The Fox Was Ever the Hunter Read Online Free PDF Page A

they’re shaking. If she so much as moves her slipper, the woman says, Lenuza, you stay put. And to the officer she says, now stick your stork back in your pants. The man stands up and puts on his underwear. His wife carries his pants on her arm through the living room, always clinging first to the edge of the table, then to my mother’s shoulder. She says, Lenuza, clean up, then her hand goes back to the table and follows it like a guardrail over to the bedroom door. Her husband traipses after her, boots in hand. And my mother cleans up the bathroom and switches off the light.
    The servant’s daughter blew warm breath onto her hands. My coat doesn’t have any pockets, she said, it came from the officer’s wife. She rubbed her fingers on her coat, hitting the buttons with her nails, a sound like stones hitting stones.
    I have a hard time believing the whole business, said the servant’s daughter. But my mother’s never lied before. She hears them behind the bedroom door, the officer snores and his wife hums:
    Roses in bloom
    Come again soon
    Lovely once more
    Roses in bloom
    *   *   *
    My mother knows the song, the woman sings it in the kitchen every day. My mother walks on her tiptoes but the floorboards creak. The wife can tell when my mother is by the front door ready to lock up and then she says, don’t forget to lock up twice Lenuza. The wife is afraid of the stone angel, that it might enter the house during the night. That’s why she has her lions. Now and then the wife says to my mother, his angel can’t get past my two lions. The officer bought the angel to ward against his wife’s lions. But my mother says the lions and the angel won’t hurt each other because they all come from the same stonecutter. The officer realizes that, said the servant’s daughter, but his wife doesn’t.
    *   *   *
    In the morning, when the officer is in his cap and boots, his wife stands in the hall and brushes his uniform jacket. He bends down slowly to pick up his briefcase, she bends down with him and keeps brushing. The brush is so small that at first my mother couldn’t see it in the wife’s hand. My mother wondered why she crooked her hand when she stroked her husband’s jacket. Then one time the woman dropped the brush. Her hands are so small, until that moment my mother thought they weren’t capable of hiding anything. The officer’s wife is very tall, said the servant’s daughter, I’ve never seen hands that small on such a tall woman. After the officer leaves, his wife watches him through the window. Two houses later she loses sight of him but she waits until he reemerges, first at the entrance to the bridge and then once more on the bridge itself. The woman says she’s more worried something might happen to her husband when he’s sober, in the morning while he’s crossing the bridge, than on his way back home.
    Then there’s the story with the perfume flask, said the servant’s daughter. The wife carries it stashed in her purse, even though the flask has been empty for years. The bottle has a rose etched into the glass, and a stopper that used to be gold-plated, by now the plating has worn off, but you can still see a few Cyrillic letters engraved on the side—it must have been Russian perfume. Years ago a Russian officer was in the house, but no one ever mentions him. He had blue eyes. Occasionally the wife says that the handsomest officers have blue eyes. Her husband has brown eyes and occasionally says to his wife, I see you’re reeking of roses again. The servant’s daughter slowly moistened her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. There must be something special about that flask, she said, something sad. Something that opens a wish and closes a door, because it’s not her husband’s absence that makes her so lonely, it’s the empty perfume bottle in her purse. Sometimes, she said, her mother feels the woman’s head is sinking farther and farther into her neck, as if a staircase