himself out loud, the passersby averted their eyes, and when he slept, some ventured closer to kick the soles of his shoes with the tips of theirs until he groaned. None of them ever wanted to rouse a corpse, but each of them hoped that day had come.

A bottle was propped against the man’s stomach, his fingers were around the neck, he held the bottle firmly, and didn’t loosen his grip even in his sleep.

*   *   *

Until one day the man did loosen his grip, and the bottle fell over. A woman kicked the soles of his shoes. After that the caretaker came from the nearest apartment building, then a child, then a policeman. The man in the phone booth no longer groaned, his death smelled of plum brandy.

The caretaker tossed the dead man’s empty bottle into the grass and said, if there really is such a thing as a soul then his was in that bottle and it was the last thing he swallowed. And that means that his soul is whatever his stomach didn’t manage to digest. The policeman whistled and stopped a horse cart on the street. The driver set down his whip and climbed out. He lifted the dead man by the arms while the caretaker lifted him by the shoes. They carried the stiff weight through the sun like a board, then they swung the board onto the cart, on top of the green cabbage heads. The driver covered the dead man with a horse blanket and picked up his whip. He tapped the horse and clicked his tongue, twisting his mouth.

*   *   *

The phone booth still smells of plum brandy, and for two days the wind has been making a different sound in the street. The clematis has kept growing and blooming, blue as ever, the one-eyed numbers stare from the dial. Adina dials in her head and talks to the dead man until she’s left the phone booth well behind.

*   *   *

I’m at the other end of the line, he says.

You’re skin and bones, she says, you’re just a board.

Doesn’t matter, he says, I’m a whole person, half crazy and half drunk.

Show me your hands, she says.

Wine in the mouth, cognac in the stomach, brandy in the brain, he says.

She sees his shoes, he drinks standing up.

Stop, she says, you’re drinking with your forehead, like you don’t have a mouth.

*   *   *

Near the bottom of the street a large spool of wire is rusting away. The grass around it is yellow. Behind the spool is a fence, behind the fence is a yard and a wooden shack. In the yard a dog jerks on his chain, pulling it across the grass. The dog never barks.

No one knows what the dog is guarding. Early in the morning and late in the evening, always after dark, policemen come. They talk to the dog, feed him, and light their cigarettes but do not finish them. According to the children from the apartments there are three policemen. Because their rooms have only candles, the children can see three cigarettes smoldering outside the wooden shack. Their mothers pull them away from the windows. The dog is named Olga, according to the children, but the dog is male, not female.

The dog looks at Adina every day, its eyes mirror the grass. Every day Adina says OLGA, so the dog won’t bark.

Yellow leaves lie strewn on the grass beneath the poplars in front of the school, which change color long before the poplars in town do. And in March the poplars in front of the school turn green, before all the other poplars in the city. The poplars in front of the school have a mind of their own. The teachers claim this is because the school is on the edge of town, with no protection from the weather coming off the open fields. The director says the leaves turn yellow so early because the children piss on the trunks, like dogs.

But really the poplars by the school turn yellow so early because of the factory where women make red chamber pots and green clothespins. The women who work there cough and turn barren, and the poplars turn yellow. Even in summer the women wear thick knee-length underwear with elastic bands. Every day they pad their legs and stomachs with clothespins, sticking so many in their underwear that nothing rattles when they walk. In the center of town, on the plaza by the opera, the women’s children loop strings of clothespins over their shoulders and trade them for panty hose, cigarettes or soap. In the winter the women hide whole chamber pots full of clothespins in their underwear. Nothing can be seen beneath their coats.

*   *   *

The bell rings across the school yard and through the poplars. No one is walking through the yard, no one is hurrying through the halls. No class is about to begin. The children are sitting on a truck under the poplars in front of the school. They are being driven far past the city, out to the tomatoes ripening in the field.

Their shoes are sticky with bits of squashed tomato from yesterday, the day before, whole weeks from morning to evening. Their pockets are sticky with squashed tomato, as are their water bottles, their jackets and shirts and pants. Also with grass seed, nightshade, and withered clumps of thistle fluff.

*   *   *

Thistle fluff is for the pillows of the dead, say the mothers, when their children return home late from the fields. Machine oil eats away at the skin, they say, but thistle fluff devours the mind. They stroke their children’s hair for several moments, and then, without warning, they slap them in the face. After that both children and mothers stare in silence at the candlelight. The eyes are full of guilt, but this can’t be seen by the light of the candles.

*   *   *

Dust sticks to the children’s hair, it makes their heads stubborn and their hair kinked, their eyelashes short and their eyes hard. The children on the truck don’t talk much. They look at the poplars and eat the fresh bread that has been counted. Their wart-clustered fingers are quick and nimble, the first thing they do is bore a hole in the crust. The children eat the inside first. It’s white and unbaked, the dough has scarcely been numbed by the heat of the oven, it sticks to their teeth. The children chew and say they are eating the HEART. They soften the crust with spit and form it into hats, noses and ears. This leaves their fingers tired and their mouths empty.

*   *   *

The driver closes the tailgate. His shirt is missing a button, so the steering wheel touches his navel. Four loaves of bread are lying on the dashboard. Next to the steering wheel is the picture of a blond Serbian singer. A streetcar comes too close, the bread scrapes against the windshield, the driver curses, mother of all streetcars.

Far past the city is not a direction. Wheat stubble without end, until the eyes can no longer make out its pale color. Only the undergrowth and the dust on the leaves.

*   *   *

The harvesters are pretty big, says the driver, and that’s a good thing because when you’re perched up there in the seat you can’t see the dead bodies lying in the wheat field. His throat is covered with hair, his Adam’s apple is a mouse hopping between his shirt and his chin. The wheat’s pretty high, too, he says, high enough that you can’t see the soldiers’ dogs, just their eyes. Except it’s not high enough to hide the people trying to sneak across the border. Adina grips her knees tightly, they pass a bird sitting in a rosebush by the edge of the field and pecking at a hip on the topmost branch. A red kite, says the driver. You know, when they say GOD’S ACRE they mean the cemetery. I spent three summers running the harvester near the border, all by myself on the field at harvesttime, and then two winters plowing, only at night. The field has a sweet kind of stink, when you think about it GOD’S ACRE really ought to mean a wheat field. They say a good person is as good as a piece of bread, at least that’s what the teachers teach the children.

The red kite sits motionless on the field as though its belly were impaled on the stubble. The sky sees that the stubble field is empty and hard and that the bird’s belly is soft, and rolls out two white clouds while the stubble sucks the bird’s belly dry. The driver’s eyes twitch in the corners, the blackthorn is studded with bluish green spheres and isn’t afraid of the bus wheels.

But you can’t tell children that a person is as good as a piece of bread, says the driver, otherwise they’ll believe it and won’t be able to grow anymore. And you can’t tell that to old people either, they can sense when you’re lying and then they’ll shrink until they’re as small as the children because they never forget anything. His Adam’s apple hops from his chin into his shirt. My wife and I, he says, the only time we talk is at night, when we can’t sleep. My wife wants to be good, so she doesn’t buy bread. The driver laughs, the potholes jerk his gaze onto the field, but I end up buying it anyway, he says. We eat it and like it, my wife too. She eats and cries and is getting older and fat. She’s a better person than me, but who’s really good these days. When she can’t bear it anymore instead of screaming she goes to throw up. He tucks his shirt in his pants. She vomits quietly, so the neighbors don’t hear anything, he says.

*   *   *

The road turns into the field and the truck comes to a stop, the children hop off into the grass. The wheatgrass is deep and swallows them up to the waist. Flies come buzzing out of the tomato crates. The sun has a red belly, the tomato field stretches far into the valley.

The agronomist is waiting by the crates, his tie flapping in front of his mouth. He bends over, inspects his pants and picks off the blades of wheatgrass. But the blades cling to his sleeves and back, they hike up his body faster than he can pick them off. Mother of all grass, he curses. He checks his watch, the dial burns in the sun and so does the wheatgrass. The blades shine with greed, the grass will stop at nothing to extend its reach. It even attaches itself to the wind. If it weren’t in the field, it would be in the clouds, and the world would be smothered with wheatgrass.

The children pick up the crates, flies settle on the wart clusters. The flies are drunk from fermented tomatoes, they sparkle and they sting. The agronomist raises his head, closes his eyes and shouts, today’s the last time I’m saying it, you’re here to work, every day ripe tomatoes are left hanging and green ones are picked and red ones get trampled on the ground. A blade of wheatgrass dangles from the corner of his mouth, he tries to find it with his hand but can’t, you’re a disgrace to your school, he screams, you’re doing more harm than good to our national agriculture. He locates the blade with the tip of his tongue and spits it out, fifteen crates a day, he says, that’s the quota. You can’t drink water all day, there’s a half-hour break at twelve o’clock, that’s when you can eat, drink, and go to the bathroom. A clump of thistle fluff is stuck in his hair.

The children set off into the field two by two, the empty crates swaying between them. The handles are slippery from squashed tomatoes, the plants themselves are poisonous green spotted with red. Even the smallest suckers. The wart clusters pick themselves bloody, the red tomatoes stupefy the children’s eyes, the crates are deep and never full. Red juice oozes from the corners of the children’s mouths, tomatoes fly around the heads and explode and color even the thistle clumps.

A girl sings:

I walked along a path above

And chanced upon a maid below

*   *   *

The girl puts a frog in her pocket, I’m taking it home with me, she says, covering her pocket with her hand. It will die, says Adina. The girl laughs, that doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all, she says. The agronomist looks up at the sky, catches a bit of thistle fluff with his hand and whistles the song about the maid. Two boys sit on a half-full crate, twins, nobody can tell them apart, they are two times one boy.

One twin sticks two thick red tomatoes under his shirt, the other fondles the tomato breasts with both hands, then crooks his fingers, squashes the tomatoes inside the shirt and looks with empty eyeballs at the girl with the frog. The shirt turns red, the girl with the frog laughs. The twin with the squashed tomatoes scratches the other in the face, they fall in a tangle onto the ground. Adina holds her hand out to help them up, but then pulls it back, which one started it, she asks. The girl with the frog shrugs her shoulders.

A necktie

With one hand the cyclist wheels his bike along the sidewalk, the gear chain rattles. His steps stay between the wheels as he walks past the park and toward the bridge.

The man with the reddish-blue flecked tie is coming off the bridge headed into the park. He holds a long white cigarette down by his knee, a wedding ring shines next to the filter. The man blows smoke into the shrubbery, and into the park which in the breath of fear causes people to lift their feet high. The man has a fingernail-sized birthmark between his ear and his collar.