Newcomers (20 page)

In the woods we made paper airplanes and each of us was supposed to mark his with his country’s flag. I wanted to draw a white cross on a red field on mine … all the others were either Yugoslavia, England, America, France … or such far-off countries as Holland and Sweden … “You’re competing for Germany …” Pestotnik said. “No, I’m koink to pee Zvitzerlant …” “Others have already got Switzerland.” They stood there glaring at me, the pains. So I took my plane and on its wings and tail drew a swastika, which I didn’t like because it was so prickly, like four linked gallows … Coats of arms with swords, lilies, or lions were completely different. We assembled along a line in front of the building site. Three heats. The plane that flew the farthest and longest would win … In one of the heats the winning plane bore the sign of the swastika … So I had won.

Out of the blue old Slabe, the Frenchman, started coming out to the woods, a toothless old grandfather in a white shirt, white cap
and white tennis shoes … He taught us fencing … At first we each smoothed off a stick and attached the cover of a box of shoe polish at one end as a foil guard to protect our fingers … In the clearing he showed us the various basic thrusts … eight in all … and especially a trick for assuring victory in a match. In the usual course of crossing foils, instead of going after and parrying your opponent’s tip … you plant your foil diagonally into the floor in front of him, while your opponent, whom you’ve tricked while he’s holding his foil in a horizontal position, naturally strikes downward to protect his legs, but just as he does that, you lift your foil up, striking him in the chest on the heart side with its tip. A kill!… All of us learned it and it would have been monotonous if we didn’t know other basic attacks and didn’t use the trick at various intervals … Somewhere in the middle or at the end of a round, after several warm-up lunges on the ground as we leapt from stump to stump while fencing. But your eyes had to be quicker than your opponent’s … The Frenchman’s wife, a tiny woman in an apron fastened across her breasts, who raised flowers and vegetables to sell at market, would get angry at her husband and make fun of him … Every so often she would call to him from on top of the flat roof of their half-built house to come home and get to work, her shouts echoing all through the woods, but he would pretend he was deaf … Others made fun of him, too, but everyone liked him more than they liked his wife … After every competitive round he would solemnly praise us after lining us up. He also taught us boxing. Not knockout punches, which each of us already knew, but hooks and uppercuts and how to block punches. Word was that he had once
been a wrestler or trainer, and ultimately a referee too … he showed us a photograph on a scrap of a French newspaper: him dressed in white with a black bow tie. What was he like? You couldn’t make fun of him. He went jumping around so earnestly when we practiced. And his gray eyes bulged so severely whenever we broke a rule that we had to take him seriously. Mornings he would already be waiting for us, as we’d agreed, past the bushes in the clearing, all dressed in white and with the wet gray fur that grew out of his ears … He would ask if we’d slept well and then we were off, repeating the previous day’s lesson after him. There was no difference between him and the kids, we could address him informally … When occasionally he had to go watering flowers with his watering can and we had to wait for him over in the clearing he would be red in the face with embarrassment … Once mother, Gisela, Clairi, Vati, and I were invited to his house for a visit … Vati didn’t want to go … He never liked paying visits, or formalities … The Frenchman’s wife showed us around their house. Everywhere you looked there were colorful things … variegated curtains, multicolored furniture, rainbow bedcovers and curtains, yellow, red, and green throw pillows … it was as if you’d walked into the wagon of some circus performers. I liked it … From their flat roof, where his wife always called to her husband and the Frenchman was supposed to finish the house by building another story, if only he hadn’t been so lazy and run out of money, there was a beautiful view: over the grain fields all the way to the forest and then across more fields to the cemetery and airport. They were constantly at odds with the Jakličes, who wouldn’t let them take the road across their property … 
so the Frenchman’s wife had to take all her flowers, which grew near the neighbor’s beds, and take them on a cart back to the house and only then set out on the road into Ljubljana … She brought glasses of lilac juice which she herself made out to the garden for each of us … She smiled a lot, she didn’t seem at all as hard-hearted as she did on the roof, and the Frenchman told a few jokes from Paris … During our visit mother constantly kept looking over at the new four-story building where tall, stout Mrs. Gmeiner lived. Now the one boy, who was my age, was joined by a brother who was a student of engineering. According to the Frenchman’s wife some bank officer, a Slovene, was also paying occasional visits. Mrs. Gmeiner was reportedly from Vienna and an Austrian, but she kept very much to herself and hadn’t even exchanged a word with the Frenchman yet … One day I ran into her. It was pouring buckets and I was coming home from school without an umbrella and soaked to the skin, when I noticed her in a shiny black leather coat holding an umbrella in one hand and a cape in the other, running through puddles past the houses across from the school, which was on St. Martin’s Road. Her little boy was just then coming back by a shortcut nearby and she shouted out, “Mein armes Büblein!”
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An instant later she had him wrapped up in the cape. I was jealous. My mother would never have done anything like that …

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 …”
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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 …

M
RS
. G
MEINER
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 …