The Hunger Angel Part 9

Little Robert heard my grandmother's daily questions. When it occurred to him, he imitated her, he took a step toward me, placed his fingers to his forehead, and asked all at once: Are you back, are you leaving.

Each time he touched his forehead I saw the folds of fat at his wrists. And each time he asked, I wanted to squeeze my ersatz-brother's neck. The disabler stopped me.

One day I came back from work and noticed a tip of white lace peeking out from the cover of the sewing machine. Another day an umbrella was hanging from the handle of the kitchen door, and a broken plate was lying on the table in two even pieces as though it had been cut down the middle, and my mother had a handkerchief tied around her thumb. One day Father's suspenders were lying on the radio and Grandmother's gla.s.ses in my shoe. Another day Robert's stuffed dog Mopi was tied to the teapot handle with my shoelaces, and a crust of bread was in my cap. Maybe they moved the disabler out when I wasn't home. Maybe then everything came to life. The disabler at home was like the hunger angel in the camp. It was never clear whether there was one for all of us or if each of us had his own.

They probably laughed when I wasn't there. They probably felt sorry for me or cursed me. They probably kissed little Robert. They probably said they needed to be patient with me because they loved me, or else they just thought it to themselves and went about their business. Probably. Maybe I should have laughed when I came home. Maybe I should have felt sorry for them or cursed them. Maybe I should have kissed little Robert. Maybe I should have said I needed to be patient with them because I loved them. Except how could I say that if I couldn't even think it to myself.

During my first month back home I kept the light on all night, because I was afraid without the old barrack light. I believe we don't dream at night unless the day has made us tired. I didn't start dreaming again until I was working at the crate factory.

Grandmother and I are sitting together on the plush chair, Robert is on a chair next to us. I'm as little as Robert, and Robert is as big as I am. Robert climbs on his chair next to the clock and pulls some stucco off the ceiling. He gets down and drapes it around my grandmother and me like a white shawl. Father kneels on the carpet in front of us with his Leica, and my mother says: Why don't you smile at each other, let's get one last picture before she dies. My legs barely reach over the edge of the chair. From his position my father can only photograph my shoes from below, with the soles in the foreground, pointing toward the door. Because of my short legs, my father has no choice, even if he'd prefer another angle. I brush the stucco off my shoulder. My grandmother hugs me, puts the stucco back around my neck, and holds it in place with her transparent hand. My mother uses a knitting needle to conduct my father in a countdown: three, two, and then, at one, he clicks. My mother sticks the knitting needle in her hair and brushes the stucco off our shoulders. And Robert climbs on his chair and puts the stucco back on the ceiling.

Do you have a child in Vienna.

For months my feet had been at home, where no one knew what I had seen. Nor did anybody ask. The only way you can talk about something is by again becoming the person you're talking about. I was glad that no one asked anything, although I was also secretly offended. My grandfather would have asked, but he'd been dead for two years. He died of kidney failure the summer after my third peace, but unlike me he stayed with the dead.

One evening our neighbor Herr Carp came over to return the level he'd borrowed. He couldn't help stammering when he saw me. I thanked him for his yellow leather gaiters and lied that they'd kept me warm in the camp. Then I added that they'd brought me good luck, that thanks to them I'd once found 10 rubles at the market. He was so excited, his pupils slid from side to side like cherry pits. He rocked back and forth on his toes, crossed his arms and stroked them with his thumbs, and said: Your grandfather never stopped waiting for you. On the day he died the mountains disappeared into the clouds, flocks of clouds drifted into town from faraway places like suitcases from all corners of the globe. They knew that your grandfather had traveled the world. One of the clouds was definitely from you, even if you didn't know it. The funeral was over at five o'clock and right afterward it rained quietly for half an hour. I remember it was on a Wednesday, I still had to go into town to buy glue. On my way home I saw a rat without hair right in front of your house. It was cowering next to your wooden door, all wrinkled and s.h.i.+vering. I was surprised the rat didn't have a tail, or maybe the tail was under its belly. As I was standing there I noticed a toad covered with warts. The toad looked straight at me and started puffing out two white sacs attached to its throat, first one and then the other. The whole thing looked hideous. At first I wanted to shove the toad away with my umbrella, but I didn't dare. Better not, I thought, after all it's a toad, and he's sending some kind of signal, obviously something to do with Leo's death. People thought you were dead, you know. Your grandfather kept waiting for you. Especially at first. Less so toward the end. But everyone thought you were dead. You didn't write, that's why you're alive now.

One thing has nothing to do with the other, I said.

My breath was trembling because I could tell Herr Carp didn't believe me, he just chewed on his frayed mustache. My mother squinted out the veranda window at the courtyard, where there was nothing to see except a bit of sky and the tarpaper roof on the shed. Watch what you're saying, Herr Carp, my grandmother spoke up. You told me something different back then, you said that those white sacs had to do with my dead husband. You said the toad was sending a greeting from my dead husband. What I'm telling you now is the truth, Herr Carp mumbled, more to himself than anyone else. Back then I couldn't exactly bring up poor dead Leo, not right after your husband died.

Little Robert dragged the bubble level across the floor and went tch-tch-tch. He put Mopi on the roof of his train, tugged Mother by the dress, and said: All aboard, we're going to the Wench. The sliding green eye moved left and right inside the level. Mopi sat on the roof of the train, but inside the level Bea Zakel stared out the window at Herr Carp's toes. Herr Carp hadn't said anything new, he'd merely expressed what everyone else had been too polite to say out loud. I knew they'd been more frightened than surprised when I came back-there had been relief but no joy. By staying alive I had betrayed their mourning.

Ever since I came back, everything had eyes. And all the things saw that my ownerless homesickness was not going away. The old sewing machine with its wooden cover and its bobbin and that d.a.m.ned white thread still sat in front of the biggest window. The gramophone was back inside my worn-out suitcase and in its old spot on the corner table. The same green and blue curtains hung in the windows, the same flowery pattern snaked through the carpets, which were bordered by the same frayed fringe, the cupboards and doors squeaked as always when they were opened or closed, the floorboards creaked in the same places, the railing of the veranda stairs was cracked in the same spot, every stair still sagged from use, the same flowerpot dangled inside its wire basket on the landing. Nothing had anything to do with me. I was locked up inside myself and evicted from myself. I didn't belong to them and I was missing me.

My family and I had been together for seventeen years before I went to the camp. We'd shared the large objects like doors, cupboards, tables, carpets. And the small things like cups and plates, salt shakers, soap, keys. And the light from the windows and the lamps. Now I was someone else. We knew each other in a way we no longer were and never would be again. Being a stranger is hard, but being a stranger when you're so impossibly close is unbearable. My head was in my suitcase, I breathed in Russian. I didn't want to leave the house and I smelled of far away. I couldn't spend the whole day at home, I needed to find some work to escape the silence. I was twenty-two years old but had no training. Is nailing crates a profession-I was back to fetching and carrying.

One late afternoon in August I came home from the crate factory and found a letter for me lying opened on the veranda table. It was from the barber Oswald Enyeter. My father watched me read it the way you watch someone eat. I read: Dear Leo! I hope you're back in Hermannstadt. There was no one left for me at home, so I kept on going, all the way to Austria. Now I'm here in Vienna in the Margareten district, lots of people from our part of the world. If you get a chance to come someday I can shave you again. I found a job as a barber, the shop is owned by someone from home. Tur Prikulitsch spread a rumor that he was the barber in the camp and I was the kapo. Bea Zakel keeps on repeating it even though she broke things off with him. She christened her child Lea. Does that have anything to do with Leopold? Two weeks ago some construction workers found Tur Prikulitsch under one of the bridges over the Danube. His mouth had been gagged with his tie and his forehead split down the middle with an axe. The axe was left on his stomach, no trace of the murderers. Too bad it wasn't me. He deserved it.

When I folded up the letter, my father asked: Do you have a child in Vienna.

I said: You read the letter, it doesn't say that.

He said: Who knows what you all did in the camp.

Who knows, I said.

My mother was holding my ersatz-brother Robert by the hand. And Robert was carrying Mopi, the dog stuffed with sawdust, on his arm. My mother took Robert to the kitchen, and when she came back, she was holding Robert by one hand and a bowl of soup in the other. And Robert was pressing Mopi to his chest and holding up a spoon for the soup-obviously for me.

After I started my job at the crate factory, I'd roam through town when I got off work. The winter afternoons protected me since it got dark so early. The shop windows were bathed in yellow light like tram stops. Two or three plaster people, newly decked out, waited for me inside the displays. They stood close together, with price tags at their feet, as if they needed to watch where they were stepping. As if the price tags at their feet were police markers at a crime scene, as if a dead man had been taken away shortly before I showed up. Porcelain and tin dishes were crammed into smaller display windows at shoulder height, so that I carried them off as I walked past. The goods on sale waited in their sad light, all of them destined to last longer than the people who might buy them. Perhaps as long as the mountains. Crossing the main square I felt drawn to the residential streets. Lighted curtains hung in the windows-an enormous variety of lace rosettes and labyrinths of thread, all reflecting the same black tangle of branches from the bare trees. The people inside didn't realize how alive their curtains were, as the white threads mixed with the black wood in patterns that s.h.i.+fted every time the wind blew. The sky kept out of sight except at the street crossings, I saw the evening star melt and hung my face on it. By then enough time had pa.s.sed and I could be sure that everyone would have finished eating by the time I came home.

I had forgotten how to eat with a knife and fork. My hands twitched, and so did my throat when I swallowed. I knew how to go hungry, how to make food last, and how to wolf it down when you finally have some. But I no longer knew how to eat politely, how long to chew, and when to swallow. My father sat across from me, and our tabletop seemed as big as half the world. He squinted as he watched me and hid his pity. The horror shone in his half-closed eyes just like the rose-quartz skin inside his lip. My grandmother understood better than anyone how to be kind to me without making a fuss. She made soup that was extra thick, probably so I wouldn't have to agonize over knives and forks.

On the day in August when the letter came we had a soup made with green beans and pork ribs. After the letter I lost my appet.i.te. I cut a thick slice of bread and picked at the crumbs on the table. Then I dipped my spoon in my soup. My ersatz-brother was kneeling on the floor of the veranda, he stuck the tea sieve on the stuffed dog like a cap and set the dog astride the edge of the cabinet drawer. Everything Robert did made me uneasy.

He was a child a.s.sembled from different parts-his eyes came from Mother, old and round and evening blue. His eyes will stay that way, I thought. His upper lip came from Grandmother, like a pointed collar under his nose. His upper lip will stay that way. His fingernails were curved like Grandfather's and will stay that way. His ears were like mine and Uncle Edwin's, with the turned-in folds that smooth out at the lobes. Six identical ears made of three different skins, and the ears will stay that way. His nose won't stay the way it is, I thought. Noses change as they grow. Later it may have a bony bridge, like Father's. If not, then Robert won't have anything from Father. And Father won't have contributed anything to his ersatz-child.

Robert walked over to me at the table, holding his Mopi with the tea sieve in his left hand, and grabbed my knee with his right, as if my knee were the corner of a chair. Since that first embrace when I came back home eight months ago, no one in our house had so much as touched me. For them I was unapproachable, for Robert I was a new object in the house. He grabbed hold of me like I was a piece of furniture, to steady himself or to put something in my lap. This time he stuffed his Mopi in my coat pocket, as if I were his drawer. And I kept still, as if that's exactly what I was. I would have pushed him away, but the disabler stopped me. Father took the stuffed dog and the tea sieve out of my pocket and said: Take your treasures.

He led Robert downstairs to the courtyard. My mother took a seat across from me and stared at the fly on the bread knife. I stirred my soup and saw myself sitting in front of Oswald Enyeter's mirror. Tur Prikulitsch came in the door. I heard him say: Little treasures have a sign that says, Here I am.

Bigger treasures have a sign that says, Do you remember.

But the most precious treasures of all will have a sign saying, I was there.

I was there-DA WAR ICH-the German words sounded in Tur's mouth like tovarishch. I hadn't been shaved for four days. In the mirror of the veranda window I saw Oswald Enyeter's black-haired hand pulling the razor through the white lather. And behind the razor a strip of skin stretched from my mouth to my ear like a rubber band. Or perhaps it was the long slit mouth from hunger already beginning to show. The reason that Father and Tur Prikulitsch could go on like that about treasures was that neither one of them had ever had a hunger mouth.

The fly on the bread knife knew the veranda as well as I knew the barber room. It flew from the bread knife to the cabinet, from the cabinet to my slice of bread, then to the edge of the plate, and from there back to the bread knife. With each flight it rose steeply into the air, sang as it circled around, and touched down in silence. It never landed on the bra.s.s top of the salt shaker with all the little holes. And all of a sudden I understood why I hadn't picked up the salt shaker since I came back: Tur Prikulitsch's eyes were twinkling in the bra.s.s. I slurped my soup, and my mother listened as though I were going to read the letter from Vienna one more time. The fly's stomach sparkled as it danced on the bread knife, now like a drop of dew, now like a drop of tar. Dew and tar and how the seconds drag, when a forehead has been split in two. Hase-veh, but how could a whole tie fit into Tur's short snout.

The cane.

After work, instead of going home I went in the opposite direction, away from the residential streets and across the main square. I wanted to look inside the Holy Trinity Church to see if the white alcove and the saint with the sheep around his neck were still there.

A fat boy was standing on the square, wearing white kneesocks, short houndstooth-patterned pants, and a white frilled s.h.i.+rt, as if he'd run away from a party. He was shredding a white bouquet of dahlias and feeding the pigeons. Eight of them were convinced it was bread: they picked at the white dahlias on the cobblestones and then gave up. A few seconds later they'd forgotten everything, they jerked their heads and started picking at the flowers all over again. How long did their hunger believe that dahlias would turn into bread. And what was the boy after. Was he playing a trick on them or was he as dumb as the pigeons' hunger. I didn't want to think about the tricks that hunger plays. I wouldn't have stopped at all if the boy had been feeding bread to the pigeons instead of shredded dahlias. The church clock showed ten of six. I hurried across the square to make it to the church before it closed.

Then I saw Trudi Pelikan walking toward me. It was the first time I'd seen her since the camp. She was using a cane. We noticed each other too late for her to avoid me, she put her cane down on the pavement and bent down over her shoe. It wasn't even untied.

Both of us had been back in our hometown for more than half a year. For our own sakes we preferred to act as though we didn't know each other. There's nothing to understand about that. I quickly turned my head, but how gladly I would have put my arms around her and and let her know that I agreed with her. How gladly I would have said: I'm sorry you had to be the one to bend down, I don't need a cane, next time I can do it for both of us, if you'll let me. Her cane was polished and had a rusty claw on the bottom and a white k.n.o.b on top.

Instead of going inside the church I made a sharp left onto the narrow street I'd come from. The sun stabbed at my back, the heat ran straight into my scalp as if my head were bare metal. The wind was dragging a carpet of dust, the treetops were singing. A little whirlwind formed on the sidewalk and swept through me, then touched down, leaving the pavement speckled with black. The wind droned and flung the first few drops. The storm was here, I heard the rustle of gla.s.s beads, and suddenly ropes of water went whipping past. I fled into a stationery shop.

As I stepped inside I wiped the water off my face with my sleeve. A salesgirl came out through a narrow curtained doorway. She was wearing worn-out felt shoes with ta.s.sels that looked like paintbrushes growing out of the insteps. She went behind the counter. I stayed next to the display window for a while, watching her with one eye and looking outside with the other. Suddenly her right cheek swelled up. Her hands were resting on the counter, her signet ring-it was a man's ring-was much too heavy for her bony fingers. Her right cheek went flat again, even hollow, and then her left cheek swelled up. I heard something clicking against her teeth and realized she was sucking on a candy. She closed one eye and then the other, her eyelids were made of paper. She said: My tea water's boiling. She disappeared through the little door and at that moment a cat slipped out from under the curtain, came up to me, and nuzzled my pants as if it knew me. I picked it up, it weighed practically nothing. This isn't a cat at all, I told myself, just gray-striped boredom that's grown fur, the patience of fear on a narrow street. The cat sniffed at my wet coat. Its nose was leathery and rounded like a heel. When it set its front paws on my shoulder and peered inside my ear, it wasn't even breathing. I pushed its head away, and the cat jumped to the ground. It jumped without making a sound and landed like a sc.r.a.p of cloth. The cat was empty on the inside. The salesgirl's hands were also empty when she came back through the door. Where was the tea, she couldn't have drunk it that fast. And her right cheek was swollen again.

Her signet ring scratched against the counter.

I asked for a notebook.

Graphed or lined, she asked.

I said: Lined.

Do you have something small, I can't make change, she said. She puckered her lips and both cheeks went hollow. The candy slipped out onto the counter. It had some transparent pattern, she stuffed it quickly back in her mouth. It wasn't candy at all, she was sucking on a polished drop of gla.s.s from a chandelier.

Lined notebooks.

The next day was Sunday. I began to write in the lined notebooks. The first chapter was t.i.tled: FOREWORD. It began with the sentence: Will you understand me, question mark.

By you I meant the notebook. And seven pages had to do with a man named T.P. And another man named A.G. And one named K.H. and O.E. And a woman named B.Z. I gave Trudi Pelikan the alias SWAN. I wrote out the name of the factory Koksokhim Zavod and the coal station Yasinovataya. Also the names Kobelian and Kati Sentry. I even mentioned her little brother Latzi and her bright moment. The chapter ended with a long sentence: In the morning after I washed up, a drop of water fell out of my hair and ran down my nose into my mouth like a drop of time-I really ought to grow a trapezoidal beard so no one in town will know who I am.

Over the next weeks I expanded the FOREWORD into three notebooks.

I didn't mention the fact that Trudi Pelikan and I had traveled back home in separate cattle cars. We did this deliberately but without any prior discussion. I also left out my old gramophone suitcase. I described my new wooden trunk and my new clothes precisely: the balletki, the paneled cap, the s.h.i.+rt, the tie, and the suit. But I said nothing about my sobbing fit on the way home, when we arrived at the receiving camp in Sighetul Marmaiei, the first Romanian train station. Or about the weeklong quarantine in the freight depot at the end of the platform. I had broken down because I was afraid of being sent into freedom, afraid of the abyss that loomed so close by, and my fear made the way home shorter and shorter. I sat there nested between my gramophone suitcase and my new wooden trunk, in my new body and my new clothes, with my slightly swollen hands. The cattle car wasn't sealed, so we had the door wide open as we pulled into Sighetul Marmaiei. The platform was covered with a film of thin snow, I stepped over sugar and salt. The puddles were frozen gray, the ice was scratched like the face of my sewn-on brother.

When the Romanian police handed out the tickets for the rest of the trip home, I held my farewell to the camp in my hand and sobbed. Home was at most ten hours away, with two changes, one in Baia Mare and one in Klausenburg. Our singer Loni Mich snuggled up to Paul Gast the lawyer, focused her eyes on me, and thought she was whispering. But I understood every word she said: Look how he's bawling, he's falling apart.

I thought about that sentence a lot. Then I wrote it down on an empty page. And the next day I scratched it out. The day after that I wrote it down again underneath. Scratched it out again, wrote it down again. When the page was full I tore it out. That's memory.

Instead of mentioning my grandmother's sentence, I KNOW YOU'LL COME BACK, or the white batiste handkerchief or the healthy milk, I went on for pages triumphantly describing my saved bread and the cheek-bread. And my persistence in the emergency exchange with the horizon and the dusty streets. When I got to the hunger angel I went into raptures, as if he'd only saved me and not tormented me. That's why I scratched out FOREWORD and wrote AFTERWORD above it. I was now free, but it was an immense personal disaster that I was irrevocably alone and bearing false witness against myself.

I hid my three lined notebooks under my bed, in my new wooden trunk, which had been serving as my dresser ever since I came home.

I'm still the piano.

I nailed crates for a whole year. I could squeeze twelve little nails between my lips and flick twelve through my fingers at the same time. I could nail as quickly as I could breathe. The boss said: You have a gift for this, because your hands are so flat.

But they weren't my hands, just the flat breath of the Russian quota. 1 shovel load = 1 gram bread was transformed into to 1 nail head = 1 gram bread. I thought about deaf Mitzi, Peter Schiel, Irma Pfeifer, Heidrun Gast, and Corina Marcu, all lying naked in the earth. As far as my boss was concerned they were b.u.t.ter boxes and eggplant crates, but for me they were little fir-wood coffins. For me to meet my goal the nails had to fly through my fingers. I managed 800 nails an hour, no one else even came close. Every little nail had its hard head, and every nail was under the supervision of the hunger angel.

In the second year I enrolled in a night cla.s.s on concrete manufacture. By day I was a concrete expert at a construction site on the Ucea River. That's where I made my first design for a round house, on blotting paper. Even the windows were round, everything with corners reminded me of a cattle car. With every line I drafted, I thought about t.i.ti, the foreman's son.

Late that summer, t.i.ti came with me to the Alder Park. An old peasant woman was standing at the entrance with a basket of wild strawberries, fiery red and tiny, like tongue tips. And each had a stem on its green collar like very thin wire. A few had three-fingered serrated leaves. She gave me one to taste. I bought two large bags for t.i.ti and myself. We walked around the carved wood pavilion. Then I lured him farther and farther along the stream and through the bushes, behind the short-gra.s.s mounds. After we'd eaten the strawberries t.i.ti crumpled his bag and wanted to throw it away. I said: Give it to me. He reached out his hand, I took it and wouldn't let go. He looked at me coldly and said: Hey. That couldn't be brushed off with laughing and talking.

The fall quickly colored its leaves and was soon over. I kept away from the Alder Park.

My second winter home the snow came early and stayed, by November the small town was packed in a padded suit. All the men had women. All the women had children. All the children had sleds. And they were all fat and home-sated. They ran through the white in tight-fitting dark coats. My coat was home-sated too since it was the same worn-out coat from Uncle Edwin. But it was light-colored and slightly dirty and much too big. All the people pa.s.sing by were home-sated, but the sc.r.a.ps of breath flying out of their mouths showed the truth: here they were, going about their lives, but life was flying away. And they all watched it go, their eyes glistening like brooches of agate, emerald, or amber. One day, early or soon or late, onedroptoomuchhappiness awaits them too.

I was homesick for the lean winters. The hunger angel was running around with me, and he doesn't think. He led me to the crooked street. A man was coming from the opposite end. He didn't have a coat but a fringed plaid blanket. He didn't have a wife but a hand cart. The cart didn't have a child but a black dog with a white head, which bobbed loosely in time with the turning wheels. As the plaid blanket came closer, I saw the outline of a heart-shovel on the man's right breast. As the cart went by, the heart-shovel turned into a singe mark from a flatiron and the dog into a metal canister with an enameled funnel in its neck. As I watched him walk away the canister with the funnel turned back into a dog. And I had arrived at the Neptune Baths.

The swan on the sign had three gla.s.s feet made of icicles. The wind rocked the swan, one of the gla.s.s feet broke off. On the ground, the shattered icicle was the coa.r.s.e-grained salt from the camp that still needed breaking up. I stamped on it with my heel. When it was fine enough to sprinkle, I went through the open iron gate and stood in front of the entrance. Without thinking, I pa.s.sed through the door into the hall. The dark stone floor reflected everything like still water. I saw my light-colored coat swimming below me to the cas.h.i.+er's booth.

The woman at the register asked: One or two.

I hoped it was only the optical illusion speaking out of her mouth and not suspicion. I hoped all she saw were the twin coats and not the fact that I was on my way to my old life. The woman was new. But the hall recognized me, the s.h.i.+ny floor, the middle column, the leaded-gla.s.s windows of the cas.h.i.+er's booth, the water-lily tiles. The cold decoration had its own memory, the ornaments hadn't forgotten who I was. I had my wallet inside my jacket, but I pretended to search for it in my coat pocket and said: I left my wallet at home, I don't have any money.

The cas.h.i.+er said: That doesn't matter. I've already torn the ticket, go ahead and pay next time. I'll just take down your name.

I said: No, absolutely not.

She reached out of her booth and tugged at my coat. I shrank back, puffed out my cheeks, lowered my head, and shuffled backward in the direction of the door, narrowly avoiding the middle column.

She called after me: I trust you, I'll just take down your name.

Only then did I notice that she really did have a green pencil behind her ear. I backed into the door handle and yanked at the door. I had to pull hard, the metal spring wouldn't give. I slipped through the crack, the door squeaked shut behind me. I rushed through the iron gate and into the street.

It was already dark. The swan on the sign was sleeping white, and the air slept black. Under the lantern at the street corner it was snowing gray feathers. Although I wasn't moving, I heard my steps inside my head. Then I started to walk and stopped hearing them. My mouth smelled of chlorine and lavender oil. I thought about the etuba. And all the way home I talked to the snow that was dizzily flying from one lantern to the next. But the snow I was talking to wasn't the snow I was walking in, it was a famished snow from far away, a snow that recognized me from going door-to-door.

That evening, too, my grandmother took a step toward me and placed three fingers on her forehead, but asked: You're back so late, do you have a girl.

The next day in the schoolyard I met Emma. She was taking a cla.s.s in accounting. She had light eyes, not the same bra.s.s yellow as Tur Prikulitsch, more like a quince. And like everyone else in town she had a dark home-sated coat. Four months later I married Emma. Since Emma's father was deathly ill we didn't have a celebration. We moved in with Emma's parents. All that was mine I carried on me, my three lined notebooks and clothes all fit inside the wooden trunk from the camp. Emma's father died four days later. Her mother moved into the living room and gave us the bedroom with the double bed.

We lived with Emma's mother for half a year. Then we left Hermannstadt and moved to the capital, to Bucharest. The number of our building was 68, like the number of bunks in the barrack. Our apartment was on the fifth floor, it had just one room and a small kitchenette, with a toilet out in the hall. But nearby, twenty minutes by foot, was a park. When summer came to the city, I used a dusty path as a shortcut. Then the park was only fifteen minutes away. While I waited in the stairwell for the elevator, two light-colored woven cables moved up and down inside the wire cage, as if Bea Zakel's braids were rising and falling.

One evening I was sitting with Emma at the Golden Jug restaurant, two tables away from the orchestra. As the waiter poured the wine he covered his ear and said: You hear that, I told the boss over and over that the piano's out of tune. So what does he do, he throws out the piano player.

Emma gave me a sharp look. Yellow gears were turning inside her eyes. They were rusted, her lids caught on them when she blinked. Then her nose twitched, the gears freed up, and Emma said, with clear eyes: See, it's always the player that gets it and never the piano.

How come she waited until the waiter left before she said that. I hoped she didn't know what she was saying. At that time my nickname in the park was THE PLAYER.

Fear is merciless. I stopped going to the nearby park. And I changed my nickname. For the new park, which was far from our apartment and close to the train station, I took the name THE PIANO.

One rainy day Emma came home with a straw hat. She'd gotten off the bus near the small hotel DIPLOMAT, where a man was standing under the awning. He was wearing a straw hat. As Emma walked by, he asked if he could share her umbrella, just to the bus stop on the corner. He was a head taller than Emma even without the hat, so Emma had to hold the umbrella very high. He didn't offer to take it, just stuck his hand in his pocket, practically shoving her into the rain. He said that whenever the drops make bubbles it rains for days. It had rained like that when his wife pa.s.sed away. He'd put off the funeral for two days, but the rain didn't stop. He'd set the wreaths outside at night so they could drink the water, but that didn't help the flowers, which got soaked and rotted. After saying that, his voice grew slippery and he babbled something that ended with the sentence: My wife married a coffin.

When Emma said that marrying and dying were two different things, he said that they were both things to be afraid of. When Emma asked why, he demanded her wallet. Otherwise I'll have to steal one in the bus, he said, from some frail prewar lady, with nothing inside but a picture of her dead husband. As the man ran away his straw hat flew into a puddle. Emma had given him her wallet. Don't scream, he had told her, or I'll have to use this. He was holding a knife.

When Emma finished her story, she added: Fear is merciless. I nodded.

Emma and I often agreed on things like that. I won't say any more, because when I speak, I only pack myself in silence a little differently, in the secrets of all the parks and all the agreements with Emma. Our marriage lasted eleven years. And Emma would have stayed with me, I know. What I don't know is why.

Around that time CUCKOO and NIGHTSTAND were arrested in the park. I knew the police managed to get nearly everyone to talk and that nothing could help me if someone mentioned THE PIANO. So I applied for permission to travel to Austria. To speed things up I wrote the invitation from Aunt Fini myself. Next time you'll go, I told Emma-married couples were never allowed to travel to the West together. She agreed. While I was in the camp Aunt Fini had married and moved to Austria. She'd met a confectioner from Graz named Alois aboard the DINOSAUR, on her way to the salt baths. I had told Emma all about Aunt Fini's curling iron, the wave in her hair, and the locusts under her gauzy dress, now I led her to believe that I wanted to see my aunt again and meet her confectioner.

To this day nothing weighs more on my conscience. I dressed as though for a short trip, boarded the train with a light suitcase, and traveled to Graz. From there I sent a card the size of my hand: Dear Emma, Fear is merciless.

I'm not coming back.

Emma didn't know what my grandmother had told me. We'd never talked about the camp. I deliberately used her words, adding NOT on the card in the hope that even the opposite of my grandmother's sentence would be of some help.

That was more than thirty years ago.

Emma remarried.

I remained unattached. Wild animal crossings, nothing more.

The urgency of l.u.s.t and the fickleness of luck are now long past, even if my brain still lets itself be seduced at every turn. Sometimes it's a certain way of walking on the street, or a pair of hands inside a shop. In the streetcar it's a certain way of looking for a place to sit. In the train compartment the prolonged hesitation when asking: Is this seat taken, and then a certain way of stowing the luggage that confirms my intuition. In the restaurant it's a certain way the waiter has of saying: Yes, sir, no matter what his voice is like. But to this day nothing seduces me so much as cafes. I sit at a table, sizing up the customers. With one or two men it's a certain way of slurping their coffee. And the way their lips glisten on the inside like rose quartz when they put down their cups. But only with one or two men.

One or two men can set off the patterns of arousal inside my head. The old habits act young even if I know they're frozen in place like figurines in a display window. Even if they know I no longer suit them because I've been ransacked by age. Once I was ransacked by hunger and didn't suit my silk scarf. Against expectation I was nourished with new flesh. But we have yet to come up with a new flesh that can counter the ransacking of age. I used to believe it wasn't entirely in vain that I let myself be deported into the sixth, seventh, or even eighth year of camp. That I might recover the five stolen years, that the process of aging might be postponed. It didn't happen that way, the flesh reckons differently when it surrenders. It's barren inside and on the outside it glints in your face as eye hunger. And the eye hunger says: You are still THE PIANO.

Yes, I say, the piano that no longer plays.

On treasures.

Little treasures have a sign that says, Here I am.

Bigger treasures have a sign that says, Do you remember.

But the most precious treasures of all will have a sign saying, I was there.

I WAS THERE was what Tur Prikulitsch claimed should be written on treasures. My Adam's apple bobbed up and down under my chin as though I'd swallowed my elbow. The barber said: We're still here. That's five coming after nine for you.

Back then in the barber room I thought that if you didn't die in the camp then everything later would be After. That we'd be out of the camp, free, possibly even back home. Then we could say: I WAS THERE. But five comes after nine, we've been lucky, but our luck is a little balamuc, and we have to explain where and how. So why should someone like Tur Prikulitsch go back home and claim he never needed any luck.

Perhaps even back then someone from the camp had already decided to kill Tur Prikulitsch. Someone who was running around with the hunger angel while Tur Prikulitsch was strutting in his s.h.i.+ny patent-leather purselike shoes. Perhaps during the skinandbones time someone standing at roll call or locked up inside in the concrete box was rehearsing how he might split Tur Prikulitsch's forehead in two. Or was this someone up to his neck in snow beside a train embankment or up to his neck in coal at the yama or in sand at the kar'yer or inside the cement tower. Or did he swear revenge when he was lying on his bunk, unable to sleep in the yellow light of the barrack. Maybe he planned the murder on the day that Tur, with his oily gaze, was at the barber's, talking about treasures. Or at the moment when he asked me in the mirror, so how are things in the cellar. Or at the very instant I was saying: Cozy, every s.h.i.+ft is a work of art. I guess a murder with a tie in the mouth and an axe on the stomach is also a work of art, a belated one.

By now I've realized that what's written on my treasures is THERE I STAY. That the camp let me go home only to create the s.p.a.ce it needed to grow inside my head. Since I came back, my treasures no longer have a sign that says HERE I AM or one that says I WAS THERE. What's actually written on my treasures is: THERE I'M STUCK. The camp stretches on and on, bigger and bigger, from my left temple to my right. So when I talk about what's inside my skull I have to talk about an entire camp. I can't protect myself by keeping silent and I can't protect myself by talking. I exaggerate in one case just as I do in the other, but I WAS THERE doesn't fit in either. And there's no way of getting it right.

But there are treasures, Tur Prikulitsch was correct about that. The fact that I came back is a stroke of crippled luck that's permanently grateful, a survival top that starts spinning at the least d.a.m.ned thing. It has me in its grip just like all my treasures, which I cannot bear but also can't let go of. I've been using them now for over sixty years. They are weak and pushy, intimate and disgusting, forgetful and vindictive, worn out and new. They are Artur Prikulitsch's dowry and I can't tell one from the other. When I list them, I start to stumble.

My proud inferiority.

My grumbled fear-wishes.