Not long after this, we hear that Smrtnik from Ebriach has bought himself a van that seats eight people. A lot of people go on trips with Smrtnik, we’re told. Grandmother doesn’t wait long and organizes an expedition to Brezje. She decides I will have to go with them because it’s time I went on a pilgrimage with her.
Early in the morning we cross the Seeberg Saddle Pass and are stopped at the border. I hand the Yugoslavian customs officer my first passport. He speaks Croatian or Serbo-Croatian and wants to impress upon us that we are at the border of a special nation that must examine all travelers who wish to enter it. Smrtnik takes over communications because he’s had experience with customs officials. After we’ve crossed the border, the men on our pilgrimage begin recounting their border adventures in years past. The only story that makes an impression on me is how our neighbor Peter, whom I know well, smuggled the skeleton of a cave bear across the border in a basket over the course of several nights, but that was still before the war.
The church in Brezje is overflowing. With those who are praying, we push our way up to the altar on which a Madonna with a crown and scepter sits enthroned. A few women fall to their knees and shuffle on their knees up to the altar. To give my appeals weight, I imitate these women and decide that I’ll just have to settle for dirty tights. Grandmother kneels, makes the sign of the cross, and stands up. Someone offers her his seat on the pew. During the mass I shift impatiently from one foot to the other and try to imagine what’s going on in the minds of those who are singing and praying. Finally, I sit on Grandmother’s lap. She tweaks my thigh to make me aware that I’m fidgeting. If you don’t calm down, I won’t bring you next time, she threatens.
When we step out of the church after the lengthy mass, the space outside looks to me like a high, shining nave and the inside of the church like a small cell in which we’d yearned to be outside, just as we’d earlier streamed into the semi-darkness to find purification. In the square in front of the church we pass merchants’ stalls. Grandmother buys rosaries and wooden spoons. I get a pack of cookies and a devotional image with a picture of the church with the Madonna of Brezja floating on a small, round cloud above it.
We are shown to a table in the tavern on the other side of the square. We sit under the framed photograph of the president, who looks down from the wall under his garrison cap with a red star emblazoned on its front. Studying the photograph, Smrtnik claims that no matter which corner of the room you stand in, Marshal Tito looks directly at you, he follows you with his eyes, so to speak. You can test it when you walk into the room. Two men stand up from our table and go to the men’s room so, they say, the Marshal will look straight at them when they return. Just as they come back in the room, our noodle soup is served. The two men don’t linger on the threshold long, where they’d stopped to catch the Marshal’s eye. From joy or relief at having prayed so exhaustively, they order wine to assuage their thirst. Grandmother announces that she can handle Cviček, too, and drinks a toast to her traveling companions. Besides, she has to fortify herself for the two remaining destinations, for Begunje and Bled.
The village of Begunje is not far from Brezje. We’ll want to visit a former prison, Smrtnik says, many people were tortured and killed there during the War.
We get out of the car in front of a high, white wall and enter the former castle in which the Nazis had installed prison cells. Lists of those who were shot to death, signed by the Carinthian Gauleiter, hang on the walls of the prison wing. A woman guides us through the rooms and, before we enter a dark cell, turns on a recording of a child screaming desperately for its mother. Smrtnik describes for Grandmother how it was when the Gestapo deported his family from Trögern. He couldn’t even cry, he says. I grab Grandmother’s hand because the child’s screams are upsetting. The screams cover everything there is to see like a blanket that cloaks what is visible and wrenches what is hidden to light. I don’t know how to let Grandmother know that I can’t bear the child’s screams but she keeps listening to Smrtnik and thinks I’m misbehaving. Terror rages inside me like a hurricane. When we finally step outside, it feels as if half of my head were missing and I were looking at it from outside like a house with its roof torn off by a storm.
Bled enchants everyone. We absolutely have to visit the castle perched high above the lake and look down at the water from above, Smrtnik says. We park the car in a small wood and climb up to the castle grounds on foot. The smell of cooking wafts towards us from the doors and windows of the restaurant established in the castle. The pilgrims’ moods revive. Soon after we’ve sat down on the terrace and ordered drinks and slices of the local cream pastry, a group of musicians start unpacking their instruments behind us.
For us? Smrtnik asks, that would be lovely!
For a double wedding, one of the musicians calls over, there’s lots to celebrate!
The music starts up with the arrival of the first wedding party. A cluster surrounds the first couple. Waiters circle the happy couple with trays of wine. The second couple is led into the courtyard by a group of folk dancers who urge them to dance with laughter and cheers.
Grandmother stands up and toasts the wedding parties. Her kerchief has slipped back in the excitement and a strand of thin, white hair peaks out from under the cloth. Without a word, Grandmother sets her glass on the table and approaches the wedding guests. She tugs at a man’s sleeve and whispers something into his ear. He bows his head, puts his arm around her shoulders, and starts to dance with her.
The elderly woman with round glasses dancing with a young man draws the photographers’ attention for a few seconds. They turn away from the bride and groom and take pictures of the unusual couple.
In the breaks between the dances, Grandmother speaks animatedly with her partner and only after several dances does she allow him to lead her back to our table. Thank you for the dance and a lovely afternoon to all of you, the man says and winks at Grandmother. He’s from Dolenjsko, Grandmother says. All I said was that I’m from Carinthia. That pleased him and he pleased me, it’s as simple as that.
The pilgrims stock up on wine and cigarettes for the ride home. They discuss how best to smuggle the goods across the border, and one of the men suggests stuffing cigarette cartons in my clothes, because there’s plenty of room under my dirndl. Grandmother considers the idea and gives me a questioning look. What happens when the customs officer finds the cigarettes, will I be arrested? I ask irritably. The pilgrims laugh.
The car bounces along the sparsely paved road towards Carinthia. We turn off into the Kokra Valley. One of the pilgrims becomes nauseous. Smrtnik pulls over on the side of the road and lets the man out. He throws up immediately. If he keeps vomiting at that rate, he’ll sober up quickly, one of the men says, then there’s no point drinking.
Smrtnik stops abruptly a few kilometers from the border. A second pilgrim has to vomit and dives into the bushes next to the road. In the dark, we can hear him heaving and breathing heavily.
Smrtnik asks the passengers to hide the wine and cigarettes, leaving only the authorized amounts visible on the seats so it doesn’t look like we’re bringing absolutely nothing back with us. A few bottles of wine and cases of cigarettes are stuck under the spare tire in the trunk, the rest are slipped into the sleeves of the men’s jackets and draped inconspicuously. What about you, an older woman asks, should we stick a few cartons in your dress, the officer won’t bother you because you’re a child. I agree and open my collar so that Grandmother can slip the cigarette cartons behind the top section of my dirndl. You should wrap a woolen jacket around your shoulders so that your back isn’t so noticeable, she says.
When we reach the border crossing, I lie stretched out on the back seat, stuffed full of cigarette cartons, with two cases beneath my seat, hidden there at the last minute, and I pretend to be asleep. The cigarette smoke tickles my nose. A customs official asks if the gentlemen have anything to declare and Florian answers that everyone each bought a bottle of wine and a few cartons of ciga
rettes, that’s what’s allowed.
And the girl, the officer asks.
I squeeze my eye shut more tightly and want to peek at least a little, to see what’s going on.
She doesn’t count, one of the men says, she’s too young.
You’re right there, the officer says and waves us on.
When we get out of the van on the access road below our house, Grandmother says that next time she’ll make sure she knows which men will be traveling with them to Brezje. There are some people you simply can’t go on a pilgrimage with.
Before bed, I lay my musty dirndl over the back of the chair. I’m exhausted and feel like my body has grown a few centimeters taller. Just wild growth, not at all useful, I might have thought had I not fallen asleep immediately.
THE cigarettes we brought for Father don’t cheer him up. He thanks us for the contraband and for a while no longer sends me to the tavern to get him two packs of strong, unfiltered Austria 3 cigarettes in a green package. He has other worries.
During the hay harvest his horse refuses from one day to the next to pull the cart. Father beats the animal with the straps. The stallion rears under the blows and pulls away the drawbar and traces, upsetting the cart. The panicked animal drags the splintering cart all the way back to the stables, where it comes to a stop, snorting and with foam around its nostrils. The shock ripples over its skin in constant shuddering waves. Father roars and yanks at the reins. I beg him to stop his cries of rage, but like the horse, he is beside himself.
Grandmother pulls me into the kitchen. She explains that from years of hard work the horse has become erratic and is at the end of its strength. For many winters, Father earned the money he needs to build the house with the dangerous work of hauling wood for the count.
He wants to build a house? I ask, astonished.
Yes, Grandmother says, but she’ll know how to keep him from tearing down the old one.
Father decides to sell the stallion. One day the horse’s stall in the stable is empty. The smell of horse sweat lingers for months. The stallion’s perspiration fades only gradually and eventually cedes to the smell of the young bulls that toss their heads cantankerously, as if they wanted to shake off the chains that have been put around their necks.
One Sunday morning, Mother bursts into the kitchen in tears. She begs Grandmother to come with her, she doesn’t know how she can help Father now. Grandmother seems to guess what the problem is and tells me to get a willow branch from the attic. Using the poker, she scrapes embers from the stove into a cast iron frying pan with a poker, breaks the willow branch I hand her in little pieces and puts it on the burning coals with a few herbs. It starts smoking right away. Mother has already run onto the outbuilding’s balcony and is pointing at the apiary in which Father has holed himself up. Grandmother rushes past us with the smoking pan. I hear Father singing Vigred se povrne, a sad song about spring that returns every year and brings everything back to life, only for him there will be no more spring, for he will die. I ask Mother what’s wrong with Father, but she just shakes her head and presses a handkerchief to her lips. Grandmother waves the smoking pan back and forth in front of the bee-house, covering the door with a cloud of smoke. Then she enters the apiary and comes right back out empty-handed. Without a word she returns to the kitchen. I stare at the apiary’s open door and believe I can make out Father with a rifle in his hand. In any case, he comes out of the building without a weapon and sits on the threshold with his head in his hands. Mother whispers that we have to take care of him. I ask what we could do and Mother answers: pray. You should pray for him! And so I say an Our Father for Father. He lifts his head and looks at us reproachfully for a moment, then starts singing again and sets the smoking cast iron skillet down outside.
On weekends, Mother sends me to the tavern to get Father because, as she puts it, he forgot to come home. She doesn’t want to fetch him anymore because he behaves impossibly on the way home and enough is enough, Mother says.
The kitchen at the Rastočniks’ tavern is smoky and filled with cooking fumes. When I open the door someone inside yells that the command to retreat has sounded. Father sits grinning against the wall at the large guest table. I sit next to him on the wooden bench. You should come home, I say, as if he didn’t already know. You think so, he asks and orders another beer for himself and a lemonade for me.
The waitress brings the drinks quickly and asks what’s new at home and how things are at school. Are you happy about the new house, she wants to know. I nod and look at Father quizzically. It’ll be something, he says, it will be my ruin.
Go on, says Pepi, one of my mother’s cousins, you don’t have to sign on to every stupidity. It’s a good time to build, hasn’t Father noticed there’s a cement mixer in front of almost every house. Yes, goddamn it, Father responds and draws on his cigarette.
It’s night when we leave the tavern. On the way home, Father argues with invisible adversaries. Sometimes he points at the sky and says, the Big Dipper, you see, or there, the Little Dipper. I walk beside him at a suitable distance and avoid touching him. Did Mother send you, he suddenly asks and he sounds more irritable than before. No, I lie, it was Grandmother. I see, he mumbles and walks on in silence.
At home Grandmother puts a glass of fortified wine and a cup of gentian tea on the table, the herb that cures a thousand ills, she says. Father should drink the tea before he goes to sleep. I ask Mother if Father is sick. He has stomach pains, she says, and lies awake almost every night. She can’t sleep either when he groans with pain. But he refuses to see a doctor. Maybe it has to do with the coming changes, she supposes. We’re getting a new house, and I’ll have my own room. Am I not happy about that, she asks me. I nod, even though the thought of leaving Grandmother’s room doesn’t thrill me.
Father spends the next day resting on the bench near the stove. Mother has laid an herbal compress that smells of damp hay on his stomach. At night, the pain made him vomit, but only bile came out, Father tells me, a yellow slime. I give him a worried look and go outside with a guilty conscience because I can’t do anything for him.
IT’S time for you to walk to the Hrevelnik farm with me, Grandmother says, as long as I’m still on my feet. Soon it will be too late.
One morning she wakes me early and takes a willow rod taller than she is from the granary. Put decent footwear on, she commands, the path is steep.
We start at a leisurely pace, descending the sloping meadow below the house to the municipal road. On the road, Grandmother turns and looks back at our house and its whitewashed walls flashing between the trees. She can’t get used to the idea that the old house is going to be torn down, she sighs. That house sheltered so many generations, how could anyone want to raze it!
We turn onto a road that winds its way through the pastures in broad curves up the shadowy side of the valley to the forest. The landscape dances and sways on the lenses of Grandmother’s glasses. The pastures swing up to the crest of the hill, the tips of the spruce trees sink down into the shaded valley, a fragment of sky glints in the glittering stream running next to the road far below.
In the forest, the path narrows under our feet. After a clearing, it slips down to a streamlet then climbs steeply uphill, as if it wanted to prevent our advance. It is slippery and covered with beech leaves. Our steps set off small avalanches of leaves that slide gently into the depths. Walking is difficult. Grandmother stops and pants after almost every step. She would like to rest by the well up top, she says, there’s nowhere to sit here.
At the beginning of the escarpment, I walk behind her and pass her on more even sections, wondering what I would do if Grandmother stopped and couldn’t continue. In spite of my fears, she shows remarkable tenacity that you would never have suspected given her emaciated form. We climb slowly and doggedly until we reach the turn in the path at the top of the rise, behind which a well is visible. The water flows along a wooden channel into a wooden trough. Grandmother sits on the forest floor next to the w
ell and looks at the house highest up on the valley wall opposite, now at the same elevation as we are. It strikes her that there are changes everywhere she looks, here something’s been built, there something’s been torn down, she says and points at a new access road. The road has torn a scar into the slope, Grandmother says and shakes her head.
After the well, the path runs almost level. Taking long strides, we approach the Hrevelnik property. It lies on the upper end of a gently sloping meadow. The shadow of a sundial vibrates on the whitewashed bulkhead of the main house. The buildings are abandoned. This farm was known far and wide for its sundial, now no one is left, Grandmother says and walks purposefully towards the stables. There was a path behind the stables that led to the Remschenig combe. This is the direction they came from back then, the women from Lepena who survived the camp, Grandmother begins her story. She was brought across the border near Koprivna illegally. When they climbed over the fence separating Yugoslavia and Austria, they laughed and wept. They flung their arms around each other’s necks because it suddenly seemed so easy to make it home after their long odyssey. Once we crossed the border, walking wasn’t hard at all, Grandmother tells me. They’d been walking all day. When they reached the Hrevelnik farm, night had fallen. She heard someone milking in the barn. She went in and said good evening. The milkmaid fell right off her stool, she was so happy, and the milk sprayed everywhere, Grandmother says. Milka jumped up and screamed, Mitzi, you’re back! We thought you were dead! There are more with me, she answered and pointed at the women standing outside the barn, at Gregorička, Mimi, the Mitzis, at Frida and Malka. All these women who had lived on the farm, they all crowded together. At the Hrevelniks, they told Mimi there was no point in going home, because everything in Kach had been destroyed. Gregorička went to the Rigelniks, hoping they’d take her in, Grandmother says. The Gregorič’s farm was destroyed, her husband died in Auschwitz, and the children were housed with strangers. The women were very upset. At the Hrevelniks they also learned that Grandfather and the boys were already home. Milka gave the women fresh milk to drink. She’ll never forget the taste of that milk, Grandmother says and falls silent.
Angel of Oblivion Page 4