Herta Müller - The Hunger Angel

Because minus 273 degrees Celsius is absolute zero, I said, it doesn’t get colder than that.

You’re very scientific today, he said, but I’m sure you miscounted.

I couldn’t have, I said, the number 273 watches out for itself, it’s a given.

What’s given, said Albert Gion, is that you should have thought of something else. My God, Leo, you could have run away.

I gave Trudi Pelikan twenty potatoes, to pay her back for the sugar and salt. Within two months, just before Christmas, all 273 potatoes were gone. The last ones sprouted blue-green sliding eyes like Bea Zakel’s. I wondered whether I should tell her that someday.

Deep in the fruit garden, at our summerhouse in the Wench, stood a wooden bench without a back. We called it Uncle Hermann. We called it that because we didn’t know anybody by that name. Uncle Hermann had two round feet made of tree trunks stuck into the earth. The top of his seat was smooth, but the underside was still rough timber, with bark. When the sun was blazing, Uncle Hermann sweated drops of resin. If you plucked them off they grew back the next day.

Higher up on the grass hill stood Aunt Luia. She had a back and four legs and was smaller and slimmer than Uncle Hermann. She was older as well, Uncle Hermann had come after her. I climbed up to Aunt Luia and rolled down the hill. Sky below earth above and grass in between. The grass always held me firmly by the feet so I wouldn’t fall into the sky. And I always saw Aunt Luia’s gray underbelly.

One evening my mother was sitting on Aunt Luia, and I was lying on my back in the grass at her feet. We were looking up at the stars, which were all out. And Mother pulled the collar of her jacket over her chin, until the collar had lips. Until not she, but the collar said:

Heaven and earth make up the world. The reason the sky’s so big is because there’s a coat hanging there for every human. And the reason the earth is so big is because the world’s toes are so far away. So far away you have to stop thinking, because distances like that make you feel hollow and sick to your stomach.

I asked: Where is the farthest place in all the world.

At the end of the world.

At its toes.

Yes.

Does it also have ten.

I think so.

Do you know which coat is yours.

I’ll know when I’m up in heaven.

But that’s where the dead people are.

Yes.

How do they get there.

They travel there with the soul.

Does the soul have toes, too.

No, wings.

Do the coats have sleeves.

Yes.

Are the sleeves their wings.

Yes.

Are Uncle Hermann and Aunt Luia a couple.

If wood gets married, then yes.

Then Mother stood up and went into the house. And I sat down on Aunt Luia in the exact spot where she had been sitting. The wood was warm. The black wind quivered in the fruit garden.

Today I don’t have to work the early-morning shift, the afternoon shift, or the night shift. After the last night shift of a given rotation we have a free Wednesday, which counts as my Sunday, and lasts until two p.m. on Thursday. I’m drowning in all this free air, I ought to trim my nails, but last time it felt as though the nails I was trimming belonged to someone else. I don’t know who.

From the barrack window I can see across the camp to the mess hall. The two Zirris are coming up the camp street carrying a heavy bucket, it must be coal. They pass the first bench and sit down on the second because it has a back. I could open the window and wave or else go out to them. I quickly slip into my galoshes but then I just stay there, sitting on my bed.

There’s the boredom of the rubber worm with its delusions of grandeur, the black knee of the stovepipe, the shadow of the dilapidated little table—a new one appears every time the sun moves. There’s the boredom of the water level in the bucket and the water in my swollen legs. There’s the boredom of my frayed shirt seam and the borrowed sewing needle, and the shaky boredom of sewing, when my brain slides over my eyes, and there’s the boredom of the bitten-off thread.

Among the men there’s the boredom of vague depressions during grumpy card games that lack all passion. Someone with a good hand ought to want to win, but the men break off the game before anyone wins or loses. And among the women there’s the boredom of singing homesick songs while picking nits in the boredom of solid lice combs made of horn and Bakelite. And there’s the boredom of the jagged metal combs that are of no use. There’s the boredom of having your head shaved and the boredom of skulls that look like porcelain jars decorated with pus blooms and garlands of lice bites, both fresh and fading. There’s also the mute boredom of Kati Sentry. Kati Sentry never sings. I asked her: Kati, can’t you sing. She said: I’ve already combed my hair. See, the comb scratches when there isn’t any hair.

The camp yard is an empty village in the sun, the sharp tips of the clouds are fire. On the mountain meadow my Aunt Fini pointed to the evening sun. A gust of wind had lifted her hair like a bird’s nest and parted it in back with a slashing white line. And she said: The Christ child is baking cake. I asked: Already. She said: Already.

There’s the boredom of wasted conversations, not to mention opportunities. Even the simplest request takes many words, and there’s no guarantee that any one of them will do the trick. I often avoid conversations, and when I seek them out, I am afraid of them, most of all of the ones with Bea Zakel. Maybe the reason I dive into her sidelong gaze is not because I want something from her but because I want to beg mercy from Tur. The truth is I speak with everyone more than I want to, simply to be less alone. As if anyone could be alone in the camp. No one can be alone here, even if the camp is an empty village in the sun.

It’s always the same, I lie down to sleep, because it won’t get any quieter later on, since the others will be coming off work. But night-shift workers don’t sleep for long stretches, and I’m awake after four hours of obligatory rest. I could try to calculate how long it is until the next boring spring in the camp with the next senseless peace anniversary and the rumor that we’ll soon be sent home. And then there I am, lying in the new grass for the new anniversary, and I have the whole earth strapped onto my back. But they ship us farther east, to another camp, where we’re supposed to chop down trees. I pack my cellar-things into my gramophone suitcase, I pack and pack and never finish. The others are already waiting. The train is whistling, I jump onto the step at the last moment. We ride from one fir forest to the next. The firs leap out of the way and yield to the tracks and then hop back in place after the train has passed. We arrive and climb off the train, the first one out is Commandant Shishtvanyonov. I take my time, hoping that no one notices I don’t have a saw or an axe in my gramophone suitcase, just my cellar-things and my white handkerchief. Immediately after stepping off the train the commandant changes clothes, now his uniform has horn buttons and oak-leaf epaulettes, even though we’re in a fir forest. He’s impatient— Davay , come on, move it, he tells me, we have more than enough saws and axes. I climb out, and he hands me a brown paper sack. Not more cement, I think. But one corner of the sack is torn and it’s leaking white flour. I thank him for the present, I carry the sack under my left arm and salute with my right. Shishtvanyonov says: Get a move on, here in the mountains we sometimes have to blow things up. Then I understand, the white flour is blasting powder.

Instead of having thoughts like that, I could read. But I’ve long since sold the terrible Zarathustra , the thick Faust , and the onionskin edition of Weinheber as cigarette paper to still my hunger for a little while. On my last free Wednesday I also imagined being shipped farther east, but that time we didn’t even need a train. We traveled in our barrack, which stretched out like an accordion, without any tracks or wheels. The ride was smooth, the acacias rushed by, scratching the windows with their branches, and I sat next to Kobelian and asked: How can it be that we’re riding, when we don’t have any wheels. And he said: That’s because the camp is always on track.