The Fox Was Ever the Hunter

The cat and the dwarf

A line of heads passes between the rusty spools of wire in the factory yard. The man at the gatehouse looks up into the sky. What he sees is the loudspeaker next to the gate.

* * *

In the morning, between six and seven-thirty, music comes out of this loudspeaker. The gateman calls it morning music. He uses it as a clock. Anyone who passes through the gate after the music has stopped is late to work. Anyone who isn’t stepping to the music on his way to the lathes and looms, anyone crossing through the yard when it is quiet is written up and reported.

The marching songs are loud even before it’s light outside. The wind beats against the corrugated tin roof. The rain pounds on the asphalt. The women’s stockings are spattered, the men’s hat brims turn to gutters. Out on the street the daylight comes sooner, but inside the factory the wire spools are still black and wet from the night. Even in summer it takes the day longer to reach the factory yard than to light the street outside.

* * *

The gateman chews sunflower seeds and spits the shells into the afternoon. They land on the ground, on the threshold. The woman who shares the gatehouse duty sits beside him, knitting. She wears a green smock. She has a gap in the middle of her teeth. She counts the spools of wire and wire mesh out loud, through the gap in her teeth. A striped cat is sprawled at her feet.

The phone rings in the gatehouse. The gateman hears it ring and listens with his temples, without turning his head. He keeps his eyes on the people passing through the spools of wire. The gatewoman lifts her knitting needle to the gap between her teeth, then sticks it down her smock and scratches between her breasts. The cat twitches her ears and watches. The cat’s eyes are golden grapes. The spool tally gets caught in the gap between the woman’s teeth and inside the eyes of the cat. The telephone is shrill. The ringing catches on the wool, the yarn climbs into the gatewoman’s hand. The ringing climbs into the cat’s stomach. The cat climbs over the gateman’s shoe and runs into the factory yard. The gateman doesn’t answer the phone.

When she’s inside the factory yard, the cat is all rust and wire mesh. On top of the factory roof she is all corrugated tin, and outside the offices she is all asphalt. By the washroom, sand. And in the workrooms the cat is all shafts and cogs and oil.

The gateman can see heads emerging among the spools. Sparrows come flitting out of the wire. The gateman glances up at the sky. A single sparrow flying in the sun is something light, only a flock is heavy. The corrugated tin slices the afternoon at an angle. The twittering of the sparrows is hoarse.

The heads come nearer, on their way out of the factory, leaving the wire behind. The gateman can already make out their necks. He paces up and down. He yawns, his tongue is thick, it squeezes his eyes shut during the empty time when the sun sends streaks of moisture down his chin. When the gateman stands in the sunlight, a bald spot appears, sleeping under strands of hair. The gateman still doesn’t see the hands and bags of the passing heads.

For the gateman, yawning is waiting. When the workers leave the wire, their bags become his bags. The bags are searched. The bags are light, and swing from the hands holding them. Unless there’s iron stashed inside, in which case they hang stiffly. The gateman notices that. The women’s purses also hang stiffly if they are carrying something made of iron. Anything that can be stolen from the factory is made of iron.

The gateman’s hands don’t rummage through every bag, they simply know which to search when the faces pass by, because there is a change in the air. A change he can sense in his face, somewhere between his nose and his mouth. The gateman lets himself be inhaled by this air, lets his intuition decide between one bag and another.

His decision also depends on the gatehouse shade, and on the taste of the sunflower seeds in his mouth. If a few kernels are rancid his tongue turns bitter. His cheekbones clench up, his eyes grow stubborn. His fingertips tremble. But after the first bag his fingers gain confidence. His palm presses against the foreign objects, his grabbing becomes greedy. Rummaging through a bag is for him the same thing as grabbing a face. He can cause the faces to go from chalk to blush. And they don’t recover. When he waves them on, the faces leaving the gate are either caved in or swollen up. And they stay distraught long after they’ve left. Their vision and hearing stay blurred, so that the sun seems like a giant version of the gateman’s hand. And their noses are no longer enough, they have to gasp for air in the streetcar, with mouths and eyes in faces that are no longer their own.

As he searches, the gateman hears their empty swallowing. Throats turn dry as a vise, fear rummages through stomachs, and passes out of their bowels as foul air that lingers at knee height. The gatekeeper can smell the fear. And if he spends longer searching a particular bag, many are so afraid they pass not one, but two quiet farts.

* * *

The gatewoman once told Clara that the gateman is a strict believer. That explains why he doesn’t love people, she said. He punishes those who don’t believe. And he admires those who do. He doesn’t love the believers, but he does respect them. He respects the party secretary because the party secretary believes in the party. He respects the director because the director believes in power.

The gatewoman pulled a bobby pin out of her hair, stuck it in the gap between her teeth and rewound her bun. Most people who believe in something, said Clara, are high party officials, and they have no need for the gateman or his respect.

The gatewoman plunged her pin deep into her hair and said, but there are other believers too. Clara was standing in the door, the other woman was sitting in the gatehouse. Do you believe in God, she asked Clara. Clara peered into the bun on top of the woman’s head and focused on the bend of the bobby pin, which was made of wire. The tines had disappeared so only the bend was visible, and it was as thin as a single strand of hair. Only brighter. Sometimes I believe and sometimes I don’t, Clara told the gatewoman, and if nothing’s troubling me, then I forget. The gatewoman dusted off the phone with the corner of a curtain and said, the gatekeeper says some people simply aren’t capable of believing. While she spoke she saw her face in the windowpane and her smock, which looked darker in the glass. The gateman says that the workers don’t believe in their jobs and they don’t believe in God, for them He’s just a day off work. And maybe, if God’s willing, a roasted chicken for Sunday dinner, stuffed with its own liver. The gateman doesn’t eat poultry, said the gatewoman.

* * *

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.