One fine day we finally got to meet her. How? Had mother tried to pump her for money or had she sold her some fur item of Vati’s?… The lady came down to the road with her friend, the bank officer, and her younger son, where we were waiting for them, as she and mother had agreed beforehand. Together we went down a road past grain fields and clover to some neat little houses, then back to where the farmsteads began and finally down the road into town. I wanted to talk to Leon who knew Slovene really well, since he had been here since first grade. But he was too fragile and delicate for me to get any halfway lively conversation going. I could barely get him to go with me onto the grassy escarpment over the road, where it was nicer to walk. We looked at the castle, all lit up and crystalline in the early twilight, and the bank officer, who was wearing a white raincoat and had a black mustache and sideburns … he appeared to be quite the cosmopolitan gentleman … explained what a nice local practice it was, “alte Schlößer und Monumente am Abend zu beleuchten.”† At last they invited us over for some stewed fruit. Everything still smelled of mortar and our footsteps echoed through the big, empty building as we climbed up its modern staircase. It was a handsome apartment with big windows, and her son the student was drawing some schematics in the kitchen on a big drafting board. In the living room, which was full of rugs and armchairs, Mrs. Gmeiner wound up the gramophone … “An der schönen, blauen Donau,” … “Wien, Wien, nur du allein.…”‡ Mother sat fearfully in a chair, her arms nervously folded, while Clairi, who was all excited, began swaying on the sofa in waltz time and humming along and clicking her tongue, “tsk tsk tsk …” At his mother’s insistence, Leon showed me a box containing arrows and a target … we played for a while … After the stewed fruit we left. The lady from Vienna and her bank officer lay down on the sofa in the living room and Leon, whose health was fragile, soon went to bed. I stayed for a while in the kitchen with the older one, the student, and because I liked drawing, watched as he used charcoal and a fountain pen to shade in big and small turbine screws. Through the open door I saw feet resting on the edge of the sofa … coarse male feet in polkadots and hers with their tiny heels in silk stockings, which excited me. I also heard her voice as the springs squeaked, “Laß mich in Ruhe, du! Laß mich in Ruhe …”§ Women really did have it rough … Suddenly something began to rumble as if out of hell. Military planes, one, then another, flew right over the house … almost touching the roof with their wings … They were fighter planes, that much I guessed right away from the machine guns alongside their cockpits. The panes in the windows growled and a whole avalanche was released through the upper stories, causing my mouth to go dry … The airplanes vanished together with the lights on their wings in the direction of the airport … All of us jumped up, except for the student. “There’s going to be a war,” he said as he continued to draw. “The Germans are going to come any day and send this whole Yugoslav circus to hell …” It was the first time I’d heard somebody saying in Slovene that Germany was going to destroy Yugoslavia. And with such zest! That had a strong effect on me … But the young man’s face was so focused and serious when he looked at me that I believed him …
*
My poor little boy!
†
… to light up old castles and monuments in the evenings.
‡
The beautiful blue Danube
, and
Vienna, just you alone