Newcomers (16 page)

In March Clairi and I gathered kindling … it was already dry … It was strange, but somewhere far from here, but not far from where Vati was in Ljubljana … the dark Führer … the thin man with his stubby mustache and his hair parted to one side, with the belt strap going over his shoulder … had marched into Austria once again at the head of his glorious army … Into the city that mother sang about, “Wien, Wien, nur du allein … city of my dreams …” There were photos in the
Patriot
 … A whole forest of upraised arms, flowers, black swastikas like crossed-out gallows or broken extremities in the white circle of their flags … And the tanks, the cavalry, the Heinkel bombers. A whole army of young boys carrying their little Hitler flags, in capes and with drums. The Attila Youth! These kids even had medals pinned to their chests … All of this was in the air … like an invisible, gray soot falling on the Krka. He called to the people, so that they came running down to the Krka to listen to the radio through headphones … Nothing was clear to me … Not far from the clearing we ran into the forester … He whistled softly from behind the trees and took a big portion of cracklings wrapped in newspaper out of his leather shoulder bag. For us!… Clairi and I didn’t know how to thank him … “A kiss,” said the forester … “OK, but only a peck on the cheek,” Clairi said. But barely had she puckered her mouth when he took her in
both arms, with his whole uniform, and squeezed her against him … Smack! Smack! went the kisses … He grabbed ahold of her rear end, her breasts … I was there when Clairi finally fought her way loose, jumped, and shoved him away … flushed red with anger and the abrasion of his whiskers … She stood amid the big clearing, rubbing herself … “Adieu, Herr Lokar … Das dürften Sie nicht machen …”
^d
And he had always seemed to be such a decent man. Respectable. Well dressed!… I picked the bag of cracklings up off a tree stump … there was no way I was going to leave them there for the snakes or foxes … Suddenly a stubborn silence dominated the area by the spring near the forester’s house … I would break the ice with a stone in the mornings to fill a pot with water … The forester’s children came toward me over the grass and surrounded me. They were standing so close that I knew right away what that meant … But I didn’t understand why, because they were good, decent boys and girls otherwise …

T
HE DAY BEFORE OUR DEPARTURE
we still didn’t know how we were going to get our things, our suitcases and the rest to the train stop … There was nobody we could ask in the village. Not even Jožef. Anyone who might have helped us would be getting on Karel’s bad side, is what mother said. What about the Gypsies? Mother and I went to the quarry to get a hitch with a driver … Meeting with them didn’t worry me, because the Gypsy groups often changed in the ravine.
Sometimes there were more of them, other times fewer, and sometimes there was just one of them perched there, picking his lice off. On the marly stone where the ground was level and smooth there were tents and campfires … while their carts and horses stood on the gravel and sand. Now I saw the Gypsies differently from before … They were like circus performers, magicians and dancers from an amusement park … Chicken thieves, horse thieves, thieves of clothing, perhaps. But robbers and murderers by no means. With their ridiculous necklaces, bracelets and rings in their ears, with their sticky coin purses around their necks, sideburns straight out of fashion magazines, their funny and colorful clothes, their shawls, headscarves and hats they gave the impression of mardi gras characters. Moreover, they were only slightly worse off than we were and the granite walls of the quarry differed only slightly from the cold walls of our room … And ours did leak when it rained, we would have had to admit … There were old Gypsies here too … gray-haired, barely mobile, with white fur on their chests, the faces of old doctors … old women with the collapsed cheeks of grandmothers … and fat women who resembled the rich fruit vendors at the market … I was amazed in their case and couldn’t fathom how they could live out in the open, instead of in houses, in rocking chairs and hospital rooms … Everything would have been fine, if they just didn’t stink the place up quite so much … cooking awful brown sludge in their pans … pretending to work … banging away at stones with their hammers for the municipality, sitting on the short handles of crutches wrapped up in rags … Mother and I finally agreed with a fat Gypsy woman that everything we left
behind would be hers … some skirts, blouses, a straw tick, a pair of shoes … if she drove us with our luggage to the train stop … The evening before we left was corn shucking time in the vestibule … everyone from Uncle Jožef’s house, some villagers and Karel. They had all become good friends again … Some of them were sitting right next to our door while the whole lot of them brawled at the top of their voices. Karel, Jožef, Stanka, Mica, some village women, Ciril and Ivan … We didn’t dare leave the room … As soon as we said anything or moved, they would become alert … They would stop talking and start listening … We had to pack our things quietly, as if we were in some sort of hospital … They talked, sang, cracked jokes, and laughed. Then I sensed that their voices, at first quietly and one by one, then in chorus, began to mount. As though you were putting logs on a fire … first one, then another … until you end up with a pyramid and light it … Blam! a corncob came flying straight into the door at the height of their chatter. Laughter! Blam! came another … “Zurick in die Schweiz! Heilhitler! Heilhitler” they hollered … “Still bleiben!”
^*
mother warned us. Gisela was afraid. Clairi was rigid with fear … How was she going to get to the outhouse … I sat on the strongbox, sorting through my school supplies … textbooks, pencils, notebooks … But inside I was boiling … Two to one, only counting the grown-ups, but otherwise we were outnumbered three to one. This wasn’t fair, this broke all the rules … Suddenly … flutter! flutter! plunk!… the door opened and something black fell into the room … 
and the door slammed shut behind it … The black thing was not a stone. It collided with the wall and slid down … then got back up … as light as a feather … A sparrow! It was back on the floor … I tried to catch it … but then … pitter-pat!… it fled away from my fingers … It took off again … I climbed up on the bench to catch it … but it had already flown away and fallen on the down comforter. Carefully I reached across from the side and got it. Look! As light as a petal. It stuck its head out between my thumb and index finger. I lifted it up. But strange, under its eyelids there were just little pits … Somebody had gouged its eyes out on both sides … and they were hanging alongside its beak like smashed raisins … I tossed it out the window toward the tree. Rage, horror, and disgust mounted within me to the top of my head … and began squeezing my eyes out of their sockets. I kicked the door open and literally flung myself out, as though into water … Onto a heap of tassels and cobs. I saw everything now in a particular way … Their faces … I started swinging … Karel, Mica, Ciril … I howled … Thwunk! I got hit by a corncob in the head, in the back … All of a sudden so many hands!… I grabbed Karel by the neck … He was grinning … Then I squeezed … He shrieked … I flung myself this way and that … I wouldn’t let go … He fell back off his log … He bit me in the arm, the pig!… Ciril came to help him … One more head … I leapt at Karel and gripped his chest between my legs. “Bubi! Bubi!” mother and Clairi shouted at me … The others surrounded me from behind, shouting and cursing … Somebody kicked me in the back … then hit me in the neck … followed by a gob of spit out of Stanka’s mouth … They threw me back inside the room … Clairi,
mother, Gisela … their long faces in front of me like dripping candles. My hands, my face, my legs and everything inside me was shaking … Only now did I feel all through my gut their blows, kicks, and bites … I was broken … my ribs wobbling, my teeth chattering … My heart started pounding so hard that I couldn’t hear the noise anymore … I threw up … My knees gave out … and I dropped to the floor … What if I’d killed Karel?… I would have liked to be able to cry … but some sort of cramp seized hold of me … I had attacked everything there was and couldn’t stop … Oh, how I wished I could have killed all of them!… With a scythe, a hoe, an axe!… I would have smashed the whole straw cutter over their heads!…

The next day all four of us sat waiting for the head of the Gypsy horse to appear at the window, with the Gypsy woman sitting on the box … Everything had been closed, locked and secured with padlocks … There was nobody else in the house … We climbed through the window to get to the outhouse. I could barely turn my head … everything was still boiling inside me, and everything was broken. The Gypsy woman drove to the back of the house, practically overturning the wagon on the steep slope … Karel had forbidden any Gypsies to approach the house from the front … We handed all our luggage out through the window … the comforter, the suitcases (canvas, cardboard and round), a bag of laundry, the steel strongbox, the pipes we had removed from the stove, because they were ours … and set it on the wagon. Mother made a stack of a sweater, some skirts, a pair of shoes and the straw tick for the Gypsy woman, who examined them closely … held them up in the sunlight, unfolded them, tried
on the shoes … She wasn’t satisfied with what she’d been given, it wasn’t adequate payment for her effort … All the way to the train stop she muttered angrily and complained in her language … we went around the house through the fence by the postman’s house … past Poldka’s little house … the engineer’s villa … down over the long road past the blacksmith’s … There was nobody anywhere, except for some kids in some yards … Because the little wagon was so fragile and the diminutive horse so skinny we didn’t ride in the cart … It went slowly. It took an effort to reach each of the trees along the way, one after the other. Over and over … It was raining buckets when we reached Ljubljana that night and Vati met us on the platform. The streetcars had stopped running, and he couldn’t take us and the luggage home with him on foot … So he ran out to hail a taxi … He argued with the driver over the fare. Finally the driver agreed. By then we were soaked through to the skin … A black, square car with red arrows for turn signals on both sides drove up to where we were … It had a huge spare tire on the running board blocking the rear door … so we all had to pile in through the door on the other side … The train station vanished along with its lights … Despite the rain I could feel the wheels revolving along the asphalt. Thank God, we were back in the city!… The driver turned on the overhead light. Now we couldn’t see anything outside anymore. That little light set in felt captivated me … maybe because I was sitting between the seats on the floor … The taxi swayed as it drove into the black hole of night, full of the downpour and gritty puddles that spattered the windshield and windows … on the sides, at the back, in the front … 
“Mein Zimmer liegt weit draußen in der Umgebung der Stadt,”
^†
Vati said.

A
LL HE HAD
was a black pot, a plate and utensils for one person. The bed, a table, a chair and the stove in his basement room had been borrowed and belonged to the landlord. “Ein pensionierter Zahlmeister – bei der Marine,”
^*
he explained. The only furnishings that were ours were the wicker chest and the sewing machine that Clairi had brought with her from Switzerland.

The first morning we got up very early … The first thing I actually saw through the window was a miracle. A miracle of red roses entwining some green sticks that had crystal balls on them amid the thorns, reflecting the sky’s blue and the blue house … Right across from the window, which was barely an inch up off the sandy ground!… I had to get outdoors as soon as possible … “Paß auf!” mother put a hand on my shoulder in warning … My God, the house was so big, three stories tall … Blue, with its windows and doors outlined in white and white bands at the corners. It stood on a big lot of white sand that was neatly and carefully raked … Behind the flowers there was a round pond full of water and a wooden gazebo painted green … The trees behind it were arrayed in thick grass that had been well soaked by the previous night’s rain. The road was visible on the far side of an
iron gate set in a high, sculpted hedge … God, where had we come to? A castle, a villa, the estate of some wealthy count? I didn’t dare move from the spot … As though I had downed some concoction, starch?… I just stood there. But there was something else … something that flickered and buzzed in the air … What was it? I couldn’t guess. Behind the house in the middle of the sandy yard there was a big green well, with a gigantic handle jutting out like a train signal … To one side of it, tucked away, was a shed made of boards and white cardboard. I didn’t dare go there yet … That’s where the forest began, which probably wasn’t big … and at the edge of the forest was a wooden hut, an outhouse, and a lime pit. Behind the gazebo, from the lime pit on, a narrow path led alongside the woods to a brown chapel. The Chapel of St. Roch with his dog … The saint was depicted in the garb of a Roman soldier with a sword made of mosaic tiles. He was standing in a desert and pointing to a wound on his thigh. He had blue eyes with rings around the pupils … No matter if I stepped to the right or the left, the saint’s eyes followed me … I went on … behind the hedge was another road, full of dust that intersected with the first one behind the iron gate.