The camp yard is an empty village in the sun, the sharp tips of the clouds are fire. On the mountain meadow my Aunt Fini pointed to the evening sun. A gust of wind had lifted her hair like a bird’s nest and parted it in back with a slashing white line. And she said: The Christ child is baking cake. I asked: Already. She said: Already.
There’s the boredom of wasted conversations, not to mention opportunities. Even the simplest request takes many words, and there’s no guarantee that any one of them will do the trick. I often avoid conversations, and when I seek them out, I am afraid of them, most of all of the ones with Bea Zakel. Maybe the reason I dive into her sidelong gaze is not because I want something from her but because I want to beg mercy from Tur. The truth is I speak with everyone more than I want to, simply to be less alone. As if anyone could be alone in the camp. No one can be alone here, even if the camp is an empty village in the sun.
It’s always the same, I lie down to sleep, because it won’t get any quieter later on, since the others will be coming off work. But night-shift workers don’t sleep for long stretches, and I’m awake after four hours of obligatory rest. I could try to calculate how long it is until the next boring spring in the camp with the next senseless peace anniversary and the rumor that we’ll soon be sent home. And then there I am, lying in the new grass for the new anniversary, and I have the whole earth strapped onto my back. But they ship us farther east, to another camp, where we’re supposed to chop down trees. I pack my cellar-things into my gramophone suitcase, I pack and pack and never finish. The others are already waiting. The train is whistling, I jump onto the step at the last moment. We ride from one fir forest to the next. The firs leap out of the way and yield to the tracks and then hop back in place after the train has passed. We arrive and climb off the train, the first one out is Commandant Shishtvanyonov. I take my time, hoping that no one notices I don’t have a saw or an axe in my gramophone suitcase, just my cellar-things and my white handkerchief. Immediately after stepping off the train the commandant changes clothes, now his uniform has horn buttons and oak-leaf epaulettes, even though we’re in a fir forest. He’s impatient—Davay, come on, move it, he tells me, we have more than enough saws and axes. I climb out, and he hands me a brown paper sack. Not more cement, I think. But one corner of the sack is torn and it’s leaking white flour. I thank him for the present, I carry the sack under my left arm and salute with my right. Shishtvanyonov says: Get a move on, here in the mountains we sometimes have to blow things up. Then I understand, the white flour is blasting powder.
Instead of having thoughts like that, I could read. But I’ve long since sold the terrible Zarathustra, the thick Faust, and the onionskin edition of Weinheber as cigarette paper to still my hunger for a little while. On my last free Wednesday I also imagined being shipped farther east, but that time we didn’t even need a train. We traveled in our barrack, which stretched out like an accordion, without any tracks or wheels. The ride was smooth, the acacias rushed by, scratching the windows with their branches, and I sat next to Kobelian and asked: How can it be that we’re riding, when we don’t have any wheels. And he said: That’s because the camp is always on track.
I’m tired and don’t want to yearn so much for anything. There are all kinds of boredom, some that go running ahead and others that come limping behind. If I treat them well they won’t hurt me and they’ll be mine to have. All year long, over the Russian village, there’s the boredom of the moon—the thin moon whose neck resembles a cucumber flower, or a trumpet with gray valves. Then a few days later the half-moon that hangs in the sky like a cap. And then the boredom of a full moon, full to the point of overflowing. Every day there’s the boredom of the barbed wire on the camp wall, the boredom of the guards in the towers, Tur Prikulitsch’s shiny toecaps, and the boredom of my own torn galoshes. There’s the boredom of the cooling-tower cloud as well as the boredom of the white bread linens. And there’s the boredom of the corrugated asbestos sheets, the streaks of tar, and the old puddles of oil.
There’s the boredom of the sun, when the wood shrivels and the earth gets thinner than reason in your head, when the guard dogs doze instead of bark. Before the grass has entirely withered, the sky closes in, and then there’s the boredom when the ropes of rain fall, when the wood swells and your shoes stick in the mud and your clothes stick to your skin. The summer is cruel to its leaves, the fall to its colors, the winter to us.
There’s the boredom of freshly fallen snow with coal dust and old snow with coal dust, the boredom of old snow with potato peels and freshly fallen snow without potato peels. The boredom of snow with cement creases and tar stains, the floury wool on the guard dogs, and their different barks, either metallic-deep or soprano-high. There’s the boredom of dripping pipes, with icicles like glass radishes, and the boredom of plushly upholstered snow on the steps to the cellar. And the hairnet of icy threads melting on the chipped fireclay of the coke ovens. And the sticky snow that’s so fond of humans, which glazes our eyes and burns our cheeks.
On the wide Russian train tracks there’s the snow on the wooden cross ties and the rust on the wreaths of densely set screws that come in sets of two, three, or even five, like epaulettes for different ranks. And on the train embankment, if someone falls over, there’s the boredom of the snow with the corpse and the shovel. Scarcely has the corpse been cleared away than it’s already forgotten, because bodies that thin hardly leave any trace in snow that thick. All you can see is the boredom of an abandoned shovel. It’s best not to go near the shovel. When the wind is weak, a soul flies up, adorned with feathers. When the wind is strong, the soul is carried off in waves. And not just the soul, since presumably every corpse also releases a hunger angel who goes looking for a new host. But none of us can nourish two hunger angels.
Trudi Pelikan told me that she and the Russian medic drove with Kobelian to the train embankment and loaded Corina Marcu’s frozen body onto the truck. That Trudi climbed into the truck bed to undress the body before it was buried, but that the medic said: We’ll take care of that later. That the medic sat with Kobelian in the cab and Trudi sat in the truck bed with the body. That Kobelian didn’t drive to the cemetery but to the camp, where Bea Zakel was waiting in the sick barrack and that she stepped outside carrying her baby when she heard the rumble of the truck. That Kobelian hoisted Corina Marcu onto his shoulder and didn’t carry her to the dying room or to the surgery but to the medic’s own room, as the medic told him to do. That he didn’t know where to put the body, because the medic said: Wait. That the dead woman grew too heavy and he let her slide down his side and stood her on the ground. That he propped up the body until the medic had stashed her canned goods in a bucket and the table was free. That Kobelian laid the dead woman on the table without saying another word. That Trudi Pelikan started to unbutton Corina Marcu’s jacket, because she thought Bea Zakel was waiting for her clothes. That the medic said: First the hair. That Bea Zakel locked her child up with the other children behind the wooden screen. That her child kept kicking the wooden screen and screaming until the other children joined in even more shrilly, the way dogs bark more shrilly after one has already started. That Bea Zakel pulled the dead woman’s head over the edge of the table so that her hair hung down. That as if by some miracle Corina Marcu’s head had never been shaved and the medic then cut her hair with the clippers. That Bea Zakel placed the hair neatly inside a little wooden box. That Trudi wanted to know what that was good for and the medic said: For window cushions. That Trudi asked: For whom, and Bea Zakel said: For the tailor shop, Herr Reusch sews window cushions for us, the hair stops the draft. That the medic washed her hands with soap and said: You know what I’m afraid of, that it’s so boring when you’re dead. That Bea Zakel said, with an unusually high-pitched voice: You’re right to be afraid. That Bea Zakel then tore two empty pages out of the sick register and covered the little wooden box. That with the box tucked under her arm like that she looked like she’d just been to the store in the Russian vill
age and had bought something perishable. That Bea didn’t wait for the clothes but disappeared with the little box before the dead woman was completely undressed. That Kobelian went to his truck. That it took some time to undress Corina Marcu, because Trudi didn’t want to ruin the good fufaika by cutting it off the body. That with all the tugging a cat brooch fell out of the dead woman’s pocket and landed on the floor next to the bucket. That when Trudi Pelikan bent down to pick it up she read the printed label off one of the shiny tins in the bucket: CORNED BEEF. That she couldn’t believe her eyes. That meanwhile the medic picked up the brooch. That the truck was rumbling outside the whole time and didn’t drive off. That the medic went out holding the cat brooch and came back empty-handed and said: Kobelian’s sitting at the steering wheel, bawling, and saying My God My God over and over.
Boredom is fear’s patience. Fear doesn’t want to exaggerate. Only on occasion—and fear considers this very important—does it want to know how things stand with me.
I could eat a piece of saved bread from my pillowcase, with a pinch of sugar or salt. Or dry my wet footwraps on the chair next to the stove. The little wooden table casts a longer shadow, the sun has moved. In the spring, next spring, maybe I’ll finagle two pieces of rubber from the conveyor belt in the factory or from a tire in the garage. Then I’ll take them to the cobbler.
Bea Zakel was the first in the camp to wear the shoes we called balletki. She’d had them since the previous summer. I’d gone to see her in the clothes room, I needed new wooden shoes. I rummaged through the pile, and Bea Zakel said: The only shoes I have left are either too big or too small, nothing but thimbles or ships, the medium-sized shoes are all gone. Because I wanted to stay there longer, I tried on several pairs. At first I decided on a small pair, then I asked when some medium shoes would be coming in. In the end I took two large ones. Bea Zakel said: Put them on right now, leave the old ones here. Look what I have: ballet shoes.
I asked: Where from?
She said: From the cobbler. See how they bend, just like barefoot.
How much do they cost, I asked.
She said: You have to ask Tur.
Kobelian might give me the pieces of rubber for free. They have to be at least as big as two shovel blades. But I’ll need money for the cobbler. I’ll have to sell some coal now while it’s still cold out. In the summer, next summer, the boredom may take off its footwraps and wear ballet shoes. Then it will walk around just like barefoot.
The ersatz-brother
At the beginning of November, Tur Prikulitsch summons me to his office.
I have a letter from home.
My mouth is smacking with joy so much I can’t close it. Tur opens one half of a cabinet and searches through a box. The closed half has a picture of Stalin pasted on the door: his cheekbones are high and gray like two slag heaps, his nose is as impressive as an iron bridge, his mustache looks like a swallow. The coal stove next to the table is clanging away, a tin pot of black tea is humming on top. Next to the stove is the bucket with anthracite. Tur says: Put in a little more coal while I look for your letter.
I pick through the bucket for three suitable chunks, the flame shoots up like a white hare jumping through a yellow hare. Then the yellow one jumps through the white one, the hares tear each other apart and whistle in two-part harmony: Hase-vey. The fire blows heat into my face and the waiting blows fear. I close the little feed door and Tur closes the cabinet. He hands me a Red Cross postcard.
The postcard has a photo that’s been sewn on with white thread, evenly stitched by machine. The photo is of a baby. Tur looks me in the face, and I look at the card, and the child sewn onto the card looks me in the face, and from the door of the cabinet Stalin looks all of us in the face.
Underneath the photo is written:
Robert, b. April 17, 1947.
My mother’s handwriting. The baby is wearing a crocheted bonnet with a bow under his chin. I read once again: Robert, b. April 17, 1947. Nothing else. The handwriting is like a stab, my mother’s practical thinking, saving space by abbreviating born with b. My pulse is throbbing in the card and not in the hand that’s holding it. Tur places the mail register and a pencil on the table, I’m supposed to find my name and sign. He goes to the stove, spreads out his hands, and listens to the tea water humming and the hares whistling in the fire. First the columns start to swim before my eyes, then the letters. Then I kneel at the edge of the table, drop my hands on the table and my face in my hands, and sob.
Do you want some tea, asks Tur. Do you want brandy. I thought you’d be happy.
Yes, I say, I’m happy, because we still have our old sewing machine at home.
I drink a glass of brandy with Tur Prikulitsch, and then another. Much too much for skinandbones people. The brandy burns in my stomach and the tears burn in my face. It’s been forever since I cried, I’ve taught my homesickness to be dry-eyed. I’ve even managed to make it ownerless. Tur presses a pencil into my hand and points to the proper column. My hand shakes as I write: Leopold. I need your full name, says Tur. You write the rest, I say, I can’t.
Then I step out into the snow, the sewn-on child tucked away in the pocket of my fufaika. Looking in at the office window, I can see the cushion used to stop the draft, the one Trudi Pelikan told me about. It’s very evenly stitched and stuffed. Corina Marcu’s hair couldn’t have been enough, there has to be other hair inside the cushion as well. Funnels of white start flowing from the lightbulbs, the rear watchtower is swinging back and forth in the sky. Zither Lommer’s white beans are strewn all across the snowyard. The snow slips farther and farther away, along with the camp wall. But on the path where I am walking, it rises up to my neck. The wind has a sharp scythe. I have no feet, I’m walking on my cheeks, and soon I have no cheeks. I have nothing but the sewn-on child, my ersatz-brother. My parents had a baby because they’ve given up on me. Just as my mother abbreviated born with b., she’ll abbreviate died with d. She’s already done so. Isn’t my mother ashamed of the space below the precisely stitched white thread, below the handwritten line, the space in which I can’t help but read:
As far as I’m concerned you can die where you are, we’ll have more room at home.
The white space below the line
My mother’s Red Cross postcard came in November. It had taken seven months to get to the camp. She’d sent it from home in April. By then the sewn-on child was already nine months old.
I stowed the postcard with my ersatz-brother in the bottom of my suitcase, next to the white handkerchief. My mother had written only one line on the card, and not a word in that line was about me. I didn’t even appear in the white space below the line.
In the Russian village I’d learned to beg for food. But I wasn’t going to beg my mother to mention my name. For the two years that followed I forced myself not to answer her card. Over the past two years the hunger angel had taught me how to beg, and in the two that followed he taught me tough pride, as rough and raw as being steadfast with bread. He tormented me cruelly. Day after day he showed me my mother forgetting all about me so that she could feed her ersatz-child. Tidy and well nourished, she pushed her white baby carriage back and forth inside my head. And I watched her from all sides, from every place I didn’t appear, including the white space below the line.
Minkowski’s wire
Everyone in the camp has his own here and now. Everyone touches the ground in rubber galoshes or wooden shoes, even if he’s twelve meters below the earth, sitting on the board of silence.
When Albert Gion and I aren’t working, we sit on a bench made of two stones and a board. The lightbulb burns in its wire cage, and a coke fire burns in the iron basket. We rest and don’t speak. I often ask myself, Can I still do arithmetic. Given that we’re now in our fourth year of camp, and our third year of peace, there must have also been a first and second peace year here in the cellar, just like there must have been a time before the peace, without me. And the number of day and night shifts must correspond
to the number of layers in the earth. I should have counted my shifts with Albert Gion, but can I still do arithmetic.
Can I still read. My father gave me a book for Christmas: Physics and You. According to the book, each and every thing—every person and every event—has its own place and its own time. This is a law of nature. It follows that each and every thing has its reason for being in the world, and also a wire that connects it to everything else that exists, the MINKOWSKI-WIRE. As I sit here, I have a Minkowski-wire running straight up from my head. When I bend, it bends, and when I move, it moves with me. So I’m not alone. Every corner in the cellar also has its wire, as does every person in the camp. And no wire touches another. Above all our heads is a strictly ordered forest of wires. Every person is in his place and breathes with his wire. The cooling tower breathes double, since the cooling-tower cloud likely has a wire of its own. But the book doesn’t account for all the things inside a labor camp. For instance, the hunger angel must have a Minkowski-wire of his own, only it’s not clear from the book if the hunger angel’s wire always stays attached to us, which is why he never really goes away when he says he’s coming back. Maybe the book would have impressed the hunger angel. I should have brought it along.
I almost always sit in silence on the cellar bench and peer into my head as if through a bright crack in a door. The book also said that every person is moving through his own film at every moment and in every place, and that the reels all spin at sixteen frames per second. PROBABILITY OF PRESENCE was another memorable phrase in Physics and You. As if there were a chance I might not really be here. Then I could be elsewhere without even having to want to leave here. And that’s because as a body in a specific place, in this case the cellar, I am a particle, but because of my Minkowski-wire I am also a wave. And as a wave I can also be in another place, and someone who isn’t here can be here with me. I can pick out anyone I want. But instead of a person I’d rather it be an object, that would go better with the layers of earth in the cellar. For instance, the DINOSAUR, which was the name of the long-distance bus that ran between Hermannstadt and the spa town ten kilometers away: very elegant, dark red, with chrome bumpers. My mother and Aunt Fini used to take the DINOSAUR to the baths. When they came back they let me lick their bare arms to taste the salt from the baths. And they told me how the salt collected in pearly scales on the grass stalks in the meadow. Through the bright door-crack in my head I cause the DINOSAUR to run between me and the cellar. It has its own bright door-crack and its own Minkowski-wire. Our wires never touch, but our bright door-cracks join below the lightbulb, where the fly ash is swirling around with its Minkowski-wire. And on the bench beside me Albert Gion sits quietly with his Minkowski-wire. The bench is the board of silence, because Albert Gion can’t tell me which film he’s in at the moment, just like I can’t tell him that I have a dark-red long-distance bus with chrome bumpers right here in the cellar. Every shift is a work of art. But its Minkowski-wire is nothing but a steel cable with little carts moving up and down. And every cart with its wire is nothing but a load of slag twelve meters below the earth.