Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

When Ivan and Karel came out, we would go one place or another. “Vehr to?” I would ask. I would look at Karel, because Ivan responded to everything with equal enthusiasm, no matter what somebody proposed … Karel wouldn’t answer at all … My attachment to him grew as fast as my revulsion … only occasionally would the antipathy lag. I perceived his proximity … from his head to his toes, from his eyes to his long pants belt that always flapped over his knee … as serious, precious, and unbearably annoying … Had he done anything to me? Not a thing! Had he done anything bad? No! But one day he would, and I had to get ready for that … Gisela, whom I brought with me once to the embankment, talked and played with him as though he were air. I envied her that she could relate to him that way.

We went from the antique stores toward Žabjak and Breg streets … that was a dangerous neighborhood, that’s where boys hung out who were stronger or at least more numerous than the three of us … You had to stay alert. One of those guys could come dog your heels, and if you didn’t pay attention or turn around fast enough, he could give you a kick … Karel and Ivan said that they were always invading the embankment, but if you just stepped on their territory, you’d get a rock thrown at you or delivered by slingshot. Ivan showed me where his legs had been hammered by projectiles … As soon as they hit you, they shout, “We declare war on you!” … and you have to beat it as fast as your feet will go … You have to do something so those wise guys stop harassing you or invading the embankment at the drop of a hat … An army ought to be formed that includes all the boys who live on that side of the water and nearby. If we have our own units, then nobody will ever dare touch any of us again, no matter if we go down to Trnovo or Žabjak or up to the castle … Creating an army on the embankment, I sensed, would be the secret glue that would bind our friendship together most tightly of all … I would have to think about that some more …

At that time we would go visit the public market … now and then some vendor or shopper would give you an apple … or we would climb down the ladders at the Triple Bridge to get to the gravel riverbed. Karel would slowly climb down the rungs one foot at a time, clinging to the ladder like a girl … it gratified me to see that … We undressed and waded through the shallow water to those catacombs under the road that used to be a dock in olden times … We drove the fish ahead of us and would try to bludgeon them with paving stones … Sometimes we succeeded, but the fish stank too much of the Ljubljanica and sludge … So instead we went looking for valuable objects on the bottom … once we found a burnt-out compressor that was as heavy as a steel cash register … When I went back to the gravel, I avoided the heap with Karel’s pants, belt and undershirt, as if he were still in them … I felt as though I would get stung or catch something … Every day I would strain to think of shortcuts or detours I could propose to strengthen our friendship … At home in the evenings I would make plans for the next day in feverish excitement … all kinds of imaginative games … I would consult with myself about what direction to head out in … what entertaining things we could try … what I would tell them about myself and about Basel, and what I wouldn’t … what games we would play … to the extent possible ones that I’d invented when I was all alone and had no playmates … The closer the time for us to meet, the higher my temperature would get, and when we met, I would become like someone possessed. In those few short hours that we were together I had to try out all those games I had invented and planned. My fear that it would soon be evening and I would have to go home intensified the wild pace of the games and ideas … But my apprehension about the short-lived nature of our fun sometimes took all the fun out of it. Besides that, I had to keep the reins on myself so that I wouldn’t go completely out of control and turn into a tyrant … Karel remained unfazed … Just when I thought that we understood each other best, I would be filled with the greatest revulsion and hatred for his hidden aggression, which I couldn’t flush out of him. Most of all I would have liked to do some irreparably nasty thing to him … punch him in the nose, which would have been least hard of all. Once, for fun, we tried wrestling. I could have whipped him like a pussycat, even though he was older, and pinned him to the ground, if I hadn’t always had second thoughts at the last minute about the force of some hold or blow … When he fell, I didn’t leap on his chest and force his wrists to the ground … The thought of touching his skin and his bones repulsed me … What sense did victory have if it was like a defeat? The tension stayed in the air like a burnt smell. But I couldn’t have parted ways with him and I was haunted by the fear that some day I might actually offend him. Ivan, however … he was a caricature of Karel. With him Karel’s sharp voice and disdainful laugh turned into a kind of hiccup and grin from ear to ear …

One day as we were headed to the public market, some delinquent from Breg started pelting us with rotten apples. Outside the bookstore there was a heap of tomatoes gone bad that the green grocers had dumped into the sewer … I flung my first bomb, a tomato, at our attacker … and hit a priest … the cathedral canon dressed in a violet clerical vest … just as he was about to go across the square … when I turned around, Ivan and Karel were nowhere in sight. I could see that the tomato had exploded on hitting the priest’s head, and because of the red juice running down him, I couldn’t tell if I’d drawn blood or not … I bounded around the edge of the square toward the butchers’ stands and the Dragon Bridge, when I suddenly noticed that a long-legged produce vendor in a blue apron and a leather cap whom I knew by sight from the fruit market was following me … I had to avoid a crowd, but he was faster and latched onto me just under the first dragon … “I’ll show you to steal from me! Let’s go!” he shouted for all to hear, spun me around and with his hand on my neck propelled me back past the wooden stands and benches to his fruit stand. “You stole my money!” he said once he had shoved me in among his empty crates. I was surprised. “I titn’t zteal anysink,” I said. But I knew it was futile to plead innocent. He searched me … my trousers, pockets, shirt, belt … my buttons went flying … He shouted for a policeman, but there were none close by … He wrote down my name and address in the notepad that he used to add up customers’ purchases … When he let me go, I didn’t budge … “I titn’t zteal!” I howled at him. “Scram!” he leapt at me again with his huge shoes. “I titn’t zteal, you cherk!” I repeated. At that point he lost all control and was on top of me with all fours in an instant, in his shoes and his felt gloves …

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS now was to establish our own army on the embankment … Ivan made the rounds of all the houses on the embankment, Town Square and Jail Road to summon all the boys who could conceivably join our army. The assembly point was next to the cart by the wall. The first to show up was Franci, who delivered the Morning door to door and had raced past us on the embankment several times with his newspaper bag. He was a pretty solid kid. Even in the middle of summer he had a runny nose from the dust and drafts in the buildings where he delivered the paper … His trickle of snot would harden into putty. For fun he would dig it out and swallow it without batting an eye. Not only that, but he smelled of mush gone sour. He infected everything with his smell … even the trees and the grass … He had an older brother and a grandmother. He lived on the top floor of the last house on the embankment, which had a furniture and carpet store on the ground floor. His grandmother was sick and couldn’t leave the house. And on top of that she was quite cranky. When no one was home, he and his brother would have to tie her up so she wouldn’t do anything to herself. Once he showed her to me: she was sitting tied with rags to an armchair, so she wouldn’t fall out the big attic window that she always looked out of toward the dead end of Frog Lane and the Harbor Inn restaurant. His brother could have been twenty or maybe fifty. He was a little daft. He did things to help out the sexton of the cathedral … he swept the courtyard of the bishop’s residence, watered the palms in big pots, and in the mornings he delivered the Slovene . The two of them took great care to make sure nobody in the bishop’s residence found out that his younger brother delivered the Morning , and to that end Franci only delivered his newspapers on the left bank of the Ljubljanica. Metod, his brother, was a fright to look at. Flushed, blond, with a big mouth that gaped like a fresh, wet wound, full of crooked teeth and bared gums … He spent his free time in the afternoons at the Harbor Inn, from where he could keep an eye on their grandmother … The Harbor Inn was a huge tavern consisting of just a single room in the shape of a big letter L, with a gigantic rustic stove at each end. It was where produce vendors, storekeepers, Dalmatian Croats, newspaper salesmen and delivery boys, drunks, Greta Garbo from outside the main post office, idiots and petty thieves liked to drink … once I just walked into the place … it was a real hellhole … the long room with its huge rustic stove on which drunkards were lying, and a gigantic bar that was thick with smoke and people … in that rubbish heap they played the accordion, whooped it up, clobbered each other, sang … some of them even slept there. The mute violinist whom I’d run into on Fridays when I went begging with Mirko and his mother would also be in the ostaria, playing … Franci was strong on account of constantly carrying his heavy bag, which had made one of his shoulders lower than the other … But he was a coward. You couldn’t count on him at all. No sooner would you turn to him with a serious request than he would vanish, evaporating like dew off the grass on account of some other obligation …