Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

WE ATE out of one big dish next to the stove in the kitchen — some thickened milk that had small, sour dumplings floating in it. Each of us had his own wooden spoon … Vati, uncle, me, aunt … only mother and Gisela shared a spoon … Auntie giggled to herself with all the red craters on her face as she carried the sour milk up to her mouth. When old women laugh that wholeheartedly, it means they’re not quite right in the head … And if they have so many pustules, they’re probably suffering from some awful disease … plague, leprosy — which isn’t contagious … I ate across from her and was careful not to spoon anything out from the middle … But my stomach revolted when I put the first little dumpling with milk in my mouth. It tasted terrible … like nothing at all. After breakfast Karel took me by the shoulder and led me outdoors … He went to get the gray spotted cow in the barn. “Du bist jetzt der Hirte,” Vati said. “Nur an diesen kleinen Baum dort darf die Kuh nich heran.” *I picked up one of the sticks that were lying around. The cow came out of the barn … It had nice, taut brown spots, as though it were dressed in a map. A chain hanging down from its collar dragged along the ground. It headed straight for the tiny tree that was tied with straw to a stake. I had lifted up my thin stick when it turned its head toward me … as big as a gas lantern. It looked at me with its eyes … which were at least five times as wide as human eyes. The first time it saw me, and I it, it was barely a hand’s breadth away. Its horns were marbled, flinty, and slightly curved … It curled its lips, which had thick, white spittle, milk, dangling down … It exposed its yellow teeth set in their pale gums. I fell flat on my face in the grass. Fearlessly uncle picked up the chain that lay next to its hooves and tried to put one end in my hand. I was unresponsive. But he picked up my hand, set the hot ring in it, wrapped the chain around my wrist and pointed ahead … to a patch of dry grass in the sun. I was now holding her head at the end of this heavy restraint. But thanks to a chin that resembled Claire’s, she struck me as goodnatured and entirely trustworthy. I ought to have pulled her along behind me, but I didn’t dare. Uncle Karel stepped in and pulled the chain tight from the middle. The cow strained away and Karel let go of the chain … For a while the huge, earnest animal walked obediently behind me of her own free will. Maybe she sensed that I was alone and would care for her … But that’s not very likely … Suddenly she was nudging my back with her bazooka round of a muzzle … And she was mooing strangely, plaintively, angrily, as she kept advancing on me. Hurriedly I unwrapped the chain from around my wrist … and jumped aside.

When I turned around I saw two boys under the tree outside the house. Lithe and swarthy. They were wearing snow-white shirts and shorts that reached down to their knees. Barefoot. Slightly shy. “Das sind die Söhne vom Onkel Joseph oben vom Dorf,” †Vati said. Cousins, Ivan and Ciril. “Das ist Bubi.” They looked at me. They had brown eyes and dark mouths, as though they’d been eating cherries. They were at least two grades ahead of me. Should I shake their hands? That probably wasn’t done here. All three of us were at a loss … They studied me from head to toe. That was uncomfortable, because both of them were handsome. Then Karel called them and they ran off.

Gisela and I went out under a tree in front of their garden. Using the sticks that lay scattered in the grass in huge numbers — you could hardly pick up one of them without three or four others sliding off — I created the outline of a ring. Gisela was going to be the black man Joe Louis and I was going to be the German, Max Schmeling. The grass was appropriately low. Both of us assumed our boxing positions. “Box match, Joe Louis: Max Schmeling!” I announced. “Bong!” I struck the gong … It was wonderful to be fighting outside, in the open air, in the grass. In Basel we could injure ourselves if we went flying to the ground … but here it was a pleasure to fall into the soft grass. In my excitement I actually punched Gisela and hurt her, causing her to cry. She gave it back to me in the eyes, so that I couldn’t see. Uncle Karel stood watching, once again doubled over with hilarious laughter … but strangely, his eyes weren’t laughing at all. No, this was not a good sign … Mother came out, dressed, Vati too. “Jetzt gehen wir hinauf zum Onkel Joseph. Sie warten schon auf uns,” ‡he said. Ciril and Ivan, my cousins, also came galloping out from behind the house. Each of them was wearing a new green hat.

We hit the trail as we had the night before … going past a white house with a brand new red roof. The same flowers that grew in the meadows were in various big pots and glasses at the foot of the cross. Except they had faded. It was strange that they picked flowers that grew in such numbers at Jesus’s feet anyway … And even stranger that they let them fade when they could have put fresh ones in the glasses each day … At the railroad crossing I paused in the middle of the tracks: on one side they led from where we had just come from, and on the other side they curved along the high gravel trackbed and headed into the black forest … After the crossing the path rose … with houses built along the slope. Simple, unadorned, white … A little black house made of straw stood slightly set back from the path. “Da lebt eine alte Närrin, wie der Karel erzählt,” I heard Vati say. “Ihr ganzer Kram liegt vor dem Haus.” § … It consisted of a box and a colorful heap of rags, with not even a chair … Ciril and Ivan were walking on either side of me. I wanted to be polite … but it’s hard to connect with boys your same age when you can’t talk or play some game … I pointed at the forest that the train had passed through … at the iron weathercock on a roof … and at a neat wooden garden hut in the distance. Both of them nodded, adjusted their hats over their black hair, bent down because I was shorter, laughed … In their hip pockets they had something interesting … a fat rubber band, a kind of sling, like David’s, on a sturdy cleft stick. They picked up a stone, pulled back the rubber band and … ping! it went flying straight into a snipe that had been perched on the mossy roof of the crazy woman’s house … As handsome as they were, and as honest and decent as they may have been, they knew all the tricks … What would it be like? Would we really become friends?… Along both sides of the path lay carpets of furrowed black earth. We walked past several wooden structures that had carts and ladders standing beside them. On the road there were a number of men, peasants like Uncle Karel, only shaggier, with pitchforks and shovels in hand, but friendly, I thought. Also old women in dense layered dresses and scarves, like our aunt, but minus the bundled-up feet and the pustules … Untroubled faces, dark furrows. Some brown stinking rivulet, liquid manure, trickled right down the path … and huge heaps of black, stinking leaves stood in front of each house. A white hen was waddling along the top of a fence above a pool of filthy urine. Yellow chicks like the ones we’d get for Easter, but alive, were chirping. No one paid any attention to them except Gisela and me, but mother called us back so we wouldn’t fall into any manure. Now we could see that garden cottage from a bit closer up and next to it a house with big windows. That was probably where city people had to live.

*

You’re the cowherd now. Just make sure the cow doesn’t go near that little tree over there.

†

These are the sons of your Uncle Joseph who live up in the village.

‡

We’re going up to visit your Uncle Joseph now. They’re already expecting us.