The Fox Was Ever the Hunter by Herta Müller Read Free Book Online

leather apron folded as he fell, but he himself did not. When his shoulder hit the ground, his head stayed straight. The man who smelled like grass then untied the knot and coiled the rope, drawing it between his thumb and forefinger and across his palm and over his elbow. When he tied off the short end he said, this rope will come in handy in the slaughterhouse.
    The seamstress came in and stashed a pair of pliers and a new shiny nail in her apron pocket. She lowered her head, her tears dripped onto the alarm clock sitting on the table, as the locomotive pictured on the timepiece ticked away. The seamstress looked at the hands on the dial and reached for a watering can, I’ll take that for tending his grave, she said. And the man who smelled like grass said, I don’t know. He searched around for his stovepipe.
    And the barber said, the tinsmith came by my place just an hour ago, I gave him a shave. His face was still wet and he went and hanged himself. The barber pocketed a small file into his smock. He looked at the man who smelled like grass and said, whoever cuts down a hanged man fashions his own noose. The man who smelled like grass had three stovepipes tucked under his arm, he showed the barber the rope, look here, nothing’s been cut.
    Adina saw a mountain of soldered pots on the floor next to the hanged man. The enamel was chipped and stained. Parsley and lovage, onion and garlic, tomatoes and cucumbers. A clove, a slice, a leaf, everything that summer coaxed out of the earth had left its mark. The vegetables of gardens and fields on the outskirts of every town, and the meat of all the yards and stalls.
    When the doctor came everyone took a step away from the tinsmith, as if the horror were only just arriving. Silence twisted every face, as though the doctor were bringing death itself.
    The doctor undressed the tinsmith and examined the pots. Tugging on the lifeless hands he said, how can a person solder with just three fingers on each hand. When the doctor dropped the tinsmith’s pants onto the floor two apricots fell out of the pocket. They were round and smooth, the same yellow as the soldering flame that no longer chewed the pots. The apricots raced under the table, glowing as they went.
    The string hung around the neck of the tinsmith as it always did, but the wedding ring had disappeared.
    For several days and nights the air under the trees had a bitter smell. Adina saw the empty string in the veins of whitewashed walls and in the cracks of asphalt streets. The first afternoon she suspected the seamstress, and that first evening she suspected the man who smelled like grass. The next day she suspected the barber and in the night, which sank into the evening without any twilight, she suspected the doctor.
    Two days after the tinsmith hanged himself, Adina’s mother crossed the beet fields to the village with the sheep, whose gleaming white walls could be seen from the outskirts of town. Because it was almost Easter, she bought a lamb. The women in the village told Adina’s mother that a child nobody had ever seen before had been at the tinsmith’s and stolen the ring right off his neck. The tinsmith’s ring was gold and could have been sold to pay for a funeral pall. As it was, the money in his worktable drawer barely paid for a rough narrow box. That’s not a coffin, said the women, it’s a wooden suit.
    *   *   *
    The man leading the horse stops at the edge of town and is hidden for a moment by a passing bus. Then the bus is gone, the man stands in the dust, and the horse walks around him. The man steps over the halter, slings it around a tree trunk and ties it off tight. At the shop he pushes through the door and makes his way past the waiting heads to join the bread line.
    Before he disappears among the screaming heads, the man glances back. The horse lifts its hooves and stands on three legs for longer than it takes a bus to pass, then rubs its flank against the tree trunk.
    Adina feels dust