Newcomers

by Lojze Kovacic

  One fine day we finally got to meet her. How? Had mother tried to pump her for money or had she sold her some fur item of Vati’s?… The lady came down to the road with her friend, the bank officer, and her younger son, where we were waiting for them, as she and mother had agreed beforehand. Together we went down a road past grain fields and clover to some neat little houses, then back to where the farmsteads began and finally down the road into town. I wanted to talk to Leon who knew Slovene really well, since he had been here since first grade. But he was too fragile and delicate for me to get any halfway lively conversation going. I could barely get him to go with me onto the grassy escarpment over the road, where it was nicer to walk. We looked at the castle, all lit up and crystalline in the early twilight, and the bank officer, who was wearing a white raincoat and had a black mustache and sideburns … he appeared to be quite the cosmopolitan gentleman … explained what a nice local practice it was, “alte Schlößer und Monumente am Abend zu beleuchten.”† At last they invited us over for some stewed fruit. Everything still smelled of mortar and our footsteps echoed through the big, empty building as we climbed up its modern staircase. It was a handsome apartment with big windows, and her son the student was drawing some schematics in the kitchen on a big drafting board. In the living room, which was full of rugs and armchairs, Mrs. Gmeiner wound up the gramophone … “An der schönen, blauen Donau,” … “Wien, Wien, nur du allein.…”‡ Mother sat fearfully in a chair, her arms nervously folded, while Clairi, who was all excited, began swaying on the sofa in waltz time and humming along and clicking her tongue, “tsk tsk tsk …” At his mother’s insistence, Leon showed me a box containing arrows and a target … we played for a while … After the stewed fruit we left. The lady from Vienna and her bank officer lay down on the sofa in the living room and Leon, whose health was fragile, soon went to bed. I stayed for a while in the kitchen with the older one, the student, and because I liked drawing, watched as he used charcoal and a fountain pen to shade in big and small turbine screws. Through the open door I saw feet resting on the edge of the sofa … coarse male feet in polkadots and hers with their tiny heels in silk stockings, which excited me. I also heard her voice as the springs squeaked, “Laß mich in Ruhe, du! Laß mich in Ruhe …”§ Women really did have it rough … Suddenly something began to rumble as if out of hell. Military planes, one, then another, flew right over the house … almost touching the roof with their wings … They were fighter planes, that much I guessed right away from the machine guns alongside their cockpits. The panes in the windows growled and a whole avalanche was released through the upper stories, causing my mouth to go dry … The airplanes vanished together with the lights on their wings in the direction of the airport … All of us jumped up, except for the student. “There’s going to be a war,” he said as he continued to draw. “The Germans are going to come any day and send this whole Yugoslav circus to hell …” It was the first time I’d heard somebody saying in Slovene that Germany was going to destroy Yugoslavia. And with such zest! That had a strong effect on me … But the young man’s face was so focused and serious when he looked at me that I believed him …

  *My poor little boy!

  †… to light up old castles and monuments in the evenings.

  ‡The beautiful blue Danube, and Vienna, just you alone

  §Leave me alone, you. Leave me alone.

  MRS. GMEINER was like my teacher Roza. She was just as big and powerful a lady, except that she always wore clothes of black or purple satin because she was in mourning for her husband … At the beginning of summer Vati got me re-registered for the public school in Ledina, because the one in Jarše was too full … The school in Ledina was much grander than the one-room school I’d attended in Lower Carniola … There was strict discipline and tidiness in the hallways. Between the windows and doors to the classrooms there were framed pictures of famous men in beards, all of identical size in identical frames. While I was waiting for Vati, who was in the principal’s office, I read the names under the pictures: Prešeren, Stritar, Cigler … Kersnik, Jurčič, Mencinger … Levstik, Slomšek, Dalmatin … The hallway was like a temple and as I walked back and forth, the eyes of those great men followed me through the gray ash of their hair, their mustaches, their beards … They were probably doctors or judges … Then a teacher came, tall, broad, stout Miss Roza all dressed in black but with red lips. She spoke to Vati, who looked like those learned men with long hair and beards in the pictures, and as he held his hat behind his back, standing in front of this woman who was nearly twice his size, he seemed to visibly shrink with stage fright … She kindly pressed me to herself, to her blouse covered with frills and patches. “If he studies as hard as he did in Lower Carniola, he won’t have a thing to worry about …” she said. My fellow students were all perfectly combed and dressed. Miss Roza introduced me from the platform, with her hand on my shoulder. Here is your new classmate. He came here from Switzerland over a year ago. He attended the first form there. He was seriously ill and spent two years in hospitals … Her voice sounded clear, sweet and maternal … His Slovene is bad, she went on, so be nice to him and help him … The brats were staring at my long hair that my parents cut at home … Despite my embarrassment and the teacher’s sing-songy voice I immediately spotted two ass-kissers and a few who had already declared pre-emptive war on me … A whole train car full of mama’s boys and and conceited know-it-alls! Then the teacher had me take a seat in a bench by the window. She sat down and her bosom with all the various decorations affixed to her dress made her look like a portrait bust set on her desk. Above her was the famous young king in a fuzzy photo, looking gently down from under his black profusion of hair … Oh, he had whatever his heart desired … During the main break the other students snacked on chocolate and rolls with marmalade or thin slices of cheese. My head was practically spinning from hunger … They would leave their leftovers under the benches … halves of breakfast rolls jutted out among the briefcases stowed on the shelves and I felt like nabbing them. But I knew that theft was punished harshly at school … A few busybodies came up to my bench. How’s it going? Why were you in Switzerland? Some of them behaved decently, but one of them, a fatso, started interrogating me with his hands in his pockets like some bank director, and his head was all bulging out, too, “So why did you come here from Swtizerland if you don’t know any Slovene?…” This was another one of those damned lumps who feel just super duper dressed in their nice sweaters and corduroy knickers … because they know all about something or because they have a train set under their bed at home or because they already know they’re going to get a gold watch for their next birthday … “Bah! He can’t even answer my question!” he scowled. You just wait, I’ll land you such a punch, you’ll be looking for parts of yourself around the schoolyard for days!… My immediate neighbor, named List, was different. Calm. Independent. With a thin, dark red face, like mountain climbers, a bit cross-eyed, always wearing checkered shirts with white suspenders … While I answered during the first period, everyone had a good laugh. But that was nothing, I expected as much. Miss Roza found a way to silence them immediately … not with a look and not with her hand or with anything that I could notice … it was very elegant. I didn’t know anything … well, maybe my drawing and handwriting weren’t so bad … When Miss Roza asked me a question, I stood up and didn’t answer. All right, then, next time, she said and gently motioned with her hand for me to sit down … All my homework was written in chicken scratch. I didn’t have anyplace to write … when we’d finish eating, Vati turned the kitchen table into a work table and then later into his bed … In between times I had to steal a corner of it for my notebook or some sheet of drawing paper. But that was an excuse. I knew nothing because I understood nothing, and sometimes because I didn’t feel like thinking …

  Across from the school there was a fur store … with a fox made of red tin walking across its signboard. In its display window there were muffs, collars, coats and a pretty mannequin
dressed in a moleskin jacket. This store was like a memento of wealth and of Basel … I would go over to look at it. I felt like I was back on Gerbergässli. Every day I had the long walk to Jarše and then from Jarše to school … I had to get up especially early. Off of St. Martin’s Road there were soldiers who lived in a wooden shack in the middle of a field guarding the army’s crops … Every morning I gave the guard a hand salute … But then: past the long wall of the lime factory to the railway overpass and from the Dragon up toward Tabor to Ledina … more than an hour! The washerwomen were already out before seven pushing their two-wheeled carts with bundles of laundry down the shoulder of the road into town … At the steam oven bakery, I’d occasionally see two bicyclists engaged in a tussle, usually an Eagle and a Falcon who had run into each other on their bikes … One was riding into town, the other out of it. As they rode toward each other, one would wave an arm or an umbrella, causing the other to fall off his bike … He left his bicycle in the middle of the street and ran after the other, grabbing at his rear fender … if the other didn’t manage to escape, he kicked at his pedals or the bike … and then it began … they grabbed at each other, writhing through puddles, rolling over the grass and then back out into the street. It was comical to watch these grown-up, wobbly grandpas locked in some childish wrestling hold. People stared and either left them alone or walked on … At St. Jožef’s hospice I always waited for List, who lived somewhere close by. Those few minutes before school were the nicest of the whole day. Sometimes his older sister would bring him in on her bicycle. I liked her, because she was cheerful and like her brother and she always wore checkered skirts with suspenders … A few times on the way home from school we stopped at St. Jožef’s morgue where the dead lay, the old men and women from the hospice … There were wreaths and flowers all around where they lay. What were they like when their souls left their bodies? They had white faces and cardboard shoes that lay just as flat as them. We sprinkled holy water on them but there were some lowlifes who, if a corpse had its mouth open, would take all the little sacred objects set out on its clothes and stuff them into its mouth … I wasn’t afraid of them, I was just afraid that some soul floating around in the cold crypt that resembled a dirty garage might touch me … slide into my mouth like a cold snake and whisk everything out of me. Teacher Roza asked me a little bit every day and finally rewarded me with a smile … as though I were suddenly some model student … She had a son, they said, who apparently was such a prize student that he skipped some grades and was already in high school … After school she would often take me or some other student along to the market so we could help carry her baskets … She put on a black straw hat with glass cherries … She always wore a skirt that almost reached to the ground … Velvet, taffeta, satin, twill … I knew my fabrics well … Everyone said hello to her … on the bridge, at the market … I went with her from stall to stall where meat was sold as she made her selections. I listened to her talk to the master butchers. I was curious how such a learned lady would act in the midst of everyday life, at the market, with all its shouting and bargaining over price. She just smiled, enjoyed herself and was cheerful, like a true lady … she could have easily been the queen of China or Spain or Monte Carlo … She had her special vendors and peasant women … for potatoes, for lettuce, for apples, eggs, cream and flowers … Everyone was happy to see her. I was proud and felt it an honor to be able to walk with her through town … When she got on the streetcar outside city hall, she always waved goodbye to me through the window …

  Once after school I got to go visit Elite … It was a big sewing workshop, full of machines and men in vests cutting, measuring and sewing around a big extensible tailoring table … Vati worked around the corner, with the work in his lap, because he didn’t have a place at the table. Clairi sewed in the back behind some thick, brown tarp. She had to hide, I don’t remember from whom … the boss, the owner or the police … because she was working illegally … I didn’t understand … All I knew was that the men in vests at the big table were paying her directly out of their own pockets, because she was helping them. I went with both of them to Tivoli and then once with Clairi to visit her friend Marica, who worked in an ice cream parlor on St. Peter’s Road … This was a big establishment that had to be electrically lit even in daytime. Marica was pretty, blonde, and dressed all in white like a hairdresser … Not only did she have blue eyes and black eyelashes, but even her eyelids were blond, like a forest maiden’s … She brought each of us a piece of cake at her expense and then chatted with us as though we had paid her … The way home was much longer … and if I didn’t stop by the shed with the soldiers, all the more so. Mother cooked beans and potatoes or macaroni, if she had any, and mixed in an egg every once in a while. But our biggest holiday was on Saturdays, when they both got their pay from the tailors … I went out as far as the light at the intersection to meet them and when I saw the loaf of bread and the package of butter in Clairi’s shopping net, I immediately broke off a whole heel, even though my sister tried to prevent it.

  By the end of the school year I hadn’t passed. Teacher Roza assembled all of us for our final lesson. It was quite ceremonial. In a vase there were red and white roses with a tricolor ribbon wrapped around them. The boys were on pins and needles, red in the face and all of them sweating. Each of them had brought some present for the teacher … downright elegant little packages with a ribbon, or at least a bouquet of flowers. Miss Roza called out each name separately … You’re going to have to repeat third grade, she said to me when she handed me the big, rigid report card … all ones and twos, barely any threes … I was a little disappointed. This big document … with the stamp of the government and the white royal seal was going to trigger a tragedy, if I thought about my parents … After distributing the report cards Miss Roza gave us a short speech. All year long I’ve been looking at one of the boys in this class, she said, and thinking for the longest time that he had a terrible blemish under his forehead. Then one fine day I realized that he has such big, dark eyes … “Who? Who?” everyone shouted right and left. Our Lojze, the teacher said … So that meant I was handsome?! I realized to my delight … It was hot as I walked home and I was hungry enough to eat even wild chestnuts, if there had been any, even though they’re as bitter as soap … I went straight to visit the soldiers out in the field, guarding their crops from their shack … They were true giants with upturned mustaches, big shoes and caps that made them look like they were wearing pots on their shaven heads … But they were so friendly, you would have thought we were the same age. They knew as little Slovene as I did and that’s why we got along. I sat in their dark shack, with them reclining on their metal cots, which were for the cavalry. Now and then they would offer me a piece of toast left over from breakfast, because they were hungry every day, too … they showed me their rifles … such clumsy ones that they would go off when they took them down off the wall, or wouldn’t when they tried to shoot them. They looked at my catechism with its color pictures of the creation of the world, the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve … everything that happened up to the birth of Jesus … and then the pious widows who accepted the infant John the Baptist in the New Testament … I said that I would sell them the catechism, which belonged to the school, for a fourth of a loaf of bread or, in other words, a day’s ration of army sourdough … I sensed I was doing wrong, but I had to gather some strength … At the far end of the field was a barrel of water that they called their rain gauge. I hesitated a bit. “One must pay the utmost attention to documents, all one’s life,” mother had always stressed. She was thinking of passports, birth and christening certificates, various receipts, papers, and confirmations. I folded up the stiff report card and submerged it in the water barrel, then I tore off a white wad of it and shoved it into a molehill … At home nobody asked me about my report card. Mother didn’t remember about it until halfway through summer. “Hast du die Klasse bestanden?”* “Ja,” I said, “das Zeugnis bekomme ich im Herbst.”† Well,
at least I would have some peace until then …