*Here comes the Faist crew in full formation.
†A paymaster. He was responsible for his regiment’s payroll.
‡He was always such a sad person.
§Then came your father.
‖There’s no denying, he was a good worker. But as a person …
aHe chased me all through the house, he would reach for my hand, but I ran upstairs to my brothers and sisters and we laughed at him.
bLook what an ugly man that is walking with Lisbeth.
cYes, now he’s handsomer than he used to be, and now I’m the fright.
dBut later that ended in tragedy.
eI know nothing beyond that.
fThat was just a few days before the war.
gFurriers’ fair.
hChamber of commerce.
iA boy! A boy! I have a son!
jAnd then came the big surprise.
kAnd you were a terrible brat and then sick for two years.
lI don’t know if anyone is even still alive.
mWith that stupid Hitler in power they’ve probably all either died or emigrated.
TWO OLD WOMEN, tiny, white-haired sisters who were remarkably alike, lived on the riverside down from Karel’s house. Home for them was a little, half-wooden, half masonry cottage. They had one cow and somewhere far away from the village, in Prečna, a decent-sized potato field … One of them had lived in the country forever, while the other had worked much of her life in town as a servant, and she knew German … One day the two sisters ran into mother at the spring. They invited her over and encouraged her to bring Gisela and me along. The house stood right next to the Krka, which meant that their yard got flooded every now and then. It had a terrace made out of wooden battens. That’s where we sat with the little old ladies. They were so much alike that I could only distinguish them by the fact that one of them spoke better German. Occasionally they brought supper up from their house for Gisela and me. A big slice of bread slathered with lard and cracklings … “Das ist ein slawischer Baum, das aber ein deutscher …”* said the one who used to work in town as she pointed to a linden and an oak that grew in their tiny yard … I felt more strongly about the linden, although for mother’s sake I chose the oak. It was pleasant there with the breeze blowing off the water. Gisela and I would sit down by the water’s edge, next to a hole-ridden boat. How could we fix it?… It was filled with water up to the top, though you could still see its seats. A stubby, white, undamaged oar had been leaned up against the linden … That’s what intrigued me, the thought of rowing off down the Krka, far away, as far away as possible … I remembered the rowboats, sailboats and steamboats on the Rhine … The tugboat “Fleur des carrieres,” which came puffing its way out from under the bridge every day. In its belly and on its decks it transported a whole ironworks, with all manner of hellish cranes and rods sticking out … And the small boats that the water kept scooping up on all sides … The tour boat that took us on a trip through the vineyards. Even if all I had was the tiniest little boat with its prow constantly leaping up in the air!… My imagination carried me off and my head hurt from daydreaming …
Across a wide, muddy path that led from the yard of the two sisters to the inlet where we watered the horses, just behind a stand of trees stood the woodsman’s big house … which was also masonry on the ground floor and wooden above, but imposing … There were already a lot of children living in it, mostly girls. The woodsman’s oldest son, dark-haired and pale, was always inventing something … mills, model airplanes … Following plans he assembled a radio with headphones, stretching its wires from the peak of the house to a shed by the water … on the way down the slope it was supported by trees, beanpoles, more trees … Everybody went there to listen … They put a scratchy gray headset on me. Everything outside got quiet and then from far off I heard, as though l were listening to that big seashell that we kept on the credenza at home in Basel … music, the music of violins and mandolins … It wasn’t like anything else in my world … A whole orchestra … My head was swimming in sounds … The lanky technician was in love with a blonde beauty, the girl from the new house with the red roof next to Karel’s meadow. But his parents and hers were like cats and dogs … The house belonged to the postman, who wasn’t a typical mailman, but an official who worked in a telegraph office … You got to the house over a gravel path where the veranda with the big, beautiful vase was … Their windows had dainty curtains on them … and the smells coming from their kitchen were of dishes that I’d once had at home but that the peasants here didn’t cook … Roasted potatoes, chicken, veal roulades, cutlets … the sweet smell of boiled marmalade, potica and puddings … of all possible sauces and soups with noodles … “Heute gibt es bei ihnen Kalbfleisch mit Blattspinat,”† said mother, who had a nose for cooking … We ate soured corn mush or browned flour soup … sometimes macaroni and bread, if we had it … The smell came straight out from under their pinned-up curtains … Lord, what a ravenous appetite I had when we lived there … I devoured every crust of bread I could find, turnips, carrots, every drink gone bad, fennel root, I chewed on wheat grains and corn … The smell of the puddings and meat literally became food for my head … since my goatskin of a stomach couldn’t have made sense of them, anyway … But if only I could have had a bellyful of all that abundance just once … The postman had a wife and daughter. Both were fine-looking and blonde … except the mother was older … small and as round as a wine cask. But the daughter!… Her hair, her red lips, her face like a doll’s, her eyes like blue candies … The beautiful hands that drew the curtains aside on Sundays, so you could see the brightly polished cupboard and the gold clock standing on it … Her whole head radiant amidst curls … Whenever I caught sight of her, I either froze or ran quickly away … She was studying to become a hairdresser … and sometimes she wore her blue flowing smock … She and the woodsman’s son, the technician, were in love … But the most they could do was nod at each other whenever they met. Once my two cousins and I were down by the washing stones. The woodsman’s son was beside himself, flushed, angry, tearful … He threw himself down on the grassy path, on top of one of the molehills. He began to convulse and simulate making love to a girl. Ivan and Ciril didn’t move … They stood there and watched without saying a word … until the woodsman’s son got up and put his thing, which gleamed like one of the nipples on an udder, back into his pants …
*That is a Slavic tree, and that one is German.
†Today they’re having veal and spinach.
THE HOUSE WITH BIG WINDOWS and a garden cottage that stood amid fields on the far side of the railway tracks belonged to the engineer … I had seen him: he wore a wide-brimmed hat and a black cloak. He knew Greek and Latin, they said … Knowing several languages meant you could change the world, your surroundings even more, and in other ways … let’s say the woods by the train tracks … In short order they could become an ancient forest with pagan gods and bulls that knew how to speak … Pavlica, his wife, wore her kerchief differently from peasant women. Just a touch higher, like the housekeepers in Basel when they came out to beat their carpets … And their rakes, hoes, shovels, and watering cans were all vividly decorated, resembling playthings … Besides blooms of all colors, shapes and kinds, the flower beds in their garden also had glass balls … that were big and all the colors of the rainbow, as though for Christmas … They changed your body and face, made you look skinny … Mother hurried over to visit the engineer’s wife with a whole armful of fashion magazines that we’d brought with us from Basel … She hoped to get an order to sew a dress for her. This time for money, not barter … And following the latest fashion, at that … Despite her nervousness she was fearful and tight-lipped. Oh, but she did know how to behave with clients. In Basel she had hosted various customers … whether wacky, wealthy, serious, or revolting … She pulled together everything she had in those old stacks … various flounces, patterns, blouses, lengths, widths, skirts, laces … even an ocean of silk. What people were wearing, wh
at was in and what wasn’t … no more pleat on the right side, but down the middle … this sort of cuffs on the blouses, the décolleté square now, big buttons made out of glass, a new sort of sleeve … Meanwhile Gisela and I played with the lady’s children … and others from the neighborhood … In their garden shed, which was filled with chairs, side tables, useless tools, also a big dynamo, an engine cylinder, some technical handbooks … I taught them to drum … I made faces imitating the masks that our Waggis wore and other disguises from the pre-Lenten parade … I had them bent over with laughter … Wrestlers from the amusement park, a magician, a weight-lifter, a fire swallower, contestants in the bicycle races … a canary pecking from a feedbox labeled “Zukunft …” All of it done with just sounds and gestures. They laughed so hard they sprained their mouths … Then I showed them how a bull had jumped up on one of Karel’s cows … from on top of a table, where I depicted the whole business, I leapt up onto Gisela and mimicked the bull while Gisela imitated the cow … They were rolling on the floor with laughter … guffawing like trumpets and horns. Then suddenly they were all quiet!… In the doorway the engineer’s wife had appeared … With her eyes practically bulging out of her head. “Hinaus! Out!” she shrieked, brandishing a red feather duster … All the others were on their feet staring at us. I was already familiar with scenes like this from school. I picked Gisela up and practically flew with her in my arms out of there, to the train tracks … right past the the duster’s red handle … Before long everybody had heard everything about the theater in the garden shed … mother, Karel, Mica … Ciril, Ivan, Uncle Jožef … Stanka, Anica, Minka, the woodsman … Suddenly there was nobody left who didn’t burn holes in me with their eyes whenever I met them … That was the reward for fun, for acting silly … If I had at least been dressed for mardi gras, like a Harlequin at the fair … they would have applauded me and I would have gotten a hatful of coins …
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