*It stopped running. We had to take it to the watchmaker’s.
†When will it be fixed?
‡In a week or two.
§Mrs. Guček took it to a watchmaker in the old town who’s a friend of hers.
‖No, no, we didn’t trade the watch with the grocer and we didn’t put it in hock … it was so broken that the watchmaker couldn’t do anything with it … nothing but cogs and springs …
aGritli will send you another one.
bPangs of the soul are far nobler than pains of the body.
cHi! (Serbo-Croatian)
dHold still, please.
“VON WEM HAT DER LÜMMEL nur das schlechte Beispiel?”* mother asked, as if I weren’t in the room … It was a harsh blow … the whole house found out about the scandal, the whole block … From the hospice to “Mexico” … The twins disappeared whenever they saw me … I didn’t dare show myself to butcher Ham, who was always so nice to me … not to mention Jože, whom I hid from like a needle in a haystack. I shook passing the newsstand as if it were my tombstone … I would have preferred to spend days and days in bed, hidden under a blanket … Slept or died. But you can’t afford a luxury like that living together in one room. I had to get up and go to school, that ludicrous chaff cutter … The tobacconist lady told mother, “Dieses Kind wird Ihr Unglück sein, liebe Frau … Schon jetzt ist er durch und durch verdorben … Ein elender Bub … Ich habe mein Vertrauen in ihn gelegt …”† Those were her last words … Mother was afraid she was going to take us to court, even though she’d gotten furs as compensation … that she would have me locked up … She didn’t dare respond. She and Mrs. Guček discussed whether or not to put me in some institution … yes or no? At length they weighed the arguments for and against … “Ach, wenn der Lausbub nur wüßte, wie Weh er Ihnen tut …”‡ Mrs. Guček said. Yes, the very same fright with the shriveled eyes of a mad crow … “Die einzige Rettung ist die Erziehungsanstalt,”§ mother concluded, fixing me with her eyes … The old woman and that girl of hers by the faucet now had a free hand … to go at me with even greater zest … I spilled water on the floor when I set a bucket down … Of course I would first take the bucket back to our room and then come back with a rag … No! Up went the blinds … the foster child or stepdaughter pressed her elliptical, pimply face to the glass pane. She said something back into the room, informing her aunt, and the next instant the old lady had leapt into the hallway and begun shouting at me … Mother came out … she brought a rag along with her … and more or less came to my defense … I was boiling … with rage at the old hag, but even more at that pale, anemic puppet of hers … A few days later I finally ran into her, just as she was coming up the stairs. She pressed flat up against the wall, so as not to brush against me … that low life and wild man. She was taller than me and four or five years older. I stood right where I was on the steps up above her and suddenly landed her such a wallop, a full wooden mask, that it deafened me, too, for a while. At first she almost fainted … then the tears started to pour … as pale as her face … amid sobbing that was so miserable that it touched my heart. She ran upstairs, sprinkling the hallway, the walls, the support beams as she went … At that very moment mother reached for the bamboo cane again …
*Who on earth ever set such a bad example for the lout?
†That child will be your undoing, ma’am. Even now he’s rotten through and through. A wretched boy. I trusted him.
‡Oh, if the lout only knew how much pain he’s caused you.
§Reform school is the only solution.
CLAIRI WENT BACK several times to visit the old lady who lived on Town Square over the dry cleaner’s … She also got to know her daughter, Mrs. Hamman. She was the owner of the dry cleaning shop, which included ironing and alterations, as well as a linen shop selling bed covers, quilted blankets and window curtains … Then mother began going with Clairi … She curled her hair for the occasion and put some rouge on her cheeks. Since she didn’t have any proper blouses, she sat in her coat through the whole visit, with it buttoned to the top and a scarf that she wrapped around her neck to make it look like a blouse collar … When they came back, they talked about Mrs. Hamman and some gentlemen who were there … and always fell silent when I came in … They would let me hear about the impressive furnishings of her rooms and salons. “Das Nipptischchen in der Mitte, ein herrliches Louis XV. Stück,”* they enthused. And the ladies … the Duchess Thor von Thorfels, Miss Ana-Maria, who was slightly cross-eyed, Miss De Lambistes, a relative of the Italian ambassador … Mr. Hoffmann, Dr. Haras … The most distinguished, most influential set in town. Just hearing about all these exquisite objects was enough to cause a delicate crystal to form in my ears … On the ladies they recognized all the best pieces from the workshops of Ljubljana’s furriers. Choice “jackets,” little chokers and stoles. They even knew what they cost … And how a lady wasn’t really a lady until she wore fur! How nice the things looked on them. They had been charmed … And once again they headed out for a visit. They had their urgent courtesy calls to make, and now and then even Vati had to go with them, whether he liked it or not. He ironed his trousers, bleached his collar … Wherever it was they were headed, it was mysterious and a long way off … As mysterious as if they were heading into the fog … especially because all three of them kept coming back more and more worried, as though out there, beyond the confines of Bohorič Street, they had experienced a shock, a disaster …
Around this time I had to start attending preparations for the sacraments of the holy communion and soon after that preparations for confirmation in the St. Peter’s rectory. I was the biggest disgrace in my class, because I hadn’t yet had communion. And because I hadn’t been christened until I was eight years old, as the certificate of baptism said, in St. Paul’s Basilica in Basel. All of these things got delayed because Vati didn’t like priests. During our last year in Basel mother had me christened on her own initiative … On that occasion in the park across from the church, the priest of St. Paul’s handed me a yellow envelope containing a gold twenty-franc coin. My coin was immediately confiscated at home … ever since the bailiffs had repossessed nearly all of their assets they needed every last sou … They always took everything away from me … there was nothing to prevent this, it was their right … I recall how the ministrants performing the liturgy in that wide, dark church, all wearing white shirts, giggled behind their music as not an infant, but a regular giant was lifted up over the christening font, and how I howled when they poured ice cold water over my hot noggin … And even though I got the name Alojz Samson at the time, my family kept calling me Bubi …
This time, of all the kids getting ready for the sacrament of holy communion, I was the oldest once again … The old vicar and his young assistant priest taught us stories, commandments and songs … The assistant priest was a tall, skinny, waxen priest in a cassock. We sat on chairs with high backs in the rectory’s vestibule, among portraits of bishops and past priests of St. Peter’s, and we sang: “Sing, ye mountains and valleys … sing with us, all ye plains …” “So, what did you like most about the hymn?” the young priest asked us as we sat in the open doorway between the vestibule and the room with the piano. I decided that I was going to open my mouth and say something for a change, something I didn’t do even in school. Because the words of the song had truly captivated me. “I like ze mountains pest off all …” I said. “Why?” the priest asked, his lips showing the grimace of disgust at my accent that I was already used to seeing from everybody. “Pecows ze kow, ze flow …” I stammered. “They don’t flow, they sing,” the priest brusquely replied … this time with more obvious repugnance in his voice, because I hadn’t understood the words. Just like my Slovene language teacher!… Once again I’d let myself be lured out onto thin ice … I’d opened my mouth and babbled … Don’t … say … anything! That was the best counsel of all … Whenever I didn’t speak and kept mum, I could let my eyes wander wherever my heart desired. No sooner did I say anything
than I awoke the sleeping dragon … got entangled in disputes and rejection … I looked at the priest, because based on everything that the catechism said, he ought to have been a living rebuke to all the highfalutin and hurtful miscreants in the world … But he had such an ordinary, puckered-up face that I couldn’t believe this was supposed to be a servant of God, one of the Savior’s elect, that he could have eyes seeing the inner truth. And even all around me … not in this wide heavy table, nor in the piano, nor behind the cheap silk curtains concealing St. Mary with the emaciated Jesus just off the cross in her lap … there was no sense of any presence of the all-highest … except, perhaps, in the cleanliness of the old cabinets and the smell of the holy water that was already stagnant, in fact. Where was He? Nowhere! Not even here, where the priests slept, ate, and bathed … when in fact this is where he ought to be before anywhere else, certainly before that palace with bell towers next door, the big, white church … That’s where the altars, organ, candles and icons were … a sort of dance hall … And what about the mountains and valleys that were supposed to be singing? What sort of far-fetched nonsense was that, what sort of dangerous games of the imagination!… If they really believed that the mountains sang and didn’t go, then that … aside from the fact that they liked to eat and drink far too much and far too well, something Jesus would never have permitted … was the greatest depravity of all. In that case something had to be wrong with their spirituality …
On the day before that Sunday Vati spent all night long sewing my first confirmation suit out of his own black suit … By morning it still wasn’t finished and he sewed on its right sleeve with just a few stitches. With a white ribbon and a bunch of lilies of the valley tucked into my sleeve cuff I came running into the church at the last minute … I was already late and I had to push my way through the crowd of excited and flushed parents who had come to watch the first communicants and therefore had filled up the entire back of the church … I shoved my way through them, under their bags and bouquets, and suddenly my sleeve came off at the shoulder, slipping over my elbow like a stovepipe, and I only caught it at the last minute … the cotton or horsehair or whatever it was that served as a lining poked out at my shoulder … “Gottverfluchteterteufel,”† I swore like Vati … I had to shove the sleeve back up toward the shoulder and press my arm to my side, as though I’d just been inoculated … The vicar looked at me furiously with those charcoal-rimmed eyes of his … only my communion candle was left on a little covered table … I grimaced in pain in an I just got kicked by a horse outside posture … Idiot! Life was always veering off into some comedy or other … you would have burst with laughter if something like this happened in a movie … Another problem was when we went in a long, fingery line, our hands clasped around candles, up to the communion table. One row got up, then the next one left and caught up with it … The light, the reflections, the organ, the singing and the spectators all blinded me … For the first time my tongue was going to feel the light touch of Jesus, who was contained in a white, thin little disk, and my mouth instantly swelled … He was going to break into me like the highest saint of all saints, without there really being anything for him to find in me, in this dark little cell crammed full of perversion and greed, in this heart of a murderer … and I had to reassure him that nothing awful was going to happen to him, that I would try to protect him from the evil forces of my soul and body … tuck him away in some quiet corner of myself, where he would be shielded from me … But what was going to happen to me when he really entered me, taking over my body, my soul, my whole being?… Was I going to change, become illuminated, behave more nobly?… was his light, bony hand going to guide mine, would the future be brighter and nicer … From now on was I going to feel the lightness of strength and faith … Would I get to perform some glorious feat in the process … would I become a model student, build a house for Vati, a garden for Gisela, would I tame mother, find Clairi a husband? Would I become a soldier? Awaken the love of a beautiful princess and become betrothed to her, and be in her heart as she was in mine …? A massive table in the rectory was laden down with delicacies … there was a cake in the middle that was as big and white as Mont Blanc with a layer of sand … there were cookies already out on plates … and dishes of cherries in sugar glaze … I could barely wait to sit down and dig in. Then they took a picture of all of us … white candles in hand … the girls wearing their little wreaths and veils … mine was the only black suit in the picture amid all the white ones …
Had I told the priest everything at Saturday confession? No, I hadn’t! What was I going to tell that fat bag of flesh, that red crocodile hide in his black cassock who could barely breathe on his dark side of the grill! I wasn’t going to tell any of them anything about the delectable things I did with my pee-pee and repeated over and over again until the little thing was just a poor, skinny fuse … Nothing about Anka or the little gypsy girl, nothing about my shoplifting, or the tobacconist lady, nothing about my angry thoughts. That stayed in my head. I couldn’t and wouldn’t put it out in the open … and then he wouldn’t have understood my accent, anyway … God already knew what sort of a labyrinth I had in my head. I wasn’t about to confide anything to the blacksmith bellows rasping behind the bars of that little cell, even if it smelled of flowers and ambrosia itself … No, I didn’t believe that even one of them was Jesus’s apostle. They were ordinary people in uniforms who made faces … like the police, or sergeants, or train conductors, whether they were talking about ordinary things or singing hymns … I’d sworn, I’d lied, that’s what I’d told him the last time … One bright morning in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight … Those were the kinds of things I’d confessed. Once the hurt priest said to me, “Oh, how Jesus is crying now!” There was something relaxed in his voice, like a storyteller’s … I could practically see twelve-year-old Jesus in his little shirt, shedding tears over the storm gutter at the corner. I almost opened my mouth to tell him everything, that’s how much the humanity of his voice moved me … but thank God, I didn’t … Once outside I assigned my own penance, more than the priest had given me … Instead of one Our Father I prayed ten, instread of two Hail Marys I recited twenty … That was for all the infractions that God alone knew about and for that reason were his concern only … “You must have had a lot of sins, if you had to do that much penance,” my schoolmates said when I came back out after half an hour … they judged the sinfulness of your sins based on how much time you spent confessing in church. They were determined to mark you one way or another … Oh, then I began to finish my prayers in a flash … I didn’t pray my real penance until I was back outside … sometimes crouching behind the fat entryway pillar that supported a golden painting over the doorway … And from there I would move to a bench in the park. Did it count if I prayed just in my head? No … surely not, I had to at least move my lips as I prayed, otherwise it would be too convenient … Nothing, not a single thing counted for anything if you didn’t use your muscles in the process …
Then every Saturday afternoon I began having to attend the pieties that were designed to prepare you for holy confirmation. At confirmation you became a soldier of Christ … that was something real that you could get enthusiastic about. The preparatory pieties were held in a different place each time … first in the cathedral, then in a church in Trnovo … We prayed, sang and studied, listened to the sermon of a priest who told us that there was a fog in our souls that we had to cut through with a knife. That provoked some laughter, because it was true. Now I began to look differently at the paintings over the altar, especially the ones on the ceiling … Jesus conveying the big golden key of St. Peter on the rock … A big, handsome ship sailing through shadows … full of sails to the very top of its masts … setting about for Mount Ararat … All of the townspeople were on its deck, all of them calm. Among them I recognized some dead people from Basel … I even recognized the man holding onto a camel and the one who was at the wheel … Captain Noah …
He had his mouth open. He was shouting commands … The ship went on … With my whole heart I followed it across the whole ceiling … On the far side was Jesus, resurrecting Lazarus in some cramped room … A banquet. Troubadours playing for coins. And women around a king, giving him all kinds of advice … a whole mountain of advice … Bloody women, they were always spoiling eternity … I’d had it up to my ears with their gossipy tongues … The Last Supper, Judgment Day … I believed in the paintings that depicted events. But I didn’t believe the modern ones that just had one saint standing with his hand raised in an oath, as if he were in a telephone booth where just one person could call … My sponsor was a student, an owl, the St. Vincent’s conference had assigned him to me, Vati explained. I was promised a new suit, underwear, and shoes. I went to get measured. In the nuns’ garden, amid the geraniums and touch-me-nots, a skinny, pious tailor measured me for a belted jacket and three-quarter pants made of mottled cloth … I also got shoes with soles that stuck out on the sides and looked like submarines, and a white shirt with a collar that reached halfway down my chest … The confirmation took place in the cathedral … This was the first time I got to see the bishop up close, the one that Mrs. Guček and the whole town knew liked looking at women, and had a red nose because he was fond of drink … There was no other bishop in town, so this had to be the same one that everybody picked to the bone … This was the first time I saw the bishop, whom they called pastor … he really was dressed all in gold … with a tall gold cap, a gold cloak and a gold, curved St. Nicholas rod. He didn’t strike it as hard as they’d threatened he would. The blow wasn’t manly or athletic or feminine or anything at all … My student sponsor in his outgrown sport coat and wide necktie stood behind me … There were street vendors outside and he had bought me a bag of candy and oranges … Then we went to some little house in Moste next to a factory, where we played roulette for prizes … The whole sidewalk outside was packed with us and it took us nearly an hour to get inside. There were ten of us who’d had sponsors appointed … We gathered in some room at a round table. The grand prize was a pocket watch on a chain that was hanging over a chest of drawers. At first we won tea and potica. When my turn came, I tossed a little ball onto the red spinning wheel with silver numbers on it … The ball kept bouncing crazily back and forth before magically stopping on the number that had also been assigned to the pocket watch on a big label … The grand prize! Incredible!… God was shining his grace on me! Then a nervous conversation, a brief argument erupted between my sponsor and a little man in a black necktie and hat who was the organizer … I was holding the watch, which was silver with a green dial … “The watch,” said the little man, “cannot be his, because he’s from a different precinct.” What did that mean? I could see my prize, my treasure disintegrating. I have to admit, my sponsor offered a spirited defense, even though he was quite undistinguished and gesticulated a lot … but he was just a lowly youth, a student, and he had to give way to the little man’s arguments. I had to return the watch through a whole forest of hands so they could put it back over the chest of drawers … I really was on the verge of crying … Instead I got a different prize, a kilogram box of “Dr. Francek’s Chicory” … At home Vati fulminated. “Diese Schweinhunde von katolischen Pfaffen …”‡ Mother and sister searched through the bag … aside from a few jellybeans, lollipops, hazelnuts, and one orange there was nothing … not one single dinar, not even a cent. I gave the whole bag to Gisela. All I had were the shoes and the suit, which, because the fabric was cheap, mother predicted would fray, wear out and fall to pieces within very little time … First communion and confirmation were behind me … without too much pain I’d passed one subject at school: religion.
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