Newcomers (27 page)

The tobacconist lady called to me through the gap in her window when I sat down outside her newsstand. She was demanding her money “immediately.” I instantly deflated … The next day when I came home from school at noon, Vati and mother were already waiting for me in our room, bamboo rod in hand. The tobacconist lady was standing there in the corner … she had closed her newsstand over lunch … she was short and undistinguished without her newsstand,
but she had such a wide, muscular rear end that I got excited and began fantasizing about something dirty … I had just enough time to throw down my backpack and race back down the stairs head over heels. I had no idea where to … I ran toward the train station, racing without any let-up, as though all the tobacconists in Ljubljana were on my heels … I stopped outside the fence of the freight station. I kept my hands in my pockets … Stood first on one foot, then on the other. Amid all this my pole stood up like a thumb in a glove … I watched the trains going past … freight wagons, tenders, tank cars … There was a distinctive building on the other side. The Hotel Miklič, as its vertical sign proclaimed … That was where we had stayed overnight two years before, when we still had Swiss francs in our pockets … People were sitting in the waiting rooms with the intention of traveling. Travelers. Different from those on the street, who just walked around for no reason. Peasants with wicker handbags, with backpacks, with cardboard suitcases, with baskets … The squalor consoled me, felt good. I sat down on a bench next to a railing and fell asleep. When I woke up, there were two bearded beggars, two well-liquored old men leaning against me. Where was I? I got up, shoved the shaggy dwarves, those bearded children who would never grow up, away from me … The steam that the locomotives emitted … “tssshhhhhh” … turned into cold, stinging fog. It reminded me of the souls in a drawing that I’d once seen in some old German book: in a rocky, barren landscape, vibrant little clouds came out of the mouths of dying knights, then narrowed into naked, white angels or black, finned devils who blocked out the sky, the sun, the stars, the moon … I went to the market.
There I saw the open butcher stalls where I used to help Miss Roza do her shopping. Under the counters next to the chopping blocks there were empty spaces where I could spend the night. But there was such a stinking, rotten chill dominating the place, gnawing at my wet feet and especially the slit between my trousers and long underwear, which had been sewn by its elastic band to my pants where I was exposed, that I had to get back up … It’s bad when you can’t find any possible place to breathe, one corner was worse than the next … I walked around in a daze … in the park near St. Peter’s Church I had cold sweats … I cruised from bench to bench, sitting on each of them for a short while … I made two circuits. In Jarše, in Lower Carniola, in Basel, in the mountains around Urach there were places, sanctuaries, hollows where you could hide and live, albeit with cows or young wolves of my age … Finally I shoved off and boldly headed toward Bohorič … Once past the fence and in the yard, I wanted to go up the ladder to Jože’s, but as if I was cursed, the ladder was gone and his room was dark. The horses neighed, it was warm there … But the stable door was locked. The house was asleep. Stars shone over the courtyard. They glimmered way up there, white and cold … sending each other ironic little arrows … I crept up the staircase … Here outside our room there was at least a kind of house rag that served as a doormat, and I could wrap myself up in it. I put my hands under the back of my neck, tucked my head in between my knees … Barely had I managed to doze off … to slip into a world of pleasant, warm darkness with no people … when light sliced into it: mother and Vati in their coats, Clairi in her brown sweater, and a cop with a big belly.
A commotion of voices … They’d been looking for me all over town, trumpeting my shame to all four corners of the world … It was three in the morning. I felt worst of all for Vati’s sake. He always got up first … He immediately went to the kitchen to shave. I stood motionless at his back while the commotion continued around the corpulent constable. My throat was all knotted up. He looked askance at me, then continued to busy himself with his knife … Clairi went all the way to the far corner … she wanted to have nothing to do with it all. The policeman left. Mother got undressed and then, “ganz still, bitte,”
^d
she whacked me on my cold butt with the bamboo cane, which proceeded to get hotter and hotter. Gisela woke up and started to cry. She tried to protect me by throwing herself in between, and then the cane stayed in midair … I lay down beside her in bed. Gisela pressed close to me, hugging me tight to warm me … It didn’t hit Vati until morning … He shook the table and the boxes … muttering monologues to himself. Bankrupt!… Hooliganism!… War!… Jews!… Blackguards!…

“V
ON WEM HAT DER
L
ÜMMEL
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 …

C
LAIRI 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 …