by Herta Müller
* * *
The flock of sparrows scatters. The windows in the factory halls are broken, the sparrows find the holes in the glass, and fly into the main workroom faster than the gateman can see. The gatewoman laughs and says, don’t even bother to look or they’ll fly right through your forehead. The gateman stares at his hands, at the black hairs on his fingers, at his wrists. The shadow of the afternoon slices his pants below his knees. The dust beside the spools of wire spins around itself.
* * *
A knife, a smeared canning jar, a newspaper, a crust of bread. And under the paper a handful of screws. Well well, says the gateman. The man closes his bag.
A letter, a bottle of nail polish. A plastic bag and a book. A jacket stuffed in a shopping bag. A lipstick drops out of the jacket pocket. The gateman bends over. He opens the lipstick, rubs a red stripe on his wrist. He licks the stripe off with his tongue, pfui he says, rotten raspberries and mosquitoes.
The man has a wound on his thumb. The buckles on his bag are rusty. The gateman opens the bag and takes out first a folding ruler, then a cap, and from under the cap a clothes iron. Look at that, says the gateman. All I did was repair the plug, says the man. On factory time, says the gateman. He sets the iron in the gatehouse and curses, mother of all plugs. The gatewoman places the iron on her hand and, stretching her fingers, irons her palm flat.
A purse. A clump of cotton wool drops onto the ground. The man with the wounded thumb bends over to pick it up. The woman pulls a strand of hair behind her ear, she takes the cotton wool out of the hand with the wounded thumb. A sunflower seed and an ant are clinging to the cotton.
The sun flashes white on Clara’s teeth as she laughs, and the gap between the gatewoman’s teeth laughs, and the gateman sends Clara through.
The man with the wounded thumb takes his cap out of his bag and spins it on his forefinger like a wheel. The gatewoman laughs, the gap between her teeth is a megaphone that makes her laughter echo. The man with the wounded thumb peers into the spinning circles of his cap and sings:
The money came the money went
We owe the landlord two months’ rent
His fist is a wheel, a vein in the crook of his arm pulses thick and thin. His eyes are following the gatewoman’s knitting needles.
He’s thrown us out now on the street
Yes life is always such a treat.
* * *
His mouth sings, his eyes are narrow and his fist is whirling. And his other hand, the empty one with the wounded thumb, does not move to close the rusty buckles on his bag. The man’s song is a song of waiting to get the iron back.
An acacia leaf flutters by the crack of the door, then races off and flies and flies. The gatewoman watches it go. The leaf is yellow like the eyes of the cat. The man with the wounded thumb looks at the clock.
* * *
Every year the cat has kittens. They’re tiger-striped just like she is. She eats them right away, while they’re still slippery wet and blind. The cat mourns for a week after devouring her young. She ranges through the factory yard. Her belly is flat, her stripes narrow, there’s nothing she can’t move through or past.
As long as the cat’s in mourning she does not eat meat. Only young grass tips and the salty residue that collects on the stairs in the back courtyard.
The women on the mesh looms claim that the cat came from the outskirts of town. And the warehouse supervisor says she emerged from the factory yard, from the boxes of iron shavings, where the rain barely leaks through. He says she was wet and rusty and no bigger than an apple when he found her there on his way from the warehouse to the offices. And that the kitten’s eyes were shut. The supervisor set the kitten on a leather glove and carried it to the gateman, who placed it in a fur cap.
And I fed that thing milk through a straw for thirty days, says the gatewoman. And raised her myself since nobody wanted her. After a week, says the gateman, the kitten was able to open its eyes. And I was shocked to see the image of the supervisor deep inside those eyes. And to this day, whenever the cat purrs, he says, the supervisor is right there in both of her eyes.
* * *
As far as the cat is concerned, the factory is as big as her nose. She sniffs everything and everywhere. She sniffs in the workrooms, in the remotest corners, where people sweat and freeze and shout and cry and steal. She sniffs up and down the gaps between the spools, where the grass is choked out and where people squish and pant and make love standing up. Where copulating is as greedy and hidden as stealing.
At the rear entrance to the factory, which is reserved for trucks, the roof is made of tar paper, the gutter of split tires, and the fence is an assemblage of dented car doors and willow whips. Beyond this entrance is a crooked street called VICTORY STREET. The gutter lets the rain out onto Victory Street. Next to the rear entrance is the warehouse containing mountains of protective clothing—gray padded jackets, green leather aprons and gloves, and gray rubber boots. The warehouse has a small window overlooking the street. And inside, below the window, is a large overturned crate that serves as a table, and a small overturned crate that serves as a chair. On the table is a list with the names of all the workers. And on the chair sits the warehouse supervisor, Grigore.
* * *
Grigore sells gold, says the gatewoman, gold necklaces. And wedding rings. He buys them from an old Gypsy who lost a leg in the war. That man lives on the edge of town, near the Heroes’ Cemetery. The Gypsy buys the gold from a young Serbian, who lives in a village in the corner of the country where Romania and Hungary and Serbia all meet. He has relatives in Serbia and travels there frequently as part of the local border traffic. He also has a brother-in-law who works as a customs official at the border.
Now and then Grigore acquires merchandise from Russia as well. The thick gold necklaces come from Russia and the thin ones from Serbia. The thick ones are made of die-cut hearts and the thin ones of die-cut dice. The wedding rings come from Hungary.
When Grigore closes one hand and slowly opens his fingers, the chains slither out like golden wire. He lets the ends dangle and holds them up to the light from the small window.
* * *
For a woman working at the factory, six months of rusty wire have to pass through her hands before she takes her wages to Grigore and a gold chain is draped around her neck. But then a few days afterward, late in the evening, just when bare feet are stepping on a rug and the gold is glittering above a nightgown, there comes a knock at the door and two men are standing there, one in a suit and another in uniform. The light in the hall is dim but enough to see a rubber truncheon dangling alongside the leg of the uniform. The man in the suit speaks in curt sentences, his cheek is smooth and shiny, a spot of light rises and falls. The voice stays quiet, almost flat, cold. The man’s shoes stand on the edge of the rug. The chain is confiscated from the neck.
* * *
Grigore recovers it the following morning, when the first streetcar is nearly empty and the lights are blinking off and on from all the jolting. The man in the suit climbs in at the stop by the brewery and silently hands him a matchbox.
On those days Grigore is the first person at the factory, he arrives when the water is still lazy under the bridge and the sky still hunched over with darkness. He’s cold and lights a cigarette. The loudspeaker is mute as he passes among the spools, trailing the smoke from his cigarette, carrying his gold chains. A few hours later he again lets them dangle and run through his fingers in front of the small window overlooking Victory Street. And the money reappears, the same but different, just like the same but different images that reappear in the eyes of the cat.
* * *
The gateman says that in the evening Grigore regularly goes to the police and reports whom he sold gold chains to in the morning. But he does not report the wedding rings.
The gateman respects Grigore the warehouse supervisor, because Grigore believes in his money.
Well the black market is exactly that, says the gatewoman,
after all no one’s making them buy anything. And black business is risky business. The gateman says, one person has, the other needs, and so the world turns. Everyone does what he can.
* * *
The cat can also smell whenever the supervisor takes a woman off to the left corner of the warehouse. He leads them down an aisle between the heaps of clothing and up to a lair hollowed out of the gray mountain, right below the window. The women lie on the slope of clothing, so when they lift their legs their feet are the same height as their head. When Grigore undoes his pants, the cat comes in off the roof and sits on the top of the mountain, overlooking the lair. From the women’s point of view the cat is sitting upside down, because their rubber boots are raised above their eyes. The eyes of the women race through their foreheads to the eyes of the cat. Shoo her away from there, say the women, shoo her away. And Grigore says, that doesn’t matter, she can’t see anything, let her be, that doesn’t matter at all. The cat twitches her eyes and watches.
Afterward the women stand in front of the desk, covered in sweat, with a gray padded jacket over their arm. They find their name on the supervisor’s list and sign for their clothing. The cat doesn’t wait for them to sign. She clambers outside and saunters between the wire spools in the courtyard and into the workrooms.
* * *
The image remains fixed for a while in the eyes of the cat, so everyone can see what’s happened. And everyone talks about it, about the latest love hastily performed standing up or lying down. The talk about the love is also hasty. They all rest their hands on the wire, wherever their fingers happen to be when the cat comes near. Because no image grows very old. Because another one comes along and is fixed for a while in the eyes of the cat. And envy spurs each woman on, as does the oil splattered on her face, convincing her that she will be next, that the next image in the eyes of the cat will feature her. Come spring or come fall, when the padded jacket wears out and tears at the elbows and when the wind scratches cold or warm against the tar paper and blows through the fence onto Victory Street, the other women will be watching. Because the cat will carry their thighs through the factory, naked in the lair and spread wide and raised higher than their heads—the thighs now resting under their smocks in front of their looms.
* * *
When the cat mourns her young, her eyes have no image, but that’s only one week during the year. Whoever is seized by love in the haste of this fleeting blind week is lucky, say the women. They believe no one will see them because there will be no image in the eyes of the cat.
Many bribe the gatewoman to tell them when this week will be. They all do, she says, so I fill the calendar, and I tell each of them whatever I want.
And each woman tries to jump the queue, rushing into the false week of mourning with short hasty thrusts.
* * *
But during the actual week of mourning, the love lines all get tangled, between the workrooms and the factory yard, the washroom and office, and so the coupling men and women do end up being seen, by the gatekeeper, the cleaning woman, the foreman and the stoker. There is one small difference, though: because there are no images in the eyes of the cat during the real week of mourning, each of these encounters remains a rumor.
* * *
The women’s children all look like Grigore, says the gatewoman. Thank god the mothers don’t bring them to the factory. I’ve never seen the children all grouped together, only one here and one there. Short or tall, skinny or fat, black-haired or blond. Girls and boys. When they stand next to each other you can tell they’re siblings. They’re all different, says the gatewoman, but every one of their faces has a palm-sized piece of Grigore.
* * *
From the moment they’re born, the women’s children suffer from sleeplessness. The doctors say it comes from the machine oil. These children start growing and for a few years it seems they will grow up and away from the factory.
But sooner or later, says the gatewoman, they come here to the gatehouse looking for their mothers. It’s rarely anything urgent. Most of the time there’s no reason.
The gatewoman says the children stand there next to the gatehouse and tell her their names so the gateman can call their mothers. And that while they’re standing there they clutch their cheeks with their fingertips because they’re afraid. That they don’t see either of the gatekeepers. That from the moment they say their names they only have eyes for the wire, the spools, the sunken factory yard, which they stare at with empty eyes. And that the longer they stand there, the more the palm-sized piece of Grigore starts to show in their faces.
And the gatewoman sees the rust on their small or large shirts, on their small or large clothes, on their knee socks. While the children are standing and waiting next to the gatehouse, some small, some bigger, some nearly grown-up, the gatewoman can always spot the rusty stains—every child has one on some piece of clothing, like a toothed and tattered leaf.
The rust comes from the hands of the mothers, from the same hands that mix melon blood into the men’s soup before dinner. The black rims on their fingernails dissolve when they do the laundry. And then the rust is not in the water and not in the foam. It’s in the fabric. And there’s nothing to do about that: drying in the wind doesn’t help, or ironing, or stain removers, says the gatewoman.
* * *
Even ten years later the gatewoman recognizes Grigore’s many children who have no idea they are related. By then tons of rust and wire mesh have been driven through the gate. And new tons of rust and wire mesh have been woven and piled in the same spot, before the grass can find any sun to grow. And by then these children, too, are working in the factory. They never wished it, they’re here only because the factory is all they know. From the tip of their noses to the tips of their toes they never find another way because there is no other way for them to find. Nothing but this gutter of poverty, hopelessness and tedium, from mother to child and on to that child’s children. One day without warning they discover they have no choice: at first they’re angry and loud, then eventually they become soft and quiet, puttering from one day to the next. The tang of the machine oil still stings their nostrils, their hands are long since rimmed with black. They get married and thrust their shrunken love into each other’s bellies during the break between day shift and night shift. And they get children. Who lie in rusty diapers. These children grow and put on small and then large shirts, clothes, socks and stockings. They stand right next to the gatehouse with their tattered leaves of rust. And wait. And they don’t know that they’ll never find a way, that nothing else will occur to them.
Grigore’s mother also worked in the factory. As did the mother of the gatewoman.
* * *
The knitting needles are resting on the table. The factory yard is quiet. The wind smells of malt. Just past the rooftops is the brewery cooling tower. And jutting out of the tower is a large insulated pipe that stretches over the street and into the river. Steam comes out of the pipe. During the day the steam gets shredded by the passing streetcars. During the night it is a white curtain. Some people say the steam smells of rats, because inside the iron vats, which are bigger than the gatehouse, the river rats get drunk and drown in the beer.
On the eighth day, says the gatekeeper, God had a clump of hair left over from Adam and Eve. He used that to make the feathered creatures. And on the ninth day God faced the great void and belched. And from that belch He created beer.
* * *
The gatehouse shadow has widened. The sun is looking for the shortest path between Victory Street and the wire spools in the yard. The sun is boxy and squeezed in at the edges, with a gray spot right in the middle.
There are days in late summer when the loudspeaker up by the gatehouse crackles. Then the gateman stares at the sky for a long time and says, up there, above those tin roofs, over the city, higher than the brewery cooling tower, the sun’s turned into a rusty water tap.
Outside the gate is a pothole where the sparrows powder themselves in
the dust. Lying on the ground between them is a screw.
The gatekeepers sit in the gatehouse. They play cards. The iron is resting on the edge of the table. The gatekeeper confiscated the iron and reported the man with the wounded thumb to the administration. Tomorrow the man with the wounded thumb will receive a written reprimand.
* * *
Sparrows are hopping inside the workroom. Their feet and beaks are black from the machine oil. They peck at sunflower seeds and melon seeds and bread crumbs. When the workroom is empty the letters on the slogans are larger than ever, WORK and HONOR and PARTY, and the lamp by the door to the dressing room has a long neck. The dwarf with the red shirt and the tall shoes sweeps the oily floor with an oily broom. Sitting on a nearby loom is a watermelon. It is bigger than his head. The watermelon has light and dark stripes.
The light slants through the door to the factory yard. And the cat sits next to the door and chews on a piece of bacon rind. The dwarf looks through the door into the yard.
And the dust flies without a reason. And the door creaks.
Nuts
The woman with the gnarled hands spits on the cloth and rubs the apples until they shine. She sets out the shining apples in a row, red cheeks in front, scars toward the back. The apples are small and malformed. The scale is empty. To weigh the fruit she uses two iron bird head weights, their beaks swing past each other until weights and apples balance out and come to a stop. Then the old woman counts out loud until her eyes come as close together as the iron beaks. Like the beaks her eyes are hard and silent because they know the price.
* * *
All the vendors in the market hall are old. Within the concrete walls, under the concrete roof, behind the concrete tables and on the concrete floor the country village can be seen in their faces—gardens fending off the creeping wheatgrass.
* * *
Liviu has been talking about these villages ever since he took a job teaching in the part of the country cut off by the Danube. He talks about summer days that grow tired until they snap shut between the eyes, days that amount to nothing more than the evening, when the head sags into sleep before the body can come to rest. He tells about the wakeful sleep of the young and the leaden sleep of the old. And about how in their nighttime wakefulness and leaden sleep the day’s toil keeps on trembling in their fingers and trudging in their feet. And how their ears mistake their own snoring for the voice of the village policeman and the mayor, who tell them even in their dreams what must be planted in every garden, every flower bed. Because the policeman and the mayor have their lists and their accounting. And they expect their tribute, no matter if flea beetles, worms, snails or mildew come and devour everything or not. Even if rain forgets the village and the sun burns it down to the last fiber and flattens it so night climbs in from all sides at once.