What I used to like most about summer was playing with the son of the gatekeeper at the bread factory. We’d go to a path that ran alongside the broad avenue and was shaded by the same tall trees. The path was full of ruts and holes; we’d find the places where the dust was thickest. The boy was lame from birth, he would drag along behind me. We’d sit inside the deepest pothole, he’d bend his right leg and stiffly stretch his thin left one out in front. He was glad to be sitting down. He had nimble hands, curly hair, and a sallow complexion. We would become completely absorbed in our game, swirling the dust into snakes that went slithering all over one another.
That’s how blindworms crawl through the flour, he said, that’s why bread has holes.
No, the holes are because of the yeast.
They’re because of the snakes, you can ask my father.
The snakes could have easily gone on slithering through the pothole for half the day, until his father came to fetch him, carrying a bag from the bread factory. But as soon as my dress got dirty I’d feel bad, so I would run home and leave the boy to fend off the blindworms on his own.
One day a different gatekeeper was keeping watch at the entrance to the bread factory. Two weeks later the boy’s father returned, but without the boy. They had operated on that stiff leg and given the boy too much anesthetic. He never woke up. I would go to the path full of ruts and holes, where the trees stood huddled together casting their shade all the way to the avenue. I would keep to myself, avoiding the other children, as if the trees had promised that the boy would be coming here to play, even though he had died. I would sit down in the dirt and swirl up a snake, as thin and long as his stretched-out leg. The scraggly grass along the path. The tears dripping from my chin, forming a pattern on the snake. They’d taken the boy away from me, maybe he was looking down from heaven, maybe he realized that now I really did want to go on playing.
Lately when I go walking around town in the mornings it’s Lilli I miss. She’s the one they’ve taken away from me now.
The days when I’m summoned seem very short. Albu always has something in mind, even if I don’t know exactly what he wants from me. All I need is the large button on my blouse and a clever lie. Of course when I’m wandering around town, I don’t know exactly what I want from myself—even less than I know what Albu wants from me.
A little before eight this morning I watched the swallows: sometimes I think they’re really driving or swimming instead of flying. That was a dumb thing to do, with Albu expecting me at ten sharp. I don’t want to think about swallows. I don’t want to think about anything at all, there’s nothing to think about, because I myself am nothing, apart from being summoned. Last summer Paul still had his red motorbike, a Czech Java. Once or twice a week we’d go for a ride out of town, to the river. The lane through the beanfields—now that was happiness, good fortune, luck. The bigger the sky grew overhead, the more light-headed I felt. Whole jumbles of red flowers on each side, quivering as we flew past. You couldn’t exactly see that every single flower had two round ears and open lips, but I knew it all the same. The beans went on forever, but not in visible rows like cornfields. Even after all the stalks have dried out and the wind has tattered the leaves, a late-summer cornfield always looks like it’s just been combed. I never get light-headed in cornfields, even when the sky starts flying. Only a beanfield could strike me dumb with happiness, so much that I kept having to close my eyes from time to time. When I’d open them a moment later, I found I’d already missed a lot: the swallows were long since soaring in new orbits.
I held on tight to Paul’s ribs and whistled the song about leaves and snow. I couldn’t hear myself over the motorcycle. Usually I never whistle, because you have to have learned that as a child, and I never did. In fact, I still don’t know how. And ever since my first husband whistled on the bridge, I flinch whenever I hear someone whistle. But in the beanfields it was me who was whistling. So it must have been luck, a bit of good fortune, because nothing else I do comes out half as well as my whistling in the beanfield. Surrounded by string beans, I was literally struck dumb with happiness. With the river it’s different, the river never brings me happiness, though the smooth water always works to calm me down even when my thoughts stray to the bridge. But you can’t find happiness in being calm. By the time we reached the riverbank, I was ill at ease and Paul was impatient. He was looking forward to the river, I was looking forward to the ride back through the beans. He stepped into the water up to his ankles and showed me a black dragonfly, its abdomen hanging between its wings like a spiral made of glass. I pointed out the glossy dark clusters of blackberries beside me on the bank. And across the river the black starlings were settling onto pale rectangular bales of straw in a field of stubble. But I didn’t point those out, because I was looking at the sky, focusing on the little flecks of swallows, unable to understand how the color black is doled out and shared with the scorched yellow of a summer day. I laughed in my befuddlement, picked up a piece of tree bark from the grass, and threw it right at Paul’s feet. Then I said: You know, those swallows can’t really fly as fast as it seems, they’re just trying to trick us.
Paul fished for the bark with his toes and pushed it under the water. When he removed his foot, the wood bobbed right back up, shiny and black. He said:
Um-hmm.
He glanced up just long enough for me to see the dark daubs inside his eyes. Why ask what black fruit he has lurking in his eyes if he won’t even talk about the swallows and if his thoughts are so far removed from his toes. A breeze was rustling in the ash trees, I listened to the leaves, perhaps Paul was listening to the water. But he didn’t want to talk.
The next day in the factory I tried using the Um-hmm on Nelu when he came to my desk, pinching a sheet of paper between his thumb and coffee cup. He started rambling about button sizes for the ladies’ coats we were making for France that month. The tips of his mustache flapped around his mouth like swallow wings. I let him speak several sentences right into my face. When he came to the weekly schedule, I counted how many chin hairs he had missed while shaving. I raised my eyes and sought his. As soon as our pupils met I came right out with it:
Um-hmm.
Nelu was silent and walked over to his desk. I also tried out other words, such as Ah and Oh. But nothing could beat Um-hmm.
When I was confronted about the notes, he denied having informed on me. Anyone can deny things. It was just after I had separated from my first husband; white linen suits were being packed up for Italy. After we went on a ten-day business trip together, Nelu expected to keep on sleeping with me. But I’d made up my mind to marry a Westerner, and I slipped the same note into ten back pockets: Marry me, ti aspetto, signed with my name and address. The first Italian who replied would be accepted.
At the meeting, which I was not allowed to attend, my notes were judged to be prostitution in the workplace. Lilli told me Nelu had argued for treason, but had failed to convince them. Since I wasn’t a Party member and since it was my first offense, they decided to give me a chance to mend my ways. I wasn’t fired, which was a defeat for Nelu. The man in charge of ideological affairs personally delivered two written reprimands to my office. I had to sign the original for the records, the copy remained on my desk.
I’ll frame it, I said.
Nelu didn’t see what there was to joke about. He sat on his chair, sharpening a pencil.
What do you want with the Italians, they’ll come and screw you, give you pantyhose and a little deodorant, then go back home to their fountains. For a blowjob they’ll throw in some perfume.
I watched the frilly wood peelings and the black powder spilling out of his sharpener and stood up. I held the reprimand over his head and let go. The sheet floated down and settled on the table in front of him without a sound. Nelu turned his head toward me and tried to smile, pale as a worm. Then he accidentally nudged the newly sharpened pencil with his elbow. We watched it roll off the table, and listened to it chime against the fl
oor. Nelu bent down so that I could no longer see how tensely he was working his jaws. The pencil tip had broken off. He said:
So what. A pencil fell on the floor, it’s not like something exploded.
Who knows, I said. With someone like you, anything’s possible.
That was my first day back in the factory after three days of questioning. Nelu didn’t say another word to me. Evidently he was capable of worse than I had imagined. The three notes later found in trousers destined for Sweden read: Best wishes from the dictatorship. The notes were just like mine, but I didn’t write them. I was fired.
Even if the snow was deep, we drove to work on the Java. Paul had ridden a motorbike for eleven years and never had an accident, despite the fact that he drank. He knew the streets like the back of his hand and could have found both our factories with his eyes closed. I was all wrapped up, the streetlamps and lighted windows were glittering, the frost bit into our faces, our lips felt like frozen crusts of bread, our cheeks as smooth and cold as porcelain. Sky and street were nothing but snow, we were driving into a great big snowball. I leaned against Paul’s back and pressed my chin against his shoulder to let the snowball flow through my face. The streets are longest, the trees tallest, the sky closest when your eyes are fixed straight ahead. I wanted to go on riding and never stop. I didn’t dare blink. My ears were burning, my fingers, toes. The frost scorched me like an iron, only my eyes and mouth stayed cold. There was no time for luck or good fortune, we had to get there before we froze, and every morning we pulled up to my factory gate at half past six on the dot. Paul let me off. Using one reddish-blue finger to push up his cap, I kissed his porcelain forehead, then pulled the cap back down over his eyebrows. Afterwards he drove off to the engine works on the edge of town. When I saw hoarfrost on his eyebrows, I thought:
Now we are old.
After the business with the first notes, I put Italy out of my mind completely. It took more than linen suits for export to land a Marcello, you needed connections, couriers, and intermediaries, not trouser pockets. Instead of an Italian I landed the Major. My stupidity screamed at me, my self-reproach was sharp as a blow to the ears. I felt I was stuffed with straw. I couldn’t abide myself: that was the only way I could carry on every day, sitting in the office with Nelu, staring at columns and filling them in, until the second notes turned up. But I still liked myself: that was why I could enjoy riding the trams, having my hair cut short, buying new clothes. I also felt sorry for myself: that was why I could make it to Albu’s at precisely the right time. I felt indifferent toward myself too, as though the interrogations were a just punishment for my stupidity. But not for the reasons Albu cited:
Your behavior makes foreigners think all our country-women are whores.
I don’t see how, the notes never made it to Italy.
Thanks to the care shown by your colleagues, he said.
Why whores, anyway—I only wanted one Italian, and I wanted to marry him. Whores want money, not marriage.
The foundation of marriage is love and love alone. Do you even know what that is. You wanted to sell yourself to the Marcellos like a filthy slut.
Why like a filthy slut, I would have loved him.
It was over, I was back outside, back in the summer brightness, with everyone going about his noisy business. I could hear the straw rustling inside me. Chances are I wouldn’t have loved the Italian, but he would have taken me with him to Italy. I would have tried to love him. If I couldn’t, I would have found somebody else, after all, there’s no shortage of Italians in Italy. There’s always someone you can love if you put your mind to it. But instead of love I wound up with Albu summoning me as often as he pleased. And Nelu keeping a close watch on me at work. I put men completely out of my mind. Then I got caught up in Paul, right when I was on the defensive. I think being on the defensive sharpens my desire, much more than being actively on the lookout for someone. It had to have been that way, that’s why I clung to him so. It’s not that anybody could have transformed my defensiveness into desire, although it’s possible that someone other than Paul might have done so. Weary of life—that’s how I must have felt, without a good hold on things. And then one Sunday I met Paul. I stayed through Monday, and on Tuesday I moved in with him, lugging all my worldly possessions into the leaning tower.
Each morning I found it harder and harder to go to work. Paul would grip his Java firmly in both hands outside the factory gate, smile, wait for me to kiss his forehead and say:
You have to act like Nelu isn’t there.
Easy for him to say. But how to spend eight hours on end acting as if two mustache tips were simply floating in midair behind a desk.
Nelu’s so full of it, I said, that you can’t see through him.
And the motorbike roared, kicking up snow around the wheels, or dust. When Paul was halfway down the street I tried coaxing him back to the gate with my eyes, each morning I wanted to say something more to him, something he could take to last him the whole day among the machines. But we always repeated the same words.
Paul: You have to act like Nelu isn’t there.
Me: I’ll be thinking of you. Don’t get worked up if they steal your clothes.
The quick getaway. And the wind when he turned the corner, his jacket arching back like a cat ready to pounce. Every morning I had to force myself to step inside the factory. The mere sight of Nelu was enough to drive me crazy. Neither of us greeted the other, though after an hour or two Nelu would try to break the silence, claiming that we couldn’t possibly stay in the same room together for eight hours at a stretch without saying something. I didn’t feel the need to say anything, but he couldn’t stand the silence. He talked about the production schedule, I said:
Um-hmm.
Um-hmm, and Oh, and Ah.
When that didn’t work, I turned chatty. I picked up the little vase on his desk, peered through the thick glass on the bottom and studied the reddish-green rose stem inside the water. I said:
Come on now, why talk about the schedule when there’s no point in meeting the targets. If we ever did, they’d be raised the next day. That schedule of yours is a disease of state.
Nelu plucked a hair from his mustache and rubbed it between his fingers so that it curled up. He said:
Do you like it.
If you pull out one a day, pretty soon your face will look like a cucumber, I said.
Don’t get too excited. You’re obviously thinking of pubic hair.
But not yours, I said.
Do you know why Italians always carry a comb in their pocket—because otherwise they can’t find their pricks when they have to piss.
You’ve got a comb too, but even that won’t help you. You don’t have what it takes to be an Italian.
I’ve seen what it takes, unlike you I’ve been to Italy.
Um-hmm. And did you do a little spying there too, I asked.
It’s true I was thinking of pubic hair, Nelu forced me to think of his all the time he was talking about the schedule. He placed that hair right in the middle of my desk, too, where there was a nick in the wood. Not one I had made. He’d probably gone and measured the desk to locate the spot furthest from my reach. I didn’t want to touch that curly hair of his, but I didn’t have my ruler handy to flick it off the table right then and there. So once again I wound up doing something he really enjoyed seeing, I blew the hair away. The sight of me pursing my lips gave him something to laugh at. I had to blow three or four times before the hair flew off the table. He made me obscene.
One day the cleaning lady will come into the office after work and she’ll be wiping away blood instead of dust, I said to Lilli. It won’t be long now. One of these days I’m going to lose control and kill the son of a bitch.
Lilli brushed me off with a wave of her hand and said:
Don’t you dare. Why not just leave a knife on his desk and tell him how good it would feel against his throat, that it doesn’t hurt at all. Then move away a little, like on the bridg
e, so he won’t feel awkward. He’s doing everything he can to make you lose control, and you’re letting him, you’re positively asking for it. Keep a hold on yourself and you won’t lose your grip. It just takes practice.
Lilli’s plum-blue eyes met my own and her gaze won. And her smooth neck. I knew from the bridge how fast you can lose your grip, how quickly you can send another person to his death when he starts to weigh on you, like stones piled on your heart. And I knew this would happen again, with Nelu.
Lilli dismissed me with a wave of her hand, then blushed. Her nose was twitching, but it stayed cool and white. At that moment I hated everything about Lilli, as she stood there before me, but even so I couldn’t help thinking:
That nose is as beautiful as a tobacco flower.
Lilli considered me an instigator. I had frightened her, and now she was using the bridge against me. I could see signs of hate lurking in her features; I wish I’d never found out how much that made her look like her mother. At the funeral you could hear the earth ringing on the coffin, then it closed over Lilli, and that mother of hers snapped at me, with Lilli’s mouth.
That’s right, keep a hold on yourself—Lilli thought—it just takes practice. She could see the threads running through my tangled thoughts more clearly than I could. And I imagined I could see through her own tangle more clearly than she did. There was a time when we could have swapped places, she and I. Instead, she traded with her mother. Keep a hold on yourself, she thought, and you’ll make it across the border. Don’t lose your grip, the bullets only hit you if you let them know you’re worried. It just takes practice, and she wanted to learn. Back when she told me to keep a hold on myself with Nelu, Lilli was just starting to sleep with a sixty-six-year-old officer. A couple of weeks later they decided to flee across the Hungarian border. He was arrested and she was shot dead. Too clever for her own good, Lilli.