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

the seat.
    When the women wear cotton wool between their thighs, they carry the blood of melons in their bellies. Every month come the days of the melons and the weight of the melons, it hurts.
    *   *   *
    With melon blood any woman can bind any man she wants, said Clara. The women in the wire factory talk about how it’s done: once a month late in the afternoon they stir a little melon blood into the man’s tomato soup. On that day they don’t put the tureen on the table, they fill each bowl at the stove. The melon blood is in a ladle next to the oven, waiting for the man’s soup bowl. They stir the soup with the ladle until the blood is dissolved.
    During the days of the melons the wire mesh passes in front of their faces before clambering onto the large spool where it is measured by the meter. The looms bang away, the women’s hands are rusty, their eyes dull.
    The women from the factory bind the men to themselves in the late afternoon or evening, said Clara, in the morning they don’t have enough time. In the morning they hurry off from the men’s sleep, and carry a bed full of sleep and a room full of sticky air with them into the factory.
    *   *   *
    But according to the servant’s daughter it’s best to bind the men in the morning, on an empty stomach. During the days of the melons the officer’s wife slips four dashes of melon blood into the officer’s morning coffee, before he goes off to his casino. She brings him his coffee in the same cup as always, without any sugar. She knows he’ll take two spoons of sugar and stir it into the coffee for a long time. The blood bits dissolve faster than the sugar. The best is the blood from the second day, the officer’s wife told the servant’s daughter. The wife’s melon blood is in every step the officer takes on the bridge, every day he spends drinking in the casino. Each bit of blood lasts a week, four bits cover the whole month.
    Each blood bit has to be as big as the thumbnail of the man the woman wants to bind, said the officer’s wife. The melon blood dissolves in the coffee and clots again after it’s run down his throat, she said. It doesn’t go past his heart, it doesn’t trickle into his stomach. The melon blood cannot contain the officer’s desire, there’s no remedy for that because his desire refuses to be bound. His desire flies to other women, but the melon blood winds around his heart. It clots and locks the heart in. The officer’s heart is closed to the image of other women, said the servant’s daughter, he can betray his wife but he cannot abandon her.
    *   *   *
    Someone has written on the wall of the toilet stall:
    ’Tis eve on the hillside
    The bagpipes are distantly wailing
    *   *   *
    Two lines from a famous poem the children learn in school. The servant’s daughter claimed to recognize the handwriting. It’s the physics teacher, she said, I can tell from the way he writes the d and the l. The lines run at an angle up the wall.
    Adina feels a warm rush between her thighs, then hears someone latching the door to the neighboring stall. She pushes her elbows against her thighs, she wants to keep the rushing smooth and even. But her belly doesn’t know what smooth and even is. Over the toilet tank is a small window with spiderwebs instead of a pane. It never has a spider, the noise of the tank drives it away. Every day, a band of light perches on the wall and watches everything including how the women rub newsprint between their hands until the writing is grainy and the fingers gray. Rubbed newsprint doesn’t scratch the thighs.
    *   *   *
    At the faculty meeting the cleaning woman announced there was no toilet paper for the teachers’ toilet. For three days in a row, she said, I set out a new roll, but each roll was stolen within fifteen minutes on each of the three days, so now three rolls have to last for three weeks.
    Well, corncobs and beet leaves were good enough for you in the