Fame by Daniel Kehlmann

A little man was looking at her with narrowed eyes.
    “Do you speak English?”
    He spoke neither English nor French nor German nor Greek, nor did he understand her sign language. He stood there motionless, watching her, his polite smile never wavering.
    She pulled out a stool. The sun had been so fierce; she needed to sit down for a moment. And she was so thirsty. As soon as she made a goblet of her hands and lifted them to her mouth, he understood: he reached for a plastic container and poured her a glass. A few days ago the glass and the little brown filaments swimming in the water would have disgusted her, but now she drank it greedily. Then she sat for awhile, hunched over, her elbows propped on her knees. The little man waited at a respectful distance.
    When she raised her head, she saw, between two Auristos Blanco titles, something she knew. She got to her feet and pulled it out. A cheap cardboard binding, garish red. Hername in Cyrillic script over a title she couldn’t read, but she knew it was Dark Rain , her most successful novel. Under the title was a photograph of a man in sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat. This was how her Russian publisher had represented Commissioner Regler, her melancholy detective opposed to all forms of violence. How ridiculous she’d found it, how she and her husband had laughed over it!
    She turned it over; no author photograph. She showed it to the little man, tapped her finger on the book, then pointed to herself.
    He smiled, baffled.
    She pushed it back onto the shelf. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything.”
    He bowed.
    She thanked him for the water and left.
    She came to a marketplace. It smelled of sheep and rotten fruit, and the stalls were in the process of being dismantled. She went up to a big woman in an apron who looked friendlier than the others, and pointed to her mouth and stomach. The woman gave her a hunk of bread. It tasted good; admittedly a little bitter, but it gave her strength. The woman also gave her a water bottle, and after she’d drunk from it, she felt almost restored.
    The woman was very wrinkled, several of her teeth were missing, and one of her eyes was half closed, the eyelids drooping to one side. She said something Maria didn’t understand. Then she hoisted a crate of potatoes and indicated to Maria that she should help carry them.
    Together they hauled the crate across the street to wherean old man was waiting by a tractor, and heaved it up onto the trailer. The woman squatted down behind it and gestured to Maria to do the same.
    Bathed in gasoline fumes, they set off judderingly. The town soon disappeared and the steppe spread out in the twilight. The air turned cooler. For a long time a dragonfly flew beside them. The woman’s head nodded with every stroke of the engine, she seemed to be sleeping with her eyes open. The sky was empty, not a bird to be seen. Night fell.
    When they reached the house, it was dark. Maria jumped down from the trailer; the ground was so muddy that she sank in up to her ankles. The house was built of weathered planks, the roof was corrugated iron; inside it smelled musty, and as the old man lit two torches, she saw a mouse run off. Outside the woman was working a rusty pump. She brought in a tin pan full of water, set it down, pointed to the wooden floor, the pail, and the floor again. Then she gave Maria a cloth.
    While she cleaned, Maria tried to think. She would have to live here for a year, maybe two, no search party would find her, no envoy from the Foreign Ministry would suddenly appear to free her. She would have to stay and work until she learned the language. If these people paid her something, she’d set some money aside. At some point she’d be able to make her way to the capital. There she’d find someone who could help her. She wouldn’t be stuck here for an eternity; she was better equipped than these people; she’d come out of this.
    In no time her back was aching, her