Newcomers (10 page)

L
ANGUAGE
, one that you don’t understand, can be pleasant now and then … It’s like a kind of fog in your head … It’s nice, there’s truly nothing better … It’s wonderful when words haven’t yet separated from dreams … But not always … I could examine everything as though I was in a theater … Before a storm the sky would get dark. The rain splashed as though a whole sea hung in the air … The Krka flowed like a roadway from hell … the water rose to the machine with the bucket … a whole wagon, a haystack, half a hayrack, a small forest … once even an ox gasping for air and lowing … floated past quickly and slammed into the banks of the river … You lost your voice from the wetness, your sight from the gloom, your soul from the lightning … And then silence again. The great kingdom of fog!… It was
as though everything was under a spell … a different world … You couldn’t see two paces ahead of you in Karel’s meadow … The house hung in a cloud, the fog tamely expanding into the entryway, slowly pressing into the dark kitchen, into our yellow room, between Gisela and mother, who was refitting dresses for Minka, Mica, Stanka … between the cows and the pigs in the barn … Mooing and cooing and crowing filled the space … Especially sounds from the river below … It seemed as if the water reached to our window … We could hear it on the other side of the house, where just a plum and an apple tree stood … The steam engine’s whistle expanded in serpentines through its foggy soot to the sky … A land of ghosts. You had to go back into the house right away. So you wouldn’t topple into the Krka down by the bucket … But on peaceful days red clouds floated back up above the horizon over the water and the fields became blue … A whole parade of people … women, men, children … each with a hoe in hand, wearing hats, scarves, and colorful woolen caps, like the ones babies wear, would be digging out in the fields … tossing the useless potatoes onto the gravel … calling out to each other across the fields. A ladder wagon came racing along and stopped, causing its horses to rear up on their hind legs … With that guillotine of his on a tall handle, the plough, Karel pushed through the meadow … Everything that had been down below got turned up … The meadow exposed its whole lower layer to the world, to the sun and the air, so that the huge green space by the train tracks looked something like an African’s gigantic shining face. No one had ever seen anything like it. Ever. It was a miracle, a sin, something like the Indian wars, the first casualties … with
not a sidewalk, a bit of asphalt, a roadway to be seen … you kneaded the cool, pleasantly damp, greasy lumps barefoot, till at the end of a row, next to the ploughshares and the basket-like carts, you were spattered with dirt on your chest, back and face … like the Sioux in their warpaint … Then all the way back, and then once more all over again to repeat the pleasure of having your legs sink into the dirt up to your knees … Mother in her white dress smiled at me from the far end of the field and Vati, as always, rested his hands on his back and was nervously blinking behind his glasses …

D
URING THE FIRST WEEK
we went down into town. To the authorities to take care of some paperwork. Both uncles wearing black suits and hats. In tall black shoes that laced up high. With no stockings. They wrapped rags around their feet. “Leggings,” Aunt Mica said. I couldn’t repeat it … I went with one of the uncles and Vati went with the other. Karel entertained Ciril and Ivan with much laughter … they were very similar. All three of them had black, fringe-like hair and brown eyes, but only Karel had sideburns. Each of them had a big mouth. And the same way of shoving his hat back on his head. “Go join them!” Karel said and I ran over to Uncle Jožef, who was talking to Vati and laughing with Anka, his youngest … I ought to have been staying at Karel’s side, not running to Jožef. They were revealing their teeth and gums … this was whole-hearted laughter … which I could understand even in a foreign language … The houses reached down toward the water, like animals going to drink … Along the way there
was a smithy, with the smith outside just then, nailing shoes onto a black horse. “Unser weiter Verwandter,”
^*
said Vati … For a while we watched the black horse – lithe, glistening, a regular racer with his head tied to a timber – put up with all the hammering on his hooves … The nails that broke got pulled out with pliars. Uncle and Vati had a short chat with the smith. He didn’t look strong enough to me for that kind of work. I couldn’t understand anyone. Maybe the bellows, the fire under the hood. But when the smith’s assistant began to strike the white-hot shoe with his hammer, even that
clinkity-clink-clink
sounded like a word from their language … Other than that, my ears just hurt from the noise, but still … Even Liska was mooing like the braune and schwarzbunte Kühe
^†
on the slopes around Urach … But this “moo” coming from her funnel-like muzzle was not the same “moo.” Maybe Liska wasn’t even a proper cow … She went walking straight into the house, announcing herself in the kitchen. As fat as poor Mrs. Dopf from the flower shop next door on Gerbergässli in Basel, she stood between the table and the hearth in the fringe-like coat and horns of an outwardly clumsy cow. I felt sorry for her … Now I could take her by the horns fearlessly and lead her out. I could stick my hand in her mouth and let her lick it … There were no “Tannenbäume” in this forest. These pines grew tall and resinous, with sharp needles and lots of gaps … they were some completely different species of tree … A completely new one! Exotic! Straight out of my imagination, although I could touch them … a species thoroughly mixed up by the chaos that
language causes. I had to give it a new name … who knows, maybe half in my language, half in theirs … derived from the impression the pine made on me … “mast tree,” “umbrella tree,” “monk tree” … Even the spoon I ate with wasn’t a proper utensil … but some object of driftwood and steel that would jab at the corners of my mouth as though it didn’t know what it had been made for … It would try to pry my jaws open … pulverize my teeth, smash my tongue. And the skinny, white and brown cat that introduced itself one morning with its magical mewing in the gutter … And then the Krka! It was a dangerous thing that flowed with its crocodilian surface as though it were flowing past us straight out of hell. It wasn’t the Rhine, which was wide and had ships sailing on it … it was meant only for drowned people, cattle, house roofs, forests and hay-wagons … It could be quiet, gurgle, swell, subside, be peaceful, ugly or beautiful, but always as though under its mists it wore some sort of mask. I wouldn’t have been afraid to wade into it … I tried from the laundry stones, since the inlet where livestock were watered wasn’t really the Krka. But Vati grabbed me under the arm. And yet I wouldn’t have dared … because it was and it wasn’t real water. Were my eyes deceiving me or something?… One morning by the pear tree outside my window I saw Ciril and Ivan, who as usual had come to get me to go with them to water the animals. They stood facing each other … each holding a sharpened stick pointed at the other, trying to gouge him in the eyes. “Sie werden sich die Augen ausstechen!”
^‡
I shouted and ran to get
mother. Mother shouted and ran to get Vati. Then Vati to get Karel. Karel waved dismissively and turned away. For him that was a game. “Sie spielen nur. Du hast das nicht richtig verstanden,”
^§
Vati said. I had misunderstood? I shouted, “Ich habe es gesehen! Ich habe es verstanden!”
^‖
I knew I had seen it as it was there to be seen. Then again I wasn’t completely convinced … Karel went to talk to my cousins. They were offended and sulked angrily after that. Had I seen right or falsely accused them?

We reached the little railroad station where we had arrived several weeks before. There were train cars standing there. Big, red ones. Tenders, as they were called. But for me they were circus paintings on a big canvas, cars made of red chewing gum … When we went down into town, the buildings scattered around amid the stones of the paved town square, which was full of sewage puddles, horse droppings, cow pies, hay-carts and pigpens, were just country buildings. Not city buildings at all, these were tiny and quiet and you could practically see through them. The town hall was a building with a tower, but it was lifeless, without any guard houses or police cars in front. The little shops here had dirty windows, half-blind rummage stores. I was no longer interested in produce stores as I’d been in Basel … with whole mountains of oranges and valleys of spinach on little bleachers … but the bakery, instead, with its sesame and poppy buns and loaves of white bread. The barbershop with its white-clad barbers, wigs and
bottles in the display window full of scents and ointments, none of which had any trace of earthy dirtiness, mud or the unpleasantness of nature … The pharmacy with its medicines in jars and gold bust of the first doctor in ancient Greece … The general store. Its display window had bottles and glasses full of unwrapped candies and a stack of small, faded chocolate bars in dismal, monochromatic wrappers. That was the clearest possible proof that everything had really changed … that it was all just a pale reflection …

I was learning the language. My cousins Ciril and Ivan, and occasionally Stanka, too, taught me the song “Little Sunshine on Little Mountains” … They pointed to the soft blue peak that rose up over the black forest on the far side of the Krka. Those were the “bountains.” Atop them lived a shepherd who got married to a skinny girl, who was all bones when she hugged him, a fat girl, who melted on him, and a very short girl, who got lost in his bed. All of them resembled various peasant women, young or old, whom you could see walking around the village. But most of all they resembled the crazy woman from the cabin, who was all of these things at once … she had a big rear end, skinny legs and she was short … The worst thing was when Vati went looking for work in town and he wasn’t at home. When I went out and said, “gut mornink! gott villink! gut day!” my cousins would laugh. This wasn’t a pleasant laughter, I noticed that right away … It shook them so hard that they practically bounced up to the roof. “Zerspringt nur, kleine Mistviehe,”
^a
I thought to myself. They ran into the house
to get reinforcements for their laughter … Aunt Mica or Karel. If one of them so much as touches me, I’ll lose it … Two weeks, three weeks, five weeks went by … I wasn’t going to let them trick me, no way! I wasn’t yet capable of having a conversation … All I had to do was remember Ivan and Ciril’s sharpened sticks … the endless arguments between mother and Vati, every possible gossip and threat … all the mischief they could inflict on you with a word … and it passed. I was fully prepared. They weren’t going to get me to walk into their trap … I had a unique opportunity to keep quiet … to hide in a way. They thought I was sulking. Let them think that! In fact, I was unable to speak … Karel dug a big, deep pit near the cross to hide food. I helped him send foodstuffs down on a pulley. A barrel of cabbage. A crate of apples. A case of meat. A box of flour. A tin of lard. He laid straw and boards over all of it. “Krieg! Krieg!”
^b
he repeated, “There’s going to be a war!” he said, encouraging me. “Zers koink to pea a vor!” I repeated. I turned around in the pit to face Ciril and made a sign on my forehead that meant “he’s nuts” … I ran off as fast as I could. But that afternoon I was already tending Liska at the far end of the pasture. I could see mother and uncle in the doorway of Karel’s short house – her wearing white, him in black. It would have been impossible to imagine two more remote opposites. I knew they were never going to be able to understand each other … From morning to night mother would only lament. And she would cry, which made me feel sorry for her. “Ich fühle mich so wie in einem Kerker”
^c
she kept repeating. On Sunday
we rode in Jožef’s black and yellow carriage with the lanterns to Prečna for mass. When I got up I had to get a good wash using the bucket next to the well … Only Vati didn’t go with us, because he didn’t believe in God. And Aunt Mica on account of her legs. Each of us was supposed to pray an extra Our Father for her. The carriage was full of my female cousins decked out in their Sunday best. Bright-colored dresses, loose blouses, pink satin. I was allowed to sit on the driver’s box next to Jožef. He was nicer than Karel, probably because we didn’t live at his place. Once long ago Vati had sent some money for the church bell in Prečna. I was proud as it rang now and echoed through the hills, fields and forest … Its white walls rose high up over the people, and the church had just two ordinary windows without colored figures … The peasants sat dressed in black, baggy suits, the very best of their wardrobes … their heads and faces poking up out of them like dirt, and their lips were chapped. God wasn’t a silver-haired St. Nicholas … He sat on a cloud with a triangle behind his head and a geometrical nose … On Sundays Stanka was prettier than usual … Children had to stand at the rear … My lips practically touched the bronzed back of her neck as she sat in the pew … The temptation was great … Her hands as she prayed were beautiful, exquisitely bronzed … they had the same maturity as her face. Like something out of a fairy tale. The charm that passed over her face as she pronounced the words of the prayers, the way her nose twitched and her lips moved … It was pure witchcraft. It flooded me. I heard angels singing. Her slightest smile sent out waves … a pure magical force. I didn’t dare look at her anymore … And her hair, as the candles got lit. Black, violet blue!
Damn! She was becoming a water sprite! Right here, for all to see. I looked around, but no one had noticed … But I also knew she could be mean … like Gritli … From that time we were mowing on the slopes above Kandija, when we played tag and she hit me with a bridle supposedly just in fun, but in fact swung it as hard as she could … Up above, on a kind of stove in the middle of the chuch, stood the priest, dressed in white … whenever the organ came in, the women would start singing like waves of thin voices. Banners hung from shiny metal poles … with saints, temples, St. John the Baptist with his shepherd’s staff on them. This was a different kind of God from the one I was used to. A peasant! A mower! A sower and driver!…