Herta Müller - The Hunger Angel

Most people only knew each other by sight, from the mess hall or the Appell. I realized many were missing. But unless they’d collapsed right in front of me I didn’t consider them dead. And I took care not to ask where they might be. Still, when the evidence is staring you in the face, when you know so many have died, fear becomes a powerful thing, even overpowering after a while—and therefore remarkably similar to indifference. This is what allows you to act so fast when you’re the first to discover a dead person. You have to undress him quickly, before the body gets too stiff to bend, and before someone else makes off with his clothes. You have to take his saved bread out of his pillowcase before someone else beats you to it. Clearing away the dead person’s things is our way of mourning. When the stretcher arrives in the barrack, there should be nothing to haul away but a body.

If you don’t know the dead person, then you only stand to gain. There’s nothing wrong with clearing things away: if the situation were reversed, the corpse would do the same to you, and you wouldn’t begrudge him that, either. The camp is a practical place. You can’t afford to feel shame or horror. You proceed with steady indifference, or perhaps dejected contentment. And this has nothing to do with schadenfreude. I believe that the less skittish we are around the dead, the more we cling to life. And the more we fall prey to illusions. You convince yourself that the missing people have simply been moved to another camp. It doesn’t matter what you know, you believe the opposite. Just like the bread court, the act of clearing away happens only in the present moment. But there is no violence, everything proceeds matter-of-factly and peacefully.

So sings our singer Loni Mich, the sweat beading up on her forehead. David Lommer has his zither on his knees, the metal ring on his thumb. After each line he plucks a quiet echo and sings along. And Anton Kowatsch inches his drum forward until he can squint at Loni’s face through his drumsticks. The couples stumble awkwardly through the song, hopping like birds trying to land in a heavy wind. Trudi Pelikan says we’re no longer capable of walking anyway, all we can do is dance, we’re nothing but quilted jackets filled with sloshing water and clattering bones, weaker than the drumbeats. To prove her point she offers me a list of Latin secrets from the sick barrack.

Polyarthritis. Myocarditis. Dermatitis. Hepatitis. Encephalitis. Pellagra. Slit-mouth dystrophy, called monkey-skull face. Dystrophy with stiff cold hands, called rooster claw. Dementia. Tetanus. Typhus. Eczema. Sciatica. Tuberculosis. Then dysentery with bright bloody stools, boils, ulcers, muscular atrophy, dry skin with scabies, shriveled gums with decayed and missing teeth. Trudi Pelikan doesn’t mention frostbite, doesn’t talk about the brick-red skin and angular white patches that turn dark brown at the first spring warmth and are already showing on the faces of the people dancing. And because I don’t say anything or ask anything, nothing at all, Trudi Pelikan pinches my arm hard and says:

All winter long—Trudi is speaking through the singing—the dead are stacked up in the back courtyard and shoveled over with snow, and left there for a few days until they’re frozen hard enough. And then the gravediggers, who she says are lazy louts, chop the corpses into pieces so they don’t have to dig a grave, just a hole.

I listen carefully to Trudi Pelikan and start to feel that I’ve caught a little bit of each of her Latin secrets. The music makes death come alive, he locks arms with you and sways to the rhythm.

I flee from the music to my barrack. I glance at the two watchtowers where the camp faces the road, the guards are standing thin and rigid. They look as though they just stepped off the moon. Milk flows from the guard lights, laughter flies from the guardhouse, they’re drinking sugar-beet liquor again. A guard dog is sitting on the main street of the camp. He has a green glow in his eyes, and a bone between his paws. I think it’s a chicken bone, I’m envious. He senses what I’m after and growls. I have to do something so he doesn’t pounce on me, so I say: Vanya.

I’m sure that’s not his name, but he looks at me as though he could say my name, too, if he only wanted to. I have to get away, before he actually says it. I take several large steps and turn around a few times to make sure he isn’t following me. At the door to my barrack I see he still hasn’t returned to his bone. His eyes are following me, or my voice, and the name Vanya. Guard dogs, too, have a memory that goes away and comes back. And hunger doesn’t go away but comes back. And loneliness is like hunger. Maybe Russian loneliness is named Vanya.

Still wearing my clothes, I crawl into my bunk. Above the little wooden table, the light is burning, as always. As always, when I can’t fall asleep I stare at the stovepipe, with its black knee joint, and at the two iron fir cones of the cuckoo clock. Then I see myself as a child.

I’m at home, standing at the veranda door, my hair is black and curly and I’m no taller than the door handle. I’m holding my stuffed animal in my arm, a brown dog named Mopi. My parents are coming back from town, along the uncovered wooden walkway. My mother has wound the chain of her red patent-leather purse around her hand so it won’t rattle when she climbs the stairs. My father’s carrying a white straw hat. He goes inside. My mother stops, brushes the hair off my forehead, and takes my stuffed animal, my kuscheltier— my cuddle toy. She places it on the veranda table, the chain of her purse rattles, and I say:

Give me my Mopi or else I’ll be alone.

She laughs: But you have me.

I say: But you can die and Mopi can’t.

Above the light snoring of the people who were too weak to go dancing I hear my voice from years ago. It’s strange how velvety it sounds. KUSCHELTIER—what a soft name for a dog stuffed with sawdust. But here in the camp there’s only KUSCHEN—knuckling under—because what else would you call the silence that comes from fear. And KUSHAT’ means eat in Russian. But I don’t want to think of eating now, in addition to everything else. I dive into sleep, and I dream.

I’m riding home through the sky on a white pig. From the air it’s easy to make out the land below, the boundaries look right, the plots are even fenced in. But the land is dotted with ownerless suitcases, and ownerless sheep are grazing among the suitcases. Hanging from their necks are fir cones that ring like little bells. I say:

That’s either a large sheep shed with suitcases or a large train station with sheep. But there’s nobody there anymore, where am I supposed to go now.

The hunger angel looks at me from the sky and says: Ride back.

I say: But then I’ll die.

If you die, I’ll make everything orange, and it won’t hurt, he says.

And I ride back, and he keeps his word. As I die, the sky over every watchtower turns orange, and it doesn’t hurt.

Then I wake up and use my pillowcase to wipe the corners of my mouth. That’s the bedbugs’ favorite spot at night.

The cinder blocks used for walls are made of slag, cement, and lime slurry. They’re mixed in a revolving drum and shaped in a block press with a hand lever. The brickworks were located behind the coke plant, near the slag heaps on the other side of the yama. That area had enough room for drying thousands of freshly pressed blocks. They were laid out on the ground in narrow rows, close together like gravestones in a military cemetery. Where the ground was swollen or pockmarked with holes, the rows were wavy. The wet blocks were carried there on little boards that were also swollen, cracked, and pockmarked with holes.