The Fox Was Ever the Hunter

There was a time and is no more

An old man is using a handcart to haul a propane tank. Hanging from the valve cap is a bag with a loaf of bread. The cart has a broom handle for a shaft and wheels taken from a child’s tricycle. The wheels are narrow and get stuck in the cracks between the paving stones. For a few steps the man has the gait of a scrawny horse. The cap rattles. The man stops and the broom handle clatters onto the pavement. The man sits on the tank and tears off a piece of bread. As he chews he looks at the poplars, first down at the trunks and then up at the branches.

Shoes thud in the back of her head, steps clatter in the back of her neck. Adina turns around and sees a man’s hands popping sunflower seeds into his mouth, his shoes shine, his pant legs flutter, his windbreaker scrunches. Now she feels the clatter on her cheek. It’s the man from the bus where the moving coffin drifted from one window to the next. You’ll do for me, he says, and spits a sunflower seed onto the stone, I’m sure you’re good in bed. She sees a bench, but there’s an empty bottle on the seat. I bet you’re a really good screw, he says, the next bench has bare nails sticking out where there used to be a wooden slat. Get lost, she says, and sits down in the middle of the third empty bench. He spits a sunflower seed onto the bench, she leans back. He sits down. There are plenty of other benches, she says and moves to the end. Now he leans back and looks her in the face. She sits up, get lost or I’ll scream, she says. He stands and says, that doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all. He laughs to himself, then opens his pants and holds out his penis. In that case I’ll be on my way, he says, as he pisses into the river. She gets up, so disgusted that her tongue rises to her eyes and she doesn’t see the paving stones as she starts walking. She feels cold water flowing into her ears and filling her head. He shakes the drops from his penis. I’ll pay you, he calls after her, I’ll give you a hundred lei, I’ll piss in your mouth.

Adina stands on the bridge, the man walks slowly in the other direction, back the way he came. His pant legs flutter, his legs are thin. As he walks his hand keeps coming up to his face, he’s still eating sunflower seeds. His back is narrow.

He walks like a quiet man.

* * *

How does the one go about the little Romanian who arrives in hell, Abi says to Paul and Adina. They are sitting in the café. That’s what he asked me when he came to my office, says Abi. I told him I had no idea. And yet three weeks ago you knew it well enough to tell it, he said. Then he said, but anyone can see you really believe little ones go to heaven, not hell, and that is a contradiction. I opened my desk drawer because I have a cold and wanted to get my handkerchief and he told me to close the drawer. I asked why and he said there might be something there he shouldn’t see. I said it’s just a desk drawer and he said that after four and a half years every drawer becomes an intimate place. I laughed and said I didn’t realize he was so tactful. Then he said he was a lawyer by profession and well bred. So, what does the little Romanian see when he gets to hell, he asked. Then he told the whole joke himself: A little Romanian dies and goes to hell, there’s a lot of pushing and shoving and everybody’s up to their neck in boiling mud. The devil sends the little Romanian off to the last empty space in the corner, and the man goes there and sinks up to his chin. From there he catches sight of a man close to the devil’s throne who’s also standing in boiling mud but only up to his knees. The little Romanian cranes his neck and recognizes Ceaușescu. Where’s the justice in that, he asks the devil, that man has a lot more to atone for than I do. You’re right, says the devil, but he’s standing on top of his wife.

He laughed and laughed, then he realized he was laughing and his face got all sharp, he pulled in his shoulders and his birthmark twitched on his jugular vein. He hated me because he couldn’t help laughing. He moved his hands quickly, like a knife and fork, he took a piece of paper out of his briefcase and placed a pen on the table. Write, he said. I picked up the pen and he looked out the window at the factory yard and dictated, I, and I asked, ME or YOU, and he said, write I and then your name. My name should be enough, I said, after all that’s who I am. Then he shouted at me, write what I tell you, and then he realized he was shouting so he put his hand to his chin and clasped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger and said quietly, write I and then write your name. I did that. Then he said, WILL TELL NO PERSON, NO MATTER HOW CLOSE, OF MY COLLABORATION WITH. I put down the pen and said, I can’t write that. He asked why, and I said, I can’t live with that. I see, he said, his jaw was clenched so hard his temple pulsed but his voice stayed completely calm. I stood up and stepped away from the table, I went to the window, looked out into the yard, and said, I don’t wish to be bothered here at work ever again. Well, he said, I imagined you preferred that to being interrupted during your free time. He stuck the pen in his jacket and crumpled up the paper and stashed it in his briefcase. He opened the briefcase all the way and I saw a picture inside. All I could really make out was a wall, but that wall looked very familiar. You think that we’re chasing after you, he said, but you’ll see, you’ll end up coming to us all on your own. He shut the briefcase and then the door. After he was gone I saw my father at this wall, with sunken cheeks and large ears. It was the last picture my mother ever received from my father.

What was this man’s name, asks Adina, and Paul says, MURGU, and Abi says PAVEL MURGU. How old, asks Adina, and Paul says, thirty-five, forty-five. He’s younger than forty-five, says Abi.

The café is dark, the curtains on the wall of windows are dark red, the tablecloths are dark red and swallow what little light there is. All the coats and caps are black. The lightbulbs glow only for themselves, the smoke is brighter than they are and lingers like sleep lulled by voices. Outside, in the spaces between the curtains, evening settles along the river and on the empty paving stones. The poplar trunks stand for themselves on their own feet, the wind along the river path whirls for itself, herding the dried leaves together and shooing them away again. The fishermen sit in the café, drinking their fill. They drink until they can no longer distinguish the evening from the booze in their heads. Now and then, when their eyes happen to see through the window, a leaf drops from the sky. And they know it comes from far away, because the poplars by the water are already as bare as fishing rods. The fishermen don’t trust the bare poplars. In the winter, say the fishermen, the bare poplars consume all happiness, even when the fishermen are drinking.

Who did you tell the joke to, asks Paul. If only I could remember, says Abi.

The fisherman afraid of melons balances a bottle of brandy on his head. The bottle is half full. He stretches his arms out like wings and walks once around the table without dropping the bottle.

The day after the concert MURGU read me a written statement, says Paul, saying that Face without Face refers to Ceaușescu. He claimed the explanation came from you, I didn’t believe him. Then he showed me the actual paper, which had your handwriting. Abi looks at Paul. There was a man screaming in the room next door, he says, I could hear the blows. He told me what to write and I wrote out everything he said. Those screams were from a recording, Paul says and looks at Adina, who is staring out between the two faces into emptiness. And inside that emptiness Abi’s face has sunken cheeks and large ears. That couldn’t have been a recording, says Abi, I don’t believe it. They kept me there until after midnight, he says. Afterward I went down the stairs and looked inside the guardhouse. There was a hand-sized mirror propped against the telephone, and next to it was an ashtray with water and a shaving brush. The guard had white lather on his face and was holding a razor. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I looked for the birthmark on his neck. Only when I was standing right next to him and he took the razor off his cheek and yelled at me to close the door because I was letting in a draft did I realize it was just a guard shaving. By then the street was completely empty, says Abi, it was pitch-dark. But I kept seeing the white lather in front of my feet. Then the streetcar pulled up with just one car, the windows were bright but all empty except for the conductor. I saw white lather on his face too. I couldn’t bring myself to get in.

The fisherman afraid of melons raises the bottle to his mouth, he doesn’t drink, just closes his eyes, kisses the mouth of the bottle, and hums a song. The eyes of the fisherman are floating in the booze, and the booze is floating in the smoke. The cathedral clock strikes outside, the chimes last shorter than a hummed song, but nobody counts them, not even Adina.

Who did you tell the joke to, asks Paul.

That night, says Abi, I dreamed I was searching for my father’s grave in a foreign city. I was led into a stone courtyard. The rear wall was the one my father was leaning against in that last picture. I had to cut a white ribbon. A tall fat man gave me a pair of scissors, and a small fat man in a white smock came next to me and stood on his tiptoes. He whispered into my ear that the courtyard was being consecrated. Then a line of men passed by one at a time. They were all very scrawny and had sightless eyes like glass balls. The small fat man asked, do you see him. I said, that can’t be him. The small fat man said, you can’t be sure, they’re all already dead.

Paul and Abi are silent, resting their heads in their hands, the shattered minds inside their skulls. Tira-tira, tira-ta, the fisherman sings, and his mouth is in everyone’s face. The bottle passes from hand to hand around the table. Each fisherman closes his eyes and drinks.

* * *

Inside the café, the evening takes its own time the same way this or that person takes his own life, just in passing, as a shadow in the river. It is winter in the city, a winter grown old and slow, a winter that pricks people with its cold. A winter in which mouths freeze and hands absently drop what they pick up, because fingertips thicken into leather. A city winter in which the water refuses to turn into ice, in which old people wear their past lives like coats. A winter in which young people hate one another like poison whenever they detect the slightest hint of happiness. And who nonetheless keep their eyes peeled while they go on searching for their lives. A winter walking along the river, where laughter freezes instead of the water. Where stuttering passes for speech and half-uttered words for loud shouts. Where every question dies away in the throat while silent tongues keep beating against clenched teeth.

* * *

The fisherman afraid of melons kisses the mouth of the bottle again and sings:

Once I used to sleep like a rock

Well all of me except my cock

Now it seems the reverse is true

My cock sleeps more than I ever do

Tira-tira tira-ta