Even the tiniest touch of evening felt on the ridge of their noses steals everything. And what it can’t steal, it forbids. Including happiness, say the fishermen. The striped summer takes all the joy out of fishing.
The poplars are full of pods that are neither fruit nor seed but galls, misshapen thimbles for flies and aphids. The bugs drop out of the poplars surrounding the café and crawl across the newspaper. Adina’s fingertips shove them into the dictator’s forelock, the flies crawl along his ear hairs, the aphids feel the bright glossy shine and play dead.
The waitress lowers the tray, sees the face on the table, her cheekbones twitch, her ears burn. She averts her eyes so quickly that a blue vein of fear snaps across her temples as she sets the glass right on top of the dictator’s forehead. The lemonade is thinly streaked with yellow swirls, the forelock appears inside the glass. Adina clinks her spoon, the spoon shines, the lemonade shines, everything that shines also sees. A hot needle of light flashes across her forehead, the streetcar passes over the bridge, setting off waves in the river. Adina leaves her spoon in her drink, she doesn’t touch the glass and lets her hand rest just like the spoon. Adina is waiting for Clara and Paul. She turns her head away.
Beyond the flat roof of the café is the park, beyond the park the rooftops are pointed. Here are the streets of the directors and inspectors, the mayors, secret police and army officers. The quiet streets of power, where even the wind is afraid when it starts to blow. And when it does blow it is afraid to eddy. And when it blusters it would rather break its own ribs than a branch. Dry leaves scratch across the walkways, quickly covering all tracks. If someone sets foot on these streets who does not live on one of them, who does not belong, it is for these streets as though nothing was there.
The quiet streets of power abide in the breeze that forks the branches in the park and festoons them with leaves and picks up their rustling, the breeze that carries the clatter of footsteps along the river path, the breeze that causes people on both banks to lift their feet when they walk across the grass, even if it’s mowed, and raise their knees into their throats. Those who come here on foot prefer to pass unnoticed, with high, slow steps. Meanwhile inside their throats they are running, rushing. Once they reach the bridge, the city cloaks them in mindless noise, and they can breathe more easily, as the streetcar whooshes by, tugging their heads out of the silence.
The masters of the quiet streets are never seen in their houses or gardens. Behind the fir trees, servants come and go up and down the stone steps. When they walk on the lawn, they draw their insides into their throats for fear of squashing the grass. When they cut the grass, a mirror appears in the whites of their eyes, where sickles and rakes gleam like scissors and combs. The servants don’t trust their own skins, because whenever they reach for something their hands cast a shadow. Their heads know that they were born with dirty hands in dirty streets, and that their hands will never grow clean here in the silence. Only old. The clock ticks on the wall, the curtains billow, and when the servants open their masters’ refrigerators and look inside, a square of light falls on their feet, their eyes are startled, and their cheeks shiver at the thoughts that pass through their minds. The meat is packed in cellophane, the cellophane is coated with frost, the frost is white like stone, like the marble in the garden.
In the gardens of the quiet streets there are no gnomes with caps. Nothing but sad, barefoot stones. Naked lions, white as snow-covered dogs, and naked wingless angels, like snow-covered children. Yet even here, when the winter proceeds along its orbit around the sun, the snow crusts yellow and breaks without melting.
The servants live in the cellars underneath the houses, more likely to brush against pill bugs and mice than if they lived on the floorboards overhead. The servants’ husbands are all lying in the earth, the servants’ children have all left home. The servants are widows.
* * *
One of the servants has a daughter who teaches at the same school as Adina. And one day when they were walking by the river the daughter said, my mother works in the yellow house behind the round garden. And she raised her hand over her head and pointed out a house on the other side. Her eyes were dull, or perhaps her gaze was simply frozen, because the day was so cold and the water so close. She giggled as they crossed the bridge, then a streetcar passed and quashed the giggling. In the evening, said the servant’s daughter, when it’s already dark, the master of the house comes back from the Military Casino at Freedom Square, he’s an officer and spends his days there drinking. In the evening he doesn’t so much find his way back home as it finds him. Before he leaves, the waitresses put his officer’s cap on his head backward. So he teeters through the streets with the visor sticking out in back, until the way finds him. And every evening when he gets home, said the servant’s daughter, he and his wife go through the same rituaclass="underline" DANUBE DELTA. The cathedral bell interrupted the servant’s daughter, she looked up and burst into laughter, the bell’s chiming clung to her lips. From the reflection in the display windows Adina once again sensed how close they were to the water. The servant’s daughter bent over to check her shoes, Adina could see the soles mirrored in her eyes. I don’t like these heels, the servant’s daughter said. She made a face and said DANUBE DELTA, and resumed her story.
When the officer has made it home, his wife can hear his boots scraping up the steps between the lions. She says to my mother: DANUBE DELTA. My mother fetches a pot of hot water from the kitchen, which she carries to the bathroom and pours into a basin set on the floor. Then she tops it off with cold water so it’s nice and lukewarm. The officer’s wife waits in the front hall. Before her husband can turn the key, she opens the door from inside. She takes the briefcase out of his hand and the cap off his head and says DANUBE DELTA. The officer mutters and nods. His wife heads for the bathroom, he follows, by the time he gets there his wife is already perched on the closed toilet seat. The officer removes his boots and sets them outside the door. His wife says, let’s see your stork. The officer undresses and hands her his uniform, she folds the pants and drapes them over her arm. He takes off his underpants, spreads his legs and crouches so that he’s straddling the basin, then lowers himself to his knees and gazes at the blue tiles above the mirror. His penis dangles in the water. If his testicles sink, his wife says, good. If they float, she bursts into tears and screams, you’ve fucked yourself empty, even your boots are limp. The officer sinks his face between his knees, looks at his floating testicles and says, I swear my love, I swear.
The servant’s daughter stared for a moment at the leafless shrub brushing against her coat and said, my mother doesn’t know what it is he swears, meanwhile the mirror fogs up and the man keeps swearing. Then, long after his wife is quiet, he starts to cry. With him it’s just a yammer, with her it’s more. My mother sits in her place in the living room, at the long end of the table, facing the bathroom, ashamed to the back of her eyes. She hides her hands under the table because they’re shaking. If she so much as moves her slipper, the woman says, Lenuza, you stay put. And to the officer she says, now stick your stork back in your pants. The man stands up and puts on his underwear. His wife carries his pants on her arm through the living room, always clinging first to the edge of the table, then to my mother’s shoulder. She says, Lenuza, clean up, then her hand goes back to the table and follows it like a guardrail over to the bedroom door. Her husband traipses after her, boots in hand. And my mother cleans up the bathroom and switches off the light.