The Fox Was Ever the Hunter Read Online Free Page A

and hold it to his lips. The fire flares at one corner of his mouth, his hand grows big and covers the flame, the wind is picking up.
    The fishermen cast their lines into the river and pull out drowned grass, decaying socks and waterlogged underpants. And once a day, when the rods are bent and the lines drunk from imbibing the river bottom, an oily fish. Or maybe a dead cat.
    Even the tiniest touch of evening felt on the ridge of their noses steals everything. And what it can’t steal, it forbids. Including happiness, say the fishermen. The striped summer takes all the joy out of fishing.
    The poplars are full of pods that are neither fruit nor seed but galls, misshapen thimbles for flies and aphids. The bugs drop out of the poplars surrounding the café and crawl across the newspaper. Adina’s fingertips shove them into the dictator’s forelock, the flies crawl along his ear hairs, the aphids feel the bright glossy shine and play dead.
    The waitress lowers the tray, sees the face on the table, her cheekbones twitch, her ears burn. She averts her eyes so quickly that a blue vein of fear snaps across her temples as she sets the glass right on top of the dictator’s forehead. The lemonade is thinly streaked with yellow swirls, the forelock appears inside the glass. Adina clinks her spoon, the spoon shines, the lemonade shines, everything that shines also sees. A hot needle of light flashes across her forehead, the streetcar passes over the bridge, setting off waves in the river. Adina leaves her spoon in her drink, she doesn’t touch the glass and lets her hand rest just like the spoon. Adina is waiting for Clara and Paul. She turns her head away.
    Beyond the flat roof of the café is the park, beyond the park the rooftops are pointed. Here are the streets of the directors and inspectors, the mayors, secret police and army officers. The quiet streets of power, where even the wind is afraid when it starts to blow. And when it does blow it is afraid to eddy. And when it blusters it would rather break its own ribs than a branch. Dry leaves scratch across the walkways, quickly covering all tracks. If someone sets foot on these streets who does not live on one of them, who does not belong, it is for these streets as though nothing was there.
    The quiet streets of power abide in the breeze that forks the branches in the park and festoons them with leaves and picks up their rustling, the breeze that carries the clatter of footsteps along the river path, the breeze that causes people on both banks to lift their feet when they walk across the grass, even if it’s mowed, and raise their knees into their throats. Those who come here on foot prefer to pass unnoticed, with high, slow steps. Meanwhile inside their throats they are running, rushing. Once they reach the bridge, the city cloaks them in mindless noise, and they can breathe more easily, as the streetcar whooshes by, tugging their heads out of the silence.
    The masters of the quiet streets are never seen in their houses or gardens. Behind the fir trees, servants come and go up and down the stone steps. When they walk on the lawn, they draw their insides into their throats for fear of squashing the grass. When they cut the grass, a mirror appears in the whites of their eyes, where sickles and rakes gleam like scissors and combs. The servants don’t trust their own skins, because whenever they reach for something their hands cast a shadow. Their heads know that they were born with dirty hands in dirty streets, and that their hands will never grow clean here in the silence. Only old. The clock ticks on the wall, the curtains billow, and when the servants open their masters’ refrigerators and look inside, a square of light falls on their feet, their eyes are startled, and their cheeks shiver at the thoughts that pass through their minds. The meat is packed in cellophane, the cellophane is coated with frost, the frost is white like stone, like the marble in the garden.
    In the