Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

Had I told the priest everything at Saturday confession? No, I hadn’t! What was I going to tell that fat bag of flesh, that red crocodile hide in his black cassock who could barely breathe on his dark side of the grill! I wasn’t going to tell any of them anything about the delectable things I did with my pee-pee and repeated over and over again until the little thing was just a poor, skinny fuse … Nothing about Anka or the little gypsy girl, nothing about my shoplifting, or the tobacconist lady, nothing about my angry thoughts. That stayed in my head. I couldn’t and wouldn’t put it out in the open … and then he wouldn’t have understood my accent, anyway … God already knew what sort of a labyrinth I had in my head. I wasn’t about to confide anything to the blacksmith bellows rasping behind the bars of that little cell, even if it smelled of flowers and ambrosia itself … No, I didn’t believe that even one of them was Jesus’s apostle. They were ordinary people in uniforms who made faces … like the police, or sergeants, or train conductors, whether they were talking about ordinary things or singing hymns … I’d sworn, I’d lied, that’s what I’d told him the last time … One bright morning in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight … Those were the kinds of things I’d confessed. Once the hurt priest said to me, “Oh, how Jesus is crying now!” There was something relaxed in his voice, like a storyteller’s … I could practically see twelve-year-old Jesus in his little shirt, shedding tears over the storm gutter at the corner. I almost opened my mouth to tell him everything, that’s how much the humanity of his voice moved me … but thank God, I didn’t … Once outside I assigned my own penance, more than the priest had given me … Instead of one Our Father I prayed ten, instread of two Hail Marys I recited twenty … That was for all the infractions that God alone knew about and for that reason were his concern only … “You must have had a lot of sins, if you had to do that much penance,” my schoolmates said when I came back out after half an hour … they judged the sinfulness of your sins based on how much time you spent confessing in church. They were determined to mark you one way or another … Oh, then I began to finish my prayers in a flash … I didn’t pray my real penance until I was back outside … sometimes crouching behind the fat entryway pillar that supported a golden painting over the doorway … And from there I would move to a bench in the park. Did it count if I prayed just in my head? No … surely not, I had to at least move my lips as I prayed, otherwise it would be too convenient … Nothing, not a single thing counted for anything if you didn’t use your muscles in the process …

Then every Saturday afternoon I began having to attend the pieties that were designed to prepare you for holy confirmation. At confirmation you became a soldier of Christ … that was something real that you could get enthusiastic about. The preparatory pieties were held in a different place each time … first in the cathedral, then in a church in Trnovo … We prayed, sang and studied, listened to the sermon of a priest who told us that there was a fog in our souls that we had to cut through with a knife. That provoked some laughter, because it was true. Now I began to look differently at the paintings over the altar, especially the ones on the ceiling … Jesus conveying the big golden key of St. Peter on the rock … A big, handsome ship sailing through shadows … full of sails to the very top of its masts … setting about for Mount Ararat … All of the townspeople were on its deck, all of them calm. Among them I recognized some dead people from Basel … I even recognized the man holding onto a camel and the one who was at the wheel … Captain Noah … He had his mouth open. He was shouting commands … The ship went on … With my whole heart I followed it across the whole ceiling … On the far side was Jesus, resurrecting Lazarus in some cramped room … A banquet. Troubadours playing for coins. And women around a king, giving him all kinds of advice … a whole mountain of advice … Bloody women, they were always spoiling eternity … I’d had it up to my ears with their gossipy tongues … The Last Supper, Judgment Day … I believed in the paintings that depicted events. But I didn’t believe the modern ones that just had one saint standing with his hand raised in an oath, as if he were in a telephone booth where just one person could call … My sponsor was a student, an owl, the St. Vincent’s conference had assigned him to me, Vati explained. I was promised a new suit, underwear, and shoes. I went to get measured. In the nuns’ garden, amid the geraniums and touch-me-nots, a skinny, pious tailor measured me for a belted jacket and three-quarter pants made of mottled cloth … I also got shoes with soles that stuck out on the sides and looked like submarines, and a white shirt with a collar that reached halfway down my chest … The confirmation took place in the cathedral … This was the first time I got to see the bishop up close, the one that Mrs. Guček and the whole town knew liked looking at women, and had a red nose because he was fond of drink … There was no other bishop in town, so this had to be the same one that everybody picked to the bone … This was the first time I saw the bishop, whom they called pastor … he really was dressed all in gold … with a tall gold cap, a gold cloak and a gold, curved St. Nicholas rod. He didn’t strike it as hard as they’d threatened he would. The blow wasn’t manly or athletic or feminine or anything at all … My student sponsor in his outgrown sport coat and wide necktie stood behind me … There were street vendors outside and he had bought me a bag of candy and oranges … Then we went to some little house in Moste next to a factory, where we played roulette for prizes … The whole sidewalk outside was packed with us and it took us nearly an hour to get inside. There were ten of us who’d had sponsors appointed … We gathered in some room at a round table. The grand prize was a pocket watch on a chain that was hanging over a chest of drawers. At first we won tea and potica. When my turn came, I tossed a little ball onto the red spinning wheel with silver numbers on it … The ball kept bouncing crazily back and forth before magically stopping on the number that had also been assigned to the pocket watch on a big label … The grand prize! Incredible!.. God was shining his grace on me! Then a nervous conversation, a brief argument erupted between my sponsor and a little man in a black necktie and hat who was the organizer … I was holding the watch, which was silver with a green dial … “The watch,” said the little man, “cannot be his, because he’s from a different precinct.” What did that mean? I could see my prize, my treasure disintegrating. I have to admit, my sponsor offered a spirited defense, even though he was quite undistinguished and gesticulated a lot … but he was just a lowly youth, a student, and he had to give way to the little man’s arguments. I had to return the watch through a whole forest of hands so they could put it back over the chest of drawers … I really was on the verge of crying … Instead I got a different prize, a kilogram box of “Dr. Francek’s Chicory” … At home Vati fulminated. “Diese Schweinhunde von katolischen Pfaffen …” ‡Mother and sister searched through the bag … aside from a few jellybeans, lollipops, hazelnuts, and one orange there was nothing … not one single dinar, not even a cent. I gave the whole bag to Gisela. All I had were the shoes and the suit, which, because the fabric was cheap, mother predicted would fray, wear out and fall to pieces within very little time … First communion and confirmation were behind me … without too much pain I’d passed one subject at school: religion.