Herta Müller - The Hunger Angel

None of us were part of any war, but because we were Germans, the Russians considered us guilty of Hitler’s crimes. Even Zither Lommer. He had to spend three and a half years in the camp. One morning a black car pulled up in front of the construction site. Two strangers wearing fine karakul caps climbed out and spoke with the foreman. Then they took Zither Lommer away. From that day on, his bed in the barrack was empty. Bea Zakel and Tur Prikulitsch probably sold his trunk and his zither at the market.

Bea Zakel said the men in the karakul hats were high-ranking party officials from Kiev. They supposedly took Zither Lommer to Odessa, and from there shipped him back to Romania.

Because he came from the same region as Tur Prikulitsch, Oswald Enyeter could get away with asking why Odessa. Tur said: Lommer had no business being here, and from Odessa he can go wherever he wants. Addressing the barber, and not Tur, I said: But where is he supposed to go. There’s no one left for him at home. At that point Tur Prikulitsch was holding his breath, to keep still while Oswald Enyeter pruned his nose hairs with a rusty pair of scissors. The barber finished the second nostril and brushed the snippets of hair off Tur’s chin like so many ants, then turned away from the mirror so Prikulitsch couldn’t see that he was winking. Are you satisfied, he asked. Tur said: With my nose, yes.

Outside in the yard the rain had stopped. The bread cart came clattering up the drive, through the puddles. Every day the same man pulled the cart with the large loaves through the camp gate to the yard behind the mess hall. The loaves were always covered with a white linen cloth, like a pile of corpses. I asked what rank the bread man had. The barber said none at all, that he had either inherited or stolen the uniform. With so much bread and so much hunger he needed the uniform to gain some authority.

The cart had two high wooden wheels and two long wooden arms. It resembled the big cart the scissor-grinders rolled through the streets from town to town, all summer long. As soon as the bread man stepped away from the cart, he limped. According to the barber, he had a wooden leg made of shovel handles that had been nailed together. I envied the bread man; it’s true he had one leg too few, but he had more than enough bread. Like me, Oswald Enyeter the barber also watched the bread cart pass by. But he only knew half-hunger; he probably made deals with the bread man every now and then. Even Tur Prikulitsch, whose stomach was full, watched the bread man, either to monitor his movements or simply out of absentmindedness. I didn’t know why, but I had the impression that the barber wanted to call Tur Prikulitsch’s attention away from the bread cart. Otherwise why would he have said, just as I sat on the stool: What a motley crew we are here in the camp. Everybody coming from someplace else, just like a hotel you live in for a while.

That was in the time of the construction site. But what did words like MOTLEY CREW, HOTEL, and A WHILE have to do with us. The barber was not an accomplice of the camp administration, but he was privileged. He was allowed to live and sleep in his barber room, while we were stuck in our barracks, our brains clogged with cement. Of course, during the day, Oswald Enyeter didn’t have the place to himself, since we were always coming and going. He had to cut and shave every wretch who stepped inside, and some men cried when they saw themselves in the mirror. Month after month he had to watch us coming through his door looking seedier and seedier. Throughout the five years he knew exactly who was still coming but whose body was already half wax. And who was no longer coming because he was too exhausted, or homesick, or dead. I don’t think I could have put up with that. On the other hand, Oswald Enyeter didn’t have to put up with work brigades or days cursed with cement, or night shifts in the cellar. He was besieged by our misery, but not betrayed by the cement. He had to console us, and we took advantage of him, because we couldn’t help it. Because we were blinded by hunger and sick for home, withdrawn from time and outside ourselves and done with the world. Just as the world was done with us.

That day I jumped up from the chair and shouted that unlike him I didn’t have a hotel room, just cement sacks. Then I kicked the stool so hard it nearly fell over, and said: And believe me, Herr Enyeter, I’m not one of the owners of this hotel, like you are.

Leo, sit down, he said, I thought we were on a first-name basis. You’re wrong, the owner is Tur Prikulitsch. And Tur stuck the pinkish-red tip of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and nodded. He was so stupid he felt flattered. Then he checked himself in the mirror, combed through his hair, and blew through the comb. After that, he placed the comb on the table and the scissors on the comb, then the scissors next to the comb and the comb on top of the scissors. Then he left. Once Tur Prikulitsch was outside, Oswald Enyeter said: Did you see that, he’s the owner, he’s the one who keeps us in check, not me. Sit back down. You know, you don’t have to say anything to the cement sacks, but I have to say something to everybody. Be happy you still know what a hotel is. By now everything people think they remember has long since changed into something else. Everything except the camp, I said.

That day I didn’t sit back down on the stool. I held firm and walked away. Back then I wouldn’t have admitted it, but I was just as vain as Tur Prikulitsch. I felt flattered that Enyeter had become conciliatory, though he didn’t need to be. The more he pleaded with me to stay, the more determined I was to leave unshaven. With stubble on my face, the cement was even more unrelenting. It wasn’t until four days later that I went back and sat down on the stool, as if nothing had happened. I was so tired from the construction work, I couldn’t care less about his hotel. He didn’t mention it either.

Weeks later, when the bread man pulled the empty cart up to the gate, I remembered about the HOTEL. By then I liked the idea. I used it against the dreariness. Coming back from unloading cement on the night shift, I trotted like a calf through the morning air. In our barrack, three people were still asleep. As dirty as I was, I lay down on my bed and said to myself: At least nobody needs a key in this hotel. There’s no key check, either, no locks, it’s all open living, just like in Sweden. My barrack and my trunk are always open. My valuables are sugar and salt. Under my pillow is the dried bread I’ve rescued from my mouth. It’s a treasure and guards itself. I am a calf in Sweden and a calf always does the same thing upon entering its hotel room—before anything else, it looks under the pillow to make sure the bread is still there.

For half a summer I was assigned to the cement, and trotted around like a calf in Sweden. I came off the day or night shift and played hotel in my head. Some days I had to laugh to myself. And some days the HOTEL just caved in completely, in me, that is, and tears came to my eyes. I wanted to right myself, but I no longer knew who I was. HOTEL was a cursed word we couldn’t inhabit because we were living inside another word, one that sounded close but was very far away: APPELL.

There were two types of shoes. The rubber galoshes were a luxury, the wooden shoes a catastrophe. Only the sole was made of wood, a piece of board two fingers thick. The upper part consisted of gray sackcloth nailed to the sole along a narrow strip of leather. Because the cloth was too weak for the nails, it always tore, first at the heels. The wooden shoes were high, with eyelets for lacing, but there were no laces. We used thin wire instead, which we threaded through the eyelets and tightened by twisting the ends. Within a few days the sackcloth around the eyelets was also in tatters.