Herta Müller - The Hunger Angel

Only the hunger angel could forbid Paul Gast from eating his wife’s food. But the hunger angel is a thief himself. All the hunger angels know each other, I thought, just as we all know each other. And they have the same professions we do. Paul Gast’s hunger angel is a lawyer just like he is. And Heidrun Gast’s hunger angel fetches and carries for her husband’s. Mine also fetches and carries, but I have no idea for whom.

I said: Heidrun, eat your soup.

I can’t, she said.

I reached for her soup. Trudi Pelikan was also eyeing it furtively. And Albert Gion from across the table. I began spooning away, without counting. I didn’t slurp, because slurping takes longer. I ate for myself, without Heidrun Gast or Trudi Pelikan or Albert Gion. I forgot everything around me, the entire mess hall. I sucked the soup into my heart. Faced with this bowl of soup, my hunger angel ceased being a servant and became a lawyer.

I shoved the empty dish over to Heidrun Gast, until it touched the little finger of her left hand. She licked her unused spoon and wiped it dry on her jacket, as if she and not I had eaten the soup. Either she could no longer tell whether she was eating or watching, or she was acting as though she had eaten. One way or the other, you could see her hunger angel stretched out inside her slit mouth, mercifully pale on the outside and dark blue inside. He may have even been able to stand in a horizontal position. And it was clear that he was counting her days in the thin cabbage soup. But it’s also possible that he had forgotten Heidrun Gast and was calibrating the scale in the back of my throat. Or that as we were eating he was figuring out how much he could get from me and how long it would be before he got it.

When the hunger angel weighs me, I will deceive his scales.

I will be just as light as my saved bread. And just as hard to bite.

You’ll see, I tell myself, it’s a short plan with a long life.

After supper I went to the cellar for the night shift. There was a brightness in the sky. A flock of birds was flying like a gray necklace from the Russian village toward the camp. I don’t know if the birds were screeching in the brightness or in the roof of my mouth. I also don’t know if they were screeching with their beaks or rubbing their feet together or if their wings had old bones with no cartilage.

Suddenly a piece of the necklace broke away and split into mustaches. Three of them flew right into the soldier in the rear watchtower, just under the brim of his cap. They stayed there a long time, and didn’t fly out again until I’d reached the factory gate and turned around one more time. The soldier’s rifle was shaking, but he stayed frozen. I thought, The man is made of wood, and the rifle of flesh.

I didn’t want to trade places with the guard in the tower or with the bird necklace. Nor did I want to be the slag worker who has to climb down the same sixty-four steps into the cellar every evening. But I did want to trade places. I think I wanted to be the rifle.

During the night shift I flipped one cart after the next, as always, and Albert Gion did the pushing. Then we switched. The hot slag cloaked us in fog. The pieces of ember smelled like fir resin and my sweaty neck like honey tea. The whites of Albert Gion’s eyes swung back and forth like two peeled eggs, his teeth like a lice comb. In the cellar his black face had disappeared.

During the break, sitting on the board of silence, the little coke fire lit up our legs all the way to our knees. Albert Gion unbuttoned his jacket and asked: What does Heidrun Gast miss more, the German or the potatoes. That wasn’t the first time she’s untied a potato, who knows what was written on the other scraps. The lawyer’s right to steal her food. An old marriage makes you hungry, infidelity makes you full. Albert Gion tapped me on the knee, as a sign the break was over, I thought. But then he said: Tomorrow I’m taking the soup, what does your Minkowski-wire say to that. My Minkowski-wire said nothing. We sat there a while in silence. My black hand disappeared on the bench. Just like his.

The next day Paul Gast was again sitting next to his wife in the mess hall, despite his abscessed teeth. He was back to eating, and Heidrun Gast was back to keeping quiet. What my Minkowski-wire said to that was that I was disappointed, as so often. And that Albert Gion was being spiteful in a way I’d never seen. He was out to spoil the lawyer’s meal and tried to pick a fight. He accused the lawyer of snoring so loud it was unbearable. Then I turned spiteful too and told Albert Gion that his snoring was even worse than the lawyer’s. Albert Gion was furious that I’d spoiled his fight. He raised his hand to strike me, and his bony face was like a horse’s head. By that time the lawyer’s spoon was already well into his wife’s soup. She dipped her spoon less and less and he dipped his more and more. He slurped, and his wife began to cough, just to do something with her mouth. And when she coughed she covered her mouth, daintily holding out her little finger that was corroded by the sulfuric acid and grimy from the lubricating oil. Here in the mess hall all of us had dirty fingers, the only one with clean hands was Oswald Enyeter the barber, but the hair on his hands was as dark as the filth on ours, and looked as though he’d borrowed some fur from the steppe-dogs. Trudi Pelikan also had clean hands, ever since she became a nurse. Clean, but colored yellowish brown from rubbing ichthyol on all the sick people.

While I was thinking about Heidrun Gast’s little finger and the condition of our hands, Karli Halmen came up to me and wanted to swap bread. My mind wasn’t clear enough for swapping bread, so I fended him off and stuck with my own portion. Then he traded with Albert Gion. That pained me, because the piece of bread that Albert Gion then bit into seemed bigger than mine by a third.

From all around the mess hall came the clatter of tin. Every spoonful of soup is a tin kiss, I thought. And every one of us is ruled by our hunger, as though by an alien power. But no matter how well I knew that in the moment, I forgot it right away.

The naked truth is that Paul Gast the lawyer stole his wife’s soup right out of her bowl until she could no longer get out of bed and died because she couldn’t help it, just like he stole her soup because his hunger couldn’t help it, just like he wore her coat with the rabbit-fur pocket flaps and couldn’t help it that she had died, just like our singer Loni Mich wore the coat and couldn’t help it that a coat was free because the lawyer’s wife had died, just like the lawyer couldn’t help it that he was also free because his wife had died, just like he couldn’t help wanting to replace her with Loni Mich, and Loni Mich couldn’t help wanting a man behind the blanket, or wanting a coat, or that the two things were tied together, just like the winter couldn’t help being icy cold and the coat couldn’t help being so warm, and the days couldn’t help being a chain of causes and effects, just like all causes and effects couldn’t help it that they were the naked truth, even though this was all about a coat.

That was the way of the world: because each person couldn’t help it, no one could.

Father, the white hare is hunting us down, chasing us out of life. He’s growing in the hollows of more and more cheeks.

He hasn’t crawled out of my face yet, he’s just been looking at my flesh from the inside, because it is also his. Hase-veh.

His eyes are coals, his muzzle is a tin dish, his legs are pokers, his stomach is a little cart in the cellar, his path is a set of tracks rising steeply up the mountain.