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

walking by could see the soles but not the shoes. The man drank and talked out loud to himself when he wasn’t sleeping. People sped up when they came to the booth, and kept a distance from its shadow. They clutched their hair as though not to lose their thoughts. They spit absentmindedly on the sidewalk or into the grass because their mouths had a bitter taste. When the man talked to himself out loud, the passersby averted their eyes, and when he slept, some ventured closer to kick the soles of his shoes with the tips of theirs until he groaned. None of them ever wanted to rouse a corpse, but each of them hoped that day had come.
    A bottle was propped against the man’s stomach, his fingers were around the neck, he held the bottle firmly, and didn’t loosen his grip even in his sleep.
    *   *   *
    Until one day the man did loosen his grip, and the bottle fell over. A woman kicked the soles of his shoes. After that the caretaker came from the nearest apartment building, then a child, then a policeman. The man in the phone booth no longer groaned, his death smelled of plum brandy.
    The caretaker tossed the dead man’s empty bottle into the grass and said, if there really is such a thing as a soul then his was in that bottle and it was the last thing he swallowed. And that means that his soul is whatever his stomach didn’t manage to digest. The policeman whistled and stopped a horse cart on the street. The driver set down his whip and climbed out. He lifted the dead man by the arms while the caretaker lifted him by the shoes. They carried the stiff weight through the sun like a board, then they swung the board onto the cart, on top of the green cabbage heads. The driver covered the dead man with a horse blanket and picked up his whip. He tapped the horse and clicked his tongue, twisting his mouth.
    *   *   *
    The phone booth still smells of plum brandy, and for two days the wind has been making a different sound in the street. The clematis has kept growing and blooming, blue as ever, the one-eyed numbers stare from the dial. Adina dials in her head and talks to the dead man until she’s left the phone booth well behind.
    *   *   *
    I’m at the other end of the line, he says.
    You’re skin and bones, she says, you’re just a board.
    Doesn’t matter, he says, I’m a whole person, half crazy and half drunk.
    Show me your hands, she says.
    Wine in the mouth, cognac in the stomach, brandy in the brain, he says.
    She sees his shoes, he drinks standing up.
    Stop, she says, you’re drinking with your forehead, like you don’t have a mouth.
    *   *   *
    Near the bottom of the street a large spool of wire is rusting away. The grass around it is yellow. Behind the spool is a fence, behind the fence is a yard and a wooden shack. In the yard a dog jerks on his chain, pulling it across the grass. The dog never barks.
    No one knows what the dog is guarding. Early in the morning and late in the evening, always after dark, policemen come. They talk to the dog, feed him, and light their cigarettes but do not finish them. According to the children from the apartments there are three policemen. Because their rooms have only candles, the children can see three cigarettes smoldering outside the wooden shack. Their mothers pull them away from the windows. The dog is named Olga, according to the children, but the dog is male, not female.
    The dog looks at Adina every day, its eyes mirror the grass. Every day Adina says OLGA, so the dog won’t bark.
    Yellow leaves lie strewn on the grass beneath the poplars in front of the school, which change color long before the poplars in town do. And in March the poplars in front of the school turn green, before all the other poplars in the city. The poplars in front of the school have a mind of their own. The teachers claim this is because the school is on the edge of town, with no protection from the weather coming off the open fields. The director says the leaves turn yellow