Herta Müller: The Hunger Angel

Can it be that I forgot the things I brought from home sooner than I forgot the things I acquired in the camp. And if so, is that because they traveled with me. Is it because they were my own and therefore I didn’t give them any more thought, just went on using them until they were used up, and even longer. As though with them I was at home and not somewhere else. Can it be that I remember the objects that belonged to others better because I had to borrow them.

I definitely remember the aluminum combs. They came during the time of lice. The lathe operators and metalworkers made them in the factory and gave them to the women. They had jagged teeth and felt moist in your hand and on your scalp, because they were cold to the touch. When you worked with them they quickly took on your body warmth, and they smelled bitter, like radish. Their smell clung to your hand long after you’d put down the comb. The aluminum combs made nests in your hair, you had to tug and pull. They caught more hair in their teeth than lice.

But for lice there were also square horn combs with teeth on both sides. The village girls had brought them from home. On one side thick teeth for parting the hair, on the other fine teeth for nits. The horn combs were solid and heavy in the hand. Your hair didn’t catch in the teeth, it came out sleek and smooth. You could borrow the horn combs from the village girls.

For sixty years now, at night I try to recall the objects from the camp: the things I carry in my night-suitcase. Ever since I came back, the sleepless night is a suitcase made of black leather. And the suitcase is lodged in my forehead. For sixty years now I don’t know if I can’t sleep because I’m trying to recall the objects, or whether I struggle to recall them because I can’t sleep. One way or the other, the night always packs its black suitcase against my will. And it’s against my will that I have to remember. And even if I didn’t have to, but wanted to, I’d rather not have to want to.

Occasionally the objects from the camp attack me, not one at a time, but in a pack. Then I know they’re not—or not only—after my memory, but that they want to torment me. Scarcely do I remember that I had brought along some sewing things in my toilet kit than a towel barges in, a towel whose appearance I no longer remember. And then comes a nail brush I’m not sure I had. A pocket mirror that was either there or not. And a watch I may have taken with me, but I can’t remember what became of it. I’m pursued by objects that may have had nothing to do with me. They want to deport me during the night, fetch me home to the camp. Because they come in a pack, there isn’t room enough in my head. I feel pressure in my stomach rising to the roof of my mouth. My breath teeters over, I have to pant. A toothcombneedlescissormirrorbrush is a monster, just as hunger is a monster. And these objects would not gang up on me if hunger were not one of them.

When the objects gang up on me at night, choking me, I fling open the window and hold my head out in the fresh air. A moon is in the sky like a glass of cold milk, it rinses my eyes. My breath again finds its rhythm. I swallow the cold air until I’m no longer in the camp. Then I close the window and lie back down. The bedding knows nothing and warms me. The air in the room looks at me and smells of warm flour.

There was never enough cement. But always more than enough coal. Also enough cinder blocks, gravel, and sand. But the cement always ran out. It dwindled all by itself. You had to beware of the cement—it could become a nightmare. Not only did it disappear all by itself but also into itself. Then everything was full of cement and there was no cement left.

The brigade leader shouted: Take care with the cement.

The foreman shouted: Be sparing with the cement.

And when the wind was blowing: Don’t let the cement fly away.

And when it rained or snowed: Don’t let the cement get wet.

Cement sacks are made of paper. But the paper is too thin to hold a full sack. Whether carried by one person or two, by its belly or its four corners—it tears. If the sack tears, you can’t be sparing with the cement. If the torn sack is dry, half the cement winds up on the ground. If the torn sack is wet, half the cement sticks to the paper. There’s nothing to be done: the more you try to be sparing with the cement, the more it wastes itself. The cement is treacherous, just like dust on the road, and fog, and smoke—it flies into the air, crawls on the ground, sticks to the skin. It can be seen everywhere and grasped nowhere.

You have to be sparing with the cement, but what you really have to watch out for when it comes to cement is yourself. You carry the sack with care, but even so, the cement inside grows less and less. You get accused of destroying the economy, of being a Fascist, a saboteur, a cement thief. You stumble ahead, deaf to all the yelling. You shove the wheelbarrows full of mortar up a slanted board onto the scaffold. The board sways, you grip the wheelbarrow tightly. The swaying might send you flying into the sky, because your empty stomach is climbing into your head.

What are the cement guards worried about. A forced laborer has nothing but his quilted work clothes—his fufaika —on his body, and a suitcase and a bunk inside his barrack. Why would anyone steal cement. It’s not something we take because we’re stealing, it’s dirt that forces itself onto our bodies. Every day we feel this blind hunger, but cement cannot be eaten. We freeze and we sweat, but cement doesn’t warm and doesn’t cool. It stirs suspicion because it flies and crawls and sticks, because it loses all form, vanishes soft and gray for no reason, like a wild hare.

The construction site was behind the camp, next to a stable that hadn’t housed a horse in years, only empty troughs. Six houses were being built for Russians—six two-family dwellings, each with three rooms. So we were told, but we imagined there’d be at least five families in each house, because from going door-to-door we had seen how poor the people were, and the many emaciated schoolchildren. Both girls and boys had shaved heads and light-blue smocks. Always lined up in pairs, holding hands, singing patriotic songs as they marched through the mud beside the construction site. A silent, rotund schoolmistress traipsed back and forth, looking morose and swinging her buttocks like a ship.

Eight brigades were assigned to the site. They dug foundations, hauled cinder blocks and sacks of cement, stirred the lime slurry and the concrete, poured the foundations, mixed the mortar, carried it in hods, carted it to the scaffold in the wheelbarrow, made the plaster for the walls. All six houses were going up at the same time, people were constantly running here and there, it was utter mayhem and nothing got done. You could see the workers, and you could see the mortar and the bricks, but you couldn’t see the walls going up. That’s the funny thing about construction: you never actually notice the walls growing, even if you watch the whole day. And then three weeks later, all of a sudden, they’re up, so they must have been growing—perhaps during the night, all on their own, just like the moon. They grow every bit as inexplicably as the cement disappears.

The cement guards order you around, but no sooner do you start one thing than they chase you off to do another. You get slapped and kicked. You become dour and melancholy on the inside and slavish and cowardly on the outside. The cement eats away at your gums. When you open your mouth your lips tear like the cement-sack paper. So you keep your mouth shut and obey.

Mistrust grows higher than any wall. In our construction-site misery everyone suspects everyone else of taking advantage, of protecting himself, of carrying the lighter end of the cement sack. Everyone is humiliated by the shouting, deceived by the cement, betrayed by the construction site. If someone dies, the most the foreman says is: Zhalko, ochyen’ zhalko— What a pity. Right after that he changes his tone and barks: Vnimanye— Attention.