* * *
The gatehouse shadow has widened. The sun is looking for the shortest path between Victory Street and the wire spools in the yard. The sun is boxy and squeezed in at the edges, with a gray spot right in the middle.
There are days in late summer when the loudspeaker up by the gatehouse crackles. Then the gateman stares at the sky for a long time and says, up there, above those tin roofs, over the city, higher than the brewery cooling tower, the sun’s turned into a rusty water tap.
Outside the gate is a pothole where the sparrows powder themselves in the dust. Lying on the ground between them is a screw.
The gatekeepers sit in the gatehouse. They play cards. The iron is resting on the edge of the table. The gatekeeper confiscated the iron and reported the man with the wounded thumb to the administration. Tomorrow the man with the wounded thumb will receive a written reprimand.
* * *
Sparrows are hopping inside the workroom. Their feet and beaks are black from the machine oil. They peck at sunflower seeds and melon seeds and bread crumbs. When the workroom is empty the letters on the slogans are larger than ever, WORK and HONOR and PARTY, and the lamp by the door to the dressing room has a long neck. The dwarf with the red shirt and the tall shoes sweeps the oily floor with an oily broom. Sitting on a nearby loom is a watermelon. It is bigger than his head. The watermelon has light and dark stripes.
The light slants through the door to the factory yard. And the cat sits next to the door and chews on a piece of bacon rind. The dwarf looks through the door into the yard.
And the dust flies without a reason. And the door creaks.
Nuts
The woman with the gnarled hands spits on the cloth and rubs the apples until they shine. She sets out the shining apples in a row, red cheeks in front, scars toward the back. The apples are small and malformed. The scale is empty. To weigh the fruit she uses two iron bird head weights, their beaks swing past each other until weights and apples balance out and come to a stop. Then the old woman counts out loud until her eyes come as close together as the iron beaks. Like the beaks her eyes are hard and silent because they know the price.
* * *
All the vendors in the market hall are old. Within the concrete walls, under the concrete roof, behind the concrete tables and on the concrete floor the country village can be seen in their faces — gardens fending off the creeping wheatgrass.
* * *
Liviu has been talking about these villages ever since he took a job teaching in the part of the country cut off by the Danube. He talks about summer days that grow tired until they snap shut between the eyes, days that amount to nothing more than the evening, when the head sags into sleep before the body can come to rest. He tells about the wakeful sleep of the young and the leaden sleep of the old. And about how in their nighttime wakefulness and leaden sleep the day’s toil keeps on trembling in their fingers and trudging in their feet. And how their ears mistake their own snoring for the voice of the village policeman and the mayor, who tell them even in their dreams what must be planted in every garden, every flower bed. Because the policeman and the mayor have their lists and their accounting. And they expect their tribute, no matter if flea beetles, worms, snails or mildew come and devour everything or not. Even if rain forgets the village and the sun burns it down to the last fiber and flattens it so night climbs in from all sides at once.
Liviu visits the city three times a year. He doesn’t feel at home in Paul’s apartment, where he lived for some time, or in the city where he lived for a long time. In the morning he asks for brandy and calls it PLUM MILK.
When Liviu visits, Paul says that he moves like a trapped dog inside the apartment and like a runaway dog when he’s out in town. And that Liviu is hanging by a thread, and that this thread is about to snap, and that Liviu knows it and so he talks and talks until his voice is hoarse.
Liviu tells Paul and Adina about the nights in his village, where only two corners are lit — at the houses of the mayor and the policeman. Two yards, two sets of steps, two gardens where even the foliage is guarded by light. Singled out and quiet. Everything else is buried in darkness. The dogs run off into the night and bark only in places where the bulbs have long burned out, where the trees lead the houses toward the Danube as they lean out over the water.
You can’t see the water, says Liviu, and you don’t hear it in the village. You only hear it in the middle of your head, but the pressure’s so strong you can’t feel your feet. As though you could drown right there on dry ground, he says, right inside your own ears.
Every now and then you hear shots in the distance, Liviu explains. No louder than a cracking branch. Only different, very different. When that happens the dogs go quiet for a moment and then start barking even louder. That means someone was trying to swim upriver during the night and cross the Danube where it forms the border. On his own. When you hear that sound you know it’s all over. He stares at the edge of the table, presses one hand against the back of the chair and closes his eyes for a moment. So I drink, says Liviu. The plum milk burns, my eyes jitter so the lightbulb starts to float, or the candle when there’s no electricity. I keep drinking until I forget the shots, says Liviu. Until the plum milk makes my legs go wavy. And I keep forgetting, he says, until there’s nothing more to think about, until there’s absolutely no escaping the fact that the Danube has cut off the village from the rest of the world.
Out in the country you’re a boy from the city, and here in town you’re a peasant, says Paul. You ought to come back. The city knows who we are, you and I, out there you have thousands of village policemen guarding just a few hundred strips of asphalt.
Paul starts singing and Liviu hums along:
Face without face
Forehead of sand
Voice without voice
What could I trade with you
One call a brother
For a single cigarette
Liviu climbs onto the chair and swats the hanging lampshade with his hand. The cord swings back and forth. Along with its shadow.
My only thought is this
What could I sell to you
My coat is old and rumpled
With just one button left
Paul’s eyes are half closed and Liviu’s have swum out of his head with all the singing. But maybe they aren’t his eyes at all — perhaps it’s just his mouth that’s so wet.
Night comes and sews a sack
Sews a sack of darkness
Liviu catches the lampshade with his hand. He stops singing, and Paul bangs more loudly on the table.
Stepmothergrass has bitter blades
The freight train whistles at the station
Little child where are your parents
Sitting on the asphalt is a barefoot shoe
* * *
Paul looks out the window at the antennas of the neighboring apartment block. He stands up and shoves his chair to the table. Then he glances up at Liviu, who laughs without making a sound. Too bad lamp cords don’t just hang down from the sky, Liviu says into the silence, because then anyone could go outside and hang himself wherever he wanted.
Don’t look at me like that, Liviu says to Paul. The sentence drops right into Paul’s face. Paul leaves the room, Liviu climbs off the chair. When he’s back on the floor he says to Adina as well as to himself, if you ask me Paul isn’t much of a doctor.
Paul sits alone in the kitchen, talking to himself but loud enough so the others can hear. Tonight, he says, a couple came to the hospital. The man had a small hatchet stuck in his head. The handle was on top and looked like it was growing out of his hair. There wasn’t a drop of blood to be seen. The doctors gathered around the man. The woman said it happened a week ago. The man laughed and said he felt good. One female doctor said all we can do is cut off the handle, the blade can’t be removed because the brain has gotten used to it. The doctors went ahead and removed the blade. And the man died.