The Hunger Angel

Fundamental, like the silence



After the skinandbones time and the emergency exchange were all behind me—when I had balletki, cash, food, new flesh on my bones, and new clothes in my new trunk—we were released. It was hard to accept. For my five years in the camp I have five things to say:

1 shovel load = 1 gram bread.

Absolute zero is that which cannot be expressed.

The emergency exchange is a visitor from the other side.

Inside the camp, the we-form is singular.

Perimeters run deep.

But all five things have one truth in common: they are fundamental, like the silence that exists between them, and not the silence in front of witnesses.





The disabler



I came home from the camp at the beginning of January 1950. Once again I was in a living room, sitting in a deep square underneath a ceiling of white stucco, like snow. My father was painting the Carpathians, every few days a new watercolor, with gray-toothed mountains and fir trees smudged with snow, almost always in the same arrangement. Rows of firs at the foot of the mountain, groups of firs on the slope, pairs and single fir trees on the ridge, with birches sticking out here and there like white antlers. Evidently clouds were the most difficult to paint, they always wound up looking like gray sofa cushions. And the Carpathians always looked sleepy.

My grandfather had died, and my grandmother was sitting in his plush chair doing crossword puzzles. Now and then she asked for help: sofa in the orient, part of a shoe beginning with t, breed of horses, roof made of sailcloth.

My mother was knitting one pair of woolen socks after the other for her ersatz-child Robert. The first pair was green, the second white, and after that came brown, red flecked with white, blue, gray. My confusion started with the white pair—I saw my mother knitting clumps of lice, and with each new sock I saw our knitted garden between the barracks, the sweater tips at daybreak. I lay on the sofa, the ball of wool lay in the tin dish beside my mother’s chair, it was livelier than I was. The yarn climbed and hovered and dropped. Two fist-sized balls of wool were needed for each sock, but it was impossible to tell how much that would be if laid out in a single strand, the total length for all the socks might cover the distance from the sofa to the train station, which was a neighborhood I avoided. At last my feet felt warm, they only itched on the instep, which was always where the footwraps first froze to the skin. The winter days turned gray as early as four o’clock. My grandmother switched on the light. The lampshade was a pale-blue funnel trimmed with dark-blue tassels. The lamp didn’t cast much light on the ceiling, which stayed gray as the stucco-snow began to melt. The next morning it was once again white. I imagined that it froze during the night, while we were sleeping in the other rooms, like the icy lace in the empty field behind the zeppelin. The clock ticked away beside the wardrobe. The pendulum flew, shoveling our time in between the furniture: from the wardrobe to the window, from the table to the sofa, from the stove to the plush chair, from the day into the evening. On the wall, the ticking was my breath-swing, in my breast it was my heart-shovel, which I missed very much.

Early one morning at the end of January, Uncle Edwin came by to take me to the crate factory and introduce me to his boss. Out on the street, I saw a face in the window at Herr Carp’s, who lived next door in the Schulgasse. The face was cut off at the neck by the frost pattern on the windowpane. Strands of icy hair twined around a forehead, a sliding greenish eye, and there was Bea Zakel in a white-flowered robe, her braid now heavy and gray. Herr Carp’s cat was sitting in the window the way it always did, but I felt sorry for Bea, that she had aged so quickly. I knew the cat could only be a cat, that the telegraph pole wasn’t a guard, that the blazing white of the snow wasn’t the camp street but the Schulgasse. I knew that nothing here could be anything other than itself, because everything had stayed at home. Everything except me. Among all these home-sated people, I was dizzy with freedom. I was jumpy, my spirit conditioned for catastrophe, trained in doglike fear, my brain geared to submission. I saw Bea Zakel in the window waiting for me, and I’m sure she saw me walk by. I should have greeted her, at least nodded or waved. But that didn’t occur to me until it was too late, we were already two houses farther down. When we reached the end of the street and turned the corner, my uncle hooked his arm into mine. I was walking close to him but he must have sensed how far away I was. He was probably just hooking his arm into his old coat, which I was wearing. His lungs were whistling. There was a long silence, and then he said something I felt he didn’t really want to say. His lungs seemed to be forcing him to speak, which is why he had two voices when he said: I hope they take you on at the factory. It seems things are a bit grouchy at home. He was referring to the disabler.

Right where his fur cap touched his left ear, the crease of skin above his lobe flattened out just like mine. I wanted to see his right ear too. I unhooked my arm and crossed to his right side. His right ear was even more like mine than his left. There the crease smoothed out farther down, the lobe looked longer and wider, as if ironed flat.

They took me on at the crate factory. Every day I left the disabler at home and returned to him after work. Each time I came home, my grandmother asked:

Are you back.

And I said: I’m back.

Each time I left the house she asked:

Are you leaving.

And I said: I’m leaving.

When she asked me these questions she took a step toward me and placed three fingers on her forehead as though she couldn’t believe what I was saying. Her hands were transparent, nothing but skin with veins and bones, two silk fans. I wanted to fling my arms around her neck when she asked me that. The disabler stopped me.

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 glasses 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 shivering. 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 damned 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 shifted 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 passed 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 appetite. 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 assembled 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 brass 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 brass. 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.