Herta Müller - The Fox Was Ever the Hunter

* * *

Inside the café, the evening takes its own time the same way this or that person takes his own life, just in passing, as a shadow in the river. It is winter in the city, a winter grown old and slow, a winter that pricks people with its cold. A winter in which mouths freeze and hands absently drop what they pick up, because fingertips thicken into leather. A city winter in which the water refuses to turn into ice, in which old people wear their past lives like coats. A winter in which young people hate one another like poison whenever they detect the slightest hint of happiness. And who nonetheless keep their eyes peeled while they go on searching for their lives. A winter walking along the river, where laughter freezes instead of the water. Where stuttering passes for speech and half-uttered words for loud shouts. Where every question dies away in the throat while silent tongues keep beating against clenched teeth.

* * *

The fisherman afraid of melons kisses the mouth of the bottle again and sings:

Once I used to sleep like a rock

Well all of me except my cock

Now it seems the reverse is true

My cock sleeps more than I ever do

Tira-tira tira-ta

The darkness is locked inside the stairwell and reeks of boiled cabbage. Even though the door to the building is open Adina cannot find the elevator. For the first few stairs the darkness clings to her legs, weighing them down. The flashlight’s pale circle catches on the banister, then leaps soundlessly through the rails onto the wall. Her shoes clatter inside her head. On the second floor is a drying room, a handful of light from outside falls on a line of white diapers. The garbage chute next to the drying room is gray, like an arm made of cloth. On the third floor is a bare geranium in a plastic pot smelling of moldy earth and boiled cabbage. On the fourth floor she hears shoes squeaking. A pair of pant legs comes down the stairs, and a shirt bright enough to provide a little gleam. Adina raises her flashlight. The pale circle jumps onto the man’s shoulder, half of his face, one eye, one ear, the white tips of his collar. And in the light, between his collar and his ear, is a birthmark. The edge of his nose. Then his chin which snaps the circle of light in two.

The market hall, Adina thinks, two nuts, his hand squeezing one against the other, and his voice asking what’s your name. By this point he’s reached the third floor, he’s leaving and at the same time staying behind inside Adina’s head. Back then it was summer, what are we going to do now, he asked. He’s also the one who told the joke about the little Romanian. Abi said that his birthmark twitched on his jugular vein.

On the fifth floor the doorbell rings, Adina lifts her finger off the button, the bell goes silent, I know what I know, those were Clara’s words, the door creaks, and Clara’s rumpled hair is in the doorway.

Adina pushes in the door toward Clara’s cheek, and Clara’s hair moves back. Adina steps right past it, as though it were part of the doorway, and heads straight through the entrance hall. The door to the kitchen is open, the room smells of coffee.

* * *

Two cups on the tray, two spoons, grains of sugar scattered on the nightstand. The bed is unmade, the pattern in the damask pillowcase is like a breathy whisper.

He was here, says Adina, the man in the stairwell just now, that was Pavel. Clara’s rumpled hair is dangling around her eyes, she pulls it back, her ears glow red beneath her thin fingers. You rarely see each other and rarely means every day, Adina’s breath dogs every word, I know why you’ve been hiding him, she says, don’t lie to me, your lawyer works for the Securitate. A hand towel is draped over the chair, right below Clara’s arm, her thin fingers fasten the white round buttons on her blouse. Even if you don’t say anything you’re lying, says Adina. Red carnations are soaking in the vase, their stems touching, the water murky around the leaves.

I could never do anything to hurt you, says Clara, and neither could he. A pair of panty hose lies on the sewing machine. Adina clutches her chin and walks into the kitchen.

Clara leans against the refrigerator, puts a finger to her mouth. Pavel is a good person, she says, with closed lips. The coffeepot is askew on the burner, the stove top flecked with drops of coffee. He gave me his word, says Clara, he knows the only way I can love him is if nothing happens to you. A dish towel lies crumpled under the table. And my fox, says Adina, did he tell you why they’re cutting up my fox. You realize that your good man is just carrying out orders, he’s fucking you on assignment, in fact he wanted both of us, she says, one in the summer and one in the winter, he wakes up every morning and has two wishes in his head just like he has two eyes — for men it’s his fist that gets hard and for women it’s his cock.

Outside the apartment window a velvet skirt is hanging on the line, it’s red and dry on top, black and wet on the bottom from the water dripping incessantly from the hem. And I’m sure that your good person promised all the others that he’d protect them too. Clara bites her lip, stares out the window straight past Adina. You don’t know him, she says, pressing her hair against her head.

And you go to bed with a man like that, says Adina. The lid is off the sugar bowl, the sugar rock hard where the coffee spilled on it. The wind blows through the tree outside. You don’t even know him, says Clara, the dented green ball is still stuck in the fork of the branches. I don’t know you, says Adina. The dented green ball is submitting to another winter. The person I know isn’t you, she says, I thought I knew you. Clara has scrunched up her toes, the cold rises off the floor tiles, coloring her knee blue, and passes into her stomach. You’re sleeping with a criminal, Adina shouts, you’re just like him, you’re wearing him on your face, do you hear me, you’re exactly the same. Clara warms one cold foot with the other. I don’t ever want to see you again, Adina shouts, not ever. Her hands flail about, her eyes are gaping open, her gaze is a hunter that pounces out of her eyes and hits his mark. Her wet mouth screams and spews embers from her tongue. Her anger is hate, as black as her coat.

Stay here, says Clara. Adina brushes aside the thin fingers clutching at her coat and jerks away her sleeve. Don’t touch me, she shouts, I can’t bear the sight of your hands. Clara’s hair stays in the kitchen, the hallway doesn’t let her toes take a single step. The door slams shut.

* * *

The stairs race up along the wall, the flashlight tosses away its light. Adina’s hand glides down the railing, clinging to it for support, the fourth floor, the third floor. The garbage chute rumbles, she hears something falling inside the shaft, something falling inside her head. Then the shattering of glass two floors below.

From underneath, the dented green ball in the fork of the tree is so small and dark it seems there’s nothing up there, nothing except once again the eye. Coats pass by, inside them are not people but November. It’s only the second week and already the month is so old and melancholy that evening arrives together with the morning.

* * *

My mother was always already my grandmother, Clara once said, not because of her age but because of how she handled it. She started to grow old, said Clara, when I was still a child. She hugged me tight and whispered in my ear, where are you my child, why are you so far away. And as she was growing old, her husband was staying young, said Clara, he got younger and younger compared to her. As if he were secretly watching her wilt away and preserving himself at her expense. And as if she, too, were allowing herself to wither for his sake. I don’t want to be that way, said Clara, no one should be that way. And then his life sped up. What worked with her became his weakness. And then summer came to the city as though it were his first. He couldn’t survive that first summer without her and died right after she did.