Newcomers (8 page)

There was also a black table and a heavy bench in the kitchen, and a cupboard with a bin for flour, and black pots of lard. And it had two doors. One that we had come in through the night before, and the other where there were steps, uneven logs, outside which we’d stood when father tapped on the pane with his branch. There were nettles growing up out of those steps, a whole grove of them with pretty, milk-colored blossoms. Which meant that nobody used that door … I hurried over to look at it, I was excited that green things grew right into the house, just like in some exotic hut …

Then Uncle Karel opened the door across from the room with the stove. It was a whole place of its own, new, shiny, just whitewashed and big … Some spattered wallboards lay on the floor, along with buckets, a shovel, some sand … “Da werden wir wohnen,”
^a
I told mother. “Gehört das Zimmer uns?”
^b
I asked, full of hope and doubt. “Ja, Vati hat etwas Geld geschickt aus der Schweiz, daß es der Onkel gebaut hat …”
^c
So it was ours! I ran inside. A small screened window seemed somehow familiar to me. Yes, I had walked past it last night! Proudly I closed the door, which also seemed almost new … Uncle Karel pointed to some stairs that led up to the ceiling. He pushed open a hatch at the top … Here in the attic there was a veritable jumble of things – half storage, half butcher shop. Sausages, salamis, and
reddish brown shanks – hams – hung on lines from the rafters … “a veal shank,” said Vati. A whole calf’s leg complete with hoof and whiskers dangled in front of my face, as though from a gallows … On the floor there were pumpkins, some sort of troughs, a wooden wheel on a rope … Oh, if only I could have understood the language in which Karel was explaining things to Vati. When we went outside, the surroundings were completely different from the way they’d been the previous night … A river, dark green, extended across to a dark forest that grew a few meters from the shore on the far side … It was incredible how disciplined the trees were about stopping just shy of the water! That gave me something to think about … And the grass underfoot that was bright green and still full of dewdrops.

The unusual piece of equipment outside the house consisted of a block on two legs, a beam, a spindle with a wiry rope and a bucket with a dish-like little roof over it. It was Karel’s invention! He showed it to us first thing: he turned a crank, like on automobiles … and the bucket took off down a wire and splashed into the water, which was a milky green from all the branches of bushes it had torn off in the storm … then he turned the crank in reverse, producing squeaks that reached to the far shore and up to high heavens … returning the bucket, now full of water which uncle used for the livestock, and setting it back on the shelf under its little roof. The only thing missing was for it to salute you! This was a real revolution!… But in addition to this apparatus there was also a well in front of the house with water you could drink. When we bent over it, our heads met against the backdrop of the sunny sky on its round watery bottom as if on a golden
platter … So many different things in such a small space! The casks and kettles standing on stones were pots that they cooked carrots and turnips in, then used blocks mounted on sticks to mix and strain them for the pigs … Between this house and the neighboring house, which was much uglier, there was a handsome rooster, a glorious bird, standing atop a black heap of leaves and animal manure. His hens, as they pierced the surroundings with their eyes, pecked their way over to Gisela and me, showing no fear of us … Then followed their chicks, little balls of yellow fluff that kept tumbling over the leaves. We reached our fingers out toward them, but uncle and aunt said something to each other and turned away, as though we’d done something bad …

The house next to the heap was long, grayish brown and made out of stone and wood. It was covered with black straw like the one we had slept in, except it was already old and full of white and green moss. In one part of it, which was dark with a muddy window, there was a barn for the livestock … Big, warm, handsome gray cows, rectangular and almost white … In the pen next to them pigs jostled each other … this was the first time I’d seen these fattest, dirtiest and most gluttonous of all animals in the world … whose name got thrown at the most terrible people … Horribly fat, pink under their whiskers, they shoved their snouts in their neighbors’ rear ends and their rear ends at their neighbors’ heads, their ears big as omelets … I saw two or three little piglets, the poor things … so young and already pigs … One of them … a big hog with its nostrils inflamed like a baby’s bottom, suddenly snapped at my hand, which I was holding over the fence. Uncle laughed at this … To the right of the entrance there was
something resembling a bed, full of leaves and rags. “Da schläft der Hirt vom Onkel Karel,”
^d
Vati said. Mother looked horrified … finally she was getting to see a farm for the first time, too … Up next was a narrow passageway with an old cupboard. That’s where the hens slept, and up at the top in the hay is where they laid their eggs … Right next to that was some sort of room with heaps of grain on the floor and a bunch of long sticks, each one tied with a cord to the others. Uncle showed us how it worked: he started swinging one of them, and with the others, which began to spin on the cord over his head, he thrashed at the floor … He motioned to me to try it, but I couldn’t make it work … A free-hanging stick slapped at my face like a billy club … In the middle there was also some equipment that resembled Vati’s square sewing machine for working with fur. Uncle got it going with his leg and cut off a sheaf of straw … bzzz! bzzz! Quickly I hid behind the grown-ups so he wouldn’t call on me again to try it.

O
UTSIDE THERE WAS
some kind of door lying on the ground with sharp nails turned upward … A fakir’s bed?… And a longish, bent wooden thing with handles and a sharp, wide blade, a real guillotine … Hanging from pegs were round gray sticks with curved Turkish sabers … Karel showed us: whoosh! whoosh!… he used them to cut the grass, which went falling in rows. Up above there was an opening
with no door over it … which you reached on a ladder … I wasn’t careful enough, because uncle grabbed me, put me on the ladder and shoved me up. The rungs sagged like rubber … some dry grass was poking out of the hole way up above just under the ladder … Uncle held onto me tight and kept pushing me higher … but the upper end of the ladder moved and I was going to fall any second and take it with me as I splashed into the water … Everything started to spin underneath me … the heads, uncle, the river, the building. “Nein! Nein!” mother shouted … When I was back down on the ground, uncle laughed so hard he stomped all over the grass in his shoes … and the glistening grass was far more attractive than him … Under the ladder there was a sort of hollow made of compacted red dirt. You got to it by going down a slope … it contained firewood, axes, bags full of things, fastened, all stacked neatly up to the ceiling.

At the end of the building the meadow began to drop off … toward the big body of water. There were smooth, wide stones on its bank. Karel said something. “Da waschen die Weiber die Wäsche,” Vati translated. Fantastic! “Was?” mother gasped … But where were the boats and horses?… The water was gray, green, black … full of eddying waves and ripples that sank in the middle of the river or expanded in rings. On the other side was the forest, a proper black forest of slender black pines, standing there like hundreds of bell towers … Not until we headed back did we see how extensive the meadow was … it was at least three hundred meters from here to the railroad tracks. There were a lot of spheres hanging in the dense crowns of the trees there. Green, red, and yellow. Small, egg-sized, blue. Apples and plums!
I barely recognized them from the ground … until then I had only seen them in crates and at fruit vendors’ stands … “Habe ich es recht verstanden … ich soll am Fluß die Wäsche waschen?” mother asked in shock. Uncle said something to Vati. Vati answered him. Karel laughed. But when he saw mother’s face, her incensed, gaping mouth, the laugh turned into a guffaw …

I ran off as fast as my legs would carry me. I stopped in front of the house. I had no idea where I wanted to go. But then I remembered what I had intended to do earlier: go look at the room we had slept in from the outside, through the window … Now it was all by itself. I saw its white walls, both narrow beds, the high stove in the corner, the glass globe of the lantern (now out), both pictures with the bleeding heart over our aunt’s bed, the flickering light in the red glass, the cross with Jesus … Some straw poking down past the wooden gutter scratched at my neck.

Then we washed our shoes in water and set them out in the sun to dry. Nervously, as always, mother sewed a button onto the shirt I was wearing tucked into my pants, the button I had lost the night before … Then suddenly from very close by we heard the whistle of a locomotive and tshhh! tshhh! tshhh!… I ran around to the other side … It was a train just then approaching the crossing with the crucifix near uncle’s fence … A steam engine with two cars attached … Like a ghost appearing in the wilderness. For the first time ever I saw the engineer, a swarthy man, from close up. He was leaning out his open window, wiping his hands with a red rag. Then the people in the cars appeared. Wearing scarves and simple hats, they were standing
and looking out of square windows that looked like they’d been sawed out of the sides of the ordinary cars. It didn’t seem like a real train to me, more like a procession of horse-drawn carts. At any rate, it made a proper “toot-toot!” The locomotive was genuine enough, with an enormous cow-catcher up front. Its movement past uncle’s huge meadow was neither fast nor slow. As though it were out for a walk … At the end of the train I could see the gray wall of its last car disappearing into the black pine forest. And then the smoke bending up out of the woods. A train right out my front door and every day, at that!

W
E ATE
out of one big dish next to the stove in the kitchen – some thickened milk that had small, sour dumplings floating in it. Each of us had his own wooden spoon … Vati, uncle, me, aunt … only mother and Gisela shared a spoon … Auntie giggled to herself with all the red craters on her face as she carried the sour milk up to her mouth. When old women laugh that wholeheartedly, it means they’re not quite right in the head … And if they have so many pustules, they’re probably suffering from some awful disease … plague, leprosy – which isn’t contagious … I ate across from her and was careful not to spoon anything out from the middle … But my stomach revolted when I put the first little dumpling with milk in my mouth. It tasted terrible … like nothing at all. After breakfast Karel took me by the shoulder and led me outdoors … He went to get the gray spotted cow in the barn. “Du bist jetzt der Hirte,” Vati said. “Nur an diesen kleinen Baum dort
darf die Kuh nich heran.”
^*
I picked up one of the sticks that were lying around. The cow came out of the barn … It had nice, taut brown spots, as though it were dressed in a map. A chain hanging down from its collar dragged along the ground. It headed straight for the tiny tree that was tied with straw to a stake. I had lifted up my thin stick when it turned its head toward me … as big as a gas lantern. It looked at me with its eyes … which were at least five times as wide as human eyes. The first time it saw me, and I it, it was barely a hand’s breadth away. Its horns were marbled, flinty, and slightly curved … It curled its lips, which had thick, white spittle, milk, dangling down … It exposed its yellow teeth set in their pale gums. I fell flat on my face in the grass. Fearlessly uncle picked up the chain that lay next to its hooves and tried to put one end in my hand. I was unresponsive. But he picked up my hand, set the hot ring in it, wrapped the chain around my wrist and pointed ahead … to a patch of dry grass in the sun. I was now holding her head at the end of this heavy restraint. But thanks to a chin that resembled Claire’s, she struck me as goodnatured and entirely trustworthy. I ought to have pulled her along behind me, but I didn’t dare. Uncle Karel stepped in and pulled the chain tight from the middle. The cow strained away and Karel let go of the chain … For a while the huge, earnest animal walked obediently behind me of her own free will. Maybe she sensed that I was alone and would care for her … But that’s not very likely … Suddenly she was nudging my
back with her bazooka round of a muzzle … And she was mooing strangely, plaintively, angrily, as she kept advancing on me. Hurriedly I unwrapped the chain from around my wrist … and jumped aside.

When I turned around I saw two boys under the tree outside the house. Lithe and swarthy. They were wearing snow-white shirts and shorts that reached down to their knees. Barefoot. Slightly shy. “Das sind die Söhne vom Onkel Joseph oben vom Dorf,”
^†
Vati said. Cousins, Ivan and Ciril. “Das ist Bubi.” They looked at me. They had brown eyes and dark mouths, as though they’d been eating cherries. They were at least two grades ahead of me. Should I shake their hands? That probably wasn’t done here. All three of us were at a loss … They studied me from head to toe. That was uncomfortable, because both of them were handsome. Then Karel called them and they ran off.

Gisela and I went out under a tree in front of their garden. Using the sticks that lay scattered in the grass in huge numbers – you could hardly pick up one of them without three or four others sliding off – I created the outline of a ring. Gisela was going to be the black man Joe Louis and I was going to be the German, Max Schmeling. The grass was appropriately low. Both of us assumed our boxing positions. “Box match, Joe Louis: Max Schmeling!” I announced. “Bong!” I struck the gong … It was wonderful to be fighting outside, in the open air, in the grass. In Basel we could injure ourselves if we went flying to the ground … but here it was a pleasure to fall into the soft grass. In my excitement I actually punched Gisela and hurt her, causing her to cry.
She gave it back to me in the eyes, so that I couldn’t see. Uncle Karel stood watching, once again doubled over with hilarious laughter … but strangely, his eyes weren’t laughing at all. No, this was not a good sign … Mother came out, dressed, Vati too. “Jetzt gehen wir hinauf zum Onkel Joseph. Sie warten schon auf uns,”
^‡
he said. Ciril and Ivan, my cousins, also came galloping out from behind the house. Each of them was wearing a new green hat.