Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

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My poor little boy!

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… to light up old castles and monuments in the evenings.

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The beautiful blue Danube

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Vienna, just you alone

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Leave me alone, you. Leave me alone.

MRS. GMEINER was like my teacher Roza. She was just as big and powerful a lady, except that she always wore clothes of black or purple satin because she was in mourning for her husband … At the beginning of summer Vati got me re-registered for the public school in Ledina, because the one in Jarše was too full … The school in Ledina was much grander than the one-room school I’d attended in Lower Carniola … There was strict discipline and tidiness in the hallways. Between the windows and doors to the classrooms there were framed pictures of famous men in beards, all of identical size in identical frames. While I was waiting for Vati, who was in the principal’s office, I read the names under the pictures: Prešeren, Stritar, Cigler … Kersnik, Jurčič, Mencinger … Levstik, Slomšek, Dalmatin … The hallway was like a temple and as I walked back and forth, the eyes of those great men followed me through the gray ash of their hair, their mustaches, their beards … They were probably doctors or judges … Then a teacher came, tall, broad, stout Miss Roza all dressed in black but with red lips. She spoke to Vati, who looked like those learned men with long hair and beards in the pictures, and as he held his hat behind his back, standing in front of this woman who was nearly twice his size, he seemed to visibly shrink with stage fright … She kindly pressed me to herself, to her blouse covered with frills and patches. “If he studies as hard as he did in Lower Carniola, he won’t have a thing to worry about …” she said. My fellow students were all perfectly combed and dressed. Miss Roza introduced me from the platform, with her hand on my shoulder. Here is your new classmate. He came here from Switzerland over a year ago. He attended the first form there. He was seriously ill and spent two years in hospitals … Her voice sounded clear, sweet and maternal … His Slovene is bad, she went on, so be nice to him and help him … The brats were staring at my long hair that my parents cut at home … Despite my embarrassment and the teacher’s sing-songy voice I immediately spotted two ass-kissers and a few who had already declared pre-emptive war on me … A whole train car full of mama’s boys and and conceited know-it-alls! Then the teacher had me take a seat in a bench by the window. She sat down and her bosom with all the various decorations affixed to her dress made her look like a portrait bust set on her desk. Above her was the famous young king in a fuzzy photo, looking gently down from under his black profusion of hair … Oh, he had whatever his heart desired … During the main break the other students snacked on chocolate and rolls with marmalade or thin slices of cheese. My head was practically spinning from hunger … They would leave their leftovers under the benches … halves of breakfast rolls jutted out among the briefcases stowed on the shelves and I felt like nabbing them. But I knew that theft was punished harshly at school … A few busybodies came up to my bench. How’s it going? Why were you in Switzerland? Some of them behaved decently, but one of them, a fatso, started interrogating me with his hands in his pockets like some bank director, and his head was all bulging out, too, “So why did you come here from Swtizerland if you don’t know any Slovene?…” This was another one of those damned lumps who feel just super duper dressed in their nice sweaters and corduroy knickers … because they know all about something or because they have a train set under their bed at home or because they already know they’re going to get a gold watch for their next birthday … “Bah! He can’t even answer my question!” he scowled. You just wait, I’ll land you such a punch, you’ll be looking for parts of yourself around the schoolyard for days!.. My immediate neighbor, named List, was different. Calm. Independent. With a thin, dark red face, like mountain climbers, a bit cross-eyed, always wearing checkered shirts with white suspenders … While I answered during the first period, everyone had a good laugh. But that was nothing, I expected as much. Miss Roza found a way to silence them immediately … not with a look and not with her hand or with anything that I could notice … it was very elegant. I didn’t know anything … well, maybe my drawing and handwriting weren’t so bad … When Miss Roza asked me a question, I stood up and didn’t answer. All right, then, next time, she said and gently motioned with her hand for me to sit down … All my homework was written in chicken scratch. I didn’t have anyplace to write … when we’d finish eating, Vati turned the kitchen table into a work table and then later into his bed … In between times I had to steal a corner of it for my notebook or some sheet of drawing paper. But that was an excuse. I knew nothing because I understood nothing, and sometimes because I didn’t feel like thinking …

Across from the school there was a fur store … with a fox made of red tin walking across its signboard. In its display window there were muffs, collars, coats and a pretty mannequin dressed in a moleskin jacket. This store was like a memento of wealth and of Basel … I would go over to look at it. I felt like I was back on Gerbergässli. Every day I had the long walk to Jarše and then from Jarše to school … I had to get up especially early. Off of St. Martin’s Road there were soldiers who lived in a wooden shack in the middle of a field guarding the army’s crops … Every morning I gave the guard a hand salute … But then: past the long wall of the lime factory to the railway overpass and from the Dragon up toward Tabor to Ledina … more than an hour! The washerwomen were already out before seven pushing their two-wheeled carts with bundles of laundry down the shoulder of the road into town … At the steam oven bakery, I’d occasionally see two bicyclists engaged in a tussle, usually an Eagle and a Falcon who had run into each other on their bikes … One was riding into town, the other out of it. As they rode toward each other, one would wave an arm or an umbrella, causing the other to fall off his bike … He left his bicycle in the middle of the street and ran after the other, grabbing at his rear fender … if the other didn’t manage to escape, he kicked at his pedals or the bike … and then it began … they grabbed at each other, writhing through puddles, rolling over the grass and then back out into the street. It was comical to watch these grown-up, wobbly grandpas locked in some childish wrestling hold. People stared and either left them alone or walked on … At St. Jožef’s hospice I always waited for List, who lived somewhere close by. Those few minutes before school were the nicest of the whole day. Sometimes his older sister would bring him in on her bicycle. I liked her, because she was cheerful and like her brother and she always wore checkered skirts with suspenders … A few times on the way home from school we stopped at St. Jožef’s morgue where the dead lay, the old men and women from the hospice … There were wreaths and flowers all around where they lay. What were they like when their souls left their bodies? They had white faces and cardboard shoes that lay just as flat as them. We sprinkled holy water on them but there were some lowlifes who, if a corpse had its mouth open, would take all the little sacred objects set out on its clothes and stuff them into its mouth … I wasn’t afraid of them, I was just afraid that some soul floating around in the cold crypt that resembled a dirty garage might touch me … slide into my mouth like a cold snake and whisk everything out of me. Teacher Roza asked me a little bit every day and finally rewarded me with a smile … as though I were suddenly some model student … She had a son, they said, who apparently was such a prize student that he skipped some grades and was already in high school … After school she would often take me or some other student along to the market so we could help carry her baskets … She put on a black straw hat with glass cherries … She always wore a skirt that almost reached to the ground … Velvet, taffeta, satin, twill … I knew my fabrics well … Everyone said hello to her … on the bridge, at the market … I went with her from stall to stall where meat was sold as she made her selections. I listened to her talk to the master butchers. I was curious how such a learned lady would act in the midst of everyday life, at the market, with all its shouting and bargaining over price. She just smiled, enjoyed herself and was cheerful, like a true lady … she could have easily been the queen of China or Spain or Monte Carlo … She had her special vendors and peasant women … for potatoes, for lettuce, for apples, eggs, cream and flowers … Everyone was happy to see her. I was proud and felt it an honor to be able to walk with her through town … When she got on the streetcar outside city hall, she always waved goodbye to me through the window …