Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

The best thing to do was get away from there … Through a wide exit doorway you came into a square hallway with doors surrounding oleanders in the corners and a rug in the middle. Thank god, it was quiet and dark there … Here at last was the vaulted door to the staircase, illuminated by real streetlights protected in wire mesh. The wide, eroded steps made a sharp turn as they followed the thick wall … That’s why I always descended them carefully or shot down like a bomb … A sunny day with street noise shone into the vaulted entryway through the wide door, only one side of which was opened inward. I stood there for a while and looked at the people … all conceivable types were walking across the square as though in a live toy box of figurines … I felt drawn outside … Next to the door was the goldsmith’s and a lamp store, then the clothes designer’s studio and a shoe store, then an optician who also sold binoculars, and then the Rot fur store. That one I knew. I stood outside its display window, hoping to see the tall blonde lady who aroused my desire, but I couldn’t find her. After that came city hall with its gigantic striped poles for flags on each side of its entrance. There was a statue on its steps: a short-maned, stocky horse ridden by the old King Peter I as he fled into the mountains of Albania … Both of them had been fashioned in rough curves out of gray rock … The handsome old king in the same sort of army cap as any Serbian soldier would wear was so alien in this environment … city hall, the square, the whole town, it might as well have been the statue of an Apache chief here on the steps … This startled and made me feel uncomfortable, because the old king’s face was so noble that I liked him immediately … Behind the barred windows of city hall were those cannon and mortars from the first World War that I had already looked at before. If the gate was open, I would slip into the cool, dark entryway to feel their barrels and carriages like hay carts on wooden wheels and the soft, still-oily bundles of rags on their ramrods … Beyond that of course was the cathedral … then a florist’s shop, and the Falcon and Spinning Wheel Inn … an old man, a junkman who sold odds and ends in display cases in the entryway … buttons, children’s watches, toothpaste, shoelaces, scarves, the board game Mensch, ärgere dich nicht , yoyos, belts … I’d already been to Šenklavž’s, also to Krisper’s, that time when I went begging with Mirko and his mother. I was careful not to let any of the sales staff recognize me. Then there was yet another furrier in a narrow building, a regular palace built out of black marble … The elegance of the street … the artificial flowers, the toys, the pretty odds and ends in the display windows, the neckties on shirts, the veils, mountains of hams with parsley, wigs of all different colors … practically lifted me off the ground, so that I could scarcely feel myself anymore and it seemed I could swim through this ocean of silk, necklaces, fine shoes, gold cufflinks … Town Square ended where the buildings got narrower and Old Square began … which was dark, crowded and grim. I didn’t go there … Here, on the border between the two squares, a barber was standing outside his diminutive barbershop with an outsized copper plate for a shop sign hanging over his head … Here was also the sign with the red Turk smoking a hookah … Here porters with braids over their shoulders and numbered tin badges on their caps waited for work … here a swarthy shoe shine man crouched behind a mirrored box, a brush and open tin of shoe polish in hand … The bridge that went over the Ljubljanica was called the Cobblers’ Bridge, it was white and had handsome lamps on it. The path that followed the river was called the Gallus Embankment … This is where the antique stores were all lined up, with rummage in their windows, their doorways, out on the street … Furniture, nails, mattresses, pots, cast-iron stoves, radios, flower stands. All of it old, disgusting junk that repelled me. Gargoyles of cast lead in the window and in boxes arrayed along benches, in front of them dragons, phantoms and devils … Everything great or small was inside in the windows or outside and under the chestnut trees … The antique dealers, women and men and their children, sat on stools, armchairs, beds and divans that they were also trying to sell. I wanted to figure out if these city kids were anything like the ones in Basel … if they were better or smarter than the peasant kids in Lower Carniola, or in Nove Jarše for that matter … I went from face to face, searching. Here was one like Anka, but too chubby and done up. Farther down from the chestnuts in a vacant sandy lot some boys were kicking a ball … They were too self-contained a group for me to be able to join them. I was drawn to some sabers and old mortars displayed in the windows, along with knives, swords in ornate sheaths … armor, lances, helmets with steel face guards … If only one of those things could have been mine … But the antique dealers kept an eye on everything and gave me dirty looks, as though they’d guessed my intentions … Around here, I concluded, there was no chance of finding company or making friends … The neighborhood was too gussied up, but also quite desolate … I went back along the wall toward the bridge … There were several trees in the sand … Carts leaned up against the wall … the wide iron gate of a warehouse … The Ljubljanica flowed lazily between its high walls. The whole of it wouldn’t have made up for one single branch of the Sava, its gravelly riverbed, the woods, the potato fields near the airport … I didn’t come across a single scamp my age anywhere … I walked down short, narrow Locksmith Lane, between an inn and a warehouse which exuded a stench of dampness, rotten fruit, paper and old dirt, with flies swarming around …

After that I arrived back at Town Square …

Alongside the jewelry laid out on velvet in the goldsmith’s display window next door to the Hammans’ front gate I suddenly caught a glimpse of myself, so changed that I didn’t even resemble anyone I knew … I felt such despair, fear, hopelessness, and confusion within myself … but the windowpane showed a thin, wiry boy with disheveled hair and the muscular legs of a soccer player or boxer … An athlete trained almost to the point of deformity … I had to step close to detect in the shadows of my eyes and nose some of that hopelessness and confusion that were inside me … All the rest was some unknown brat, whoever he was, who could very easily also have been my enemy, but under no circumstances my close friend … more likely an obstacle, the way other boys I tried to avoid were obstacles to me … Good God, how disappointed I was with the appearance I’d been stuck with, and I felt even more crushed than just shortly before … I wished I could literally extract me out of myself into the light … grab onto the air and pull myself out of that unfortunate shell into the open … I didn’t want to look anymore, otherwise I was afraid I could lose all partiality toward myself … I was one of those kids I had to run from because they were constantly blocking my path … I thought it would be best for me to quit studying, make myself invisible and unheard, and avoid people, or else sooner or later they would gang up on me.… I breathed a sigh of relief when I was back on the other side of the door again, no longer visible to myself or anyone else. I was free … and curious once again …

MOST OFTEN I went to the area just before the cathedral. Because that’s where the smallest store was that I had ever seen: the rummage man’s little display cases in the courtyard passage next to the inn. He also had several cases out on display on the steps and on the sidewalk outside the passage … This was my world … on a micro-scale. Toys, straps, buttons on cardboard, little toy pistols, combs of various sizes … and then rosaries in every possible color, toothpaste and powders in tubes and little jars … two taffeta corsets that got me excited, little balls of yarn and seven tiny cups on a silver platter, six of which were gilt, but not the seventh … These glass boxes crammed full of wares from all over aroused more interest in me than the display windows of the biggest stores in town … They were like colored cartoons, variegated kitsch, comic strips from the Most Beautiful Adventures in the World … Barely had you noticed one thing, than another showed up unexpectedly beside it … next to a bowl of pearls there were race cars, behind them there were trumpets and English horns with a Mickey Mouse and a child’s two-barreled shotgun for the jungle, affixed to a piece of cardboard showing, against a field of blue, a lion’s head with a silver mane and a gaping, fire-red gullet … beneath it was a gray wind-up elephant … The owner, the rummage man, stood or sat in his passage, always wearing a jacket and hat … He was an old man and slightly decrepit. All of this merchandise belonged to him. I didn’t pay any more attention to him than I did to any other uninteresting person on the street … He, on the other hand, noticed and remembered me when I stopped by every morning to stare into his cases on the sidewalk … Once he came up to me. “Since you seem to be so interested,” he said in a thin, wheezy voice, “come help me sometime when you’re free …” The thought electrified me … I was hired on immediately and was standing outside the passage the first thing the very next morning when its doors were still locked … The merchant arrived on an old bicycle and handed me the key … I opened it and set out a sign under the house number that read, “DRY GOODS AND MORE. Jurij Velikonja” … Then I helped him take the little display cases from their stacks, unlock the padlock on each of them, and set them out one on top of the other up to the ceiling. I hung polka-dotted belts, whips, dog leashes, necklaces and different colored rosaries out on pegs, pinned scarves to lines strung across the ceiling, always in the same order … striped ones for everyday wear, then white, then silk ones for Sundays and checkered for special occasions, and after them scarves of red damask, scarlet taffeta and still others of green taffeta … set out on a big tarp two big pillows for gentlemen and ladies, two smaller ones, and then two even smaller ones … then Velikonja put a cardboad vest over my head that had buttons of all kinds … metal, glass, ivory, monochrome and multicolored, for clothing and linens … I walked around in that costume as advertising outside the cathedral and back and forth on the square … I had to admit that the display cases and the wares in them were redolent of age. But I enjoyed selling. Selling and business became my goal. At home I even made a sign “We sell everysing here” and had to replace the “s” with “th” … Old Velikonja was nice … we talked about this and that … but not at all about me, nor was he inclined to talk about himself … so not about anything personal. We mainly talked about the most urgent things connected to selling. He acquainted me with simple bookkeeping. On one sheet he had a precise list of what he had of this and that, let’s say scarves, and on the sheet opposite how many of them he’d sold. For everyday record-keeping purposes he had cardboard tabs that hung from the display cases where you just marked off whatever item you’d sold. As a reward for good work in my first month he promised me his best cork pistol and a box of corks … We tended to have few customers. Out on the square I might occasionally sell a set of buttons for underwear … And in the passage, every now and then a housemaid might come for hair clasps or a ring … and would spend a long time choosing among all the rings displayed in various little boxes: little hearts made of red stones, a greenish anchor made out of aquamarine, gold stamped rings … The women bought hairpins and every now and then a scarf, the younger men bought belts, ties, a cigarette lighter or case … old ladies might buy a white prayer book for a girl’s first communion or confirmation … Nobody paid any attention to the Japanese ocarinas made out of bakelite … Velikonja toted up the number of items sold from the charts and put the money into a ceramic milk dish … At noon, when the church bells rang, he turned toward the stairs at the end of the passage that led up to private apartments and prayed. Then he went to the inn next door, the Spinning Wheel, for lunch. During that time I handled sales on my own … Once in his absence I sold a whole set of buttons for a man’s suit and roughly a meter of satin to some woman … though by then I had a good command of the inventory, there were still a few things that challenged me … I was most drawn to the little watches, toylike little things for kids on elastic bands. One afternoon I couldn’t resist anymore … although I knew that the watches were made out of tin and celluloid and weren’t real … still … and this should testify to my stupidity … I took out two of them that were attached to cardboard at the back of one of the cases … one to wear myself, and the other to give to Gisela … That was the end! That evening or the next morning, after checking the sales or the lists on the cases, Mr. Velikonja, who was very precise, noticed that he was missing two silly little toy watches … When I arrived the next morning, he just gave me a rude glance and said nothing … I sat down on the shoe grater next to the steps, but Velikonja went in and out past me as if I were thin air … I could feel his resentment like a sort of sad, lazy spell reminiscent of sleep. That’s how two stupid little toy watches cost me a friendship …