A child cries on the street below. Adina’s tongue searches for the bits of nut stuck between her teeth. The shells lie scattered beneath the table.
A different silence
Where are the ball bearings, says the director. A brown moth the size of a fly flits out of his shirt collar and flutters past the geranium on the windowsill, looking for the factory yard below and behind the glass. Mara says, the ball bearings are on order. Outside the director’s curtained window, on the other side of the geranium, shoes go clattering by. Heads of brown hair bob past. The potted geranium hovers first on one head then on the next. The geranium doesn’t wave its red flowers, it just lets its leaves dangle motionless over the hair and point down into the sunken factory yard, into the rust, into the wire. The director doesn’t see the heads of the people passing, only the tops of their hair. And he sees the moth at the windowpane. So, says the director, assuming the ball bearings are on order where are they. He steps so close to the glass that the open curtain brushes his forehead and the geranium grazes his chin. And the moth flips over and flutters past his shorn temples toward the meeting table. The ball bearings are on their way, Comrade Director, says Mara.
The director catches himself looking at the wire, out of habit, but quickly pulls his face back away from the window. He isn’t surprised by the moth. But he had not reckoned with a pair of tall shoes hitting the asphalt like a couple of broken bricks. Nor had he reckoned with short legs that don’t bend as they walk. Or with a back so erect as if stiffened by wire.
These shoes, these legs, this back — all unsettle eyes that wish to remain blank. No matter how many years pass in the factory, no eye looks at the dwarf without seeing some reflection of itself. Without getting in its own way.
The director pulls back his head, his routine broken by the clatter walking with the dwarf.
A dwarf, and still he’s made something of himself, says the director. Another person in his place would be begging on the street. He points at the small picture of the dictator in a frame on the table. A larger portrait hangs on the wall. Both show the black inside the eye. The two pictures look at each other, and their gazes meet between the wall and the table, right in front of the white curtain. Everyone who comes from HIS part of the country, says the director, has a strong will.
* * *
He means the south, the part of the country cut off by the Danube. The flat plain where the stony summers wither among the corn while it grows, and the stony winters freeze among the corn once it’s forgotten. Where cushions of faded thistle fluff drift on the water. Where people count the floating cushions and know that for every person shot trying to escape, the Danube carries a cushion on its waves for three days, and for three nights shows a gleaming light under its waves, like a candle. The people in the south know the number of the dead, even if they don’t know their names or faces.
* * *
Send a notice saying they’re overdue, says the director. The ball bearings are on their way, says Mara. He rubs his neck against his shirt, his collar scratches. Every now and then, says the director, there’s a knock at the door. Not very loud, I can barely hear it. And when I open the door I don’t see anyone unless I look down right away. Then it turns out the foreman has sent the dwarf, and he doesn’t say a word, just hands me a piece of paper. And then he leaves before I can say anything. I don’t call after him because I can’t ever remember his name. After all I can’t call out, HEY DWARF. Mara smiles. You have nice legs, Mara, says the director. The geranium shakes. The director kneels on the carpet. Inside Mara’s skirt his voice is deep. His hands are hard. Her thighs are hot. His teeth on her right thigh are distinct and wet and sharp. And from the portrait on the table, the black inside the eye watches. And blurs. Or is it the moth in the air, just a handbreadth away from Mara’s eyes. Ouch, that hurts, Comrade Director, she says.
* * *
Every week the director comes to the gatehouse, the gatewoman told Clara. He doesn’t come inside, doesn’t cross the threshold. He just sticks his head in the door and pulls it right back out. He looks at the spools of wire and asks, what’s the name of that dwarf. The gateman also looks at the wire because the director’s eyes pull his own there, and because he believes that the director’s head is completely entangled in the wire. Because whoever looks at the wire can’t help getting fully entangled and is no longer able to listen. Everyone that is except for the gateman and myself, she told Clara, we look at the wire but don’t see it anymore. So the gateman always gives the same answer: Comrade Director, the dwarf’s name is CONSTANTIN. He says it so loud I can hear him even if they’re both off in the yard somewhere, said the gatewoman. And the director always says the same thing back, I try to memorize the name but I always forget it a second later, I can keep track of everything else but I never manage to hold on to the name of that dwarf. The gateman says, the dwarf belongs to the devil, otherwise he wouldn’t be a dwarf. You know, the gatewoman told Clara, whenever the director’s out in the yard a moth comes fluttering out of his shirt collar. As a young man he used to be the director of a hat factory, on the other side of the Carpathians. That’s where the moths come from. After that he was director of a waterworks in the south and then a housing construction firm here in the city. But he’s never managed to get rid of the moths from the hat factory. Anyway every time he asks about the dwarf’s name he reaches into his bag and takes out a pen and a piece of paper and writes it down. He holds the paper and writes the name in big letters that fill the whole sheet, said the gatewoman. Then he puts pen and paper back in his bag and says, now I’ve got it. And the moth flies deep into the yard and gets lost in the wire. Then a week later the director once again sticks his head inside and says, what’s the dwarf’s name, I try to memorize the name but I always forget it a second later. And he takes out an identical piece of paper, and the same moth flies out of his shirt collar, and he writes down the same name all over again. And the moth flies deep into the yard, into the wire.
One time, the gatewoman told Clara, the director said that the same thing happens to the piece of paper as with the name of the dwarf — it disappears on its own.
* * *
Everybody in the factory knows the dwarf’s name, said the gatewoman, because the name doesn’t suit him at all. The director is the only one who can’t remember that. He’s always amazed that the dwarf’s name is CONSTANTIN, and every time he says, that name doesn’t suit the dwarf. It’s because of the director I know the name CONSTANTIN doesn’t suit him, she said. That never struck me before. But it strikes the director every time, she said. Which is why he ought to remember the name.
My son’s also named Constantin, the gatewoman said to Clara, but I’d never connect his name with the dwarf because my child isn’t a dwarf. And because the same name for a dwarf really isn’t the same name at all. I’ve told my son he’s not allowed to come looking for me in the factory, said the gatewoman. I’d never let him get caught up in all this wire. Because I know that if he ever started looking at the wire he’d never listen to me anymore. I’ll never let my child become a worker here, not even for a single day.
* * *
The director kneels on the rug in front of Mara’s knees that are no longer there. He sees the legs of the meeting table. He takes in more breath than his lungs can hold, he hyperventilates. His forehead feels salty and moist as though his face had two mouths, with the second feeling hot and in the wrong place, where his forehead reaches into his hair.