Then we stopped. My mother knocked on a window. I still remember that it didn’t have any Christmas tree. We went into the yard. And then down a long open walkway where you couldn’t see the walls on account of all the fox furs.
After that we went in the main room, which had a cast-iron stove and a bed, no chair. The hunter came inside carrying one of the pelts. He said, this is the biggest one. He slid his hands under the fox so that the legs hung down while he moved the arms. The legs shook like they were running. And behind the legs the tail wiggled as if it belonged to a different, smaller animal. I asked if I could see his rifle. The hunter laid the fox on the table and smoothed out its fur. He said, you don’t shoot a fox. A fox will step into a trap. The man’s hair and beard and the hairs on his hands were as red as the fox. His cheeks too. Even back then, fox and hunter were one and the same.
* * *
Clara takes off her coat and steps out of the room. In the bathroom she gags and throws up. Adina looks at the coat lying on the bed, which still seems to contain an arm, as if a hand were reaching under the blanket. Water rushes inside the bathroom.
* * *
Clara comes back into the room with her blouse unbuttoned, quickly puts on her coat and says, I feel sick, I threw up. Her purse is on the pillow. Her mouth is half open, her tongue white and dry, like a piece of bread in her mouth.
You’re afraid, says Adina, you look like death. Clara is startled, her gaze is straight and cutting. She looks at Adina and sees a face that has gone somewhere far away. A face all twisted into separate parts, the cheeks off by themselves and the lips off by themselves, lifeless and eager at the same time. A face that’s as empty from the side as it is from the front, like a picture with nothing on it.
* * *
Clara searches the empty face for a child who is walking alongside a woman and who is nevertheless all alone, because she’s carrying Christmas trees from one house to the next. A child like the one in her belly, she thinks, as alone as a child that no one knows about.
Adina wants to be the hunter, thinks Clara.
Anyway you seem more afraid than I am, says Adina. Stop looking, don’t look at the fox anymore.
Clara’s eyes are skewed, with tiny red veins in the shadow of her nose. She looks absently at the picture on the wall, the clunky shoes in the grass, the soldier’s uniform, the grass straw in Ilie’s mouth. You better not tell Ilie, says Clara, he won’t be able to stand it.
You’re not saying anything
The stairwell has no window, the stairwell has no daylight. The stairwell has no electricity, the elevator is stuck between the upper floors. Pavel’s lighter sparks but doesn’t cast light. The key finds the keyhole. The door handle doesn’t click and the door doesn’t creak as it opens. Inside the apartment the door to the main room is open, letting a bright square of light into the front hall. Inside the room the sewing machine is humming.
Pavel takes off his shoes and tiptoes into the kitchen in stocking feet. Outside the kitchen window pant legs are fluttering in the wind. Pavel doesn’t see the clothesline. The buckles on his briefcase are cold. He places a package of Jacobs coffee and a tub of breakfast margarine on top of the kitchen cupboard. He counts out twelve packs of cigarettes and sets them beside the coffee. He opens the refrigerator and puts the meat inside. Next to the refrigerator is an umbrella. He picks it up.
Pavel tiptoes toward the room. The little wheel on the sewing machine is turning, the belt moves, the thread creeps off the bobbin, Clara pumps her feet in a steady rhythm. Pavel stands in the doorway and pops open the umbrella. There’s a ferocious storm outside, dear lady, he says, might I stay the night. Clara’s eyes laugh, her mouth stays serious. Certainly, dear sir, please do come in and get out of those wet clothes. The umbrella drops to the floor and the sewing machine wheel stops in mid-stitch.
* * *
Clara’s hand is in his underpants. Her hair cascades across his face. Oh sir, I see you’re frozen quite stiff, says her mouth. Her thighs are hot and her belly deep and his penis thrusts.
* * *
The refrigerator resumes humming, the electricity has come back on. Clara sniffs at the package, switches on the light, the package crackles as her fingers open the coffee, she holds a coffee bean up to his birthmark, are you coming from work, she asks, the coffee grinder cuts off her voice. The flame licks at the pot, the water starts to bubble. She drops three spoonfuls of coffee into the water without wetting the spoon. The spoon handle clinks against the stove, could you ever do anything to Adina, she asks. The coffee rises and foams, Clara skims off some of the foam with the spoon. What do you mean, he asks. She lets a little foam into each of the two cups. What do you mean, he asks. The foam in the spoon is as bright as sand. Could you ever poison Adina, she asks, lifting the pot from the stove.
A black thread of coffee trickles into the foam. No, he says. The foam rises up to the cup handles. Because she’s my friend, says Clara. He carries the cups to the table, outside the window the pants are fluttering in the wind. That’s one reason, he says, picking up a sugar cube, what is she after anyway, doesn’t she realize where she’s living. She’s not after anything, she simply says things because she’s angry, says Clara. The sugar cube tears the layer of foam and sinks into the cup.
* * *
Whenever my father got angry, says Pavel, he just turned silent. You couldn’t argue with him. He would go for days without saying a word. It made my mother furious. Once she dragged him away from the table and pressed his face against the mirror and shook him by the hair. Just take a look at yourself, she screamed, but he didn’t even blink. As if his eyes went straight through the mirror without seeing his own reflection. His face became a stone. And when she let go of his hair his head sprang back. Then my father did look in the mirror and saw me standing there. In a very quiet voice he said, always pay attention to a person’s tongue because every person carries red hot coals in his mouth. And one angry word can ruin more in one breath than two feet can trample over an entire lifetime. Pavel’s spoon clinks against his cup.
You choose who you’re going to pick on, says Clara, but they just say out loud what all of us think, including you. He stirs his coffee, the foam floats onto the rim. We’re all victims, he says. His lighter clicks, he holds the flame for her, she pulls the ashtray from the edge of the table close to her hand. You ask what Adina’s after, says Clara, what do you think she’s after, she wants to live.
Clara rolls the cigarette in her hand. He sips the coffee, sees her eyes above the rim of the cup. What are you going to do with the person who finally shoots Ceaușescu, she asks. She swallows her breath without exhaling the smoke.
Pavel has a knot in his throat and coffee grounds on his tongue. That depends, he says. On what, she asks. He doesn’t answer.
Clara stands by the window, sees the pants fluttering and the ball stuck in the fork of the tree, the green ball that had been hidden by the swaying foliage all summer long. And had remained wedged there for two bare winters because no child dared climb up the smooth trunk onto the thin branches.
What would happen then, Clara’s mouth asks into the windowpane. He runs his fingers through her hair. Then I’ll get divorced and we’ll get married, he says. He can feel her temples pulsing in his hand. Besides, the man has cancer and doesn’t have much longer to live, he says, digging deeper into her hair and pressing on her skull.
He’ll outlive us all, says Clara. Pavel turns her head with his hands, he wants to see her face. He has cancer, I have that from a reliable source, says Pavel. But he can’t turn her eyes away from the green ball.