How do you mean, I asked.
I’ll beat him until he squeaks like a mouse.
Some people cry out when you beat them, so it’s clear when they’ve had enough. But others just go silent, and then you go on hitting them till they’re dead. I was afraid that Paul was working himself up to a state of blindness, and I said:
The thing to do with someone who steals clothes is strip
him naked and run him through the factory, then he’ll be even smaller than a mouse, and you won’t be guilty of anything.
It could be anybody. If it turns out to be one of the old fellows, or some rickety kid with ears bigger than his feet, I’ll take him outside for a little chat.
There are enough clothes around, just think if someone had stolen your precious skin, Paul’s workmates said. I heard your nipples caught cold yesterday. All soaped up and waiting and not a masseuse in sight.
Paul laughed along with the others. He preferred the few jokers to the silent herd with their sluggish tongues and dead eyes. But the difference between them was of no help to Paul in finding out the thief. Either the man made no mistakes, or else Paul didn’t notice them. Even Paul’s set of spare clothes, which, like everybody else, he kept in a tool cabinet just for this possibility, had disappeared after the shower.
Socialism sends its workers forth into the world unclad, Paul said in the factory. Every week or so it’s as if you were born anew. It keeps you young.
When the jokers showed up in the morning, they greeted him with:
Naked morning.
When they were eating they said:
Enjoy your naked meal.
Before they left for home:
Have a naked evening.
At the Party meeting the distinction between jokers and sheep no longer applied, said Paul. There, everybody sat in the second to last row, just like a wooden fence. The sweat was dripping off their temples, their hair was stuck to their skulls, and you couldn’t tell whether it was from the sun or fear. In
order to avoid appearing as if they wanted to speak, they never moved their hands from their laps, just kept them there, dirty, hard, and motionless against their knees. The curtains at the front of the assembly hall were drawn shut, so that the presidium and the first rows of chairs were in shadow, but these seats were empty, except for Paul. He had to stand there and deliver public self-criticism for his quip, then sit down by himself in one of the shadowy rows on a seat that creaked even when you breathed. And he had to breathe in deeply, because even the air seemed to shrink back before him.
Paul said that when he joined the Party he was still a kid, a tenth-grader from the mechanical engineering school. Paul’s mother said:
In this country you can be as smart as a whip but without a red book all you can do is stand on your beak and fart in the dust like a partridge.
She was a village girl who’d left her turnips for a life in the city. She moved into heavy industry, where there were five times as many men as women. With the lower half of her body she joined the Party, learning the ABC’s of communism lying on her back in various beds.
Molded and crowned, said Paul. Well, what choice did she have, all she knew how to do was hoe, sew, reap, backstitch a little with the sewing machine, dance, and milk ewes. Her political praxis stopped at the foot of the bed, yet she understood exactly at what age a well-endowed girl should stop changing men. She never lost that instinct, and when she was a hairsbreadth away from losing more than she stood to gain, she married Paul’s father, a Hero of Socialist Labor. She became faithful, and faithful she remained. Her husband wanted to teach her the language of the Party. Her brain was intelligent, but her tongue was much too loose for a language devoid of
smell and taste, hearing and sight. No matter what Paul’s father recited to her, the words in her mouth sounded like a parody: In our strength lies progress.
Not so loud, he said.
Then it sounded feeble.
A little louder and it sounded affected.
You’re talking about the cause, he said. You have to keep yourself out of it.
How’s that, she asked, aren’t I also part of our strength.
You can talk like that when you’re bringing the sheep down from the mountain into the valley. At Party meetings just keep your trap shut.
The training lasted an entire January. Paul’s mother said she’d rather clear all the snow off the mountain than talk this jargon. Her husband gave up.
Although Paul hadn’t said a word to anybody, after only three days people in the factory knew I’d moved into his place in the leaning tower. His mother found out just as quickly. She sent her son a letter that was written in a shaky hand and riddled with mistakes. It began:
Light of my life, my own flesh and blood.
It went on: There are girls who are like flowers or angels. But you, my son, are wrapping yourself in a rag that everyone’s already used to wipe themselves. This woman loves neither you nor her country. She will poison your heart. Do not let her cross my threshold. You are throwing your life into the dirt. I beg you, my child, finish with her.
She hadn’t written
Your mother
beneath the kisses but her own signature, practiced and ornate, as if she were a more refined, more cultured lady. Paul was convinced that someone had dictated the letter. The terms of endearment she normally used were as familiar to him as her handwriting.
And what about that signature.
Oh, that’s hers, said Paul.
His father had taught her how to sign things, and it came as easily to her as darning socks or milking ewes. Paul’s father believed the signature reflected the man, that people can learn more from your signature than from your eyes. His wife rarely had to write, but she often had to sign forms in the factory, so after that unsuccessful January he at least taught her how to sign things with a flourish, using newspaper edges for practice. That letter is why to this day I’ve never met Paul’s mother. A year after his father died, when she stopped wearing black, she sent Paul a letter with her picture. It shows a woman with permed hair, and a round face a little bloated with age, giving a kindly impression. A retired machine fitter, sitting in a café for the first time after her year of mourning, eating cake. Short sleeves, baggy skin around the elbows. On her wrist she’s wearing a man’s watch, and holding a small spoon using all five fingers. Her left hand is pressing her handbag tight in her lap.
Paul tells the story of how at one meeting she didn’t keep her trap shut and raised her hand to complain about a draft in the hall.
Men have it good, she said, they put on two pairs of long trousers and don’t catch cold, but you know that wind blows right up our coozies. Everybody laughed, but she just looked at them wide-eyed and then corrected herself:
As I was saying, that wind blows right up our private affairs.
On the way home after the meeting, Paul’s father hit her, saying:
Don’t you understand that you’re making a fool of me as well.
He gave vent to his rage on the street, he couldn’t put it off.
Maybe this was because he knew that by the time they got home he would no longer have the nerve to hit her, and after that he never hit her again. From then on she was nicknamed Private Affairs, and inside the factory the name stuck until the day she retired.
Before Paul and I got married, the chief engineer called him in and said:
You’ve really landed one there. That lady thinks you’re one of her Marcellos. You’ve still got time to pull out.
I couldn’t have cared less what the man said. But Paul over-did it with his answer, which, like most appropriate responses, was too risky:
I wanted to marry Stalin’s daughter, but unfortunately she’s already spoken for.
Our wedding came close on the heels of that answer, with the chief engineer waiting for Paul to make his next false move. If Paul hadn’t talked about socialism sending its workers forth into the world unclad, some other pretext would have been discovered. False steps can always be found, unlike stolen clothes.
Thank God the
tram doesn’t stop on the bridge. I don’t want to have to look at the river, I don’t like what it carries. Whether it’s reflecting what it has seen or whether it’s washing those same sights away in rippling waves, it turns everyone’s heads, in fact it sticks in my throat. But I can’t help looking. The willows seem larger than usual, the river is low in the hot weather. The sun is passing above it, flickering with hot, needle-like rays. The man with the briefcase is slouched on his seat, squinting in the glare. It occurs to him that his briefcase could work as a sunshade and he places it against the window. That helps me as well: if the river hadn’t addled my brain I could keep my
eyes fixed on the briefcase, which looks like a secret door in the middle of the car. There are papers stowed inside the briefcase, probably court papers, with names, official stamps, signatures, and a criminal charge. Whenever the court is involved it’s a bad omen. Is this man a lawyer trying to go over everything one last time in peace and quiet, or is he one of the accused, released on his own recognizance shortly before his final hearing. Either way, he’s in pretty good shape—at least he knows what’s in his file. Besides, it’s not even nine and he’s already on his way to work, while I’ve been summoned for ten sharp. He’s dressed neatly. Can a defendant who is preparing for court early in the morning still pay attention to matching cuff links, trouser creases, polished shoes, and a close shave. Obviously he’d have plenty of reason to do so; unlike the judge, he has to make the perfect impression, even if it doesn’t have any real bearing on the case. Or is the man with the briefcase simply vain, maybe he always looks like he’s just been unwrapped, no matter where he’s going or what the time of day—but that requires a job that doesn’t involve getting dirty. Of course he could be both judge and defendant—surely cases like that aren’t unheard of. Serious mistakes often have silly explanations; no doubt even men with matching cuff links get charged with crimes. Including judges who know the law by heart. But what if their children do something that’s not permitted. They, too, grow up and move away from home and aren’t any different from Lilli and me. Who is my mother, anyway: nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to her when I wrote the notes. Papa was dead, Lilli’s stepfather had already retired. If he or my father had been judges, what kind of questions might Lilli have asked before attempting to flee, what would I have asked before writing my notes. Even judges’ children hear something about the world, they go to the Black Sea like everyone else in this country. They look out
and feel the same urge to go somewhere, feel it tugging at them from head to toe. You don’t have to be particularly bad off to think: This can’t be all the life I get. The judges’ children know as well as Lilli and me that the same sky that looks down on the border guards stretches all the way to Italy or Canada, where things are better than here. They demand their good luck, although not of the border guards. One person pleads with God, the other with the empty sky. No matter whom they appeal to, sometimes it ends well, and sometimes it ends red as a bed of poppies, or in being left behind, alone, like Lilli’s officer, or else all over the place like me. One way or the other, the attempt will be made, whether sooner or later, in this way or that.
Paul came home
barefoot since the shoes his workmates had lent him didn’t fit. This time he didn’t need a shirt, it was a hot summer. But he did borrow a pair of trousers that stopped a few inches above his ankles and were three times too big around, he’d tied some wire through the waistband. At home Paul made fun of his appearance and pranced about the hall. The seat of his trousers billowed down to the back of his knees. He stretched his arms out and whirled me around, faster and faster. I put my ear to his mouth, he hummed a song, closed his eyes, and pressed my hand against his chest. I could feel the swift pounding through my hand and said:
Don’t charge around like this, your heart is fluttering like a wild dove.
We danced more slowly, keeping our elbows in front of us and sticking our behinds out so our stomachs and legs had room to swing. Paul bumped me on the left hip, spun around, bumped me on the right, and then his stomach danced away
from me, and my hips swung up and down of their own accord. My head was empty except for the beat.
This is how old people dance, he said. You know, when my mother was young, she had pointy hips. My father called them tango bones.
I stepped on Paul’s dusty toes with my own red-tipped ones and sang:
World world sister world
when shall I tire of you.
When my bread is dry
when my hand forgets my glass
when the coffin’s boxed me in
maybe that’s when I’ll be tired of you.
Living is despairing
and the dead they rot away . . .
We felt so together, we laughed our way through the song, in which death seems like a special prize following a life that’s been paid for dearly. We gulped down the song as we laughed and never once missed a beat. Suddenly Paul pushed me away and yelled:
Ow, the zipper’s pinching me.
I tried to open it but couldn’t. He pulled the wire out of the belt loops and tossed it in the corner, the seat dropped to his heels, but some pubic hair was snagged in the zipper. I was supposed to cut the hairs that had got caught, but I was laughing too hard. Paul took the scissors away from me, his hands shaking:
Just get out of the way, would you.
Where to, I asked.
So I let Paul do it himself, but I couldn’t stop laughing,
gurgling more and more, as if I were having a fit. I laughed and laughed until I finally got over it. I inhaled deeply and immediately exhaled, the air was exploding inside me until I had no more, and that was the end. But the beginning was happiness itself. To dance to the rhythm of laughter. And to snap the short leash that otherwise kept us tied. It had to have been happiness if a song about death could warm our temples from within. Until we felt ashamed in front of each other, until the leash shrank to a length shorter than our noses: that’s how long our happiness lasted. Then Paul ran his hand through his hair, and I curled up my fingers and dug my nails into my palms like a scolded child.