The Hunger Angel

Potato man



For two months in the camp I ate potatoes as a supplement to the mess-hall fodder. Two months of boiled potatoes, strictly rationed into three-day cycles of appetizer, entrée, and dessert.

The appetizers consisted of peeled potatoes, boiled with salt and sprinkled with wild dill. I saved the peels for the next day, when I treated myself to an entrée of diced potatoes with noodles. The saved peels mixed with the fresh peels were my noodles. Day three was dessert—unpeeled potatoes, cut into slices and grilled on the fire, then sprinkled with roasted wild oat kernels and a bit of sugar.

I had borrowed half a measure of sugar and half a measure of salt from Trudi Pelikan. Like all of us, after the third anniversary of the peace Trudi Pelikan had thought they’d soon let us go home, so she gave her bell-shaped coat with the beautiful fur cuffs to Bea Zakel, who traded it at the market for five measures of sugar and five measures of salt. That deal went better than the one with my silk scarf, which Tur Prikulitsch still wore to roll call. No longer all the time, though, and never in the heat of summer, just every few days, now that autumn was here. And every few days I asked Bea Zakel when I’d get something for my scarf, either from her or from Tur.

After one evening roll call without the silk scarf Tur Prikulitsch ordered me, my cellar companion Albert Gion, and Paul Gast the lawyer to his office. Tur reeked of sugar-beet liquor. Not only his eyes but his tongue seemed oiled. He crossed out some columns on his list and filled our names in elsewhere and explained that Albert Gion didn’t have to go to the cellar tomorrow and that I didn’t have to go to the cellar and the lawyer didn’t have to go to the factory. But what he wrote down was different from what he said. We were all confused. So Tur Prikulitsch started over, and this time he explained that Albert Gion had to go the cellar tomorrow as always, but with the lawyer, not with me. When I asked why not with me, he half-closed his eyes and said: Because tomorrow morning at six o’clock sharp you’re going to the kolkhoz. Don’t take anything, you’re coming back in the evening. When I asked how I was getting there, he said: What do you mean how, on foot. You pass three slag heaps on your right, then keep an eye out for the kolkhoz on your left.

I was convinced I was going for more than just one day. The people assigned to the kolkhoz died more quickly. They lived five or six steps below the earth, in holes they had dug out of the ground, with roofs made of twigs and grass. The rain dripped down from above, and the groundwater seeped up from below. They were given one liter of water daily for drinking and washing. They died of thirst in the heat instead of starving to death. And with all the filth and vermin, their wounds got infected with tetanus. Everyone in the camp was afraid of the kolkhoz. I was convinced that instead of paying me for the scarf, Tur Prikulitsch was sending me to the kolkhoz to die, and then he would have inherited the scarf from me.

At six o’clock I set off with my pillowcase in my jacket, in case there was something to steal at the kolkhoz. The wind whistled over the fields of cabbages and beets, the grasses swayed orange, the dew glistened in waves. I saw patches of fiery orach. The wind pushed against me, the entire steppe streamed into me, urging me to collapse because I was so thin and it was so greedy. I passed a cabbage field and a narrow swath of acacias and then the first slag heap, then grassland, and after that a cornfield. Then came the second slag heap. Steppe-dogs peered out over the grass. They stood on their hind legs, with brown furry backs and pale bellies and tails the length of a finger. They nodded and pressed their front paws together like human hands at prayer. Their ears were on the sides of their heads, like human ears. They nodded for one final second, then the empty grass rippled over their burrows, but very differently than in the wind.

Only then did it occur to me that the animals could sense I was walking through the steppe alone and unguarded. Steppe-dogs have keen instincts, I thought, what they’re praying for is flight, for escape. And I could escape, but where to. Maybe they think I’ve already made my escape and they’re trying to warn me. I looked back to see if I was being followed. Two figures were coming up far behind me, they appeared to be a man and a child, carrying two short-handled shovels, not rifles. The sky stretched out over the steppe like a blue net that seemed to grow out of the earth at the horizon, with no gap to slip through.

There had been three attempts to escape from the camp. All three men who tried came from the Carpatho-Ukraine, like Tur Prikulitsch. Despite the fact they spoke fluent Russian, all three were caught and paraded at roll call, their bodies disfigured from the beatings they’d received. After that they were never seen again, sent either to a penal camp or to their grave.

To my left I now saw a little hut made of boards, and a guard wearing a pistol on his belt, a thin young man, half a head shorter than me. He’d been waiting for me and waved me over. I didn’t get a chance to catch my breath, he was in a rush, we hurried past the fields of cabbage. He was chewing sunflower seeds, popping two in his mouth at the same time. He bit down once, then spat both husks out of one corner of his mouth while snapping up the next seeds in the other, after which the empty husks went flying out again. We walked as quickly as he snapped. Maybe he’s mute, I thought. He didn’t speak, he didn’t sweat, his mouth acrobatics never lost their rhythm. He walked as though the wind were pulling him forward, cracking his seeds like a husking machine, without saying a word. Then he grabbed my arm and we stopped. Scattered across the field were some twenty women. They had no tools, they were digging potatoes with their bare hands. The guard assigned me to a row. The sun was standing in the middle of the sky like a glowing ember. I shoveled with my hands, the ground was hard. My skin cracked, the dirt burned in the cuts. When I lifted my head, swarms of little specks flickered before my eyes. The blood froze inside my brain. Out here, this young man with the pistol was not only our guard but also nachal’nik, foreman, and inspector all in one. When he caught the women talking he whipped them in the face with a potato plant or stuffed a rotten potato in their mouths. And he wasn’t mute. I couldn’t understand what he was screaming, but it wasn’t coal curses, construction-site commands, or cellar words.

It slowly dawned on me that Tur Prikulitsch had something else in mind. That he had made an agreement with the young man, who was supposed to work me all day long and then shoot me in the evening, as I attempted to escape. Or else he was supposed to stick me in my own private hole for the night, since I was the only man here. And probably not just for tonight, but for every night from now on, and I’d never make it back to the camp.

When evening came, our guard, nachal’nik, foreman, and inspector also became camp commandant. The women lined up to be counted. They stated their names and numbers, opened their fufaikas to the left to show their pockets, and held out their hands with two potatoes in each. They were allowed to take four middle-sized ones. If a potato was too big it was exchanged. I was the last person in line and held out my pillowcase. It was filled with twenty-seven potatoes, seven middle-sized and twenty larger ones. I, too, was allowed to keep four middle-sized potatoes, the others I had to take out. The pistol man asked my name. I said: Leopold Auberg. As if in response to my name, he took a middle-sized potato and kicked it over my shoulder. I ducked. The next one he’s not going to kick with his foot, I thought, he’ll throw it at my head and shoot it in midair with his pistol and blow it to shreds along with my brains. He didn’t take his eyes off me as I was thinking that, and when I stuck my pillowcase in my pants pocket he grabbed my arm, pulled me out of the line, and, as if he were once again mute, pointed me in the direction I had come from that morning, at the evening, and at the steppe. Then he left me standing there. He commanded the women to march and set off behind them, in the opposite direction. I stood at the edge of the field and watched him march away with the women. I was certain that he’d leave his brigade any minute and come back, that he’d fire his pistol just once, that there’d be no witnesses, only the verdict: Shot while attempting to escape.

The brigade moved off into the distance like a brown snake, smaller and smaller. I stood rooted in front of the big pile of potatoes and now began to think Tur Prikulitsch’s agreement wasn’t with the guard but with me. That this pile of potatoes was the agreement, and Tur wanted to pay for my scarf with potatoes.

I stuffed my clothes with potatoes of all sizes, all the way up to my cap. I counted 273. The hunger angel helped me—he was, after all, a notorious thief. But after he’d helped me, he was once again a notorious tormentor and left me to fend for myself on the long way home. The potatoes were heavier than I was.

I set off. Soon I was itching everywhere: the head louse, the neck-and-throat louse, the armpit louse, the chest louse, and the pubic louse. My toes already itched from the footwraps in the galoshes. To scratch anywhere I would have had to lift my arm, which I couldn’t do with my overstuffed sleeves. To walk normally I would have had to bend my knees, which I couldn’t do with my overstuffed pant legs. I shuffled past the first slag heap. The second heap didn’t come and didn’t come, or maybe I’d missed it, and now it was much too dark to make out the third slag heap. Stars were strung out across all parts of the sky. I knew the Milky Way ran north and south, because Oswald Enyeter the barber had explained it to me after the second one of his countrymen tried to escape and failed, and was put on display at the roll-call grounds. To travel west, he said, you have to cross the Milky Way and turn right, then go straight, always keeping the Big Dipper on your right. But I couldn’t even find the second and third slag heaps that now, on my way back, should be coming up on my left. Better to be guarded all around than lost all around. The acacias, the corn, even my steps were cloaked in black. The cabbages followed me like human heads in a fantastic assortment of caps and hairstyles. The moon wore a white bonnet and touched my face like a nurse. Maybe I no longer need the potatoes at all, I thought, maybe I’m going to die from the poison in the cellar and just don’t know it yet. I heard halting birdcalls from the trees and a sad, gurgling lament in the distance. The night silhouettes flowed around me. I can’t allow myself to be afraid, I thought, or else I’ll drown. I talked to myself, so as not to pray:

The things that last never squander themselves, they need only one unchanging connection to the world. The steppe connects to the world through lurking, the moon through giving light, the steppe-dogs through fleeing, and the grass through swaying. And my connection to the world is through eating.

The wind hummed, I heard my mother’s voice. In that last summer at home my mother should not have said: Don’t stab the potato with your fork because it will fall apart, use your spoon, the fork is for meat. But my mother couldn’t have imagined that the steppe would know her voice, that one night on the steppe the potatoes would pull me into the earth and all the stars would stab me from above. No one could have guessed, back then at the table, that I would be hauling myself like a big trunk through fields and grassland all the way to the camp gate. That only three years later I would be alone in the night, a man made of potatoes, and that what I would call my way home was a road back to a camp.

At the gate, the dogs barked in their soprano night-voices that always sounded like crying. Perhaps Tur Prikulitsch had also made an agreement with the guards, because they waved me through with no inspection. I heard them laughing behind me, their shoes tapping on the ground. With my clothes stuffed so full, I couldn’t turn around, presumably one of the guards was aping my stiff gait.

The next day I took three middle-sized potatoes to Albert Gion on our night shift, thinking he might want to roast them in peace and quiet over the fire in back, in the open iron basket. He didn’t. He studied them one at a time and put them in his cap. He asked: Why exactly 273.

Because minus 273 degrees Celsius is absolute zero, I said, it doesn’t get colder than that.

You’re very scientific today, he said, but I’m sure you miscounted.

I couldn’t have, I said, the number 273 watches out for itself, it’s a given.

What’s given, said Albert Gion, is that you should have thought of something else. My God, Leo, you could have run away.

I gave Trudi Pelikan twenty potatoes, to pay her back for the sugar and salt. Within two months, just before Christmas, all 273 potatoes were gone. The last ones sprouted blue-green sliding eyes like Bea Zakel’s. I wondered whether I should tell her that someday.





Sky below earth above



Deep in the fruit garden, at our summerhouse in the Wench, stood a wooden bench without a back. We called it Uncle Hermann. We called it that because we didn’t know anybody by that name. Uncle Hermann had two round feet made of tree trunks stuck into the earth. The top of his seat was smooth, but the underside was still rough timber, with bark. When the sun was blazing, Uncle Hermann sweated drops of resin. If you plucked them off they grew back the next day.

Higher up on the grass hill stood Aunt Luia. She had a back and four legs and was smaller and slimmer than Uncle Hermann. She was older as well, Uncle Hermann had come after her. I climbed up to Aunt Luia and rolled down the hill. Sky below earth above and grass in between. The grass always held me firmly by the feet so I wouldn’t fall into the sky. And I always saw Aunt Luia’s gray underbelly.

One evening my mother was sitting on Aunt Luia, and I was lying on my back in the grass at her feet. We were looking up at the stars, which were all out. And Mother pulled the collar of her jacket over her chin, until the collar had lips. Until not she, but the collar said:

Heaven and earth make up the world. The reason the sky’s so big is because there’s a coat hanging there for every human. And the reason the earth is so big is because the world’s toes are so far away. So far away you have to stop thinking, because distances like that make you feel hollow and sick to your stomach.

I asked: Where is the farthest place in all the world.

At the end of the world.

At its toes.

Yes.

Does it also have ten.

I think so.

Do you know which coat is yours.

I’ll know when I’m up in heaven.

But that’s where the dead people are.

Yes.

How do they get there.

They travel there with the soul.

Does the soul have toes, too.

No, wings.

Do the coats have sleeves.

Yes.

Are the sleeves their wings.

Yes.

Are Uncle Hermann and Aunt Luia a couple.

If wood gets married, then yes.

Then Mother stood up and went into the house. And I sat down on Aunt Luia in the exact spot where she had been sitting. The wood was warm. The black wind quivered in the fruit garden.





On boredom



Today I don’t have to work the early-morning shift, the afternoon shift, or the night shift. After the last night shift of a given rotation we have a free Wednesday, which counts as my Sunday, and lasts until two p.m. on Thursday. I’m drowning in all this free air, I ought to trim my nails, but last time it felt as though the nails I was trimming belonged to someone else. I don’t know who.

From the barrack window I can see across the camp to the mess hall. The two Zirris are coming up the camp street carrying a heavy bucket, it must be coal. They pass the first bench and sit down on the second because it has a back. I could open the window and wave or else go out to them. I quickly slip into my galoshes but then I just stay there, sitting on my bed.

There’s the boredom of the rubber worm with its delusions of grandeur, the black knee of the stovepipe, the shadow of the dilapidated little table—a new one appears every time the sun moves. There’s the boredom of the water level in the bucket and the water in my swollen legs. There’s the boredom of my frayed shirt seam and the borrowed sewing needle, and the shaky boredom of sewing, when my brain slides over my eyes, and there’s the boredom of the bitten-off thread.

Among the men there’s the boredom of vague depressions during grumpy card games that lack all passion. Someone with a good hand ought to want to win, but the men break off the game before anyone wins or loses. And among the women there’s the boredom of singing homesick songs while picking nits in the boredom of solid lice combs made of horn and Bakelite. And there’s the boredom of the jagged metal combs that are of no use. There’s the boredom of having your head shaved and the boredom of skulls that look like porcelain jars decorated with pus blooms and garlands of lice bites, both fresh and fading. There’s also the mute boredom of Kati Sentry. Kati Sentry never sings. I asked her: Kati, can’t you sing. She said: I’ve already combed my hair. See, the comb scratches when there isn’t any hair.

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 village 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.