Newcomers (26 page)

One day Clairi – as a result of a humorous incident in which, on the street outside the hospital she was startled by a streetcar and dropped a box of furs that she was taking to offer some customer in Tabor – made the acquaintance of an older gentleman who picked up her items for her and helped her repack them in a park on the other side of the street. A white-haired gentleman, all furrows and wrinkles. He invited her out on a date at the Tabor Café and she took me along, because she didn’t quite trust this casual acquaintance … He really was a white-haired, wizened man, but to me he seemed more like an old show-off, awkward and not very bright, at that, which I inferred from the fake way he behaved, but most of all from the unsavory jokes he was constantly cracking … On top of that, he talked in a falsetto, and if only his hair, though in Clairi’s opinion quite attractive, had not been cut in a ring of fringe at the top like the fathers … So this was the suitor I’d had to bathe, brush my hair, cut my fingernails and sit as still as a statue at a wobbly table for, and on top of that translate his inanities for Clairi and hers back to him. He didn’t care much for me, either, I noticed that instantly, I got in his way … oh, I knew what he wanted and I could tell from looking at Clairi that from one minute to the next he was becoming less and less to her liking. He ordered cake and raspberry juice. I got nothing out of the whipped cream or the
syrup, because everything was so polite and forced. When he paid, he pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket, which contained a banknote folded in three … Only then did my eyes open, only then did I begin to feel sorry for him and I felt ashamed. But it was too late for me to become any nicer toward him, at least not outwardly.

Then Clairi got to know a military family. Actually the Croatian wife of a non-commissioned officer at first, a stout woman with a broad face and lots of hair, Spanish-looking with lots of earrings and a beauty mark under one eye. She had brought Vati her red fox fur to mend. She knew how to tell fortunes from coffee dregs and cards … read palms … and she knew a whole bunch of superstitions … she knew lots of unusual Balkan dishes and bloody love stories. Her bracelets would clatter like castanets when she told them and her voice, her hair, her hands, her breasts, all of her would quiver. Clairi was drawn to exotic and romantic things … freedom, wind, fire. This was something for her! A free life in which every sign in the heavens and on earth has its own hidden meaning, every gesture its hermetic secret … Clairi would stare like a child. “So was?… Was Sie nicht sagen … Ist das möglich?…”
^†
She believed that our great-great-grandfather might have been a Gypsy after all … That was probably why we were constantly on the move, living from hand to mouth … why we liked fire, wind, trees, rain … and why we would never lose our will to live. At the same time in her mind she was cautiously assembling a judgment about this exceptional person … What an army dimwit … 
what a schemer, trying to get her tasteless fur, those “twelve worn-out foxes on one sow” mended for little or nothing … this vain, pampered shystress of fortunes and oracles. But then again … some age-old wellspring of faith in the instincts, in the senses, in the inextricability of phenomena … a door grown over with vines, beyond which there was another door, and beyond that yet another … until you finally ran into the grace that bestowed its revelation on you … Mira’s husband was a sergeant. One Sunday the sergeant came with her. He was a short, handsome, swarthy man reminiscent of Valentino. He wasn’t an officer, but still … He had white gloves and a saber, and from the saber’s hand guard a number of tricolor ribbons hung down. He hadn’t come empty-handed. He brought a bottle of brandy and some bacon. He sat down at the table and talked with Vati half in Serbo-Croatian, half in German, with a bit of Slovene thrown in. He was for Hitler … Vati was, too … Hitler had two roles to fulfill, so claimed Sergeant Mitič. He was bringing abundance to all the poor of the world and in order to do that he was also strengthening the offensive capabilities of his army … The world has never seen an army like this … powerful, mechanized, disciplined. He’s going to defeat all his opponents and establish a new order … And something else: Hitler is going to beat it into all the weaklings’ fat heads that only the person who is least afraid wins. Nobody is going to be able to hold out against that kind of force, which arouses such terror in weaklings. They will all be ground into nothing!… And as proof that all this is going to happen, take the German people. Whether by trick or courage, it doesn’t matter – they have to see the thing through to the end … the time has come for all nations
to pass a test of their viability. A human arm can be transformed into a club … cowards have to change into heroes, unbounded creatures … Hitler says, “Wir wünschen alles zu machen, daß die Form Mensch nur ein Zufall bleibt und eine Übergangsphase!…”
^‡
This ought to become the plan and goal of every nation …

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 …

O
NE 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 …