*
Eat, or else you’ll get sick.
†
After thirty years living in Switzerland they’ve thrown us out.
‡
It’s the war.
§
If it weren’t for the threat of war, you would never have been expelled from Switzerland.
‖
If only we’d taken Swiss citizenship back then, in the twenties. But my husband wanted to get his land back … How far are you traveling with us?
a
To the border.
b
Hurry, hurry! Get washed, we’re going to Yugoslavia.
c
No, I won’t permit it.
d
Bad, tepid coffee.
e
Why aren’t they traveling with us?
f
Clairi will come later, but Gritli is staying and will do everything she can with the authorities so we can come back.
g
That’s the right train!
h
How funny, nine hours ago we were still in Basel.
i
It’s dirty over there.
When I Opened my Eyes
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, all three of them — Vati, Gisela and mother — were sitting across from me. Judging from the thick tobacco smoke that filled my head and my lungs, I could tell that something must have happened in the meantime, and I could hear various languages and murmuring voices intermingling around my head. The train car was full. Thick with people … but I had to shake off the sleep and the smoke in order to see them. “Sind wir schon über die Grenze?”* I asked randomly, because I didn’t know … “Ja, jetzt sind wir schon in Jugoslawien,”† Vati said, smiling. I was crestfallen. There had been no flash, no thunder when the locomotive penetrated the border, there was no sign that anything had been split or changed outside … all around in the blue darkness there was a huge number of people just sitting … I pressed my eyes shut to see if somewhere in the darkness of my body, my chest, my head, I could find a bright line of lightning, some afterglow of the border, an echo of thunder … Because although I’d been sleeping, my body must have perceived the transition from darkness to light … and in my darkness there must be some trace at least, some dim glow, some smoldering bulb … There was nothing … it was mute, black, weightless, thick. I was just terribly sleepy. People were sitting in the shadows … on all the benches, dressed almost for autumn, although it was June. They had scarves and hats on their heads … Their heads, their heads. What were they like? Blurry. They were holding baskets, bags woven from straw, brightly colored, a man in a black suit and white shirt sitting on the bench across the aisle from me had the ugly remains of an old backpack slung over his shoulder. On the luggage racks there were baskets covered with napkins like pillows. I wanted to inspect them from head to toe, but that wasn’t possible on account of the weak, dim light … Who were they? They were sitting, from right next to me all the way to the door at the far end … there wasn’t even the tiniest free space remaining in the whole train car … They just went on forever at the back, as if in the rain. But some of them were seated facing toward our bench and seemed to be alert. What were they like? They had darkish, old faces, like leather soccer balls … and big, black cavities of various depths where their eyes were. I couldn’t make out their speech. They stared at mother, who in contrast was as white as snow, and at Gisela, even at me, and especially Vati … But he was one of them and could have blended in … They stared at us, languidly, from head to toe, causing me to feel a flush of warmth that cooled as soon as it reached my face. Vati turned to a man who was dressed in an ordinary jacket, although on his head he was wearing a uniform cap with a cockade. He said something, his mouth moving so slowly that his jaw muscles tightened, turning his face into a mask … he said something in a strange, soft language, as though he had some new, unusual mashed food in his mouth. They looked him in the face, in the eyeglasses, the mouth, his hair … “Was hast du gesagt?”‡ mother said. Our language was sharper and firm, but understandable. Now everyone turned to look at mother, even the ones sitting in the back … Still holding his hands between his knees from the cold, father turned toward where the other man was sitting … and again he said something in that extraordinarily pliable language in which I could barely make out even the more distinct consonants. The man in the cap didn’t answer, even though he was the one facing him. Instead, the voice of someone in the packed car who was sitting in shadow by the window across from us answered. I couldn’t distinguish him from the other dark-clad figures around him … He answered quickly, as though issuing some call, but again in the same strangely drawling language where I couldn’t distinguish friendliness from hostility, nor could I detect any melody, if it had one. The same man, now with his head stretched out, continued to speak, while the others kept stealing glances at Vati from over the backrests. The man with the backpack said something like thunder. Using a black, bushy umbrella that had a knotty handle resembling a roasted lizard on it, he drew something on the floor with its tip. Vati pointed at the drawing, invisible on the dark floor, which was now caked in mud and covered with sand that had been tracked in … and bent over the floor, he said something in their language that sounded very childish. Suddenly everyone started talking at once, a veritable barrage of yarn and wool … and somebody got up from the seat by the window behind me, revealing the unbuttoned panels of their vests and white expanses of the shirts underneath … “Worüber sprecht ihr?”§ mother asked, and all eyes fastened on her, including mine. “Wo wir billing essen und schlafen können,”‖ Vati answered from the door of the car, where he now stood, looking rumpled and very pale.
Maybe these ones crammed into the train car weren’t yet the real ones. The real ones lived in houses, had stores and horses and all kinds of machines.
*
Have we already crossed the border?
†
Yes, we’re in Yugoslavia now.
‡
What did you say?
§
What are you talking about?
‖
Where we can eat and sleep cheaply.
When We Got Off the Train
WHEN WE GOT OFF THE TRAIN they didn’t even give me enough time to look up at the sky and catch my breath … There was a gray, illuminated, covered passageway on the platform with a few people … and beyond it was pitch darkness all the way to the sky. The air was warm, dry and a bit oily, with a fine mist slowly drizzling … We set our luggage down on the stone floor of the illuminated passageway … It was quiet, extremely quiet. The passageway didn’t have any interesting posters or different-colored light bulbs, just iron pillars curved at the bottom and top … Some people were standing around at the far end or were walking back and forth … many of them in black trousers and white shirts, with hats on their heads … Nobody spoke … laughed … or waved … There were a few dark-skinned women with scarves on their heads and men’s shoes on their feet … just one woman, running across the tracks in the distance, was dressed in cheery, colorful clothes like the women in Basel … but she vanished among the trains … The people were milling around as if waiting, looking around, especially at us, although they moved as though they were slightly crippled … They had umbrellas as big as the one on the train … I couldn’t believe that we had arrived here so quickly and that I was still awake in the middle of the night … maybe because we were so tired and sleepy, someone had tricked us and we’d been directed to the wrong place … and now we were who knows where … It was a shame I couldn’t see the sky and a shame it wasn’t daytime so I could find out whether all of this was just some prank … Vati was in a conversation with some short, stocky, swarthy man. He was speaking to him in his language that felt as soft as pastry … was he asking him something? This man, too, instead of listening to Vati, looked him square in the face, and then answered him the same way … straight in the eyes, the mouth, the nose … in a voice that resounded way up toward the ceiling. Was he a woman, perhaps?