Pavel looks at the television screen. A woman and a man are standing in front of the workers’ chorus. They tilt their heads forward and scamper around with their feet, then tilt their heads back and scamper around with their feet.
I’ve been telling you for a month, says the mother, you have to go to the school and talk with the teacher. Everyone takes her coffee, says the daughter, except for us. And you can see that in her grades, says the mother.
She slurps the blob of fat off the spoon. On the television screen the man trips offstage to the left and the woman trips off to the right. Pavel drapes his jacket over the back of the chair.
The teacher’s not getting any coffee. At most a black eye. After I’m done talking with her she’ll be bringing coffee to us.
* * *
A drop of soup splashes onto the table. Veal my foot, says the mother. Maybe seven years ago it would have counted as a calf, but that meat’s been cooking for hours and still isn’t soft. That was an old cow. The daughter laughs and taps her spoon against the soup bowl. A parsley leaf sticks to her chin. The mother picks a bay leaf out of the soup and places it on the edge of the bowl. And my shoes won’t be ready before Christmas, she says. Actually my shoes are ready, just not for me. Today the school inspector came by the factory with his wife. She took two pairs. First she wanted brown, but changed her mind and wanted gray. Then she didn’t like the black ones and wanted white with buckles. The black ones were supposed to be mine, made of patent leather. But in the end those were the ones that fit. So now they’re hers.
The daughter has made herself a mustache from a piece of meat. Pavel licks a parsley leaf off his fingertip. And the inspector, he asks the mother. She looks at the daughter’s mustache and says, he told everyone that he has two corns, one on his middle toe and one on his little toe.
On the television screen the president of the country strolls through a factory hall. Two female workers present him with bouquets of carnations. The workers applaud, their lips open and close in time to their clapping. Pavel hears himself saying, there are black cars in every factory. And he hears Clara saying, but you don’t work in a factory. He reaches around and switches off the television.
The mother says, for three hours our director was kneeling next to the chair where the inspector’s wife was sitting. His eyes were watery and his mouth twisted and soft. His hands were two shoehorns, all they did for three whole hours was shovel her heels into different shoes. He could no longer straighten his fingers. And in between fittings he was kissing her hand. You should see her calves. Pavel pulls a fiber of meat from between his teeth. The daughter rummages through her father’s briefcase. She shakes three thick drops out of a perfume bottle onto her hand. Her calves are like a fattened pig’s, says the mother, no patent leather shoes are going to help that. She ought to wear rubber boots. The mother sniffs the daughter’s hand, Chanel, she says, then picks up the porcelain dog from the refrigerator. After that the workers acted out Director and Madame, says the mother, rolling their pants up to their knees and walking back and forth in high heels to show how Madame tried on shoes.
* * *
Pavel’s eyes are tired, the meat sticks to his fork. The daughter’s face is smeared with chocolate, which rings her mouth like dirt. She cries. Her father props his head in his hands, his forehead feels heavy. Stuffed handkerchiefs in their pant legs to show her calves, then climbed up on the table and draped curtains over their hair, he hears his wife saying. And at the same time he doesn’t hear her because he’s hearing the cornfield rattling in the middle of his forehead. And Clara’s voice saying, And what if I think the worst.
So then the director came bursting through the door, says the mother, and told them they could all expect disciplinary action. Including the women who were watching and laughing. Including me. Pavel hears Clara’s laughter in the middle of his forehead. He takes his wife’s hand in his own. She presses her mouth against his ear. The kiss floods his neck, his cheeks, his forehead. He hears his voice telling Clara, I don’t work at the courthouse.
His wife’s ear is next to his mouth like a young rolled-up leaf. I was planning on giving you the perfume this evening, Pavel says into the ear. And he doesn’t hear himself.
He hears himself telling Clara, I know what I know.
The razor blade
The stadium is enclosed by an earthen wall. The grass has been so eroded by the autumn that soil shows between the blades. Also rocks. The apartment blocks in the housing settlement beyond the stadium are squeezed together, from across the empty parking lot they seem no higher than the shrubs that reach up along the earthen wall — lilacs, mock orange and rose of Sharon that are never pruned because they don’t venture over the wall itself. The plants sneak into bloom early, and by spring the flowers have faded and summer growth is already well under way. But now they stand naked on the earthen wall, shaking their twigs and branches, unable to shelter anything from the gusting wind.
The long-distance runner over the entrance to the stadium is nothing but a picture painted on stone. But during the bare season there are no hurdles to slow him down. When the branches have no leaves, the long-distance runner is a winner. He looks down at the bread line in front of the store, at the screaming faces and the thick padded clothes, but he doesn’t feel hungry. Over the stadium the sun has turned away, a ring of milky white that gives no warmth. But the long-distance runner doesn’t feel the cold. With naked calves he runs overhead, past the little people and into the city.
A car pulls up to the parking lot. Two men wearing windbreakers climb out. One is young, the other older. They glance briefly at the blind sun. Their pant legs flutter as they hurry across the lot, their shoes shine. They’re eating sunflower seeds and spitting the black shells onto the well-worn path that leads them, the older man followed by the younger, between the garbage bins and mountains of empty boxes, toward the apartment blocks of the housing settlement.
* * *
The older man takes a seat on a bench, looks up at the windows and munches his sunflower seeds. Behind him, high up, is the window with the petunias. The younger man points out a window in a building on the other side of the settlement the same height as the petunias and says, that’s her apartment. One room and a kitchen. The room is in front, that’s where the fox fur is, the young man says, the kitchen is off to the side.
The wind sweeps over the bench. The older man rubs his legs and turns up his collar.
* * *
The younger man unlocks the door. His key does not rattle. He bolts the door from inside. He doesn’t trip over the shoes in the entrance hall, he knows exactly where they are, the sandals with the black traces of her toes. The bed is unmade, the nightgown folded on the pillow.
* * *
He goes to the window. The woman with the chestnut-red hair done up in big waves is standing behind her petunias. He signals to her with his hand. He crosses to the wardrobe, kneels on the floor. He takes a razor blade out of his jacket’s inner pocket. He unpacks the razor blade and places the paper wrapper next to his knee. He slices the right hind leg off the fox. Then he licks his fingertip and wipes the cut hair from the floor. He rubs the hair between his thumb and forefinger into a firm ball and drops it into his jacket pocket. He wraps the razor blade in the paper and sticks it in his inner pocket. He slides the cut-off leg back against the belly of the fox.
He stands up and checks to see if the cut is visible. He goes to the bathroom. He lifts the toilet cover. He spits into the toilet. He pisses and closes the cover without flushing. He goes to the door of the apartment and unlocks it. He quickly sticks his head into the hall and steps out. He locks the apartment door.