Кристиан Новак - Dark Mother Earth

“But why didn’t you say something if you were there? Why didn’t you help her?” I turned and yelled at Bacawk. Milica was the only witness besides me and Franz, the only one who knew what Mladen was like. Nobody would understand what Franz was saying, and nobody would believe me.

“Why didn’t you help her, you lousy rats?” I hollered. “And why didn’t you help Trezika and Mladen and all the others?”

Chickichee said calmly, “Nobody sees us but you. They used to see us when they were small, while they were still scared of us. Later, out of fear, they don’t see or hear us, even when we’re around them all the time.”

I walked past my house and to Franz’s. His old man, a big fat bearded man with dirty hair and an unusually shrill voice, opened the door. He looked as if he’d just woken up. With unusual courtesy, he told me Franz wasn’t feeling well but that he might be going to school the next day, if he wasn’t running a fever. I asked whether I could see him, to give him his homework. From the door, the house smelled of feet and knitted sweaters that hadn’t been washed in a while. He told me I’d see Franz at school and shut the door.

I came home and cried on the steps until my sister saw me and asked what was wrong. I said my head was feeling crummy and it wasn’t anything too bad.

The next day they buried Milica. Mladen and all of Milica’s family were tearstained, and everybody who’d gathered was disturbed. When I saw him, all in black, pushing the stroller with the child, I wasn’t entirely sure whether Mladen really could be such a bad man. A person who cried as much as he was crying couldn’t be all bad, I thought.

After the funeral, Mom and I stood with the folks who’d come, and I listened in. The men said it wasn’t right that the police were interrogating poor Mladen like a criminal, and the women wondered how he’d manage now with the child, and why such bad things always seemed to happen to such nice people. Somebody said he was still young, and maybe, once time had passed, he’d find somebody else. Pišta said he’d heard there was somebody going around at night and talking people into killing themselves.

“Well, well, nothing makes a bit of sense anymore.”

“In Slavonia, there’s a war going on, people are shooting each other; meanwhile here we’re doing the killing all by ourselves.”

“There don’t seem to be any way to make sense of how these people are connected.”

“Everything is connected.”

“Aw, Zvonko, don’t you start with that muck. Nobody can know who’s connected to whom.”

“Maybe they were in a sect? And swore to do this?”

“Come now, please. What sect? Hush. We just buried Milica. Show some respect.”

“Still, maybe somebody went around egging them on. There’s talk that somebody’s going around persuading people to kill themselves.”

“Hush now, Democracy.”

“What? What did you say?”

“Can it.”

The fact that a reporter from Međimurje , the local paper, was at the funeral prevented the quarrel from spilling over into a knock-down, drag-out fistfight. And then somebody said that Franz Klanz had stolen Mladen’s goalie gloves and a few other things, so the boy would be going to help him around the garden now that his wife was gone. Somebody suggested it was only right and proper for the boy to learn discipline, especially since his parents were such bums. Mladen would probably end up buying him school supplies, he was such a nice guy. I began feeling faint, and I told Mom I needed to go home.

I walked past Đura Brezovec, the village head, who was telling the reporter she mustn’t write anything bad about the village, despite the five suicides in two weeks. He said there were decent, hardworking people living here. He was upset, clasping his hands, forcing a smile, and shaking his head as if trying to wriggle out of his shirt collar.

“See, people who aren’t from these parts won’t get it. They’ll think we’re all lunatics or something. See, people are afraid they’ll lose their jobs, the ones who work over in Slovenia. But you could write, for instance, that municipal funds have been used to buy the very finest fertilizer on the market today. The economy and farming are our highest priorities. And we are in the midst of preparing for village games, so do come to those; we’ll fix a big pot of bograč game stew, and the firemen’ll perform their exercises. Bring along your camera then, you’ll have plenty to take pictures of.”

Nobody could make much sense of what the village games were about, but I reckoned they wanted to bring people together in one place and distract them from what was going on around us. They’d been looking for Imbra Perčić, the electrician, to set up the lighting for the event, but nobody knew where he’d gone. Bacawk and Chickichee told me that evening that Imbra was hanging from a branch only three hundred feet away from us, by the river, high up in a tree.

The next morning I left the house fifteen minutes earlier, to be sure not to miss Franz. He wouldn’t look at me, he just stared at the ground and tried to walk past. I blocked his way, he tried to go around, and I moved to block him again, and so it was several times until he shoved me away and mumbled something that sounded like “Evael em enola.”

“I know you ain’t stole no goalie gloves, Franz, I saw him give ’em to you.”

He shrugged. That was the least painful part of it.

“You ain’t going to Mladen’s no more, Franz. We’ll tell, we’ll tell that policeman, Stankec, he’s my friend, or the priest, we’ll tell him what that jerk did to you.”

Franz responded to each statement with silence and by spitting to the side.

“I’ll help, Franz. You ain’t alone.” I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t pull him out of this, though I didn’t know how to do that. I needed to figure out how to heal people, now that I was so adept at killing.

“We’ll run away. We’ll go to France. I have an aunt there, she’s waiting for us. We’ll go to a school for soccer players, where you do a little schoolwork and then play soccer all day.”

He was touched by my sad lie, because he looked stiffly to the side, hoping the air would dry his eyes. We parted ways at school without him making a sound. I thought I’d never be able to penetrate his silence, till behind my back I heard him mumble, still clear enough, “Hey!” I turned, and Franz pointed at me and mimed a quick kick, as if passing me the ball. I could see on his face that he didn’t believe we’d be able to run away. But he had a friend. Maybe that was enough.

At school the only thing the kids talked about was who’d seen the law enforcement officers and who’d heard our village was cursed. I was the only one who knew there was a new victim. His death was even less connected to me than Milica’s, but I found a way to feel responsible for it.

Imbra Perčić was respected as an electrician, but he was known for giving people cruel nicknames and being rude to his customers. His whole life he’d managed to be domineering. He wasn’t a member of the Communist Party, but he was the only electrician in the village, and in those last years of Yugoslavia, as I recall, this was a big deal. With something akin to joy, he’d leave people waiting for him for hours. Then he’d waltz into the house with his tools and adopt a tone of aggressive glee. After a few insulting jokes, mainly about the men of the household not being up to the task, he’d suddenly become serious and bend over the TV set or washing machine. That’s when he’d stop answering questions. Oh, how he loved leaving them hanging, bouncing off the walls, and ricocheting back to smack the person who’d asked. After an uncomfortable pause, he’d respond with the sadism of a misunderstood master when anyone dared interrupt his spell.