I know, says Adina, the men had wives, the wives had children, the children were hungry. The servant’s daughter pulls a strand of hair through her mouth, looks at the half-burned mountain, anyway now it’s over, she says, and we’re alive. Next week I’ll come visit you.
* * *
The servant’s daughter is the director of the school, the director is the coach, the coach is the union leader, the physicist is in charge of transition and democracy.
The cleaning woman wanders through the halls with a broom and dusts the empty walls where the pictures used to hang.
* * *
Adina leans against the gate, the smoke is still rising from the school yard. There are pictures posted downtown, says Adina, your good person was one of the ones who fired. And you had a birthday. Even if I’d been here, I wouldn’t have been able to give you anything, no shoes, no dress, no blouse. Not even an apple. If you can’t give someone something then that person is a stranger.
He didn’t fire at anyone, says Clara, he’s out of the country. Her eyelids have a blue shimmer, I have a passport, she says, what should I do. Her eyelashes are long and thick and calm.
I don’t know you, says Adina, you have no business here.
* * *
From the sixth floor Adina and the servant’s daughter watch as a warm winter afternoon passes behind the stadium. On the table is a bottle of brandy and two glasses. Adina and the servant’s daughter clink and drain their glasses. A single drop trickles back to the bottom of each glass.
The servant’s daughter has brought her daughter who is two and a half years old. The girl sits on the rug and rubs her cheek with the tail of the fox. She talks to herself. Adina refills the glasses. The neighbor with the chestnut-red hair done up in big waves is standing by her open window.
Look, this cat has a mustache, says the child. Under her fingertips the fox’s head slides away from the neck. The child lays the fox head on the table.
For the second time, Adina feels a noise in her head like a branch breaking. Only different.
The servant’s daughter raises her glass.
That doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all
Past the last bridge there are no flagstones along the riverbank, no benches, no poplars, no soldiers.
At the bottom of the box are the fox’s paws, on top of them the body, and the tail. On the very top is the head. Clara gave me this box, says Adina. We were coming from town, she bought a pair of shoes and put them on right away.
Paul closes the box.
You know, I had planned on keeping that fox, says Adina. Sitting at the table or standing at the wardrobe or lying in bed, I wasn’t afraid of it anymore. Paul sticks his finger through the middle of the lid, for the candle, he says, and sets the candle inside the hole. And now they’ve cut off the head as well, she says, but the fox is still the hunter. The candle burns, Paul sets the box on the water.
He lets it go.
Then he looks up at the sky, Abi is up there, he says, looking down on us. That doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all, he says, crying. The burning candle looks like a finger. Maybe Ilie really does know what he’s doing, he says.
Night spreads, the shoe box floats.
* * *
And far off in the country, near where the plain comes to an end, where everyone knows every little path, a place so far away that it’s barely reached by the same night, Ilie is cutting across a field. He is wearing his soldier’s uniform and his clunky boots and he’s carrying a small suitcase. The train station is off by itself, and where the sky stops, the lights of the small town are glowing, one next to another like the stripes on a border barrier. Now the border isn’t so far away.
Inside the waiting room there are no wall newspapers, the cabinets are empty except for the dust left from summer. The station attendant is eating sunflower seeds.
Timişoara, says Ilie.
The attendant spits some seeds through the window at the counter. Round-trip, he asks.
Just one way, says Ilie. His heart is pounding.
* * *
The earthen wall of the stadium pulls the bare brush closer. The last goal has been forgotten, the forbidden song has sung itself throughout the country, and now, as it spreads, it presses against the throat and turns mute. Because the tanks are still scattered throughout the town, and the bread line in front of the store is still long. Above the earthen wall the long-distance runner dangles his naked legs over the city, and one coat slinks into another.
About the author
HERTA MÜLLER is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the European Literature Prize. She is the author of The Hunger Angel, The Appointment, and The Land of Green Plums, among other books. Born in Romania in 1953, Müller lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats after refusing to cooperate with Ceauşescu’s secret police. She succeeded in emigrating in 1987 and now lives in Berlin. You can sign up for email updates here.
About the translator
Philip Boehm has won numerous awards for his translations from German and Polish, including works by Franz Kafka, Christoph Hein, Hanna Krall, and Stefan Chwin. He also works as a theater director and playwright: produced plays include Mixtitlan, The Death of Atahualpa, and Return of the Bedbug. He lives in St. Louis, where he is the artistic director of Upstream Theater.