Here, at the short end of the courtyard veranda, was also where the nice old lady lived, her mother, who had given me a copy of Die schönen illustrierten Abenteuer a year before. What wouldn’t I have given to be able to have another look at those guns engraved with the years of manufacture, or the collections of sabers and shields on her wall … and run my hands over those objects from noble times that I could only fantasize about … One day I ran into her just as she was airing some rugs out on the veranda, each of them bearing its own noble coat of arms … She was standing beside them, leaning on her cane and smoking out of a long mouthpiece. Her white-haired head, refined face, hooplike bracelet reminiscent of cells in a castle dungeon … and the cane with its beak-like silver handle on which she was leaning … all of it literally etched itself into me … It brought to life for me images of palaces atop cliffs in olden days … even those times of the rich past in which Vati, mother, Clairi and Margrit had lived and which for me were only a fairy tale, like everything that had been in the world before I was born … I said hello to her with all the awe that informed me … humbly, placing my hand on my heart, the way real esquires showed respect to their ladies … Oh, how I hoped she would one day invite me into her chambers …! She greeted me back with a strong, goodhearted nod, which sufficed for the moment, as her good will enfolded me like a veil beneath which I would either perish or take flight …
The veranda ran all around the rectangular courtyard, above which the trees of castle hill inclined, their bushy crowns and powerful trunks descending from the castle onto Hamman’s Dry Cleaning, Pressing and Alterations like a primeval forest … Through the long glass pane of the workroom, only the bottom half of which was frosted, I could see the laundresses, seamstresses and female assistants, all wearing caps and white work smocks. Sometimes they sang in chorus, as if up in a choir loft … Beneath its glass roof the veranda would squeak and rattle noisily whenever anyone walked on it, and the girls would lift their heads and look out over the frosted glass to see who was there. If it was me, I turned red as a beet and took off like a madman … A glass-enclosed porch hung like a basket on the wall at a right angle to the veranda. Various gentlemen and ladies would walk around and take their seats in armchairs inside it. They had eyes that they used to observe the courtyard, although they were different from the knobby eyes of the workwomen … Thus there was no refuge for me on the veranda, because you could never be alone and completely free there …
The best thing to do was get away from there … Through a wide exit doorway you came into a square hallway with doors surrounding oleanders in the corners and a rug in the middle. Thank god, it was quiet and dark there … Here at last was the vaulted door to the staircase, illuminated by real streetlights protected in wire mesh. The wide, eroded steps made a sharp turn as they followed the thick wall … That’s why I always descended them carefully or shot down like a bomb … A sunny day with street noise shone into the vaulted entryway through the wide door, only one side of which was opened inward. I stood there for a while and looked at the people … all conceivable types were walking across the square as though in a live toy box of figurines … I felt drawn outside … Next to the door was the goldsmith’s and a lamp store, then the clothes designer’s studio and a shoe store, then an optician who also sold binoculars, and then the Rot fur store. That one I knew. I stood outside its display window, hoping to see the tall blonde lady who aroused my desire, but I couldn’t find her. After that came city hall with its gigantic striped poles for flags on each side of its entrance. There was a statue on its steps: a short-maned, stocky horse ridden by the old King Peter I as he fled into the mountains of Albania … Both of them had been fashioned in rough curves out of gray rock … The handsome old king in the same sort of army cap as any Serbian soldier would wear was so alien in this environment … city hall, the square, the whole town, it might as well have been the statue of an Apache chief here on the steps … This startled and made me feel uncomfortable, because the old king’s face was so noble that I liked him immediately … Behind the barred windows of city hall were those cannon and mortars from the first World War that I had already looked at before. If the gate was open, I would slip into the cool, dark entryway to feel their barrels and carriages like hay carts on wooden wheels and the soft, still-oily bundles of rags on their ramrods … Beyond that of course was the cathedral … then a florist’s shop, and the Falcon and Spinning Wheel Inn … an old man, a junkman who sold odds and ends in display cases in the entryway … buttons, children’s watches, toothpaste, shoelaces, scarves, the board game
Mensch, ärgere dich nicht, yoyos, belts … I’d already been to Šenklavž’s, also to Krisper’s, that time when I went begging with Mirko and his mother. I was careful not to let any of the sales staff recognize me. Then there was yet another furrier in a narrow building, a regular palace built out of black marble … The elegance of the street … the artificial flowers, the toys, the pretty odds and ends in the display windows, the neckties on shirts, the veils, mountains of hams with parsley, wigs of all different colors … practically lifted me off the ground, so that I could scarcely feel myself anymore and it seemed I could swim through this ocean of silk, necklaces, fine shoes, gold cufflinks … Town Square ended where the buildings got narrower and Old Square began … which was dark, crowded and grim. I didn’t go there … Here, on the border between the two squares, a barber was standing outside his diminutive barbershop with an outsized copper plate for a shop sign hanging over his head … Here was also the sign with the red Turk smoking a hookah … Here porters with braids over their shoulders and numbered tin badges on their caps waited for work … here a swarthy shoe shine man crouched behind a mirrored box, a brush and open tin of shoe polish in hand … The bridge that went over the Ljubljanica was called the Cobblers’ Bridge, it was white and had handsome lamps on it. The path that followed the river was called the Gallus Embankment … This is where the antique stores were all lined up, with rummage in their windows, their doorways, out on the street … Furniture, nails, mattresses, pots, cast-iron stoves, radios, flower stands. All of it old, disgusting junk that repelled me. Gargoyles of cast lead in the window and in boxes arrayed along benches, in front of them dragons, phantoms and devils … Everything great or small was inside in the windows or outside and under the chestnut trees … The antique dealers, women and men and their children, sat on stools, armchairs, beds and divans that they were also trying to sell. I wanted to figure out if these city kids were anything like the ones in Basel … if they were better or smarter than the peasant kids in Lower Carniola, or in Nove Jarše for that matter … I went from face to face, searching. Here was one like Anka, but too chubby and done up. Farther down from the chestnuts in a vacant sandy lot some boys were kicking a ball … They were too self-contained a group for me to be able to join them. I was drawn to some sabers and old mortars displayed in the windows, along with knives, swords in ornate sheaths … armor, lances, helmets with steel face guards … If only one of those things could have been mine … But the antique dealers kept an eye on everything and gave me dirty looks, as though they’d guessed my intentions … Around here, I concluded, there was no chance of finding company or making friends … The neighborhood was too gussied up, but also quite desolate … I went back along the wall toward the bridge … There were several trees in the sand … Carts leaned up against the wall … the wide iron gate of a warehouse … The Ljubljanica flowed lazily between its high walls. The whole of it wouldn’t have made up for one single branch of the Sava, its gravelly riverbed, the woods, the potato fields near the airport … I didn’t come across a single scamp my age anywhere … I walked down short, narrow Locksmith Lane, between an inn and a warehouse which exuded a stench of dampness, rotten fruit, paper and old dirt, with flies swarming around …