Кристиан Новак - Dark Mother Earth

I knew he wanted to be a goalie more than anything in the world. He was being more loyal to me than to himself. We watched the other kids practice for a while in silence, and then Pišta came into the bar.

“Honest t’ God, the spuds’ll be big as squashes this year.”

“I ain’t wild about how people are fertilizing. Is it a good idea to lay it on so thick?” said Mladen.

“Who cares? I haven’t much farmland to speak of, just a couple of klafters. But I like how we fucked with the over-the-Mura folks: the damn-blasted Slovenes.”

“But, Pišta, what’s the point? I hear each farmer was given 30 percent more fertilizer for the same money. But it’s too late in the season to fertilize the crops.”

“Heh heh, just imagine how gorgeous the spuds’ll be. It’s all thanks to Miška Čurinof. He’s heard he’ll be losing his job over in Lendava next month…”

“Him, too? What’ll they all do with no work? Drink all day?”

“We’ll be farmers, I guess. And so what? We’ll be off to war in no time anyway. It was Miška who made the fertilizer deal. He works at the warehouse. When they left him to his own devices, he decided to mix the artificial fertilizer with this other chemical—butanol, or whatever it’s called. The foreman couldn’t figure how it happened, exactly, but everything’s piled on top of everything else there. So they couldn’t sell it at full price. Damaged goods. Miška let Đura Brezovec know, and the village bought a huge load of the stuff. You must have seen it when they brought it in here.”

Pišta snickered, finished his beer, and went home. Mladen told Franz he’d show him some goalie moves if he wanted. He gave us each another Cockta and asked whether we needed to pee. Franz nodded, and I was ready, too, so the three of us went out to the bushes behind the locker room. Mladen didn’t watch where he was peeing; instead he watched me and Franz. Mladen’s wiener was big and fat and stuck out of this little forest of hairs, while Franz’s and mine were wimpy little pink things. He told us he had to go but that we could always let him know if somebody messed with us, and he’d be glad have us over to his house to practice our soccer skills sometime.

The practice wound down out on the field, Bogdan lit a cigarette and sat in the car, the kids and dads headed slowly home, and I asked Franz to wait a little longer. I didn’t want to walk home with everybody else. We went along the road in the opposite direction for a bit, toward the river, where we sat on the embankment and watched the water. It wasn’t dark yet, but some stars were already coming out.

I asked Franz what he thought stars would sound like if we could hear them and also what ants would sound like. The ants and the stars were both small to us, and just as far away. We agreed pretty quick about the ants, that they are always rushing— sweet Jesus, will you look at them scurry —all hurrying each other along with no time for explanations. They’re far too busy to be sitting in libraries or on a terrace with a cup of coffee, but on rainy days they stay in their little houses underground and clean and do whatever they didn’t have time for on the sunny days. When night falls, some of them try to see what’s above the clouds using diamond periscopes, hoping to catch sight of their distant relatives, the flying ants, about whom legends abound. Meanwhile they say that camaraderie is what matters most, and they don’t go to church, because they’re communists. For the stars, Franz said, it seemed to him they look shyly down on Earth, hoping somebody will send up a kaleidoscope because they’re bored staring at the same universe all the time where things change only when trucks loaded with candy pass on their way to another galaxy. The stars laugh only when they see a bird on a distant planet flying so high that it soars up beyond the breathable air and loses consciousness, then plummets like a pear down to the ground. Then they die laughing. The stars believe in God and go to church at least once a week. Or maybe, Franz said, the stars are silent. They don’t say anything, or they talk so slowly that one word lasts thousands of years, and what we call silence is not truly silence but actually the sound they use to say the word for the time we live in. I asked him what the astral word was for the time we were living in, but Franz didn’t answer. We stared into the water, and from the water Ajitam and Znarf stared back. I asked Franz if he thought there were two boys like us on the other side of the reflection looking at us and wondering the same things we were wondering. He thought about it and said he’d like it better if they were looking at this side without him in it. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that exactly.

“What do you think it’s like on the other side? Over on the other side, what’s the world like there? What do you think, what kind of world is it, Matija?”

“You mean over on the other bank of the river?”

“Nope, on the other side of… that mirror. Of the river. The mirror of the river. Like we see ourselves in it, like on the other side of that,” said Franz.

“I believe it’s a world where everybody’s good. They’re kind to us there, Franz. You’re the goalie, and I’m—”

“I heard there’s a way through the Mura to an underground place where everybody’s dead, and they walk around in the dark, looking for a way out.”

“Naw, Franz. I thought my dad was down there… I was sure of it. But he ain’t. I wish I’d never thought it. Ever since then, nothing’s been like it was before.”

“I figure it can be fixed, Matija, I think it can, it can for sure…” Every once in a while Franz said comforting things that surprised me and made me glad. Because through this crack I could see how, behind his walls, behind the curly hair and jaw, behind everything, there was a marvelous land with puffy white clouds, little houses with round windows, and horses cantering free. Because of this, I knew he’d be fine.

When I came home, I tossed my cleats in the corner. Mom asked me whether I’d signed up for soccer, and I said I hadn’t and that they’d said bad things about Dad so I’d kicked the soccer ball at the coach’s head.

I was the only kid in my class who didn’t sign up.

Before I went to bed, Chickichee was waiting for me in the bathroom and insisted on telling me about how a long, long time ago, five centuries or more, our village had played a game with a neighboring village, and the goal was to leave the rotting corpse of a dog smack in the middle of the other village.

“Sweet Jesus, how they played—the game went all summer long. The carcass was already crawling with maggots. A boy named Miklauš from the next village wanted to put the carcass on our street, so he rode over on his horse, but our boys heard him. This kid by the name of Vajnč hit him in the spine with a hoe, and the horse spooked and galloped home. The next morning they found Miklauš dead on the horse’s back, in the middle of their village, holding the dog’s carcass. The mood soured for a spell, what with the boy being killed and all, but in time it settled down. And now when somebody teases somebody at school, others might say to the teaser: ‘Watch out so’s you don’t get smacked with a hoe in the back,’ and everybody laughs.’”

I pretended not to listen. I left the bathroom and shut the door behind me, leaving him with the stink.

The next day in gym class, the boys played soccer and the girls played dodgeball, as usual. Nobody would pass me the ball, so I got angry and took it, shoving Dejan. He fell and scraped his elbow. I reached to help him up, but he wouldn’t take my hand. The teacher called me and asked why I’d done that. I didn’t say anything, so for the rest of the hour I sat on a wooden bench and watched the others play. At one point, Goran called everybody over and they whispered. Nobody looked at me, but I could tell they were talking about me.