Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

SO THAT WAS HOW I MANAGED to cut off my own path to the cathedral … I headed back down Locksmith Lane to the embankment. I could sense, I could smell that boys met there … Outside the locked door of the warehouse there was a big, sandy area with thin trees growing on it, lindens … I sat down under one of the trees, determined to wait for the first boy who walked past so I could establish a friendship with him, no matter if he limped, was an idiot or had lice … if need be I would even have been happy with a girl my own age … I looked at the sapling for any similarity between it and the tall, mighty trees that grew along the Sava or around Cegelnica … It was too tiny, it was deficient in chlorophyll … it made more the impression of a little box of soup greens than a proper tree … The houses were deficient, too … both on this side of the river and the other. Otherwise, on the other bank there was a good-sized building, the gray blue Matica movie theater, and beyond it was Congress Square and the Star Park … Some chestnut trees were being cut down there and the base was being erected for a monument to King Aleksandar I, who was the son of Peter I and was also going to be riding a horse, but one twice as big. Nearby was a casino with a garden restaurant and a music pavilion where an orchestra played in the evenings … But all of that was meant for the elegant world, the grown-ups, not for kids …

My waiting finally paid off … I noticed two boys carrying a big box across Cobblers’ Bridge, then they turned past the Kolman porcelain warehouse onto the embankment … They were walking so carelessly, one of them taller, the other shorter, that I immediately figured this had to be their home turf … Just to be safe I had put a stone in my pocket … Something in their faces immediately changed when they noticed me … They sped up and I tautened some muscles so I could get out of there fast if they attacked me … They set the box down close by, both of them taller than me, long-legged and long-necked like storks … “Where do you come from,” one of them asked … He seemed to have some difficulty speaking. Now the burden was on me and I had a test to pass … “Ve moofed here from Pohorič Street,” I said … The taller one was looking at me out of deep-set eyes. The pucker around his mouth was swollen and golden brown, but his forehead by contrast was white and bulging, making his head look naked … a moron? an idiot? The shorter one was made of other stuff, even though they looked and were dressed alike. In blue work aprons, like two little businessmen … fruit farmers, produce vendors … I got up. This required delicacy, because I was the one infringing on their space. Of course I was shorter than either of them … The other one, Karel, had a skinny, triangular face with jutting cheekbones. There was something unpleasant in his unblinking, narrow, gray eyes and around his thin lips, something that radiated through his skin … He was more dangerous than the tall one … “Where are you from?” he asked harshly. “From Moste, Pohorič Street,” I answered. He sat down by the box, clasping his long arms around his legs … He lowered his pointed head between his knees so that the vertebrae stood out on his back … Then he lowered his eyelids so that only the pupils were visible. This was now a matter of instinct … distinguishing between a thousand changes of tone in what could be a friendship. Both of them needed to find out as quickly as possible that I came from a long way away and that I was absolutely no threat to them … “Ve came from Zvitzerlant sree years ako,” I said … The younger one opened an eyelid and started looking at me a little differently now … “Are ze two off you broders?” I asked quickly. I was in a hurry so they wouldn’t think better of this, decide that I wasn’t worth a cent and leave … “Yes, we are,” the taller one said enthusiastically … “Ant zis? Vie to you haff zis?” I pointed to the big box that seemed to be full of strips of different-colored paper. I wanted the younger one to answer. The older one waved toward the bridge. “That guy who puts covers on books gave it to us.” … “The bookbinder!” said the younger. “Let’s go!..” My mouth suddenly got dry … “Vill you come out zometime?” I blabbed, full of hope and doubt … “Maybe,” the younger said … They went into a yellow house that had a shop sign on it that said “Prinčič Fashion Salon” … Oh, was I ever happy, even though they never showed up near the warehouse again. I skipped with joy as I went home …

That’s how I got to know Ivan and Karel … They lived in the same house where their mother and both sisters had a small hat shop. They only put one hat out on display in their store window at a time and changed it every week … one week it would be a hat with a veil, the next week without … then a hat for mourning, followed by a hat with cherries and next one with bouquets or swallows … If you went into their little store, all around you there were mirrors and among them a big print of The Angelus by Jean-François Millet, as the caption said down below … Past a wooden wall you came into their workroom and past the workroom there was a vestibule and from the vestibule you came into their room, where all five of them lived … Their mother was tiny, thin, and dark-haired … She reminded me of Mrs. Guček. Both sisters resembled the two brothers. Silva had a cylindrical head like Ivan … and the younger one, Ivka, had the same sharp, gray, bright eyes as Karel. They had yet another brother, the oldest, who was a barber and no longer lived at home … There was one hugely important difference between Ivan and Karel. Ivan was enrolled in special education and was very religious, while Karel went to a regular school and didn’t care about anything … Ivan was the first to get up every morning, so he could go to the Franciscan church, where he helped the priests and other ministrants first in the sacristy, then at mass … He would clear off the pews, put out the flowers, trim the candles. Now and then, under the supervision of an older attendant, he would serve as a ministrant in one of the side chapels … The others were all still asleep by the time he got back … He would put the big prayer book which one of the Franciscan brothers had given him back into the night table, climb out of his good clothes and lie down next to Karel to finish sleeping … Karel, on the other hand … not just his name, but his pointy face reminded me of our uncle. Unblinking, cold, tight-lipped, inscrutable … as though he was never going to let you see his true colors … I had to accept that as part of the bargain … I suspected there were quite a few other things I was going to have to swallow. I resolved not to bat an eye at any intolerance or disappointment … I was prepared to sacrifice anything I had for this friendship … even more than the White Prince in the Beautiful Illustrated Adventures ever intended to sacrifice …

The next day I went to sit by the warehouse door. When they didn’t come, I climbed up on the wall across from their business. The wall there formed a kind of box or balcony looking out over the Ljubljanica. Inside the box was a cart chained to a young willow tree that grew there … My friends slept late, until eight or nine … After that I couldn’t hold out anymore. I went down Locksmith Lane and called to them through a street-level window that had an iron grate over it … The room would have been bare if it hadn’t had wardrobes against the walls … They slept together on a narrow, brown bed in the corner … two steps away from the big double bed that their mother and both sisters slept in … I sent a big rooster parading around in their room … Finally they heard me. They dug themselves out from under their blankets, where they’d been sleeping in their swimsuits, which inspired me, because mother had always forced me to put on one of her old slips overnight … They washed next to a bucket in the vestibule, then came outside to the wall … I felt badly only on account of the women … I assumed they must be completely different from mother, Clairi, and Margrit … I took care not to embarrass them. Silva … a broad-hipped, diligent, boring woman … I had nothing to do with her … But Ivka! Whenever she poked her disheveled head out of the covers at my muffled whistle … she also slept in her swimsuit … I would freeze … She was like Karel in almost every respect. Exactly the same triangular face, the jutting cheekbones … the same thin, taut, pinkish skin … but especially the same sharp, gray, glaring eyes the color of slate … Now and then she would toss me a look or mumble something through her thin, pursed lips … something nasty, insulting, mean … at my expense, naturally … The feeling I developed toward her was similar to what I felt about Karel … except that it was so complicated and high up somewhere, as though it unfolded on top of some mountains where my eyes couldn’t reach … I sensed a chilly revulsion … I would have given just about anything to be able to change that disdain in her eyes at least into indifference … Once when I walked into the vestibule by mistake when she was there washing her armpits by the bucket, I froze in fear of having perhaps embarrassed her … But she just kept washing as if I weren’t there, and even though I calmed down, the feeling that I had simply been blotted out was surprisingly unbearable … I would have preferred it if she’d yelled at me … But then, she didn’t pay much heed to other people, either … not to her sister, not to her mother … she and Karel communicated with little more than a short word or a gesture … probably because they were almost twins … The only time I saw her laugh was when her oldest brother, who was a barber, came to visit … She laughed aloud at his jokes … The oldest brother was a skinny, pale, dark-haired man with a haircut like Tarzan’s, always artistically dressed … in a light blue sport coat with a scarf around his neck that was tucked into his checkered shirt … While he told jokes and everyone laughed, with one hand he would give Karel and Ivan, who were begging him, coins from his pocket which was so full of change that it weighed his elegant jacket down, while with the other hand he kept constantly running a comb through his hair …