Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

The tobacconist lady called to me through the gap in her window when I sat down outside her newsstand. She was demanding her money “immediately.” I instantly deflated … The next day when I came home from school at noon, Vati and mother were already waiting for me in our room, bamboo rod in hand. The tobacconist lady was standing there in the corner … she had closed her newsstand over lunch … she was short and undistinguished without her newsstand, but she had such a wide, muscular rear end that I got excited and began fantasizing about something dirty … I had just enough time to throw down my backpack and race back down the stairs head over heels. I had no idea where to … I ran toward the train station, racing without any let-up, as though all the tobacconists in Ljubljana were on my heels … I stopped outside the fence of the freight station. I kept my hands in my pockets … Stood first on one foot, then on the other. Amid all this my pole stood up like a thumb in a glove … I watched the trains going past … freight wagons, tenders, tank cars … There was a distinctive building on the other side. The Hotel Miklič, as its vertical sign proclaimed … That was where we had stayed overnight two years before, when we still had Swiss francs in our pockets … People were sitting in the waiting rooms with the intention of traveling. Travelers. Different from those on the street, who just walked around for no reason. Peasants with wicker handbags, with backpacks, with cardboard suitcases, with baskets … The squalor consoled me, felt good. I sat down on a bench next to a railing and fell asleep. When I woke up, there were two bearded beggars, two well-liquored old men leaning against me. Where was I? I got up, shoved the shaggy dwarves, those bearded children who would never grow up, away from me … The steam that the locomotives emitted … “tssshhhhhh” … turned into cold, stinging fog. It reminded me of the souls in a drawing that I’d once seen in some old German book: in a rocky, barren landscape, vibrant little clouds came out of the mouths of dying knights, then narrowed into naked, white angels or black, finned devils who blocked out the sky, the sun, the stars, the moon … I went to the market. There I saw the open butcher stalls where I used to help Miss Roza do her shopping. Under the counters next to the chopping blocks there were empty spaces where I could spend the night. But there was such a stinking, rotten chill dominating the place, gnawing at my wet feet and especially the slit between my trousers and long underwear, which had been sewn by its elastic band to my pants where I was exposed, that I had to get back up … It’s bad when you can’t find any possible place to breathe, one corner was worse than the next … I walked around in a daze … in the park near St. Peter’s Church I had cold sweats … I cruised from bench to bench, sitting on each of them for a short while … I made two circuits. In Jarše, in Lower Carniola, in Basel, in the mountains around Urach there were places, sanctuaries, hollows where you could hide and live, albeit with cows or young wolves of my age … Finally I shoved off and boldly headed toward Bohorič … Once past the fence and in the yard, I wanted to go up the ladder to Jože’s, but as if I was cursed, the ladder was gone and his room was dark. The horses neighed, it was warm there … But the stable door was locked. The house was asleep. Stars shone over the courtyard. They glimmered way up there, white and cold … sending each other ironic little arrows … I crept up the staircase … Here outside our room there was at least a kind of house rag that served as a doormat, and I could wrap myself up in it. I put my hands under the back of my neck, tucked my head in between my knees … Barely had I managed to doze off … to slip into a world of pleasant, warm darkness with no people … when light sliced into it: mother and Vati in their coats, Clairi in her brown sweater, and a cop with a big belly. A commotion of voices … They’d been looking for me all over town, trumpeting my shame to all four corners of the world … It was three in the morning. I felt worst of all for Vati’s sake. He always got up first … He immediately went to the kitchen to shave. I stood motionless at his back while the commotion continued around the corpulent constable. My throat was all knotted up. He looked askance at me, then continued to busy himself with his knife … Clairi went all the way to the far corner … she wanted to have nothing to do with it all. The policeman left. Mother got undressed and then, “ganz still, bitte,” dshe whacked me on my cold butt with the bamboo cane, which proceeded to get hotter and hotter. Gisela woke up and started to cry. She tried to protect me by throwing herself in between, and then the cane stayed in midair … I lay down beside her in bed. Gisela pressed close to me, hugging me tight to warm me … It didn’t hit Vati until morning … He shook the table and the boxes … muttering monologues to himself. Bankrupt!.. Hooliganism!.. War!.. Jews!.. Blackguards!..

*

It stopped running. We had to take it to the watchmaker’s.

†

When will it be fixed?

‡

In a week or two.

§

Mrs. Guček took it to a watchmaker in the old town who’s a friend of hers.

‖

No, no, we didn’t trade the watch with the grocer and we didn’t put it in hock … it was so broken that the watchmaker couldn’t do anything with it … nothing but cogs and springs …

a

Gritli will send you another one.

b

Pangs of the soul are far nobler than pains of the body.

c

Hi!

(Serbo-Croatian)

d

Hold still, please.

“VON WEM HAT DER LÜMMEL nur das schlechte Beispiel?” *mother asked, as if I weren’t in the room … It was a harsh blow … the whole house found out about the scandal, the whole block … From the hospice to “Mexico” … The twins disappeared whenever they saw me … I didn’t dare show myself to butcher Ham, who was always so nice to me … not to mention Jože, whom I hid from like a needle in a haystack. I shook passing the newsstand as if it were my tombstone … I would have preferred to spend days and days in bed, hidden under a blanket … Slept or died. But you can’t afford a luxury like that living together in one room. I had to get up and go to school, that ludicrous chaff cutter … The tobacconist lady told mother, “Dieses Kind wird Ihr Unglück sein, liebe Frau … Schon jetzt ist er durch und durch verdorben … Ein elender Bub … Ich habe mein Vertrauen in ihn gelegt …” †Those were her last words … Mother was afraid she was going to take us to court, even though she’d gotten furs as compensation … that she would have me locked up … She didn’t dare respond. She and Mrs. Guček discussed whether or not to put me in some institution … yes or no? At length they weighed the arguments for and against … “Ach, wenn der Lausbub nur wüßte, wie Weh er Ihnen tut …” ‡Mrs. Guček said. Yes, the very same fright with the shriveled eyes of a mad crow … “Die einzige Rettung ist die Erziehungsanstalt,” §mother concluded, fixing me with her eyes … The old woman and that girl of hers by the faucet now had a free hand … to go at me with even greater zest … I spilled water on the floor when I set a bucket down … Of course I would first take the bucket back to our room and then come back with a rag … No! Up went the blinds … the foster child or stepdaughter pressed her elliptical, pimply face to the glass pane. She said something back into the room, informing her aunt, and the next instant the old lady had leapt into the hallway and begun shouting at me … Mother came out … she brought a rag along with her … and more or less came to my defense … I was boiling … with rage at the old hag, but even more at that pale, anemic puppet of hers … A few days later I finally ran into her, just as she was coming up the stairs. She pressed flat up against the wall, so as not to brush against me … that low life and wild man. She was taller than me and four or five years older. I stood right where I was on the steps up above her and suddenly landed her such a wallop, a full wooden mask, that it deafened me, too, for a while. At first she almost fainted … then the tears started to pour … as pale as her face … amid sobbing that was so miserable that it touched my heart. She ran upstairs, sprinkling the hallway, the walls, the support beams as she went … At that very moment mother reached for the bamboo cane again …