Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

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Your two uncles who live in America.

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My mother when she died.

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I thought it was a sponge cake.

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Your uncle wants you to ride down to the river with Ivan and Ciril.

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Down! Get him down from there!

LANGUAGE, one that you don’t understand, can be pleasant now and then … It’s like a kind of fog in your head … It’s nice, there’s truly nothing better … It’s wonderful when words haven’t yet separated from dreams … But not always … I could examine everything as though I was in a theater … Before a storm the sky would get dark. The rain splashed as though a whole sea hung in the air … The Krka flowed like a roadway from hell … the water rose to the machine with the bucket … a whole wagon, a haystack, half a hayrack, a small forest … once even an ox gasping for air and lowing … floated past quickly and slammed into the banks of the river … You lost your voice from the wetness, your sight from the gloom, your soul from the lightning … And then silence again. The great kingdom of fog!.. It was as though everything was under a spell … a different world … You couldn’t see two paces ahead of you in Karel’s meadow … The house hung in a cloud, the fog tamely expanding into the entryway, slowly pressing into the dark kitchen, into our yellow room, between Gisela and mother, who was refitting dresses for Minka, Mica, Stanka … between the cows and the pigs in the barn … Mooing and cooing and crowing filled the space … Especially sounds from the river below … It seemed as if the water reached to our window … We could hear it on the other side of the house, where just a plum and an apple tree stood … The steam engine’s whistle expanded in serpentines through its foggy soot to the sky … A land of ghosts. You had to go back into the house right away. So you wouldn’t topple into the Krka down by the bucket … But on peaceful days red clouds floated back up above the horizon over the water and the fields became blue … A whole parade of people … women, men, children … each with a hoe in hand, wearing hats, scarves, and colorful woolen caps, like the ones babies wear, would be digging out in the fields … tossing the useless potatoes onto the gravel … calling out to each other across the fields. A ladder wagon came racing along and stopped, causing its horses to rear up on their hind legs … With that guillotine of his on a tall handle, the plough, Karel pushed through the meadow … Everything that had been down below got turned up … The meadow exposed its whole lower layer to the world, to the sun and the air, so that the huge green space by the train tracks looked something like an African’s gigantic shining face. No one had ever seen anything like it. Ever. It was a miracle, a sin, something like the Indian wars, the first casualties … with not a sidewalk, a bit of asphalt, a roadway to be seen … you kneaded the cool, pleasantly damp, greasy lumps barefoot, till at the end of a row, next to the ploughshares and the basket-like carts, you were spattered with dirt on your chest, back and face … like the Sioux in their warpaint … Then all the way back, and then once more all over again to repeat the pleasure of having your legs sink into the dirt up to your knees … Mother in her white dress smiled at me from the far end of the field and Vati, as always, rested his hands on his back and was nervously blinking behind his glasses …

DURING THE FIRST WEEK we went down into town. To the authorities to take care of some paperwork. Both uncles wearing black suits and hats. In tall black shoes that laced up high. With no stockings. They wrapped rags around their feet. “Leggings,” Aunt Mica said. I couldn’t repeat it … I went with one of the uncles and Vati went with the other. Karel entertained Ciril and Ivan with much laughter … they were very similar. All three of them had black, fringe-like hair and brown eyes, but only Karel had sideburns. Each of them had a big mouth. And the same way of shoving his hat back on his head. “Go join them!” Karel said and I ran over to Uncle Jožef, who was talking to Vati and laughing with Anka, his youngest … I ought to have been staying at Karel’s side, not running to Jožef. They were revealing their teeth and gums … this was whole-hearted laughter … which I could understand even in a foreign language … The houses reached down toward the water, like animals going to drink … Along the way there was a smithy, with the smith outside just then, nailing shoes onto a black horse. “Unser weiter Verwandter,” *said Vati … For a while we watched the black horse — lithe, glistening, a regular racer with his head tied to a timber — put up with all the hammering on his hooves … The nails that broke got pulled out with pliars. Uncle and Vati had a short chat with the smith. He didn’t look strong enough to me for that kind of work. I couldn’t understand anyone. Maybe the bellows, the fire under the hood. But when the smith’s assistant began to strike the white-hot shoe with his hammer, even that clinkity-clink-clink sounded like a word from their language … Other than that, my ears just hurt from the noise, but still … Even Liska was mooing like the braune and schwarzbunte Kühe †on the slopes around Urach … But this “moo” coming from her funnel-like muzzle was not the same “moo.” Maybe Liska wasn’t even a proper cow … She went walking straight into the house, announcing herself in the kitchen. As fat as poor Mrs. Dopf from the flower shop next door on Gerbergässli in Basel, she stood between the table and the hearth in the fringe-like coat and horns of an outwardly clumsy cow. I felt sorry for her … Now I could take her by the horns fearlessly and lead her out. I could stick my hand in her mouth and let her lick it … There were no “Tannenbäume” in this forest. These pines grew tall and resinous, with sharp needles and lots of gaps … they were some completely different species of tree … A completely new one! Exotic! Straight out of my imagination, although I could touch them … a species thoroughly mixed up by the chaos that language causes. I had to give it a new name … who knows, maybe half in my language, half in theirs … derived from the impression the pine made on me … “mast tree,” “umbrella tree,” “monk tree” … Even the spoon I ate with wasn’t a proper utensil … but some object of driftwood and steel that would jab at the corners of my mouth as though it didn’t know what it had been made for … It would try to pry my jaws open … pulverize my teeth, smash my tongue. And the skinny, white and brown cat that introduced itself one morning with its magical mewing in the gutter … And then the Krka! It was a dangerous thing that flowed with its crocodilian surface as though it were flowing past us straight out of hell. It wasn’t the Rhine, which was wide and had ships sailing on it … it was meant only for drowned people, cattle, house roofs, forests and hay-wagons … It could be quiet, gurgle, swell, subside, be peaceful, ugly or beautiful, but always as though under its mists it wore some sort of mask. I wouldn’t have been afraid to wade into it … I tried from the laundry stones, since the inlet where livestock were watered wasn’t really the Krka. But Vati grabbed me under the arm. And yet I wouldn’t have dared … because it was and it wasn’t real water. Were my eyes deceiving me or something?… One morning by the pear tree outside my window I saw Ciril and Ivan, who as usual had come to get me to go with them to water the animals. They stood facing each other … each holding a sharpened stick pointed at the other, trying to gouge him in the eyes. “Sie werden sich die Augen ausstechen!” ‡I shouted and ran to get mother. Mother shouted and ran to get Vati. Then Vati to get Karel. Karel waved dismissively and turned away. For him that was a game. “Sie spielen nur. Du hast das nicht richtig verstanden,” §Vati said. I had misunderstood? I shouted, “Ich habe es gesehen! Ich habe es verstanden!” ‖I knew I had seen it as it was there to be seen. Then again I wasn’t completely convinced … Karel went to talk to my cousins. They were offended and sulked angrily after that. Had I seen right or falsely accused them?