Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

Finally I got my chance to see the frescoes and rifles in old Mrs. Hamman’s apartment again … Clairi took me along when she went to visit her … The old lady invited us to sit at a tall brown wicker table and served us cream. Oh, if only I could have lived in such peace and abundance! I would just read books and draw and never leave the house to go anywhere again … The old lady gave me a little metal box that showed a sepia film of an African scene … a hunter sitting on a fallen log in a tropical jungle … and another film from an operetta: female dancers in short skirts, with plumes on their heads … There were two reels in the box that I could turn to make the film go forwards and backwards … You saw the scene play when you aimed the device at the light … That hand-operated movie theater allowed me to instantly strengthen my friendship with Karel and Ivan … Now in winter practically nothing happened. Sometimes we went to the movies if we had the money for it … Movies about stubborn pilots who didn’t obey their generals and wore straw hats instead of helmets and then became exemplary heroes … Outside the warehouse we built a fort with firing slits out of snow and poured water on it so it would freeze overnight … What if we made a theater, it occurred to me. The red room, which was cold and damp, was still empty and we could build a stage in it. We could filch the boards from construction sites … sew a curtain out of some sheets … The Prinčičes’ mother invited me inside … Now I would sit with Ivan and Karel in the workshop behind the back wall of their store … Ivka was there, and Silva … all three of them sewing hat crowns. Both brothers and I would crouch on the floor near the stove, winding hat ribbons up on our fingers … Sometimes the two girls and their mother would sing. Not hit songs, but real ones. About a Gypsy, an orphan who was driven away from home … about a stepdaughter out in a cold storm and snow covering hill and vale, who falls asleep on her mother’s grave … Tears came to my eyes … Then we told stories. I talked about Basel … about its attractions … the shop that we had on the Gerbergässli … about Vati’s assistants … about the rabbit farm he was going to build in Polica next spring when the females got pregnant … I could feel my prestige growing, but still I avoided Ivka’s willful eyes the whole time.

*

I don’t want to get involved in politics.

†

If we don’t join, they’ll put us in a camp, no questions asked. On the other hand, if we do join, we’ll get some support.

‡

What are we joining?

§

Go out and play.

SERGEANT MITIČ AND VATI were sitting in the first room, looking at a map that the former had brought … German tank units were approaching the Maginot Line, with British, French, and Belgian divisions all around. Now it was France’s turn … It had already lost its best divisions. The ones that were left were mediocre. Even their air force was nothing much. The Germans could attack with a hundred and twenty divisions and have another thirty in reserve … The attack was going to be like a blow from a blacksmith’s hammer …

It was our topic of conversation out on the embankment, too … War was in the air … and sometimes so were airplanes. Yugoslav ones. They would fly in a starlike formation. Blue gray Messerschmidts and blotched Hurricanes. Sometimes they would suddenly appear in attack formation from behind the castle tower. Gigantic crosses with spinning screw propellers … the bombers more slowly, the pursuit aircraft more quickly — flew over the square and Star Park … their din drowning out the street noise. People became a kind of dough under these metal factories in the air, no longer significant … at the Ursuline Church the squadron of crosses lifted their noses and flew up into the sky, like skaters heading out onto the rink of an ice palace … If France, that distant country, fell, what would be next?… “If Great Britain helps, then everything will be fine,” I said … Andrej had his own opinion … which he’d got from a friend of Neva’s, who was a mechanic at the airport … Air power would be decisive … if England contributed its Halifaxes, which were best at nighttime bombardments, and its two-engine Mosquitos, which were quicker than German pursuit planes, France would be able to defend itself before the onslaught of Hitler’s tank destroyers …

At that time a blonde girl from Breg whom Franci had seen before would often walk along the riverfront. She and her mother delivered newspapers door to door, not the Morning , but the Slovene Nation … Her name was Tatjana. She made herself right at home walking down the embankment. Starting at the Triple Bridge she would cover the whole territory down to Cobblers’ Bridge, as though she didn’t care in the least what we thought of it. Occasionally we noticed her from a distance when she turned past the ostaria. She had such pale blonde hair that her head was like a bunch of straw and she always wore clothes that looked like they had been sewn out of bed slips and throw rugs … She waved her arms a lot when she walked. She never stepped on the sidewalk or roadway, she just always walked on the curb … Once when we saw her coming our way again, Firant said, “Guys, what if this girl is spying for the Castle or Trnovo?…” That was entirely possible. We watched as she walked past the Black Cat restaurant … “Hey, you! Stop!” Drago shouted just as she reached the trees. She immediately stood still and turned toward us. We were sitting in a kind of pyramid: some on the ground, a few on the cart, one or two on the wall … Her face was wide and pale. Almost white, as if powdered. She had wide-set eyes and a small nose. She looked me straight in the face, causing everything to start flickering … Firant stopped in front of her and I could tell from the way his head was cocked that he was about to hit her … I couldn’t take that. “Leaf her alown!” I shouted out. I jumped down … shoved him aside … he looked at me furiously and I knew he was going to pay me back with interest the first chance he got. I turned to face Tatjana. What eyes this skinny girl had! Watery, bulging, as though they were floating in a glass. Yet at the same time they radiated something powerful … “You can kow here if you’re in a pig hurry,” I said. I should have said something else … like what I might say to Gisela … But there was a lump in my throat. The air would have exploded if I’d blurted anything else out. Firant puffed up his cheeks and punched them with both fists. Pop! If I hadn’t known that was him, I would have looked everywhere to find out where that smack of air had come from.

That night I didn’t fall asleep, because I kept having to think about her, that Tatjana. Just as I thought I was about to stop thinking about her, she would appear in some gray rainbow … growing progressively sharper, even more than in daytime, and then some entirely new, unexpected detail would come floating along … suddenly she’d be wearing a necklace, then she’d get a kitten on her shoulder, or a lace-trimmed skirt and a red jacket to wear … if I had told anyone about what I thought, his jaw would have dropped and he would have started crossing himself from all the laughter … The next morning I crossed to the other side, to Breg, to see if I could catch her somewhere … I was afraid of meeting her alone, so I took Karel and Ivan along. I told them we were going to reconnoiter … On Breg there were old, fat houses from the previous century, if not the century before that, standing all in a row … resembling an enormous rotting forest, and people went in and out of the houses as though they had tree holes … We inspected this courtyard and that courtyard, then all the passageways between the walls of buildings, where we’d find doghouses and old bones lying around … In one courtyard I discovered a really nice pond made out of sandstone. I had to stand there for a while admiring it. It was almost surely from the times when the war between the Black and White princes was still going on and the knights climbed up onto rooftops and balconies on rope ladders … If Karel and Ivan hadn’t started yawning in boredom, I would have stayed in that courtyard for a full hour … even if it meant running into Škoblar, the grocer’s son who led the Breg army … We strolled past the benches where girls sat and around the big red library that the bricklayers were still working on … through the park with the bronze heads of composers outside the Music Academy … There wasn’t a trace of her anywhere, although some special air, some potable breeze blew on this side of the Ljubljanica … there was something about it, there had to be something about it, it was in the air and that was that! I could feel the power of Tatjana’s presence like a fire that had to be mightily burning somewhere … The next day around the time when she usually walked down the embankment, I was sitting on the wall … I tried in vain to produce any sound … I was in seventh heaven and yet also in purgatory … The whole time it took for Tatjana to walk away in her white dress, which had black stripes so that it looked like it was scattered with burned-out matches, my heart was in my mouth. The thousand invisible threads that tied me to her broke … one after the other … When she turned onto Cobblers’ Bridge at the Kolman warehouse and then disappeared, I just stared at the warehouse door like a calf, and when I bumped into Karel’s eyes and Firant’s mouth, I jumped so fast that the cart tipped onto the street …