Games of Every Possible Kind
GAMES OF EVERY POSSIBLE KIND took place in the woods below the construction site … soccer, shoot the goat, slingshot tournaments … It never got boring. One day I went with the Balohs, who had brought along some rope, down to the Sava for firewood. One Slabe and one Jaklič brother also came along. I had no idea which, the younger or the older ones, because I didn’t know any of the four very well and they all looked a lot alike. Enrico didn’t come with. He avoided groups that went anywhere with some definite goal in mind. And he had enough firewood at home. Whenever his father came home from one of his construction jobs, he would bring along on a tricycle or a pickup truck a few gunny sacks full of wood. Bits and sawed-off ends of struts and masonry scaffolds from construction sites. Such nice yellow chunks that it made your mouth water to think what all you could do with them if you just had a hammer and nails at hand … Past the four-story house on the hill we came to the first feed barns, hayracks, and farmsteads … These weren’t really proper farmsteads … they were half town, half peasant houses. The people who lived in them had half and half faces to match … If those were peasants, then I was a native Parisian. There weren’t even any dung heaps in front of the houses … Some fields, a horse here and there, but mostly just a few pigs and hens. And what about their fields?… Small plots of potatoes and beds of lettuce and onions and cabbage and beans. Now and then one Baloh or another would pounce on a patch and come out with an onion in his teeth … Oh, they wouldn’t have gotten away with that in Cegelnica … Everywhere there was lots of laundry out drying, in front of every house and in all the courtyards and meadows … Under the eaves stood the same tall, yellowish brown, two-wheeled carts that I’d seen on the day we arrived, on the main street outside the train station. This is where the laundry women live, Štef explained, who do the laundry for the rich folk in town … When we went down to a meadow that was full of trees and bushes, that smell, noise and breath that always encircled me grew stronger and stronger … And when we got to the edge of the meadow, I saw paradise … the Sava, bluer than the sky and flowing through three big, distinct channels with banks made of smooth, snow-white pebbles that otherwise only existed in dreams!.. I almost keeled over in amazement. This was too much! I sat, unable to move ahead. The river was racing at tremendous speed! So this was the source of all that had seemed so mysterious in the atmosphere … Such air! Such unbounded shimmering! And the scent! Of gravel, of wet sand, of the wood, the branches, the willows, the stones that the water flowed through … Two hills … that stood in a field of blue on the far side … two furry tents, a dromedary … also belonged to this paradise … On the left a short forest, on the right mature willows … Too much for one pair of eyes … Such beauty was almost impossible, such a thing must surely intoxicate people, change them completely … turn them upside down and set them on their heads!.. But I had to get up. My group was creeping ahead over the gravel without looking at anything around them, as though only the cord and their gunny sacks were important. We waded across the first channel, which was stagnant, then we stepped into the second … Its rapids … I could clearly make out the bottom, which was paved in brilliant light and dark stones of various sizes that would just lift up and float away if you kicked them. Such detailed inlay!.. I could barely keep my balance on them … I thought that the water was going to fling me up toward the sky … suck me down … slice off a foot and carry it off … it raced with such force, as though I’d been caught in a powerful eel basket … I triggered a whole avalanche of stones that quickly floated away like a school of fish … The surface smelled like nothing else in the world. Like an incredibly huge bowl of ice-cold stewed fruit … Willows, rusted pots, sand in dried-out tree trunks … with their short roots and branches they were like bathyscaphes or naval mines washed up from the bottom … and dandelions, dandelions and more dandelions, as yellow as lemons … And on top of a heap of stones lay a long, yellow, narrow skull with hollow eye sockets that the wind blew through … “A horse!” said Štef … Like in the wild west! “Es ist zo nice here!” I forced out, but immediately realized I’d blown it. Red-haired Jaklič next to me broke into a broad grin that involved all of his freckles and all of his teeth. Rats! I softened. For a second I turned my head toward the dense forest to calm down … Just let him poke at me one more time, and I’ll let him have it, I’ll give him a knock-out punch straight into the Sava … Štef and his crew, his younger brother and Marija, were already heading across the third, deepest channel to the other side … That was where the best firewood was supposed to be, that got washed up by the Sava and that nobody ever gathered … The wind was blowing over the water for all it was worth. At first the water was up to my knees, then suddenly up to my navel, my chest … It hurled into my shoulders, my hips, my knees, shoving me to the right, where the currents of both channels, this and the weaker one, joined up together and formed an enormous whirlpool beneath a high, eroded bank, a downright demolished earthen wall … As though a merry-go-round had been flung out into the rapids … Štef reached an arm out of the raging water … mother would have died if she’d seen me … and grabbed me by the belt around my trousers … Now I was in water up to my chin. My heart was beating not just in my throat, but in my chin. I was going to drown! I didn’t know how to swim. But I was ashamed … One of the Jakličes was skipping down the left side with his hands clasped over his head, like some girl dancing … Then there was Marija with a scarf on her head. And she was a year younger than me. Then she shouted … The water had carried her scarf away … She was screaming … The white rag was already floating away past the eroded bank … It vanished and reappeared … It could no longer be saved … The bank rose up like a wall … I climbed up on all fours, clutching onto the wet sand … There was as much wood here as anyone could want … just waiting to be collected. Washed up into a heap, scattered to all sides, tired of waiting, even dust had begun collecting. Branches like you couldn’t find in the forest anymore … Boards from old fruit crates … Boards from old fences, still painted … Real traces from a wagon rig!.. Nice looking yellow floorboards, as though they’d just been planed down … We hauled everything up into a heap, made bundles out of it, and Štef even made a kind of raft out of the traces. He was going to sell them to some peasants in Tomačevo, he decided. Marija was shivering in the cold. She had lost all her color and her nose and her ears were dripping. She knew what awaited her at home on account of the scarf. Her father’s belt, her mother’s anger. Štef paid her no heed. That was his sister’s problem … Each of us hoisted a bundle up onto his head. I was going to drown, I knew it, just as soon as I stepped back into the current … if I carried this thing on my head, I would lose my footing … I went as far as the water and froze. I couldn’t make myself move. They were already out in the middle of the water, with only their heads and bundles sticking out, closer to the far shore than to this one … “Do we need to carry you piggy back?” Štef shouted over his raft … I knew where that would lead. I shook my head. I wanted to show I was worthy, despite not knowing the language … I stepped into the water … step by step I veered to the right, as far to the right as possible, so that I would come out on the other side as far as possible from the place where the two currents met … The water was raging … A shower of stones amid flakes of froth threatened to crush all my bones. My head shook, swayed, rocked … Every second could be my last … Without my hands to row and with the bundle on my head I was like an invalid. Should I throw it away? No! It perched on my head with an easy weight, even though the wind kept slamming into it, if I threw it aside and forded through with my hands and feet, I would remain intact. No, I had to carry that wood across to dry land … yes, I had to see it under the stove, at home, whatever the cost, it was my plunder … The water was reaching up to my chin. The wind carried off a few crate planks, so long!.. But then my head rocked, shook, and suddenly slammed into the gravel on the bottom. Then I was upright again, minus the wood. And then a terrible avalanche of sand accosted me … sifted me … I’m going to drown … Disgusting! The flood is going to carry me off. I saw Marija, Jaklič and Stabe all running soaked over the gravel … and shouting. All their effort was in vain. The raging water flung me to the bottom once more, then carried me back up to the top … in a flash I could see them all on the bank talking about how I had drowned … With me floating past in pieces … For an instant I wasn’t aware of anything, and then something hit me hard in the chest and began squeezing me around the neck. It was one of the horse shafts, which Štef was holding on the other side … They dragged me up onto the hot sand, among the dandelions, willows, and nettles … Every part of me hurt, but most of all my belly and toes stung from the stones. “The Sava isn’t for you yet,” Štef said … Fine! At least I had gotten a thorough bath … Štef waded out into the middle of the second current. He scooped water up in his hands and drank it. “To trink?” I asked Marija, startled … “It flows over seven stones,” she replied … What? Over seven stones? What kind of stones? Big ones? Where? Up at its source … I had never before drunk water that I swam in.