Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

No, I had imagined girls differently. Clean … wearing cute dresses and colorful knee socks. And button-up shoes. Light blue cardigan sweaters. A chain necklace and light down in the hollow at the back of her neck. Glossy, brushed hair without any ribbons or braids … In plaid skirts in winter and a little coat with a fur collar, boots, and earrings under a woolen cap … If I ran into a girl who was wearing at least one of the items on my list, I turned to wood, as though bewitched … Štef’s sister Marija had a gray face, slate-like eyes, scraggly braids, hair so thin you could see through to her scalp, and a smock made out of the material used for umbrellas … When her kitty died and we buried it in a shoebox in the meadow next to the gravel pit, she was so sad as she made up its bier of daisies and cherry pits and she cried so unstoppably that she became cute and lovable … The blacksmith’s daughter was also pretty, reminsicent of the postman’s daughter in Lower Carniola, who was already sixteen. She had a lot of blond hair and a round face with apricot skin and a nose like a baby’s. She was prettiest of all riding her new bicycle … when she came racing by, sitting upright, her front wheel in the air and the rear wheel on the road, her arms crossed, not touching the handlebars … When she got pregnant by some boy, her father punished her. He waited for her at the crossroads near the street lamp on the telegraph pole. Belt strap in hand, he forced her to get off the bike, kneel on the ground and crawl on her hands and knees from the pole around both roads to the smithy courtyard … her face smudged and her dress filthy with dust. Once they finally reached the courtyard, he began to lay into her with the belt … People came out of the neighboring houses to watch and nobody said a word. That was the father’s right, they said, a daughter who’s brought shame to her family has to crawl home on her knees … Those were the young ones. But the other, older women in the neighborhood!.. Mirko’s mother, for instance, from the wagon in the gravel pit … She would sit Turkish style in the grass, cleaning lettuce, and because she wore a short skirt and her stockings were fastened below the knee, I could see her full, white legs … almost up to the point where that unusual black bridge between the hips began, and I gasped like a bellows … I just took care not to look her straight in her gray face … and to avert my eyes from her crotch, but my head kept turning back there all on its own … Those were women who were suitable for bed or the outhouse … I felt like pulling her skirt up over her head … becoming coarse, grabbing her hair and shaking her like a pear tree … sniffing all her various smells, baring her big, supple butt that moved closer and closer to the ground … As I had that old hag when I was stealing potatoes from a field near the airport … We thought those potatoes were for the taking, when suddenly a peasant appeared out of the forest, and on horseback, at that … Everybody was out of there like a streak … I lagged behind, I stayed, I only had about five potatoes in my sack … and I ran around blindly on those side paths near the airport and got lost … Finally I reached some rough-hewn shack standing off by itself in the brush … and noticed a fat woman in just a slip on the far side of its hedge. She was sitting amid trash and worm-eaten peas, trying to thread a needle. She had a face like an udder, eyeless, noseless, mouthless, even hairless … She couldn’t get the thread to go into her sewing implement. She scratched her thighs, under her belly where the furry depression showed black, and her nipples, which stretched taut as planets … She resembled the miller’s wife from the fairy tale, Lucifer’s mother, whom the hungry young man went to visit … To get him to stay with her and love her forever, she conjured up a richly laden table for him every day with all kinds of exquisite dishes and drinks … I was immediately ready to live with this hag, the way you live at night in your dreams … I would caress her and love her, night and day I would lie next to her fat body in bed … And I would eat, eat, and eat!.. Sweet twitches passed through my little pole … and I imagined shoving it into the gray forest, that strange mouth under the belly, as if into dough … I couldn’t tear myself away from the hedge, I shoved in and out, as if I were with her under a comforter, until I finally felt some end and it all passed.

I could imagine all women like this, except for Enrico’s mother. She was too pure, beautiful and bright for me to imagine without her clothes on … With naked breasts, bottom, and belly … The skin of her face was so white. And her hair, with waves on both sides that seemed like a single curl, a big treble cleff. The ring in her ear cast a violet reflection on her cheek and neck … I couldn’t imagine her long, pretty arms in anything but motherly caresses … nor her pale lips, which weren’t painted into a rectangle, like they were on other women … she didn’t use makeup at all … kissing anything but a cheek or a forehead … nor did the big, almost lonely brown eyes of her long face ever become harsh, cold or hateful … You never heard the sound of squeaking bedsprings coming from her room, like you did from the Permes’ upstairs or the shack selling pop … When she wore her low-cut blouse, it would never have occurred to me to pull the front down to see more, and when she sat, I never once glanced at her knees … With her, everyplace else was as pure as her face and her hands. She was almost an angel, perhaps even a nun at one time, ready for nothing more than friendly squeezes, pleasant smiles and heartfelt talks … The bricklayer could be happy to have a wife who was such an aristocrat …

MAY CAME … I was on my way with the Balohs and others to the new church in Moste for devotions to Mary … At a crossroads before we reached St. Martin’s Road we suddenly ran into the Pestotniks and other Falcons and girls … They were on their way back from exercising at the National Home … We spotted each other from a distance and as we drew close, both sides got ready … It started with taunts: “Hey, owls!..” “Falcons!..” “Clerical curs!..” “Red rubbish!” Shouts, arguments, then blows … The path was narrow. We went first then they had at us. We shoved each other into the grass, the clover, the wheat … The girls started squealing like cats. And went running to the houses with pianos for help from adults … We pushed toward the property markers and the telegraph poles. Once you get slugged in the face, the hatred comes from somewhere deep down. And it floods everything. And it’s so deep that a bit of it stays in you … They threw themselves on each other … twisting, rolling ahead, rolling back … Two girls grabbed at each other’s hair, too, by the ribbons … The Falcons knew some good punches and in their gym clothes they were lighter, too. Our guys shouted too much, and Štef wasn’t there … I didn’t feel like getting involved … I’d gone with the Pestotniks to the Falcons’ exercise grounds in Moste a few days before … I’d seen the brothers and sisters dressed in red and white carrying a big flag like a carpet between them, and the decorated portrait of King Petar. A brass band played the anthem. They shouted “Hail! Hail!” and sang … I didn’t like it … all that defiance and rigidity came out of nowhere … perhaps from the high schools … Some tall, skinny guy from a small house by the road was approaching … I acted as though I didn’t see him and let him get close. When he leapt at me with his arms stretched out and his right leg extended … I didn’t wait anymore … and I slugged him in the chest for all I was worth and kicked him in the shins, so that he howled and began hopping around like a frog … He was out!.. Then one of his girls came running up and started whining and sniffing around me … I stretched out an arm … Brats are the same everywhere in the world … if you don’t strike immediately, nothing works later … Spoiled mamas’ boys and cosseted baby girls … We wiped off our faces, slapped the dust off our shirts and picked the straw out of each other’s hair … The church in Moste was full and we had to stand on steps along the side wall. The church was new and very white … only a few statues and paintings, all very bright, stood here and there in niches or hung on the walls. It wasn’t like a church at all, more like a whitewashed hangar, or synagogues in Africa that were white so the black people could see each other more easily. Somehow God couldn’t be here. He had to be in dark churches, so dark that there had to be lamps or at least candles burning in order for you to look around. So that darkness descended on you when you entered and you couldn’t see a single person in the pews … So you could pray or think as you saw fit … Here that wasn’t possible … You saw all the people, and in the light of day as it fell through the clear windows all the faces were as alike as under the open sky … I didn’t care to go back there for services …