Newcomers

by Lojze Kovacic

  The sergeant lived with his wife Mira in a modestly appointed room of a villa near the railroad tracks … next to the Falcons’ gymnasium … Aside from a wardrobe chest and their bed, the only furniture consisted of several big, gray-green wooden suitcases with heavy locks … The fact was the officers and NCOs were constantly on the road, first in one Yugoslav province, then in another … They had big, embroidered sheer curtains on their windows … I was amazed to see that military commanders had such poorly furnished homes … It bothered me that they lived in accommodations as makeshift as ours … It would be fine if these were fortifications, shacks, guard posts at the front, or in disputed territory … But to live like this with all their dress uniforms, sabers, braids, and medals … The sergeant had a friend who was also a sergeant and who enjoyed seeing Clairi … I didn’t see that either one had a pistol, a machine gun, or an automatic rifle … They hung their sabers over the knobs on their night tables. What kinds of commanders were these?… They had big diplomas, solemn oaths in frames hanging on their walls … with the royal coat of arms in gold and crossed swords … “I will defend and protect the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Yugoslav homeland …” I stood looking at these, full of admiration and doubt. How was it possible that they had these solemn vows on their walls for all to see, when all of them were against the king and the state … when they had no intention of protecting and defending the border when Hitler attacked … When all of them supported him … I looked at both sergeants and others who came to visit them … These couldn’t be real soldiers, commanders … True, they wore the uniform, but more the way any woman wears a fur coat. I didn’t want to believe this … I found out that they did in fact have pistols, which they would take out of boxes to clean the hammers, polish the barrels with oiled cleaning rods, and shoot with, too … I saw one of those decorated commander’s uniforms come off once, revealing skin like other people had … vaguely disgusting, white human flesh with black bristles, devoid of taut muscles, tendons, any firmness at all … a kind of lazy, disintegrated human machine like the bodies of ice cream parlor attendants or cooks … And finely articulated hands with polished nails, as though they never did any work and just picked their noses or something. These were supposed to be warriors?… I couldn’t believe it … but then they got back into their coarse uniforms, put on their belt straps and sabers … the soldiers outside the house saluted them, all turned to stone, as though they had gods in front of them! I was full of doubts … they gnawed at me … everything was so fuzzy, double and triple … If these weren’t actual, loyal soldiers, they weren’t actual sworn enemies, either. If they were traitors, they couldn’t have been true friends of the enemy, either. They were nothing … neither civilians nor soldiers, not people, not men, not priests, not Gypsies … I still enjoyed going to visit them, because I kept hoping that everything I’d seen on my previous visits had just been an illusion or a deception, and that any day now … I was going to stumble onto their true image as warriors … firm, decisive, hardened men, full of plans and concerns … old Indian souls who had a vision of life and could show you the right way: Sky … Earth … Clouds … But instead …

  One Sunday all five of us had our picture taken under the arch of the railway viaduct, so that it looked like we were standing in front of some fortress made of hewn rock … At least they would have that to point to … Then we went down to the restaurant next to the quarantine hospital … along the way the other sergeant kept putting his arm around Clairi, but she gave him no sign of encouragement. Soldiers were like Gypsies for her … completely undependable people … plus they could get killed at the front. “Heute da, morgen Gott weiß wo …”§ The tavern was noisy and smoky. Someone was playing the accordion. And they were singing. And dancing. All of them had faces as red as tomatoes. Even Jože was here in his best suit, with Tončka. Clairi’s friend Marica from the ice cream parlor with her big, fleshy fiancé, an insurance salesman. We ate pretzels and they gave me a glass of wine to drink … All three women kept talking about dying their hair. For the first time I felt a cloud in my head and something as hard as a rock pressing against my forehead … I mumbled the songs that the others were singing … Jože and Marica’s fiancé asked me to sing something … Over a full ashtray that still had smoke coming out of it, I sang the aria from Carmen that Zdravko had taught me … “Toréador, en garde, toréador, toréador …” and when I finished half the tavern applauded …

  *The cheap vegetable season

  †Well what do you know … You don’t say … Is that possible?

  ‡We want to do everything necessary to make sure that the species called human being remains nothing more than an accident, a transitional phase.

  §One place today, God knows where tomorrow …

  ONE DAY a small package containing a wristwatch arrived from Basel. Margrit had sent it. The watch had a gray wristband and was packed in cotton. I put it on when I went to school in the morning … Now I was almost like the other students. If I’d had boots, corduroy knickers, a light blue sweater with a white shirt, a leather briefcase and a Pelikan fountain pen, I would have attained the ideal … But I had a pair of Vati’s old trousers, a shirt that mother had made for me from one of her blouses but that still looked like a girl’s shirt, and the same old canvas backpack for books … Worst of all were my shoes, which a nun at the St. Vincent’s conference had given to me. They had high, narrow heels and you fastened them with little hooks way up over the instep, practically over the shin. And if you added my strange accent and the way I mixed up genders and cases when I talked … which made my classmates laugh … I wasn’t just funny, I was hilarious, a regular laughingstock … The heels on the boots from the nun were so high that I rubbed clay on them to make them seem shorter, so that people at least wouldn’t tease me around town, because I was as wobbly walking in them as I would have been wearing stilts … Now I had a watch … All my schoolmates came flying like bees to honey to look at it on my wrist. This watch was the height of fashion, even though it told time the same as any other watch … One morning mother asked me to leave it at home, because they didn’t have any other timepiece. I reluctantly took it off my wrist. She hung it on the nail in the wall, which was where she kept the electric bill … When she hung it up, I wanted it back, but she soon got me to change my mind … Every day when I came home from school, the first thing I did was look at the nail over Vati’s head, to see if it was still hanging there by its band … One day the nail was bare. I broke out in a cold sweat … “Sie wollte nicht mehr weiter. Wir mussten sie zum Uhrmacher tragen …”* mother said … That exquisite watch had broken down?… I didn’t know what to do. “Wann wird sie repariert?…”† “In einer, zwei Wochen …”‡ It took a long time … A week passed. Which watchmaker had they taken it to? I asked … if they had taken it to the arcade under the Skyscraper, the repair would cost a fortune. “Die Frau Guček hat sie zu einem befreundeten Uhrmacher in die Altstadt getragen …,”§ mother said. Mrs. Guček, that crazy old loon whom you couldn’t trust with a pin …

  The second week passed, then a third … There was still no sign of the watch. One day I noticed it on the wrist of the merchant Bojadamič’s long-legged son. He was out playing in the yard. He was walking along the ledge of the wrought-iron fence, holding onto the uprights, when I noticed the gray watchband with the big chrome onion on his wrist … “Vehr to you haff zat votch fromm?” I asked him respectfully, because he was an awful dolt … “What do you care!” he answered with the same dismissive sneer on his pale face that I’d grown used to from this sort of boy … He squatted down and fixed his button-like eyes on me through the fence until I gave up and went back to the other side of the street … Pigs! So they’d given it to the merchant because they owed him for groceries … I stormed upstairs, kicked the door open and yelled, “Ihr habt …” I summoned heaven and hell down to earth … I raged like Vati … rammed my head into the wall … bit my tongue as I roared, so that it swelled up like a donut
… ran out into the hallway to catch my breath … and there was the old lady already with her stepdaughter, come out of their broom closet to enjoy the fun … I stormed back inside … blood was trickling from my lips, it was getting dark before my eyes … I was suffocating and felt I was losing consciousness … “Nein, nein, wir haben die Uhr nicht mit dem Spezeristen umgetauscht, wir haben sie nicht verpfandet … sie war so kaputt, daß der Uhrmacher mit ihr nichts anfangen konnte … lauter Räder und Federchen …”‖ mother said … She was lying, that was obvious, it was written on her forehead in big letters … They were all lying! It was only my indignation and rage that gave them cover not to feel anything … They had sold the watch or bartered it for food that I, too, had eaten … “Gritli wird dir eine andere schicken …”a Oh, sure, that’s exactly what she’ll do!… I ran downstairs suddenly … The old lady and her ward were still standing by the faucet, though enjoying themselves less … I almost flew across the street, I was so pumped full of rage … I walked up to the counter. Big-nosed Bojadamič came out of the back room. Do we owe you anything? I asked … “Not anymore, everything’s been settled …” I began to feel afflicted … “Die seelischen Qualen sind stets erhabener als die körperlichen,”b Mrs. Guček had told mother … I had stopped going to buy things at the store up there, the biggest one on the block and in the whole neighborhood, because they had once caught me trying to steal carob beans … There was another, smaller store on the other side of the street, close to the train overpass … In a small, dark window amid little painted cardboard cases hanging on threads, for such was the marketer’s art … there were stacks of carobs, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, prunes, and little chocolate truffles … I went to the tobacconist lady and, without looking through the slot at her puckered mouth, I said that if she could lend me seven dinars on my parents’ account, I would use it to buy a bag of firewood … She gave it to me without any hesitation and without a receipt … I bought a whole bagful of carobs, a bag of almonds, a kilo of prunes, cinammon, chocolate-coated bananas … Across from the store there was something like a little plot with a well that had dried up … I brushed the powdery snow off its ledge, it was the end of October, and I spread my sweet banquet out … the saliva and juices were collecting all through my head … my body craved tons of sugar … I devoured it all in an instant … I did manage to put one of each item in a bag for Gisela, which I was going to put in our hiding place for her, the hollow space under the cushioned chair, from which later, when no one was left in the room, we would take things that we meant to hide from the grown-ups … A week later I went back to the tobacconist lady … this time with a sheet of paper rolled up into a little pipe, and I asked her for twice as much money as the first time … I ate quickly … a half kilo of marmalade this time … which I ate with my fingers straight out of the wrapping paper. This time I sensed I had overstepped the bounds of what was permissible … my punishment was already waiting for me with no right of appeal … it was already descending … I headed out onto St. Martin’s Road to invite one of the soldiers from the hospital who were always selling me sourdough bread to go to the movies with me … None of the orderlies, all of whom I at least knew by sight, were anywhere to be found. So I stopped across from a soldier who was standing outside the front wall of the Šlajmer Clinic, looming over the foliage of a laurel hedge that reached up over the sidewalk, cleaning his comb with some leaves. “Živio!”c I greeted him. He was wearing a cape, and under its hood a cap with a badge and thick combat boots instead of the usual foot wraps. He was from an upland division, the mountain artillery … I would have preferred an infantryman, because I didn’t know the gunnery side of the army that well. He was glad to have company. “Do you want to go with me to the movies?” I asked. He was immediately in … they had released him from the hospital and now he had the whole live-long day until his train departed. At last I had company, too … We went to the Kodeljevo Theater, I bought two tickets in the first row and we ate two portions of Turkish delight in the lobby … I was very pleased to be able to treat him and he was embarrassed, but grateful, then went back to normal, then was surprised once again as he sat next to me in the chilly auditorium, wrapped in his cape, showing me his bayonet and eating more Turkish delight out of wrappers … I was proud and full of joy when during the movie I observed in the glow of a heater that showed through some hole in the wall the effect my manna was having as I continued to shower it on him from the sky. We watched a double feature … After the show I walked with my mountaineer in his studded army boots to a building that had a fresco of the four seasons on its facade … there I quickly bought him three Ibar cigarettes, we shook hands and he said goodbye … he went marching off to his train … it was the end of a beautiful day and I returned home completely worn out …

  The tobacconist lady called to me through the gap in her window when I sat down outside her newsstand. She was demanding her money “immediately.” I instantly deflated … The next day when I came home from school at noon, Vati and mother were already waiting for me in our room, bamboo rod in hand. The tobacconist lady was standing there in the corner … she had closed her newsstand over lunch … she was short and undistinguished without her newsstand, but she had such a wide, muscular rear end that I got excited and began fantasizing about something dirty … I had just enough time to throw down my backpack and race back down the stairs head over heels. I had no idea where to … I ran toward the train station, racing without any let-up, as though all the tobacconists in Ljubljana were on my heels … I stopped outside the fence of the freight station. I kept my hands in my pockets … Stood first on one foot, then on the other. Amid all this my pole stood up like a thumb in a glove … I watched the trains going past … freight wagons, tenders, tank cars … There was a distinctive building on the other side. The Hotel Miklič, as its vertical sign proclaimed … That was where we had stayed overnight two years before, when we still had Swiss francs in our pockets … People were sitting in the waiting rooms with the intention of traveling. Travelers. Different from those on the street, who just walked around for no reason. Peasants with wicker handbags, with backpacks, with cardboard suitcases, with baskets … The squalor consoled me, felt good. I sat down on a bench next to a railing and fell asleep. When I woke up, there were two bearded beggars, two well-liquored old men leaning against me. Where was I? I got up, shoved the shaggy dwarves, those bearded children who would never grow up, away from me … The steam that the locomotives emitted … “tssshhhhhh” … turned into cold, stinging fog. It reminded me of the souls in a drawing that I’d once seen in some old German book: in a rocky, barren landscape, vibrant little clouds came out of the mouths of dying knights, then narrowed into naked, white angels or black, finned devils who blocked out the sky, the sun, the stars, the moon … I went to the market. There I saw the open butcher stalls where I used to help Miss Roza do her shopping. Under the counters next to the chopping blocks there were empty spaces where I could spend the night. But there was such a stinking, rotten chill dominating the place, gnawing at my wet feet and especially the slit between my trousers and long underwear, which had been sewn by its elastic band to my pants where I was exposed, that I had to get back up … It’s bad when you can’t find any possible place to breathe, one corner was worse than the next … I walked around in a daze … in the park near St. Peter’s Church I had cold sweats … I cruised from bench to bench, sitting on each of them for a short while … I made two circuits. In Jarše, in Lower Carniola, in Basel, in the mountains around Urach there were places, sanctuaries, hollows where you could hide and live, albeit with cows or young wolves of my age … Finally I shoved off and boldly headed toward Bohorič … Once past the fence and in the yard, I wanted to go up the ladder to Jože’s, but as if I was cursed, the ladder was gone and his room was dark. The horses neighed, it was warm there … But the stable door was locked. The house was asleep. Stars shone over the courtyard. They glimmered way up there, white and cold … sending each other ironic little
arrows … I crept up the staircase … Here outside our room there was at least a kind of house rag that served as a doormat, and I could wrap myself up in it. I put my hands under the back of my neck, tucked my head in between my knees … Barely had I managed to doze off … to slip into a world of pleasant, warm darkness with no people … when light sliced into it: mother and Vati in their coats, Clairi in her brown sweater, and a cop with a big belly. A commotion of voices … They’d been looking for me all over town, trumpeting my shame to all four corners of the world … It was three in the morning. I felt worst of all for Vati’s sake. He always got up first … He immediately went to the kitchen to shave. I stood motionless at his back while the commotion continued around the corpulent constable. My throat was all knotted up. He looked askance at me, then continued to busy himself with his knife … Clairi went all the way to the far corner … she wanted to have nothing to do with it all. The policeman left. Mother got undressed and then, “ganz still, bitte,”d she whacked me on my cold butt with the bamboo cane, which proceeded to get hotter and hotter. Gisela woke up and started to cry. She tried to protect me by throwing herself in between, and then the cane stayed in midair … I lay down beside her in bed. Gisela pressed close to me, hugging me tight to warm me … It didn’t hit Vati until morning … He shook the table and the boxes … muttering monologues to himself. Bankrupt!… Hooliganism!… War!… Jews!… Blackguards!…