Herta Müller: The Fox Was Ever the Hunter

* * *

A Gypsy boy is standing inside the café next to the table farthest in back. He holds an empty beer glass over his face, the foam trickles down in a thread, his mouth swallows before the foam reaches his lips. Stop that, says Adina out loud, you’re drinking with your forehead, like you don’t have a mouth. Then the boy is at her table, give me a leu he says, holding his hand out over the newspaper. Adina sets a coin down next to the glass, the boy covers it with his hand and drags it off the table. May God keep you beautiful and good, he says. And though he speaks of God, all Adina sees of his face in the sunlight are two whitish-yellow eyes. Have some lemonade, she says.

A fly is swimming in the glass, he fishes it out with a spoon, blows it onto the ground and stashes the spoon in his pocket.

Shoshoi, the waitress yells.

The boy’s throat is dry, a gurgling comes from inside his shirt. He raises the glass and drains it in one gulp, through his face and all the way to his whitish-yellow eyes. He stashes the glass in his pocket as well.

Shoshoi, the waitress screams.

Clara once explained that shoshoi in Romani means HARE, that Gypsies are afraid of hares. It’s more that they’re afraid of superstitions, said Paul, and as a result they’re always afraid.

* * *

Once, he went on, an elderly Gypsy was being discharged from the hospital. Paul jotted down what the man was allowed to eat. But the man didn’t know how to read. So Paul read the list out loud, including the word HARE. I cannot take this piece of paper, the man said. You are a gentleman, you have to write out another one. Paul scratched through the word HARE, the man shook his head. That won’t do, he said, it’s still there. You may be a doctor but you are not a gentleman. You don’t understand how your own heart beats inside you. Inside the hare beats the heart of the earth, that’s why we are Gypsies, because we understand that, sir, that’s why we’re always on the run.

* * *

The Gypsy boy dashes off, the poplar stripes slice him as he runs, his soles fly up to his back as splashes of white. The waitress chases after the soles. The fisherman with the sunflower seeds watches the splashing soles. Like gravel hitting water, he says.

The wind blows in the brush, the boy’s eyes lurk among the leaves. The waitress stands in the grass, panting, alert, the leaves fan back and forth, she doesn’t see the boy. The waitress lets her head droop, removes her sandals and slowly heads back through the poplar stripes to the café, stepping barefoot in small strides over the stone slabs. The shadows from her sandals dangle below her hand. The shadows don’t reveal how high the heels are or how thin the laces, or how the buckles sparkle once just beneath her ring and again on the stone. The fisherman with the sunflower seeds says in her direction, with those legs you’d be better off running after me. Without shoes look how sturdy they are, take off those high heels and you’re a peasant woman.

The fisherman who’s afraid of melons scratches his crotch and says, once during the war I wound up in this small village. I’ve forgotten the name. I looked through a window and saw a woman at a sewing machine. She was sewing a white lace curtain, the cloth was spilling over onto the floor. I knocked and said WATER. She came to the door, dragging her curtain with her. The water bucket had a ladle, I drank one ladleful after another. I was only looking at the water, but in the water I could see her bare calves, all pudgy and white. The water was cold and the roof of my mouth was hot, my throat was pounding in my ears. The woman pulled me to the floor, she wasn’t wearing anything underneath her dress. The lace scratched, and her stomach had no bottom. She didn’t say a word. I often think about the fact I never heard her voice. I didn’t say anything either. Not until I was back on the street did I say to myself, WATER.

The fisherman with the sunflower seeds bites a thread off the hem of his shirt and says, it all depends on the calves. When I’m on top of my wife she complains the neighbors are going to pound on the wall in the middle of the night and call out, stop beating her. There’s nothing behind the complaining, I’ve known for a long time that everything under her nightshirt has gone cold, only her mouth screams. I lie on top of her and get used to the dark, I see her wide open eyes, her forehead way up high, looking grayish yellow like the moon, and her sagging chin. I see her twisting her mouth. I could use my nose and peck her right in her gaping eyes but I don’t. She groans like someone trying to move a wardrobe, not like someone who enjoys it. Her ribs are so hard that her heart’s all withered up inside, and her legs are getting thinner every day. She doesn’t have any meat on her calves. All the flesh on her body goes to her stomach, which is growing rounder and rounder and spreading out like a fat sheep.

The fisherman takes off one shoe, turns it over, shakes out a cherry pit. Sometimes the moon shines between the ceiling and the wall of our room, he says, so the moonlight has a crease, and I can see the pattern of the wineglasses in the cabinet and the fringe of the carpet. My eyes trace the fringe of the carpet as I let the day pass through my head. The fisherman with the cap of white hair plucks a grass straw and sticks it in his mouth. As he chews the straw wags back and forth. But letting the day pass through your head — the poplars, the river — doesn’t take very long, says the fisherman with the sunflower seeds. Today I have the waitress to think about so tonight it will last longer.

The fisherman with the grass straw laughs, and says, and the Gypsy. Tonight it will last longer, says the fisherman with the sunflower seeds, and I’ll take even longer to fall asleep. You know, every night I can hear the crickets outside. The whole bed shakes each time the nightshirt turns over. The crickets chirp, they pull one long note like a dark string, they eat up all my peace and quiet. I sense that they could be right underneath our room, so I hold my breath. I have the feeling they’re carrying our entire apartment block on their backs through the grass, across the long flat plain, all the way to the Danube. When I fall asleep I dream I’m stepping out of the apartment onto the street. But there isn’t any street and I’m standing there barefoot in my pajamas, next to the water, freezing. I have to escape, I have to flee across the Danube to Yugoslavia. And I don’t know how to swim.

* * *

On the other side of the river two men are sitting on a bench. Both are wearing suits. The sunlight shines right through their ears, which look like leaves next to each other. One wears a tie flecked with reddish blue. At the end of the bench is a patch of shadow that could be a coat, without sleeves, without a collar, without pockets, it’s no longer there when the light moves to the next branch. Both men are eating sunflower seeds. The husks fly quickly into the water. The wind moves the branch, the coat shrinks.

* * *

The fisherman with the white cap of hair glances toward the two men, then spits out the grass straw. Do you know those two birds over there, he asks. Anyway I really don’t know how to swim, says the fisherman with the sunflower seeds. He shrugs his shoulders and continues quietly.

There was this one dream about the Danube, he says, which my wife was also in. When I reached the water she was already there. She didn’t recognize me. She asked me the way you’d ask a stranger, are you trying to make it across the border too? She was leaving the gravel bank, heading away from the water. There were willows and hazelnut bushes. The current’s strong, she called out, I have to eat something first. She went rummaging through the underbrush, but there was nothing except river grass, so she picked through the branches and tore the hazelnuts off together with the stems and leaves. The hazelnuts weren’t ripe, they still had their green outer shells. So she pounded them with a round stone. She ate, and a milky liquid flowed from her mouth. I looked away, into the water. Our Father who art in Heaven and on Earth. The words came out of my mouth like the pounding from the stone. I couldn’t pray anymore, I felt foolish. The Lord was listening to the stone and the hazelnuts, not to me. I turned to her and screamed so loud my voice stung my eyes, I can’t do it, come back here to me, I can’t make it across, I tell you I don’t know how to swim.