Newcomers (33 page)

S
EVERAL TIMES
when I came into our room I found Mrs. Hamann standing in front of the table where mother, Vati and Clairi were sewing. One time there was even one of those gentlemen in the black neckties and green hats with her. The next time there were two of them, a short one and a tall one, both dressed identically … Barely had I come in when they fell silent … Sometimes a servant would ring the bell and Vati or Clairi or mother, and sometimes all three of them, would have to go upstairs to talk to her … “Ich will mich nicht in die
Politik einmischen,”
^*
mother complained … They were sitting around the table, downcast … “Sie werden uns glatt in ein Lager stecken, wenn wir nicht eintreten,” … I heard Clairi say. “Andererseits, wenn wir beitreten, bekommen wir eine Unterstützung …”
^†
I didn’t like it when they sat like that, made worried faces, mumbled to themselves … that usually meant we were facing yet another misfortune or some decision that would propel us into even more hopeless circumstances … a move … no money … even worse poverty. “Wo sollen wir eintreten?”
^‡
I asked … The mere fact that I’d entered the room caused mother unspeakable irritation. “Geh spielen …”
^§
she said abruptly … she still saw me as a stupid, frivolous, heartless child who was not to be trusted. But at school they all took me for a full-blooded German. The classrooms at Graben were ugly. They were full of stupid mama’s boys and spoiled brats from Trnovo. There was no point in having anything to do with any of them. Just one boy in my class, Miki, the son of a drunken painter, small for his age, even came close to being likable. At least he didn’t laugh at me. Otherwise the whole class would grab at their bellies guffawing whenever I was asked to write a conjugation or declension on the blackboard. The teacher, whose name was Marija Sajevec, seemed bright and pretty to me. She had reddish-blond hair that looked like a huge blossom, pretty legs, a
nicely made-up face, and eyes between her blond lashes that looked like aquamarines among onions … But her prodding, silly questions exposed me to even greater mockery. It was in her nature … The class got stomach cramps from laughing and I stood on the platform, as dumb as a log … Then with her finger or facial expression she sent me packing back to my bench and recorded a big, fat F for me … I didn’t understand how such an elegant lady, who put me in mind of perfumes, dance dresses, and great beauties, could be so indiscriminately hard-hearted and rude … And yet our form master, Mlekuž, was even worse. His huge, naked, white head with its shiny crest reached all the way up to the black frame of the heir apparent’s portrait … while under the table the orthopedic shoe on one of his feet rested there, big and black, as though it were some sort of old-fashioned photograph camera … He walked with a cane. He was a confirmed Falcon and patriot. On the first of December, with fifth grade teacher Sirnik, leader of the Youth Organization of the Adriatic Guards, standing at his side, he delivered a speech in the gymnasium, which had been decorated for the occasion. He spoke about the twenty-first anniversary of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, about King Aleksandar the Unifier and about the Germans who were threatening Slovene territory. He spoke briefly, clearly, not one bit loftily, while the one next to him in his white trousers, blue jacket and captain’s cap on his head looked like a crooner straight out of a musical … From the first day I knew that my classes with Mlekuž were not going to be easy … From the very beginning he gave me sinister looks. Without the tiniest trace of a smile. He had bulging eyes and plump African
lips. Otherwise he was quite emaciated, with the sunken cheeks of a fanatic … Even when he spoke Slovene with Vati, his eyes would bulge pronouncedly and his fat lips would strain and contort, as if they were one of the most disgusting amphibians … And his big red ears, with which he could hear everything, even a pin hitting the floor … His voice was penetrating and harsh. He could have delivered a sermon in the cathedral and everyone out in the market would have heard him … He would swat you with the rubber on the tip of his cane, but you’d also catch a good length of cane … Once I had to read aloud what I’d written in my notebook … He simply exploded. He shoved back from his desk and came limping toward me in his faded smock, swinging his cane, with which he smacked me across the shoulders so hard that I literally sank down into the bench … To top it off, some of the boys would wait outside for me every day. I was still safe as far as the main door of the school’s disgusting entryway, which was painted all over with brown crawlers. But as soon as my foot came off the last step, I had to be on my guard … They would leap at me from behind … get me in a double Nelson … they even knew the holds!… so that all I could do was kick with my heels … or they dropped on me from above, from the threshold, the steps, causing my school bag to fly across the sidewalk into the street, my notebooks, erasers, some arrows … Two or three would hang onto me … they didn’t just use holds, they beat me furiously, which was even worse. I had to defend myself and retreat long enough for some adult to show up on the sidewalk, but they usually weren’t any help, sometimes they just egged on my assailants … They also ripped my school bag so many times
that I had to sew it back up with a big needle in the afternoon. They were born brats, Hitler was just an excuse … I would have liked to see him there. Or King Peter II. Or an efendi, or the Aga Khan! There was another ambush waiting for me behind the Zois pyramid … That’s where that miserable Firant sometimes lurked, who was always opposing me, as if it went without saying … allying himself with whatever side was the strongest … Now and then the blowhard was even the ringleader of the ambush … but he was never alone. My voice almost changed from the fury I felt when I saw him. They were all around me, two, three, four of them. Still, I kept heading straight for the pyramid. But I also began to get ready … With a stone that I always took with me to school that served as brass knuckles … I whaled at Firant’s bony gourd, at the bocce ball heads of the other falcons and the knobs of the eagles … I threw him an undercut, a regular knockout punch with my helper, which made his gums bleed and his two bunny teeth up in front start to wobble … Not one of them was my equal. I promised Firant I would deal with him that afternoon when he came to the riverfront … When I got there, he would sometimes be crouching by the cart. He’d steer clear if he didn’t happen to have an inner tube full of stones with him. Sometimes he’d ask from a distance, from the edge of the bridge, if we could be friends again and he’d walk toward Kolman’s on the embankment with his hands up … Sometimes I’d wave for him to come, because I felt sorry for him as he kept circling a pump on the bridge and looking our way … I knew all too well how rough it was to be on your own, without any friends … But at other times I’d be unbending and wouldn’t relent until Karel put in a word or
Franci came running to report Firant’s request that we make up … I knew that none of it would last very long … at most until the next day after school … School was one world for us, but the embankment was a completely different one … Sometimes he came up to me all excited to report what he’d just heard on the radio … that eighty German paratroopers had taken Fort Eben-Emael in Belgium, which was defended by three thousand soldiers … Or that the Germans had advanced into Luxembourg … The rat, devoid of any force of character or will, the parasite! I felt like telling him that if you’re going to talk up the Germans so much, speak German, otherwise you’re just a traitor … Now of course there was no way I could think of a war on the Castle … No exploits were possible with that clever and treacherous Firant, who could attack me from the rear … It wasn’t just the Germans in Belgium, the Russians were beating Finland. They had broken the Mannerheim Line, against which they’d fired three hundred thousand rockets in a single day … They had also taken a fortress and waved with their rifles on top of it, like the Germans did from the Belgian fort … strange friends.

Finally I got my chance to see the frescoes and rifles in old Mrs. Hamman’s apartment again … Clairi took me along when she went to visit her … The old lady invited us to sit at a tall brown wicker table and served us cream. Oh, if only I could have lived in such peace and abundance! I would just read books and draw and never leave the house to go anywhere again … The old lady gave me a little metal box that showed a sepia film of an African scene … a hunter sitting on a fallen log in a tropical jungle … and another film from an operetta:
female dancers in short skirts, with plumes on their heads … There were two reels in the box that I could turn to make the film go forwards and backwards … You saw the scene play when you aimed the device at the light … That hand-operated movie theater allowed me to instantly strengthen my friendship with Karel and Ivan … Now in winter practically nothing happened. Sometimes we went to the movies if we had the money for it … Movies about stubborn pilots who didn’t obey their generals and wore straw hats instead of helmets and then became exemplary heroes … Outside the warehouse we built a fort with firing slits out of snow and poured water on it so it would freeze overnight … What if we made a theater, it occurred to me. The red room, which was cold and damp, was still empty and we could build a stage in it. We could filch the boards from construction sites … sew a curtain out of some sheets … The Prinčičes’ mother invited me inside … Now I would sit with Ivan and Karel in the workshop behind the back wall of their store … Ivka was there, and Silva … all three of them sewing hat crowns. Both brothers and I would crouch on the floor near the stove, winding hat ribbons up on our fingers … Sometimes the two girls and their mother would sing. Not hit songs, but real ones. About a Gypsy, an orphan who was driven away from home … about a stepdaughter out in a cold storm and snow covering hill and vale, who falls asleep on her mother’s grave … Tears came to my eyes … Then we told stories. I talked about Basel … about its attractions … the shop that we had on the Gerbergässli … about Vati’s assistants … about the rabbit farm he was going to build in Polica next spring when the females got pregnant … I could
feel my prestige growing, but still I avoided Ivka’s willful eyes the whole time.

S
ERGEANT
M
ITIČ AND
V
ATI
were sitting in the first room, looking at a map that the former had brought … German tank units were approaching the Maginot Line, with British, French, and Belgian divisions all around. Now it was France’s turn … It had already lost its best divisions. The ones that were left were mediocre. Even their air force was nothing much. The Germans could attack with a hundred and twenty divisions and have another thirty in reserve … The attack was going to be like a blow from a blacksmith’s hammer …

It was our topic of conversation out on the embankment, too … War was in the air … and sometimes so were airplanes. Yugoslav ones. They would fly in a starlike formation. Blue gray Messerschmidts and blotched Hurricanes. Sometimes they would suddenly appear in attack formation from behind the castle tower. Gigantic crosses with spinning screw propellers … the bombers more slowly, the pursuit aircraft more quickly – flew over the square and Star Park … their din drowning out the street noise. People became a kind of dough under these metal factories in the air, no longer significant … at the Ursuline Church the squadron of crosses lifted their noses and flew up into the sky, like skaters heading out onto the rink of an ice palace … If France, that distant country, fell, what would be next?… “If Great Britain helps, then everything will be fine,” I said … Andrej had his own opinion … which he’d got from a friend of Neva’s, who was a mechanic
at the airport … Air power would be decisive … if England contributed its Halifaxes, which were best at nighttime bombardments, and its two-engine Mosquitos, which were quicker than German pursuit planes, France would be able to defend itself before the onslaught of Hitler’s tank destroyers …

At that time a blonde girl from Breg whom Franci had seen before would often walk along the riverfront. She and her mother delivered newspapers door to door, not the
Morning
, but the
Slovene Nation
 … Her name was Tatjana. She made herself right at home walking down the embankment. Starting at the Triple Bridge she would cover the whole territory down to Cobblers’ Bridge, as though she didn’t care in the least what we thought of it. Occasionally we noticed her from a distance when she turned past the ostaria. She had such pale blonde hair that her head was like a bunch of straw and she always wore clothes that looked like they had been sewn out of bed slips and throw rugs … She waved her arms a lot when she walked. She never stepped on the sidewalk or roadway, she just always walked on the curb … Once when we saw her coming our way again, Firant said, “Guys, what if this girl is spying for the Castle or Trnovo?…” That was entirely possible. We watched as she walked past the Black Cat restaurant … “Hey, you! Stop!” Drago shouted just as she reached the trees. She immediately stood still and turned toward us. We were sitting in a kind of pyramid: some on the ground, a few on the cart, one or two on the wall … Her face was wide and pale. Almost white, as if powdered. She had wide-set eyes and a small nose. She looked me straight in the face, causing everything to start flickering … Firant stopped in front of her
and I could tell from the way his head was cocked that he was about to hit her … I couldn’t take that. “Leaf her alown!” I shouted out. I jumped down … shoved him aside … he looked at me furiously and I knew he was going to pay me back with interest the first chance he got. I turned to face Tatjana. What eyes this skinny girl had! Watery, bulging, as though they were floating in a glass. Yet at the same time they radiated something powerful … “You can kow here if you’re in a pig hurry,” I said. I should have said something else … like what I might say to Gisela … But there was a lump in my throat. The air would have exploded if I’d blurted anything else out. Firant puffed up his cheeks and punched them with both fists. Pop! If I hadn’t known that was him, I would have looked everywhere to find out where that smack of air had come from.