Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

My idea for the coming battle was this: to use scrap lumber to hammer together swords of various lengths that we could hide in our jackets and trouser legs … fill up some inner tubes with lead … pool everything we had to get some brass knuckles … buy up some popguns for visual effect at a distance … fashion some bows and attach wire to the tips of some toy arrows … In short, to create all the armaments that the others already had. Hammer some nails into shields made from old crates, with the tips pointed out. Change the Prinčič boys’ wagon into both an attack and a supply vehicle for munitions. Equip it with sharpened beanpoles or stakes and then shove the wagon … weighted down with paving stones that the driver would sit on, steering with his legs and wielding a slingshot, while a gunner would be free to throw the stones — downhill toward Žabjak … As the wagon raced down the roadway, the slingshot-armed driver and the gunner would send stones flying at boys and windows … The wagon would immediately be followed by infantry with slingshots and sabers … This would have the same effect as the English desert tanks at Tripoli, Sidi Barrani, and Benghazi … the infantry would paralyze the enemy exactly the same way the pictures in the newspapers showed Finnish ski patrols turning the Russian assault cavalry, old nags and all, into ice … We began fashioning sabers and learned to fence following the Frenchman’s instructions, we threw stones on the run, and we practiced shooting our slingshots with pots set out as targets. Fencing and throwing did not come easily to Karel: he would hurl a stone across the water or hit a dog with a stick like a girl … Our first battle was with the Breg gang on Cobblers’ Bridge. There weren’t many of them, so it wasn’t a real battle, more of a trial run, our first faltering gropes, during which our swords broke … The real war was still ahead of us and that was with the castle gang. But they must have found out about us and our plans. Maybe Franci had blabbed something to Slavko Škerjanc, a friend of his from the castle, whose mother minded the public toilet underneath the Triple Bridge. Škerjanc helped her out at work and so spent all his days on our territory. They must have found out, because no sooner did we get to the steps leading uphill at the Scarp than they attacked us from behind the old fortress wall as others began racing toward us through the neighboring gardens to the upset shouts of the owners. We sword fought with them up close, then we just clobbered each other with baskets snatched off pegs that we still had in hand, until we finally retreated in the face of their superior strength … However, we did manage to pay the Castle gang back, if only a little … they showed up on our turf … They were coming along the Ljubljanica from under Cobblers’ Bridge, taking potshots with stones at the fish in the shallow water. Sandi was with them. They were walking in a long, drawn-out single file … from staircase to staircase … He was walking in the middle, wearing his red revolutionary shirt, as always. We shouted and got them to look up … We shrieked that they’d better withdraw from our waters … They shook their heads as though there were flies buzzing around them and went on … Then we started to pelt them with stones and slingshot fire … not straight out, so as to hit them, even though the fatheads deserved it, but just to warn them that we meant business … The paving stones and projectiles struck in front of their column and behind them, sending the water shooting in ten-foot-high fountains up to the steps.… Sandi, who was a true leader, since the bravery or lack of bravery of his crew made no difference to him, pressed forward to get to the steps by the drugstore and climb up, but another, Slavko Škerjanc, one of his sidekicks, turned back toward Cobblers’ Bridge where there was another way up across from the antique stores … We couldn’t under any circumstances let them come up, or else we would pay for it … we had to drive them back upstream, toward Žabjak, the St. Jacob’s bridge, and farther on to where Little Graben empties into the Ljubljanica … to Trnovo. We ran on both sides of the river, on Breg and the Gallus Embankment, past antique dealers yelling at us, over their divans and past their mirrored cabinets, throwing stones at all the staircases. I knew that if they got a chance to poke their heads over the top, that would be it for my army … Now we waited for the payback, their revenge. I believed that we had to beat them to it … We had to attack the castle before they could launch their offensive …

ONE DAY Vati unexpectedly received from the Swiss authorities the money that was left after they confiscated his property in Basel and settled his debts … There it wouldn’t have amounted to much money, but here it was a lot … Vati began making plans to start over again, from the ground up, so to speak … Despite the fact that we’d been living in the center of town for quite a few months, and despite all his advertising, the business refused to get off the ground … He could count the customers who had walked in our door on the fingers of one hand. Mrs. Hamman, one or two friends of hers, Sergeant Mitič and the wives of other NCOs … But those were just repairs — blowing the fur, as they called it, to see where the piece was worn down or deficient … No serious orders. A fur coat. Or a whole outfit: a fur hat, a stole, and a muff … A jacket or a vest … “Die Leute haben kein Verständnis mehr, kein Gefühl für wirklich schöne Dinge,” mother lamented. “Sie schätzen die feinen, ganz handgearbeiteten Dinge nicht mehr nach Gebühr … Man interessiert sich nur für den verkommenen maschinengezeugten Kram …” *In the display windows of the six or eight furriers in town … Eberle, Rot, or on the square, you could see yards and yards of muffs, fur hats, little caps. Miles and miles of them! And fur coats on mannequins! Always different and new, a regular multitude. The junk that mother saw that was quickly stitched together by machine not only made her sad, it gave her stomach cramps … And we continued to eat badly. Rice made a hundred different ways … steamed, with peas and milk … There was no butter on the bread … maybe once a month some beef soup … twice a week a little, thin disk of salami … macaroni mixed with egg, just one of course …

Vati was making his plans: to become a supplier of hides. He was thinking of building a rabbit farm. Rabbits of all different colors and breeds. Silver, Russian, angora, and silk … He would build his farm in Polica on Uncle Janez’s property. We didn’t know him yet. It was near Ljubljana. The gray fur of Russians, resembling chinchilla, for overcoats and jackets, and wavy angoran like yarn for children’s outfits … We would have the furs and the meat, to boot … Mother and Clairi were against it … Mother kept vigilant against flights of fancy. A farm like that would be exposed to all kinds of opportunities for theft. And somebody would have to look after it. And then there was the expense of the hutches!.. you couldn’t just leave the rabbits out in a field or the woods. Then there was food for the rabbits, a special kind of bark, these rodents had an insatiable appetite … We have to think very carefully. It would be better to invest the money … But Vati kept pushing. I wrote in his name to Uncle Rudi in Polica that we would be coming for a visit on Sunday. We took the train to Grosuplje and from there we walked through a quarry and a road that ran through some fields … which I hadn’t seen or smelled in a long time. It was like an outing …

Uncle Rudi was a short, broad-shouldered man who bore some resemblance to Uncle Jožef, but wasn’t as caustic. He would ride his bicycle to Ljubljana and in the winters did road maintenance work in nearby Grosuplje. His house stood on a small hill with a winding path leading up to it like the kind in picture books … He had a number of children, including some girls, and one of the boys was my age … They were poorer than Karel and Jože, but they were nicer. They had just one cow, two pigs and a few hens. Their fields were all on the hillside … But their barn was magnificent. The straw was hard and smooth and we could slide down it like a lumber chute, then tumble down the slope outside the door … Vati chatted with Rudi about his interest in building some hutches on his property and buying some rabbits … Uncle Ivan was for the idea … We got a basket of fruit, lard, and some flour to take home …