I would never have thought I would ever see father drunk.
Finally the Time Came
FINALLY THE TIME CAME for me to start school. I was given a small canvas backpack instead of the briefcase with shoulder straps that all of the other students had. I was as frightened as an animal. One morning I went with Ciril and Ivan through the cornfields out of the village … across a footbridge over the stream … along a footpath that led uphill and then down … through the quarry where the Gypsies camped with their wagons and horses … they were still asleep in the morning, with just their dirty yellow feet jutting out of the tents toward their campfires, which had gone out … From there we followed the path uphill … past the cliff with its chest thrust out … then through willows and birches along the Krka … that part was really nice! Then we climbed up the steep path we had come down on that first night and that led through a tunnel to a wall on the road up above … It took us barely thirty minutes to walk the route that had taken more than two hours to cover on our first night … The school was a gray, square, monotonous building. Like a dirty circus bigtop stretched taut in front of the sky. I could barely see its roof. It was nothing like the mission school in Basel … that red cathedral with towers and a huge clock … Its single classroom was on the top floor just under the roof … a short but wide room with benches of various heights and colors … I sat in the highest bench, which was as high as a pew back, between Ciril and Ivan … The blackboard was white from overuse. The teacher was a Mr. Alojz, a man with wavy blond hair. There was something tomato-like about his round face … Red, sluggish blood. The blond hair curling over his ears and cheeks lent him the aspect of a carrot, too … The pupils were of various ages and sizes … They half-blocked my view of the blackboard and Mr. Alojz … The place smelled like a barn. Some of the kids lived even farther away than my cousins and me … They had to walk two or three hours each way … After leaving me alone for two months, Teacher Alojz began to work with me seriously … He would call on all of the pupils, big and small, to contribute, to say something … He wrote all the words on the blackboard in big printed letters … which were easy to read … And beneath them a translation. Big and small, young boys and adolescents all had to repeat them together over and over again … in unison, keeping the beat … The first time I spoke up, they laughed, then also the second and third … I opened my mouth wide … acted as though it was about to come out … But nothing did … Not a sound, not a syllable … So I closed my mouth … The experiment had been completed … I was left in peace during the following lessons. “In good time, Lojzek, Lord willing!” Mr. Alojz greeted me during the break. Perhaps he was at his wit’s end, a little bit desperate, but still well intentioned … I felt sorry for him … it got a bit on my nerves when he called on me … Couldn’t he just leave me alone? At last he sensed my fear or resistance and he stopped pushing. I knitted my forehead. I growled when he called on me … I didn’t take my coat off, not even during lessons, because they barely fired up the stove at all. Sometimes I dropped off to sleep if it got too warm in the coat. Ciril and Ivan moved to sit with the older kids, the ones their age. Now I was sitting alone. The others around me would play various games during lessons, but not me. I was no fun. During the break the others would group together in the hallway. They brought their lunch with them, little bundles containing unpeeled potatoes, corn mush, sometimes beans … They ate at the window alcoves that had views out over town … peasant houses, a peasant church, a wooden bridge. Better a proper village than this sort of town. I was as hungry as a wolf … Mr. Alojz patted me on the shoulder now and then as he walked by, clutching his grade book and papers under his arm … He would whack others with his stick, but not me. I was a kind of guest … It was autumn, so it was rainy and muddy. At home there was a single umbrella, Karel’s … Most often I walked alone to school and back, holding a scrap of an old horse blanket over my head … At noon when I came home by way of the Krka and through the quarry, now and then I would be accosted by the Gypsy kids who otherwise darted back and forth among the older Gypsies out cooking in pots on the fires … In the morning they’d all still been sleeping the sleep of the dead, but now they were full of vigor and ready for battle. They chased me all the way to the footbridge … but they didn’t dare go over the stream … That’s why I would skirt the top of the quarry on the way home. I knew that it would still be a while before mother would cook anything in that round stove, so I looked through the grass for all possible edible saps and grains I could chew on.
After two weeks Clairi came back from Ljubljana … She had lost the job she’d been given as an assistant seamstress. Now all four of us slept in the same bed — Gisela and me at one end, mother and Clairi at the other. At least that way we kept warm, even if there were too many legs under the blanket. The down comforter loomed up over us like a white mountain … light and warm. It reminded me of all my Basel haunts … the park, the streets, the drumming school, the Rhine … our places on rue Helder and rue de Bourg, next to the movie theater before the St. Elisabeth Church. The comforter was so out of place that I really ought to have hidden it. It refused to blend in with Karel’s house. It covered our narrow bed like a cloud, but this cloud had been plucked from some other climate, over some other town … I began to dream about a witch who lived near my friend Friederle. She would wait in front of our building for me to come out. She would attack me … and chase me until up on the square I found a balloon I could escape in.
Vati Sent us a Postcard
VATI SENT US A POSTCARD from the hospital, where he had been admitted for his lungs. The message was nearly indecipherable, written with a ballpoint pen running out of ink … The cold, his unheated room, bad food, all this had taken its toll on him. Now he was laid up in a ward with twenty tubercular men and young boys … Mother was beside herself again. “So ist es, wenn man dumm ist … Und jetzt wieder diese leeren Magen!”* Where were we going to get anything to put in our mouths? There was nothing left to cook. Vati’s steel strongbox in the corner of the room, which we had begun using to store foodstuffs in, was empty. I had succeeded in removing a loaf of bread from Mica’s cabinet in the entryway … Bread! We wrapped it up in some laundry and hid it, so that Karel or our aunt wouldn’t discover it during one of the searches of our room that they periodically conducted when we were out of the house … One Sunday Clairi and I went to see the priest in Prečna, where Vati’s bell hung in the church belltower. We wanted to ask him to lend us some money. If we didn’t get that, then we were going to ask for some groceries. The wooden steps to the rectory door creaked as if in a barn. The priest sat wearing glasses in his wretched office like a peasant in his attic smokehouse. This was the first time I’d seen a priest in civilian dress. He looked like Jožef and his desk was only slightly bigger than a feed bin. From his pantry he gave us a paper bag of beans and a big chunk of homemade bread. But Clairi insisted on money. She was so brave in her persistence that I had to admire her … At first he didn’t want to give us a cent. Then he relented and took ten coins out of his desk drawer. That was enough for us to buy two pounds of lard and bread to last us another ten days … We were even able to send Vati two dinars in a letter envelope … Oh, if money grew in fields, we could have dug it up like we did potatoes. But two weeks later we were beggars again … This time we went to visit Uncle Jožef. I didn’t feel like going in with her to plead. I also didn’t feel like listening to any arguing, even the nice words that Clairi would exchange with our uncle. I couldn’t stand noise anymore. While I waited for Clairi in that hidden nook off the trail where Vati once sat to pluck all the raisins out of the priest’s potica, I went through the possibilities: Had she said it by now or not? Had they given her something, or not?… Minka, the nicest of them all, came out the door nearest the barns and Uncle Jožef went to the granary … Then Clairi started calling me … she had potatoes in a borrowed basket, a whole pot of lard, flour, two bunches of carrots, milk, half a dozen eggs and a big cut of dried meat … This was luxury, provisions that would last us nearly a month, and I skipped the whole way home …