in the other it cuts off part of the country by flowing crooked. In both places the shots being fired are the same, like a cracking branch, but different. Very different.
* * *
There are August days in this city when the sun is a peeled pumpkin that heats the asphalt from below and the concrete of the apartment blocks from above. Then it’s so hot that heads pass through the day with the top of their skulls detached. At noon even the smallest thoughts crinkle up inside the heads and don’t know where to go. Breath grows heavy in mouths. And all anyone is left with is a stray pair of hands used to press wet bed-sheets against the windowpanes to cool things down. The sheets are already dry before the hands pull back from the glass.
* * *
It was on an August day like that when Ilie stood by the stove squashing cockroaches. But maybe it wasn’t him at all, maybe it was the brutality of the heat inside his head. Death came with a crack for the large ones and silently for the small ones. Ilie counted only the large reddish-brown cockroaches that cracked.
When they’re fully grown they turn red, said Ilie. Cockroaches will outlive everything, cities and villages and the endlessly plowed fields that have no lanes or trees. The miserable maize and the Carpathians and the wind on the stones, and sheep and dogs and humans. They will eat up all this socialism and lug it down to the Danube inside their fattened bellies. And the people on the other side will stand there horrified, blinking in the heat. And they’ll shout across the water, that’s the Romanians for you, they deserved it.
Then Ilie started sobbing and grabbed his face with hands that smelled of cockroach, and Adina dragged him out of the kitchen and gave him a glass of water. He held it in his hand but didn’t drink. Disgusted and freezing despite the heat, he broke out in a cold sweat and pushed Adina away. He was so far removed from himself that he practically choked on his tongue when he said, the world is lucky to have the Danube.
* * *
Adina chews on a nut and looks out the window. The nut tastes bitter at first and then sweet. The sky is not looking down but is turned upward, its vast emptiness clinging to little spots of white, to letters that have all been read by the time it flees the city and escapes—a refugee above the city, bound for the Danube.
A child cries on the street below. Adina’s tongue searches for the bits of nut stuck between her teeth. The shells lie scattered beneath the table.
A different silence
Where are the ball bearings, says the director. A brown moth the size of a fly flits out of his shirt collar and flutters past the geranium on the windowsill, looking for the factory yard below and behind the glass. Mara says, the ball bearings are on order. Outside the director’s curtained window, on the other side of the geranium, shoes go clattering by. Heads of brown hair bob past. The potted geranium hovers first on one head then on the next. The geranium doesn’t wave its red flowers, it just lets its leaves dangle motionless over the hair and point down into the sunken factory yard, into the rust, into the wire. The director doesn’t see the heads of the people passing, only the tops of their hair. And he sees the moth at the windowpane. So, says the director, assuming the ball bearings are on order where are they. He steps so close to the glass that the open curtain brushes his forehead and the geranium grazes his chin. And the moth flips over and flutters past his shorn temples toward the meeting table. The ball bearings are on their way, Comrade Director, says Mara.
The director catches himself looking at the wire, out of habit, but quickly pulls his face back away from the window. He isn’t surprised by the moth. But he had not reckoned with a pair of tall shoes hitting the asphalt like a couple of broken bricks. Nor had he reckoned with short legs that don’t bend as they walk. Or
* * *
There are August days in this city when the sun is a peeled pumpkin that heats the asphalt from below and the concrete of the apartment blocks from above. Then it’s so hot that heads pass through the day with the top of their skulls detached. At noon even the smallest thoughts crinkle up inside the heads and don’t know where to go. Breath grows heavy in mouths. And all anyone is left with is a stray pair of hands used to press wet bed-sheets against the windowpanes to cool things down. The sheets are already dry before the hands pull back from the glass.
* * *
It was on an August day like that when Ilie stood by the stove squashing cockroaches. But maybe it wasn’t him at all, maybe it was the brutality of the heat inside his head. Death came with a crack for the large ones and silently for the small ones. Ilie counted only the large reddish-brown cockroaches that cracked.
When they’re fully grown they turn red, said Ilie. Cockroaches will outlive everything, cities and villages and the endlessly plowed fields that have no lanes or trees. The miserable maize and the Carpathians and the wind on the stones, and sheep and dogs and humans. They will eat up all this socialism and lug it down to the Danube inside their fattened bellies. And the people on the other side will stand there horrified, blinking in the heat. And they’ll shout across the water, that’s the Romanians for you, they deserved it.
Then Ilie started sobbing and grabbed his face with hands that smelled of cockroach, and Adina dragged him out of the kitchen and gave him a glass of water. He held it in his hand but didn’t drink. Disgusted and freezing despite the heat, he broke out in a cold sweat and pushed Adina away. He was so far removed from himself that he practically choked on his tongue when he said, the world is lucky to have the Danube.
* * *
Adina chews on a nut and looks out the window. The nut tastes bitter at first and then sweet. The sky is not looking down but is turned upward, its vast emptiness clinging to little spots of white, to letters that have all been read by the time it flees the city and escapes—a refugee above the city, bound for the Danube.
A child cries on the street below. Adina’s tongue searches for the bits of nut stuck between her teeth. The shells lie scattered beneath the table.
A different silence
Where are the ball bearings, says the director. A brown moth the size of a fly flits out of his shirt collar and flutters past the geranium on the windowsill, looking for the factory yard below and behind the glass. Mara says, the ball bearings are on order. Outside the director’s curtained window, on the other side of the geranium, shoes go clattering by. Heads of brown hair bob past. The potted geranium hovers first on one head then on the next. The geranium doesn’t wave its red flowers, it just lets its leaves dangle motionless over the hair and point down into the sunken factory yard, into the rust, into the wire. The director doesn’t see the heads of the people passing, only the tops of their hair. And he sees the moth at the windowpane. So, says the director, assuming the ball bearings are on order where are they. He steps so close to the glass that the open curtain brushes his forehead and the geranium grazes his chin. And the moth flips over and flutters past his shorn temples toward the meeting table. The ball bearings are on their way, Comrade Director, says Mara.
The director catches himself looking at the wire, out of habit, but quickly pulls his face back away from the window. He isn’t surprised by the moth. But he had not reckoned with a pair of tall shoes hitting the asphalt like a couple of broken bricks. Nor had he reckoned with short legs that don’t bend as they walk. Or
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