Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN: as soon as mother and Vati were together, the complaints, accusations, shouting and arguments would begin again … “Warum hast du damals die Schweizer Staatsbürgerschaft nicht angenommen? Warum hast du damals diesen Lieferanten alles Geld anvertraut? Warum bist du damals nicht in die Gewerbekammer eingetreten?” *And Vati’s grumbling, which got louder and louder … he would start by talking quietly to himself in some corner, getting ready for the alarm, drilling for the fight … and then … I knew it from the rue de Bourg … from the Gerbergässli … from rue Helder … I knew all the arguments and counter-arguments by heart, alway pronounced in precisely the same way, they were like mummies and couldn’t hurt me. I held my hands over my ears. What I heard was always the same: the voices pitched high and low, thundering and whimpering, and the crash of various objects that seemed to get hung onto them … the iron, a hammer, scissors, wood blocks for fur hats … then fell and started rolling around … Once when I was still little I saw both of them, holding hands, fall to the floor … and then get up again. I thought they were playing. No, they were wrestling each other. Vati stood upright, his eyes bulging, shaking his clenched fist at mother like the handle of a ladle. And mother, red in the face and smaller, whimpering, shouting, and shuffling through the room. It happened more and more often that I would come floating in somebody’s arms … mother’s, Clairi’s, Gritli’s … into the blizzard surrounding Vati … and, because everybody was afraid of him and shouting at him, I shoved my fist at his shoulder and his shaggy face, causing his spectacles to fall like saucers … When the fight died down, mother came to me all in tears. She would sing some song to entertain me, or Vati would unwrap a little piece of cheese from some silver paper. Essentially they both had a heart, as did I, only that’s not what counts in life. Mother and Vati … were the kind of couple about which anyone could have instantly said that they didn’t belong together. Uncle Jožef was a little, scornful man and his wife was a tiny, malicious woman. Mrs. Baloh was small and pious and Mr. Baloh too was short and a believer. Enrico’s mother was dark-haired and pretty, just as her husband the bricklayer was handsome and swarthy … But mother and Vati didn’t fit together in any respect. Not in their hands or their feet or in their faces or postures, they didn’t even go together in the way they worked. Only in their anger and bickering … Even now. Especially when they learned from whoever it was about my adventure on the Sava. I could have drowned! Both of them were beside themselves … Who was responsible? Him, for spending his days sewing at Elite, which had unceremoniously fired him, or her, for being at home all day anyway? Her, because she wasn’t minding us, or him, because he didn’t earn enough to buy her even a meter of firewood?… And again they started throwing things at each other … boxes, covers, promotional scissors that Vati got for free at the autumn fair. Clairi quickly closed the door and stayed standing in front of it. She covered the door, I covered the window, in order to insulate our walls, to separate them from the world, to prevent them from pushing their way out of our little room into the hallway … Each of them on their own, that was still manageable, but not together. The greater the distance between them, the better it was for both of them and the rest of us, too … When Vati showed up in the cornfield on his way home from Elite, that meant the beginning of a difficult hour, a regular hurricane. Or: when I was having a good time being with him and she came limping up wearing her floral smock, all red in the face, that meant the good time was over.

Out in front of the house, where there was some grass to walk on, the women usually sat sewing or knitting, with the owner’s housemaid working on some embroidery. The first few days we were there mother joined them with her sewing. She had curled her hair for the occasion and ironed her smock. She felt a little awkward on account of her legs, which were covered with the black balloons of her varicose veins, so she hid them under the bench. But she was most ashamed of her toothless mouth, because of the stumps and the worn-down fillings. Whenever one of them asked her something with a German word, a gesture, or laughter … she would cover her mouth with her hand … It was good for the poor thing to be able to spend some time in company and chat with people at least a little bit … But on the days after that she didn’t want to go back onto the lawn. She stayed in our room. That was a bad sign … Gisela picked flowers around where the women were sitting. With her long hair and in her little brown dress with its yellow polka dots she was so cute that the women sitting there couldn’t help calling her over, passing her around from lap to lap and fondling her … Mother sat on pins and needles at her sewing machine without touching it. “Was haben sie dich gefragt?” †she asked as soon as Gisela came back in. Where is her daddy? And whether we really left our furniture from Switzerland at the railway station?… Mother turned pale. “Habe ich dir nicht gesagt …” ‡She sat down on the bed. She was going to explode any second, I could tell, or else faint … Oh, she was prepared to sew anybody a dress, a blouse or whatever for free, just as long as they didn’t start nosing around. And now that had happened … Her face shook with rage, but also with fear. That was infectious. I could even feel it start to fill me … Was I supposed to cut myself off from the world just like that? From the courtyard, from the Sava, the woods?… Mother no longer left the room if she heard the women outdoors. And if it happened that she ventured outside when they happened to be there, she dashed into the woods or the garden as fast as though lightning were striking all around her … She stopped going for water, too. Particularly ever since the morning when she caught one of the Pestotnik boys at the trough. He was lurking there with a ten-inch knife, waiting to ambush one of Štef’s younger brothers as soon as he showed and take his revenge for having thrashed him with a wooden board the night before … “Das sind alle nur mordsüchtige Luder,” §she whimpered as she lay on the bed. For the first time in my life I tried to comfort her. It was more powerful than me. I put my hand on her shoulder … “Warum sind wir hierhergekommen? Wo wir doch die Wahl gehabt haben, nach Deutschland oder Jugoslawien zu übersiedeln,” ‖she said without feeling me touching her … She would stand motionless at the door or the window. She was trying to listen. “Was sagen sie wieder? Über was lachten sie eben?” aShe wouldn’t wait for me to translate. She understood the language like music … bangs, splashing, some bells tolling … Mocking … overjoyed … most of all threatening. “Sie werden mir einmal etwas anstellen, weil ich Deutsche bin.” bThe women began to complain about Gisela and me. About me because I had spilled water from the bucket onto the steps. And about Gisela because she had dug up all the sand with her little pail and shovel. Because we played with boats that I folded from paper at the pond when the owner was away … The women pointed out the steps to the maid, whom they didn’t like because she was the owner’s lover, as well as the sand excavated down to the dirt in the yard … Old Mrs. Baloh went to complain to the landlord because I had dragged a whole tree crown from the forest into our room, dropping leaves and branches in the vestibule on the way … Mother was called upstairs. When she came back, she turned and shouted, “Das möchte ich sagen: ihr seid alle unverschämte Leute!..” Gisela and I dragged her inside … she was as strong as a motorcycle. Then she punished us. She struck Gisela on the hand and then she slapped me in the face, her full wooden mask, and then she thrashed me with the bamboo cane that Vati used to beat animal skins. Everybody in the house could hear the stick whistling through the air and me wailing. “Nichts anstellen! Und wenn dich einer etwas fragt, nach mir rufen …” cI told her that was easier said than done. If somebody asked me something in the woods, what was I supposed to do? “Das wird die Mama antworten …” dFrom then on Gisela was supposed to play with her pail by the window, so that mother could have her in view the whole time. If anybody stopped and spoke to her, mother would stick her head out the window. “Was möchten Sie von dem Kind?” eshe would call out irritably.