Lojze Kovačič - Newcomers

THE GERMANS had made a hole in the Maginot Line: Rommel’s 2,800 tanks, so wrote the newspapers, had defeated the 4,000 armored vehicles of the Anglo-French forces … Bombs began to fall on London … on June 14th the German army invaded France. On June 21st in an old train car in a forest Marshal Pétain, who had the face of old King Peter, signed France’s armistice … The Russians marched into Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, three tiny Baltic states that had once been the property of the Russian tsar …

A mandatory lights out was ordered in town. The streetcars ran with blue lights, as they had in Basel in 1936 when the Spanish Civil War began. The oldest cars, wonderful summer trailers with their flapping, striped little awnings, drove without any lights, and school kids, students and boys would jump up on their running boards and ride two, three, even eight stops for free … there and back … We rode in total darkness amid a whole crowd of freeloaders, past flickering display windows and people with coal-black faces who lit their way with flashlights pointed at the ground … This was a new kind of fun. A coal truck nearly plowed into a crowd, spraying all of them with hot steam … At noon they would test the sirens on the castle, which were intended for air raids … The mighty signal horn with its bird’s head wailed so piercingly that everything came to a stop and all the din and clamor of traffic around city hall was concealed beneath the sound curtain of its howl … My old stockings were rotting in my shoes. Vati had bought his rabbits and there was no money at home. I was hungry … Across from the fountain, on the same side as the bishopric, near Jurij Velikonja’s sundries store, there was a little ice cream and candy shop … I calculated everything down to the second … the minute hand on the city hall tower clock showed twenty minutes to twelve … I walked in and had a seat at a marble-top table next to the door. In their display windows, on their counter and all along the walls there were savory scones … white flour, rye flour, big and small, and cakes … butter cakes, honey cakes, chocolate, pear, and almond cakes … sliced or whole … A waitress went from table to table. I ordered two cream pastries and two slices of pear cake. Once I had finished slowly masticating them and begun drinking some water, the alarm directly above city hall started up, an ear-piercing sound that completely filled the little sweetshop … as if on command everybody turned away, holding their ears … I got up and calmy walked outside. Everything there stood gaping, trapped between the motionless street cars and paralyzed horses … The siren had not yet even reached the peak of its continually mounting intensity when I reached the monument to King Peter II …

At home a package was waiting for me that the young son of Fischer the grocer had brought by. It contained white knee socks, a white shirt, a black necktie, a pin with a silver swastika on it, and under the shirt a silk armband: red with a white circle that had a black swastika printed on it, like a hooked, spinning wheel that drilled right into my eyes … “Das mußt du anziehen und übermorgen zum deutschen Konsulat gehen …” *This costume was of course the uniform of the Hitler Youth, which everyone, young and old alike, loathed and despised. “Schau, daß du das alles unter den Pullover oder die Jacke versteckst …” †“Ich will das nicht anziehen und ich werde nirgends hingehen.” ‡ … “I vont ko zehr!” I said to Vati. Vati raised an eyebrow and kept on sewing … “Du mußt dorthin gehen, sonst werden uns die Hammans noch aus dem Haus feuern …,” §Clairi said. She was flushed all red in the face and upset, and she must have been crying before I got there. I couldn’t sleep. The package on the table … white, black, red … was like a snake’s nest … Mrs. Hamman’s employees had sewn it together … in the courtyard I saw boxes with the remains of red and white scraps … two days later I put on the shirt, which had an H in the collar, designating Hamman’s tailor shop. They knotted my tie, stuck the pin in the knot, put on my armband … and my arm went stiff like after a vaccination. This was an even more disgusting costume than the one the Falcons wore. I used my jacket collar to hide the tie with its hooked cross when I bounded out of the house. Like a traitor hiding a bomb in his pocket … Outside the school at Vrtača where the consulate was, there were about a hundred boys waiting in line. All wearing overcoats, dwarves and giants mixed in together. Lots of dark-haired boys, a few blond ones like Hitler required. All with their hair parted on the side, all of them children of better families … A youth in corduroy trousers who was hiding his tie pin under his trenchcoat’s raised collar appeared to be in charge … “Das wird ein Ausflug und Besprechung sein,” he said … We went in rows of eight through the underpass to Večna Path, where I suddenly spied two red-haired noodles in our column … It was the Jaklič boys from Nove Jarše. What?! How did they get here? I lost my voice from the shock. When the two brothers spotted me, they instantly blushed and turned away … What was all this about? Slovenes, Germans, mischlings? The youth marching alongside the column ordered those of us who knew it to sing “Die Fahne hoch” … They sang it out loud, straight up into the windows and balconies of the buildings … How dare they do this, when this territory is Slovene? Thank God, after a bad rainstorm there weren’t many people outdoors. At the top of a slope beneath Rožnik, which was privately owned, we were supposed to form a line. “Ihr seid die Hitlerjugend, die Zukunft unseres Reiches …” the young leader began. “Ihr wißt, daß die friedliebenden Völker Deutschlands und Rußlands gegen die plutokratischen, imperialistischen Angreifer kämpfen: gegen England und die Vereinigten Staaten Amerikas … Darum müßt auch ihr üben!..” ‖We took our coats and jackets off and performed a defense and an attack … We fought in segments. First the attack, digging in, initial resistance, followed by a break. Then we continued. It was funny to watch two Hitler youths with red bands on their white sleeves wallop each other … The Jaklič boys were going after each other as if this was real … My opponent was a boy who smelled like a drugstore, a delicate mama’s boy who was practically crying, he so did not want to fight, the poor thing. I let him be … We gradually shoved our way out to the road. Alongside a creek that flowed through a ravine our commander said, “Seht, was man machen kann im Winter, wenn man keine Waffen hat und der Gegner nachstösst! Schnee in die Flüsse und Bächer schaufeln, daß sie afschwellend die Feinde festhalten!..” aMy God, this was stupid!.. The instant the leader summoned the boys back to assembly with his whistle, I stayed among logs up by the forest’s edge … I shoved the tie and pin and the threatening armband that was visible for miles around into my pants pocket and hightailed it out of there, taking shortcuts and detours … I hadn’t enjoyed being there for one minute … that was the strangest part. But I had to go one more time … to some auditorium on Old Square above the Salaznik Café … There were a lot of older boys, younger men, even girls there, each in a uniform with a belt strap over the right shoulder. They were happy, all of them laughing with bright, handsome faces … There were lots of other people there, too, grown-ups I recognized from around town … a skinny old man who was always dressed in a hunting coat, a richly dressed lady covered with silver bracelets and black earrings … and other ladies and gentlemen … Mrs. Hamman holding a tiny glass … both of her gentlemen, who always wore black neckties and green hats, were in some alcove playing ping-pong … In one of the rooms I even noticed Gmeiner, the young student from Jarše … or maybe I just thought I did … I felt as though I had entered high society. They called the young ones among us into a good-sized room to practice. They closed the door and we learned to sing out of a green book. Then we played some sort of gymnastic game … while crouching, with our hands clasped at the back of the neck, we were supposed to go hopping from room to room … including the auditorium where the older people were. They made room for us and shouted high-spirited encouragement … Then it was time for the drawing … The grand prize was a ticket to the Union movie theater. I drew the right slip out of the hat, but Fischer’s young son objected. “Er kann es doch nicht bekommen. Er ist doch Slowener, sein Vater ist Slowener …” bhe told the leader. This leader was not the same as the one at Rožnik … he wore corduroy trousers with a belt and strap and was a very considerate, smart fellow. “Und wenn schon. Seine Mutter ist Deutschin und er ist Mitglied der Hitlerjugend …” cThe film at the Union theater was about a German mountain-climbing expedition to the Himalayas … it was full of snow and orchestral music … after fifteen minutes I ditched it and left …