Evald Flisar - My Father's Dreams

Many reproaches hung in the air between us as I walked through its heart, and both were impatient to part company, since there was nothing we had to say to each other any more. As the trees finally thinned and I noticed a patch of dull sky ahead, we both breathed a sigh of relief. Before continuing toward the village I turned around and saw the wood regaining some of its old energy, with the tops of trees swaying under a sudden gust of wind. But then, as if aware of my look, the wood sank back into itself, into shivering silence, to hide its feelings of guilt. I looked through the mist of rain to the hills for any signs of light among the clouds, but everything was dark, with the rain falling evenly, in tiny drops. There was no indication that the weather would change, although it was All Saints’ Day, one of those days when these hills were invariably bathed in cool, clear, fresh-smelling sunshine.

When I reached home I was completely drenched. Father was at the surgery, Mother was in the kitchen, preparing lunch.

“Oh,” she said, looking at me through the door, “you’re wet.” Then she carried on with the cooking.

The house was filled with the smell of chrysanthemums. I thought I could also smell incense, the kind used in Catholic churches, which was unusual, because I knew there wasn’t any. But the smell of chrysanthemums always reminded me of cemeteries, death, funerals, and incense appeared to be an integral part of it. The floor had been vacuumed, the curtains had been washed, and everything was in its place. A smell of roast pork was wafting through the open door of the kitchen. These were reliable signs that the day was not ordinary, but a holy day, which on Mother’s insistence had to be different, always smelling of something saintly, dark, and unusual.

I went to my room, got out of my clothes, took a shower, dressed again and lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling without any particular thoughts until Mother called me to the dining room. We ate alone; Father was already on the doorstep when he was called back to attend to a girl with a twisted ankle. I was afraid Mother would want to know how it was at the “home for the people who have gone bonkers”, but fortunately she showed no interest in that at all, or in anything else for that matter. She used her right hand for eating, and her left hand for holding the book she was reading, one of those chatty, long-winded books about romantic entanglements in exotic places, the only kind of books she read.

In the afternoon we walked to the cemetery. It was still raining. Father was wearing a black hat, a little too small for the size of his head, and a coat which he could not button up so that it flapped around him, especially as the wind grew stronger. Umbrellas soon became useless, we were soaked to skin, and Mother began to complain that she had water in her shoes and would catch pneumonia for sure. In the cemetery, which was on a steep slope, soil had already turned to mud, especially at the lower end, where water had been accumulating since early morning, and we had to tread carefully to avoid slipping.

Then we stood by the graves and waited.

A shy bell began to tinkle in the chapel at the top of the cemetery. While the wind carried its sound this way and that, dark figures stood in groups among the decorated graves, facing the chapel as if waiting for something to happen. Soon a small procession emerged from behind the walls, led by the priest and a small boy who was carrying a cross, and followed by the most devout village women. They all knelt in the mud and prayed, with the dark figures muttering appropriate refrains, which the blustery wind immediately muffled, so that they never reached the top of the slope. A large flock of ducks flew over us, disappearing in the mist of the falling rain.

“What a day,” I heard one of the dark figures say into the wind.

There was a distance between me and the dark figures, although on this particular day we were very much alike, all facing the chapel, all holding large black umbrellas, all standing in mud, all wearing creased and mud-spattered trousers or skirts, all wrapped in ill-fitting, rain-soaked coats or capes or thick winter jackets, all waiting for the ordeal to end. Father, Mother and I were standing at the grave of Mother’s parents, almost completely neglected, for the woman Mother used to pay to take care of it had died, and Mother failed to engage another.

Higher up the slope I noticed Grandpa Dominic, leaning on a stick and looking frail, much frailer than ever before, but standing straight as if unwilling to admit to himself and to others that he, too, would soon be lying in a coffin in that wet soil. He was alone, without Eve. Placidly, but with an unbearable burning in my heart, I accepted the fact that I would never see her again. In fact, when I think of it now, the burning was much less unbearable than I had expected. Something had been killed off in the “home for people who have gone bonkers”, some essential part of me. It was easier to live now, but the colour had gone out of life, everything had become grey, monotonous.

When the procession disappeared back into the chapel, the dark figures moved. People were leaving. Candles flickered on most of the graves, covered by makeshift paper umbrellas or encased in small carton boxes, but the flames had a very short life, for the boxes could not withstand the rain for long, or they were blown away by the wind which rolled them about until they were stepped on by shuffling feet and pressed into the mud, or carried, stuck to heels, out of the cemetery. Some people entered the chapel for the final service. Mother did, too. By Father’s will we never went to church, but this was the one occasion on which she would not compromise. Father and I slowly walked home.

“Quite chilly,” Father said after five minutes, and I replied, “Yes.” Those were the only words spoken.

Towards the evening, when Mother finally returned, a quarrel erupted between her and Father. It may have been caused by the tension which was slowly filling the house, or by the desolation of the deserted fields outside, or by the chilly wind rattling the panes in sporadic bursts, dry and biting, for the rain had stopped. Or it may have been the pernicious silence which had enveloped us in the living room, with Father leafing through a medical journal and Mother lying on the sofa and turning the pages of her book without reading it, all the while thinking about something else.

In the end she closed the book and sat up. She began to speak. She spoke in her usual haughty, telling tone which would grate on my nerves and make Father twist his face into a tortuous grin.

How could I do this, she asked. How could I bring such shame on her, not only at school and in the village, or in front of her relatives, but also, more importantly, in front of Father’s patients? For years he had been trying to strengthen his reputation, but now, just as he had managed to register his 499-th patient, one short of half a thousand, the first three hundred will stop coming because the doctor’s son had gone mad! Who is going to retain trust in his abilities after this? Do I realise that I had begun to destroy what used to be one of the most respected families for miles around, and which is now in such straits that even the Gypsies enjoy greater respect?

I gave Father an imploring look.

At first he averted his eyes as if embarrassed. Then he closed his journal and quietly asked Mother to stop mouthing inanities. Mental illness is not a matter of choice, like taking heroin, smoking or drinking, which anyone with sufficient will can give up. Nor, speaking of it, is mental illness the same as popping pills for every little twinge in the body or mind. When will she stop removing antibiotics, tranquilisers and other dangerous drugs from the dispensary without first getting a doctor’s prescription?