Newcomers (30 page)

After that I arrived back at Town Square …

Alongside the jewelry laid out on velvet in the goldsmith’s display window next door to the Hammans’ front gate I suddenly caught a glimpse of myself, so changed that I didn’t even resemble anyone I knew … I felt such despair, fear, hopelessness, and confusion within myself … but the windowpane showed a thin, wiry boy with disheveled hair and the muscular legs of a soccer player or boxer … An
athlete trained almost to the point of deformity … I had to step close to detect in the shadows of my eyes and nose some of that hopelessness and confusion that were inside me … All the rest was some unknown brat, whoever he was, who could very easily also have been my enemy, but under no circumstances my close friend … more likely an obstacle, the way other boys I tried to avoid were obstacles to me … Good God, how disappointed I was with the appearance I’d been stuck with, and I felt even more crushed than just shortly before … I wished I could literally extract me out of myself into the light … grab onto the air and pull myself out of that unfortunate shell into the open … I didn’t want to look anymore, otherwise I was afraid I could lose all partiality toward myself … I was one of those kids I had to run from because they were constantly blocking my path … I thought it would be best for me to quit studying, make myself invisible and unheard, and avoid people, or else sooner or later they would gang up on me.… I breathed a sigh of relief when I was back on the other side of the door again, no longer visible to myself or anyone else. I was free … and curious once again …

M
OST OFTEN
I went to the area just before the cathedral. Because that’s where the smallest store was that I had ever seen: the rummage man’s little display cases in the courtyard passage next to the inn. He also had several cases out on display on the steps and on the sidewalk outside the passage … This was my world … on a micro-scale. Toys, straps, buttons on cardboard, little toy pistols, combs of various
sizes … and then rosaries in every possible color, toothpaste and powders in tubes and little jars … two taffeta corsets that got me excited, little balls of yarn and seven tiny cups on a silver platter, six of which were gilt, but not the seventh … These glass boxes crammed full of wares from all over aroused more interest in me than the display windows of the biggest stores in town … They were like colored cartoons, variegated kitsch, comic strips from the
Most Beautiful Adventures in the World
 … Barely had you noticed one thing, than another showed up unexpectedly beside it … next to a bowl of pearls there were race cars, behind them there were trumpets and English horns with a Mickey Mouse and a child’s two-barreled shotgun for the jungle, affixed to a piece of cardboard showing, against a field of blue, a lion’s head with a silver mane and a gaping, fire-red gullet … beneath it was a gray wind-up elephant … The owner, the rummage man, stood or sat in his passage, always wearing a jacket and hat … He was an old man and slightly decrepit. All of this merchandise belonged to him. I didn’t pay any more attention to him than I did to any other uninteresting person on the street … He, on the other hand, noticed and remembered me when I stopped by every morning to stare into his cases on the sidewalk … Once he came up to me. “Since you seem to be so interested,” he said in a thin, wheezy voice, “come help me sometime when you’re free …” The thought electrified me … I was hired on immediately and was standing outside the passage the first thing the very next morning when its doors were still locked … The merchant arrived on an old bicycle and handed me the key … I opened it and set out a sign under the house number that read, “
DRY GOODS AND
MORE
. Jurij Velikonja” … Then I helped him take the little display cases from their stacks, unlock the padlock on each of them, and set them out one on top of the other up to the ceiling. I hung polka-dotted belts, whips, dog leashes, necklaces and different colored rosaries out on pegs, pinned scarves to lines strung across the ceiling, always in the same order … striped ones for everyday wear, then white, then silk ones for Sundays and checkered for special occasions, and after them scarves of red damask, scarlet taffeta and still others of green taffeta … set out on a big tarp two big pillows for gentlemen and ladies, two smaller ones, and then two even smaller ones … then Velikonja put a cardboad vest over my head that had buttons of all kinds … metal, glass, ivory, monochrome and multicolored, for clothing and linens … I walked around in that costume as advertising outside the cathedral and back and forth on the square … I had to admit that the display cases and the wares in them were redolent of age. But I enjoyed selling. Selling and business became my goal. At home I even made a sign “We sell everysing here” and had to replace the “s” with “th” … Old Velikonja was nice … we talked about this and that … but not at all about me, nor was he inclined to talk about himself … so not about anything personal. We mainly talked about the most urgent things connected to selling. He acquainted me with simple bookkeeping. On one sheet he had a precise list of what he had of this and that, let’s say scarves, and on the sheet opposite how many of them he’d sold. For everyday record-keeping purposes he had cardboard tabs that hung from the display cases where you just marked off whatever item you’d sold. As a reward for good work in my first
month he promised me his best cork pistol and a box of corks … We tended to have few customers. Out on the square I might occasionally sell a set of buttons for underwear … And in the passage, every now and then a housemaid might come for hair clasps or a ring … and would spend a long time choosing among all the rings displayed in various little boxes: little hearts made of red stones, a greenish anchor made out of aquamarine, gold stamped rings … The women bought hairpins and every now and then a scarf, the younger men bought belts, ties, a cigarette lighter or case … old ladies might buy a white prayer book for a girl’s first communion or confirmation … Nobody paid any attention to the Japanese ocarinas made out of bakelite … Velikonja toted up the number of items sold from the charts and put the money into a ceramic milk dish … At noon, when the church bells rang, he turned toward the stairs at the end of the passage that led up to private apartments and prayed. Then he went to the inn next door, the Spinning Wheel, for lunch. During that time I handled sales on my own … Once in his absence I sold a whole set of buttons for a man’s suit and roughly a meter of satin to some woman … though by then I had a good command of the inventory, there were still a few things that challenged me … I was most drawn to the little watches, toylike little things for kids on elastic bands. One afternoon I couldn’t resist anymore … although I knew that the watches were made out of tin and celluloid and weren’t real … still … and this should testify to my stupidity … I took out two of them that were attached to cardboard at the back of one of the cases … one to wear myself, and the other to give to Gisela … That was the end! That evening or the next morning,
after checking the sales or the lists on the cases, Mr. Velikonja, who was very precise, noticed that he was missing two silly little toy watches … When I arrived the next morning, he just gave me a rude glance and said nothing … I sat down on the shoe grater next to the steps, but Velikonja went in and out past me as if I were thin air … I could feel his resentment like a sort of sad, lazy spell reminiscent of sleep. That’s how two stupid little toy watches cost me a friendship …

S
O THAT WAS HOW
I
MANAGED
to cut off my own path to the cathedral … I headed back down Locksmith Lane to the embankment. I could sense, I could smell that boys met there … Outside the locked door of the warehouse there was a big, sandy area with thin trees growing on it, lindens … I sat down under one of the trees, determined to wait for the first boy who walked past so I could establish a friendship with him, no matter if he limped, was an idiot or had lice … if need be I would even have been happy with a girl my own age … I looked at the sapling for any similarity between it and the tall, mighty trees that grew along the Sava or around Cegelnica … It was too tiny, it was deficient in chlorophyll … it made more the impression of a little box of soup greens than a proper tree … The houses were deficient, too … both on this side of the river and the other. Otherwise, on the other bank there was a good-sized building, the gray blue Matica movie theater, and beyond it was Congress Square and the Star Park … Some chestnut trees were being cut down there and the base was being erected for a monument to King Aleksandar I, who was the son of Peter
I and was also going to be riding a horse, but one twice as big. Nearby was a casino with a garden restaurant and a music pavilion where an orchestra played in the evenings … But all of that was meant for the elegant world, the grown-ups, not for kids …

My waiting finally paid off … I noticed two boys carrying a big box across Cobblers’ Bridge, then they turned past the Kolman porcelain warehouse onto the embankment … They were walking so carelessly, one of them taller, the other shorter, that I immediately figured this had to be their home turf … Just to be safe I had put a stone in my pocket … Something in their faces immediately changed when they noticed me … They sped up and I tautened some muscles so I could get out of there fast if they attacked me … They set the box down close by, both of them taller than me, long-legged and long-necked like storks … “Where do you come from,” one of them asked … He seemed to have some difficulty speaking. Now the burden was on me and I had a test to pass … “Ve moofed here from Pohorič Street,” I said … The taller one was looking at me out of deep-set eyes. The pucker around his mouth was swollen and golden brown, but his forehead by contrast was white and bulging, making his head look naked … a moron? an idiot? The shorter one was made of other stuff, even though they looked and were dressed alike. In blue work aprons, like two little businessmen … fruit farmers, produce vendors … I got up. This required delicacy, because I was the one infringing on their space. Of course I was shorter than either of them … The other one, Karel, had a skinny, triangular face with jutting cheekbones. There was something unpleasant in his unblinking, narrow, gray eyes and
around his thin lips, something that radiated through his skin … He was more dangerous than the tall one … “Where are you from?” he asked harshly. “From Moste, Pohorič Street,” I answered. He sat down by the box, clasping his long arms around his legs … He lowered his pointed head between his knees so that the vertebrae stood out on his back … Then he lowered his eyelids so that only the pupils were visible. This was now a matter of instinct … distinguishing between a thousand changes of tone in what could be a friendship. Both of them needed to find out as quickly as possible that I came from a long way away and that I was absolutely no threat to them … “Ve came from Zvitzerlant sree years ako,” I said … The younger one opened an eyelid and started looking at me a little differently now … “Are ze two off you broders?” I asked quickly. I was in a hurry so they wouldn’t think better of this, decide that I wasn’t worth a cent and leave … “Yes, we are,” the taller one said enthusiastically … “Ant zis? Vie to you haff zis?” I pointed to the big box that seemed to be full of strips of different-colored paper. I wanted the younger one to answer. The older one waved toward the bridge. “That guy who puts covers on books gave it to us.” … “The bookbinder!” said the younger. “Let’s go!…” My mouth suddenly got dry … “Vill you come out zometime?” I blabbed, full of hope and doubt … “Maybe,” the younger said … They went into a yellow house that had a shop sign on it that said “Prinčič Fashion Salon” … Oh, was I ever happy, even though they never showed up near the warehouse again. I skipped with joy as I went home …

That’s how I got to know Ivan and Karel … They lived in the same house where their mother and both sisters had a small hat shop. They
only put one hat out on display in their store window at a time and changed it every week … one week it would be a hat with a veil, the next week without … then a hat for mourning, followed by a hat with cherries and next one with bouquets or swallows … If you went into their little store, all around you there were mirrors and among them a big print of The Angelus by Jean-François Millet, as the caption said down below … Past a wooden wall you came into their workroom and past the workroom there was a vestibule and from the vestibule you came into their room, where all five of them lived … Their mother was tiny, thin, and dark-haired … She reminded me of Mrs. Guček. Both sisters resembled the two brothers. Silva had a cylindrical head like Ivan … and the younger one, Ivka, had the same sharp, gray, bright eyes as Karel. They had yet another brother, the oldest, who was a barber and no longer lived at home … There was one hugely important difference between Ivan and Karel. Ivan was enrolled in special education and was very religious, while Karel went to a regular school and didn’t care about anything … Ivan was the first to get up every morning, so he could go to the Franciscan church, where he helped the priests and other ministrants first in the sacristy, then at mass … He would clear off the pews, put out the flowers, trim the candles. Now and then, under the supervision of an older attendant, he would serve as a ministrant in one of the side chapels … The others were all still asleep by the time he got back … He would put the big prayer book which one of the Franciscan brothers had given him back into the night table, climb out of his good clothes and lie down next to Karel to finish sleeping … Karel, on the other hand … not just his name,
but his pointy face reminded me of our uncle. Unblinking, cold, tight-lipped, inscrutable … as though he was never going to let you see his true colors … I had to accept that as part of the bargain … I suspected there were quite a few other things I was going to have to swallow. I resolved not to bat an eye at any intolerance or disappointment … I was prepared to sacrifice anything I had for this friendship … even more than the White Prince in the
Beautiful Illustrated Adventures
ever intended to sacrifice …