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Aglaja Veteranyi 
Pierre Imhof, Translator
Dafydd Roberts, Translator
Translated from the German by Pierre Imhof and Dafydd Roberts
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photo: Renate von Mangoldt |
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I imagine the sky.
It´s so big I fall asleep right away to calm myself down.
When I wake up, I know that God is smaller than the sky. Otherwise, when we pray, we´d always fall asleep from fright.
Does God speak other languages?
Can he understand foreigners as well?
Or do the angels sit in little glass cabins and translate?
AND IS THERE REALLY A CIRCUS IN HEAVEN?
Mother says yes.
Father laughs, he´s had a bad time with God.
If God was God he´d come down and help us, he says.
But why should he come down, if we´re going to go up to him afterwards?
Anyway, men don´t believe in God as much as women and children do, because of the competition. My father doesn´t want God to be my father as well.
Here every country is abroad.
The circus is always abroad. But inside the caravan is home.
I open the door of the caravan as little as possible, so home doesn´t boil away.
My mother´s grilled aubergines smell just like home everywhere, never mind what country we´re in.
My mother says we get a lot more from our country abroad, because all our country´s food is sold there.
IF WE WERE AT HOME, WOULD EVERYTHING SMELL LIKE ABROAD?
All I know of my country is the smell. It smells like my mother´s cooking.
My father says you remember your country´s smell everywhere, but you only recognise it when you´re far away.
WHAT DOES GOD SMELL LIKE?
My mother´s food may smell the same the whole world over, but abroad it tastes different, because of the longing.
Apart from that, here we live like rich people, we can throw away the soup bones after the meal with a good conscience, at home they have to be kept for the next soup.
At home, my cousin Anika has to stand in the queue in front of the breadshop the whole night, people stand so close to each other they can sleep while they´re waiting.
AT HOME QUEUING IS A PROFESSION.
Uncle Neagu and his sons wait in turn day and night, and close to the shop they sell their good places to other people who can afford not to be patient. Then they go back to the end of the queue and start waiting again.
Abroad you can manage without the wait.
Here you don´t need time for shopping, only money.
In the market you almost never have to queue, quite the opposite, they treat you like someone important, they even say thank you if you buy something.
*
ABROAD DOESN´T CHANGE US. WE EAT WITH OUR MOUTHS IN EVERY COUNTRY.
At first light my mother gets up and starts cooking, she plucks the chicken and holds it over the gas ring. My mother prefers to buy live chickens, because they´re the freshest.
In hotels she kills the chicken in the bathtub.
WHEN THEY´RE KILLED, THE CHICKENS´ SQUAWKING IS INTERNATIONAL. WE UNDERSTAND THEM EVERYWHERE.
Killing chickens in the hotel is forbidden, we turn up the radio, open the window and make a lot of noise. I don´t want to see the chicken, otherwise I wouldn´t want it to die. What doesn´t go into the soup goes down the toilet. I´m frightened of the toilet, at night I pee in the sink, where the dead chickens won´t come back up again.
We´re always living somewhere else.
Sometimes the caravan is so small we can hardly get past each other.
Then the circus gives us a bigger caravan with a toilet.
Or the hotel rooms are damp holes, full of vermin.
But sometimes we live in luxury hotels with a fridge in the room and television.
Once we lived in a house where lizards ran about on the walls. We put the bed in the middle of the living room so the creatures couldn´t creep under the covers.
And when she was standing by the garden gate a snake slithered over my mother´s foot.
WE´RE NOT ALLOWED TO GROW FOND OF ANYWHERE.
I´m used to arranging things so that I feel all right.
I only have to put my blue towel on a chair.
That´s the sea.
I always have the sea by my bed.
I only have to climb out of bed and then I can go swimming.
In my sea, you don´t have to be able to swim to be able to swim.
At night, I cover the sea with my mother´s flowery dressing-gown so the sharks won´t get me if I have to pee.
One day we´ll have a big house with luxuries, with a swimming pool in the living room and Sophia Loren dropping in all the time.
I´d like a room with lots of cupboards where I could keep my clothes and all my things.
My father collects real oil paintings of horses and my mother expensive china that we never use because it would get worn and break with all the packing and unpacking.
Our belongings are in a big trunk stuffed with lots of newspaper.
WE COLLECT NICE THINGS FROM EVERY COUNTRY, FOR OUR BIG HOUSE.
My aunt collects cuddly toys, her lovers shoot them down at the fair.
MY MOTHER IS THE WOMAN WITH THE HAIR OF STEEL.
She hangs by her hair above the ring and juggles with balls and hoops and burning torches.
When I´m grown up and slim I´ll have to hang by my hair as well. I have to comb my hair carefully, my mother says hair is the most important thing for a woman.
MY FATHER SAYS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THE HIPS.
I imagine a woman with hips as big as the circus tent.
But that doesn´t go with hanging.
I´m never going to hang by my hair, I don´t want to.
I pluck my hair from my head in tufts like the soup-chicken´s feathers.
A woman without hair won´t get a husband, says my mother.
I don´t want a husband, I´d rather be like my sister, she´s brave and always causing problems.
My sister is only my father´s daughter.
She eats everything, because my mother saved her life when she was rachitic and covered in lice.
I love her like a sister, even though she´s a foreigner. Her mother is my father´s step-daughter. She and her mother, my sister´s grandmother and my father´s first wife, live in a hospital because they´ve gone mad.
My sister is mad as well, says my mother, because my father loves her like a woman.
I have to be careful I don´t go mad too, that´s why my mother takes me along with her everywhere.
MY FATHER ONLY WANTS MY SISTER ANYWAY.
My sister can do everything a lot better than me. Although she´s only a few years older, she already has a crushed knee. My father drove into her leg with a tractor, so she wouldn´t find a husband and stay with him always.
I won´t belong to the circus before I have a proper injury of my own. But that won´t happen, my mother always stops it, I can´t even get onto the rope without her almost fainting.
My mother often behaves as if something terrible is going happen, even if someone nearby just laughs suddenly. Particularly women.
Women are jealous and calculating, they only have wicked ideas in their heads, she says.
I WAS ONLY SOMEBODY BEFORE I WAS BORN.
I was already a tightrope-walker for eight months before I was born, on my head. I was inside my mother and she did the splits on the high rope and I would look down or press my head against the rope.
Once she couldn´t get back up again from doing the splits and I almost fell out.
Just after that I was born.
I was very beautiful when I was born, my mother worried that someone might steal me and put another baby in the crib.
I was born completely bald.
After I had been bathed my mother gave me thick eyebrows with her black pencil.
My aunt counted to see whether I had all my fingers, and the midwife strapped my bow legs together with a bandage.
My father wasn´t there.
My mother named me after the midwife because she was from abroad.
And my aunt gave me a second name after a film star so I would become famous.
But I don´t have the same name as Sophia Loren.
I WAIT FOR THE NIGHT ALL DAY LONG. IF MY MOTHER DOESN´T FALL WE WILL EAT CHICKEN SOUP TOGETHER AFTER THE PERFORMANCE.
My mother has long, slim legs, on the photograph she looks Japanese, with smooth black hair and a fringe. We don´t look alike.
I look like my father.
He´s not your father at all, the bandit, my mother sometimes says angrily, we don´t need him!
WHY IS MY FATHER NOT MY FATHER?
Sometimes with men my mother pretends to be my sister. She rolls her eyes and stretches her words out long as if she suddenly had honey in her mouth. Though she doesn´t even like honey, what she really likes is black rye bread with butter and salt. And she drinks white wine. She drinks as much white wine as I eat candy-floss. If we saved the money instead we could buy our big house with the chickens.
When my mother pretends to be my sister she suddenly smells really strange. Then she mustn´t touch me any longer. At the hotel she has to sleep on the floor, I don´t want to share the bed with her.
*
MY MOTHER IS DIFFERENT FROM OTHERS BECAUSE SHE HANGS BY HER HAIR AND THIS STRETCHES HER HEAD AND MAKES HER BRAIN LONG.
My sister is as beautiful as a man, she fights with all the children. She´s a gypsy.
I WANT TO BE A GYPSY TOO.
While my mother hangs by her hair in the tent my sister tells me the story of the CHILD COOKING IN THE POLENTA, to calm me down.
If I imagine the child cooking in the polenta and how this must hurt I won´t have to think all the time that my mother might fall from up there, she says.
But it´s no good. I always have to think about my mother dying so as not to be surprised. I see her setting her hair alight with the torches, see her falling burning to the floor. And when I bend over her, her face turns to ashes.
I don´t scream.
I´ve got rid of my mouth.
*
My sister and I were suddenly taken to a home in the mountains.
While we were packing mother hugged and kissed us like a clockwork doll. She kissed us before she put our clothes in the trunk as well.
I will soon get you back, she said again and again.
My father didn´t want to say goodbye to us. He swore and banged at his face with his fists: I´ll kill anyone who lays a hand on my daughters!
Then, silently, he turned to face our little black and white television on which he had glued a piece of coloured cellophane.
The newsreader´s face looked like a cassata.
My mother and us two girls were picked up by Mrs Schnyder, who had been taking care of us and our papers since we had run away.
My mother was always asking whether there was a doctor at the home, are you sure my children won´t be kidnapped or poisoned!
PERHAPS OUR PARENTS HAVE SOLD US. IT HAPPENS IN ROMANIA.
And where was my aunt?
The car-journey went on for years.
I wanted to remember the way so as to be able to get back. But the more I tried, the more everything became like everything else, as if someone had tidied up the landscape.
The trees had packed up their leaves, as my mother had done with our clothes.
Snow was falling.
The car zig-zagged upwards.
Now the car had to fall off the edge.
A big house, surrounded by mountains.
As soon as we had climbed out of the car I couldn´t remember the direction we´d come from any more. The road we had driven along had disappeared.
We were welcomed by a woman who looked as if she had several people under her dress.
This is the director, said Mrs Schnyder.
I am Mrs Hitz, said the director.
She took us to a room with four wooden beds.
The pillows and the covers on the beds looked like snow as well.
I didn´t want to put down my suitcase.
The director opened the window and pointed to the garden.
In the summer you can pick strawberries, she said.
She smelt of bacon and spoke a language that sounded like singing. My sister understood more words than I did.
In the summer.
And now was winter.
We´ll stay here forever, I thought, and started to cry.
My mother looked very beautiful and sad, we would never see each other again.
I WANT TO PUT MY MOTHER IN MY SUITCASE.
Mrs Hitz showed us the dining room, the common room and the kitchen. Everything was orderly and tidy, it smelt of disinfectant. You couldn´t imagine anyone living there.
Homework is done in the common room, and after that the children are allowed to play, said Mrs Hitz.
My mother took out the plastic bag full of photos and told Mrs Hitz about our great successes and about all our travels. My children are very intelligent, she said with a dark look, they know the whole world. We are international artistes! You must feed them well, only the best, you understand! I will call every day and ask whether they have eaten well!
My mother kissed holes in our cheeks.
She and Mrs Schnyder climbed back into the car.
Waving.
My mother will die right there, I thought, then we´ll bury her in the garden under our window. In the summer the strawberries will taste of my mother.
My sister and I stood hand in hand in front of the door. Mrs Hitz stood next to us.
She must have rubber arms, if we run away now she´ll stretch out her arms and catch us.
An animal was gnawing away in my belly, it had already eaten away my legs.
This place is a home, says my sister.
Here you have to get very fat, otherwise you get crushed by the mountains. And you need several skins to keep warm.
I LET MY SKIN FALL TO THE GROUND.
The girls live on the top floor, the boys downstairs. There are babies too.
We have to go to bed before it gets dark.
And get up in the middle of the night.
Air the rooms, put the bedclothes and the pillows over the window sill.
Then we stand in front of the big sink in the corridor. When it is our turn we wash ourselves with a flannel with our name on it.
Each child has:
2 flannels
2 towels
2 napkins
There are no names on the bedclothes.
Once a week we have to have a bath and wash our hair.
Our clothes have our names on too, even the socks. In the needlework class we had to sew a little tape with our initials onto each item of clothing.
After washing, make the bed and tidy the room.
Then breakfast and go to school. You reach the school along a mountain road. Opposite the school there is a farm.
My sister is learning reading, writing and arithmetic.
In my class we sing and we draw.
When we sing I always start to cry.
I can´t take joyfulness.
After singing we´re given a piece of paper with an animal to colour in. Then we learn what the animal is called in this foreign language.
IN EVERY LANGUAGE THE SAME THING HAS A DIFFERENT NAME.
In the afternoon we have to do our homework, after that we can play in the house or in the garden.
The little boys stay with the girls. The big ones only come when my sister and I do tricks.
We juggle with stones.
Or we walk around like rubber women.
My sister does handstands and I do the crab or the splits.
I stuff cotton wool under my jumper and make breasts like my aunt.
The boys come then as well.
My sister already has real breasts.
She has a few hairs downstairs as well.
*
TIME FREEZES.
The week is divided into working days and weekends.
On Wednesday I hear someone say: it will be the weekend soon.
At the weekend the parents come and collect their children. Then the house is almost silent, just the babies and us.
Our parents don´t come.
They´re abroad, says Mrs Hitz.
This is abroad too, we say.
HOW MANY ABROADS ARE THERE?
At the weekend we go walking.
Mrs Hitz leads the way and we follow.
In the forest we light a fire and grill sausages.
We climb up high towers to see the countryside.
Or we go swimming. I have to jump into the water although I can´t swim.
If my mother found out!
At the weekend I sleep with my sister in her bed, which is forbidden.
At night we steal into a baby´s room and pinch it till it cries. We can´t stand the silence in the house. We´re in bed again by the time someone comes upstairs. It always takes a while for them to quieten the babies down again. That´s good.
Sometimes we go into the corridor and say we´ve been woken up. Then we´re allowed into the kitchen for a bit and we get an extra cup of milk.
The television is usually on in the grown-ups´ room. We´re not allowed to stay in there, though.
In bed I´m constantly thinking of my mother hanging by her hair. My sister always has to invent terrible things about the child in the polenta.
I help her:
DOES THE CHILD TASTE LIKE CHICKEN?
WILL THE CHILD BE CUT INTO SLICES?
WHAT´S IT LIKE WHEN THE EYES EXPLODE?
Then I cry.
And my sister holds me tight and comforts me.
I DREAM THAT MY MOTHER IS DYING. SHE LEAVES ME HER HEARTBEAT IN A BOX.
The child is cooking in the polenta because it tortures other children. It catches orphans, ties them to a tree and sucks the flesh from their bones.
The child is so fat it´s always hungry.
It lives in a forest full of bones, you can hear the sound of gnawing everywhere.
At night it covers itself with earth and sleeps so restlessly the whole forest trembles.
On Sundays we go to church. It´s near the farm. It´s not Orthodox or Jewish, there´s no dancing or proper singing.
They tell different stories about God in every language, that´s normal says my sister.
In this church the devil is important.
The devil is God´s assistant, and he lives in Hell, which is as hot as the polenta.
Hell is behind heaven.
PEOPLE ARE GOOD BECAUSE THEY´RE FRIGHTENED OF THE DEVIL.
I put my flannel on the bedside table.
That´s Hell.
If I get used to Hell quickly then perhaps we can get away from here again soon.
*
The children talk about the circus the way they do about the zoo.
Their eyes sparkle or they snigger.
They think all circus people are related, that they all love each other and sleep in the same caravan and eat from the same plate.
And then they live in the open air, oh how nice!
They´ve no idea that you train all the time, that other people might copy your act and that one night you might fall down from up there and be dead the next day.
They think it´s all fun.
IF MY MOTHER FALLS DOWN SHE WON´T DIE FOR FUN.
Only actors die for fun.
The children laugh when they hear I´m going to be a film star.
I am one already, really, a little bit, my father has already filmed me. When I get older, he´ll film my life story.
Mrs Hitz doesn´t like to hear that. She goes red in the face and says as if by heart: everyone is the same, no-one should want to be special.
The most important thing is to be hard-working and humble.
God doesn´t like it when people are lazy.
Man is here to care for the world.
He isn´t allowed to be a burden to anyone.
He has to have a job and earn enough money to be able to give to charity as well.
And he has to keep his house clean at all times.
This will bring him peace.
But she also says that we are the image of God.
IF WE´RE THE IMAGE OF GOD THEN WE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO BE AS FAMOUS AS HIM AS WELL. 
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