After that I arrived back at Town Square …
Alongside the jewelry laid out on velvet in the goldsmith’s display window next door to the Hammans’ front gate I suddenly caught a glimpse of myself, so changed that I didn’t even resemble anyone I knew … I felt such despair, fear, hopelessness, and confusion within myself … but the windowpane showed a thin, wiry boy with disheveled hair and the muscular legs of a soccer player or boxer … An athlete trained almost to the point of deformity … I had to step close to detect in the shadows of my eyes and nose some of that hopelessness and confusion that were inside me … All the rest was some unknown brat, whoever he was, who could very easily also have been my enemy, but under no circumstances my close friend … more likely an obstacle, the way other boys I tried to avoid were obstacles to me … Good God, how disappointed I was with the appearance I’d been stuck with, and I felt even more crushed than just shortly before … I wished I could literally extract me out of myself into the light … grab onto the air and pull myself out of that unfortunate shell into the open … I didn’t want to look anymore, otherwise I was afraid I could lose all partiality toward myself … I was one of those kids I had to run from because they were constantly blocking my path … I thought it would be best for me to quit studying, make myself invisible and unheard, and avoid people, or else sooner or later they would gang up on me.… I breathed a sigh of relief when I was back on the other side of the door again, no longer visible to myself or anyone else. I was free … and curious once again …
Most Often
MOST OFTEN I went to the area just before the cathedral. Because that’s where the smallest store was that I had ever seen: the rummage man’s little display cases in the courtyard passage next to the inn. He also had several cases out on display on the steps and on the sidewalk outside the passage … This was my world … on a micro-scale. Toys, straps, buttons on cardboard, little toy pistols, combs of various sizes … and then rosaries in every possible color, toothpaste and powders in tubes and little jars … two taffeta corsets that got me excited, little balls of yarn and seven tiny cups on a silver platter, six of which were gilt, but not the seventh … These glass boxes crammed full of wares from all over aroused more interest in me than the display windows of the biggest stores in town … They were like colored cartoons, variegated kitsch, comic strips from the Most Beautiful Adventures in the World … Barely had you noticed one thing, than another showed up unexpectedly beside it … next to a bowl of pearls there were race cars, behind them there were trumpets and English horns with a Mickey Mouse and a child’s two-barreled shotgun for the jungle, affixed to a piece of cardboard showing, against a field of blue, a lion’s head with a silver mane and a gaping, fire-red gullet … beneath it was a gray wind-up elephant … The owner, the rummage man, stood or sat in his passage, always wearing a jacket and hat … He was an old man and slightly decrepit. All of this merchandise belonged to him. I didn’t pay any more attention to him than I did to any other uninteresting person on the street … He, on the other hand, noticed and remembered me when I stopped by every morning to stare into his cases on the sidewalk … Once he came up to me. “Since you seem to be so interested,” he said in a thin, wheezy voice, “come help me sometime when you’re free …” The thought electrified me … I was hired on immediately and was standing outside the passage the first thing the very next morning when its doors were still locked … The merchant arrived on an old bicycle and handed me the key … I opened it and set out a sign under the house number that read, “DRY GOODS AND MORE. Jurij Velikonja” … Then I helped him take the little display cases from their stacks, unlock the padlock on each of them, and set them out one on top of the other up to the ceiling. I hung polka-dotted belts, whips, dog leashes, necklaces and different colored rosaries out on pegs, pinned scarves to lines strung across the ceiling, always in the same order … striped ones for everyday wear, then white, then silk ones for Sundays and checkered for special occasions, and after them scarves of red damask, scarlet taffeta and still others of green taffeta … set out on a big tarp two big pillows for gentlemen and ladies, two smaller ones, and then two even smaller ones … then Velikonja put a cardboad vest over my head that had buttons of all kinds … metal, glass, ivory, monochrome and multicolored, for clothing and linens … I walked around in that costume as advertising outside the cathedral and back and forth on the square … I had to admit that the display cases and the wares in them were redolent of age. But I enjoyed selling. Selling and business became my goal. At home I even made a sign “We sell everysing here” and had to replace the “s” with “th” … Old Velikonja was nice … we talked about this and that … but not at all about me, nor was he inclined to talk about himself … so not about anything personal. We mainly talked about the most urgent things connected to selling. He acquainted me with simple bookkeeping. On one sheet he had a precise list of what he had of this and that, let’s say scarves, and on the sheet opposite how many of them he’d sold. For everyday record-keeping purposes he had cardboard tabs that hung from the display cases where you just marked off whatever item you’d sold. As a reward for good work in my first month he promised me his best cork pistol and a box of corks … We tended to have few customers. Out on the square I might occasionally sell a set of buttons for underwear … And in the passage, every now and then a housemaid might come for hair clasps or a ring … and would spend a long time choosing among all the rings displayed in various little boxes: little hearts made of red stones, a greenish anchor made out of aquamarine, gold stamped rings … The women bought hairpins and every now and then a scarf, the younger men bought belts, ties, a cigarette lighter or case … old ladies might buy a white prayer book for a girl’s first communion or confirmation … Nobody paid any attention to the Japanese ocarinas made out of bakelite … Velikonja toted up the number of items sold from the charts and put the money into a ceramic milk dish … At noon, when the church bells rang, he turned toward the stairs at the end of the passage that led up to private apartments and prayed. Then he went to the inn next door, the Spinning Wheel, for lunch. During that time I handled sales on my own … Once in his absence I sold a whole set of buttons for a man’s suit and roughly a meter of satin to some woman … though by then I had a good command of the inventory, there were still a few things that challenged me … I was most drawn to the little watches, toylike little things for kids on elastic bands. One afternoon I couldn’t resist anymore … although I knew that the watches were made out of tin and celluloid and weren’t real … still … and this should testify to my stupidity … I took out two of them that were attached to cardboard at the back of one of the cases … one to wear myself, and the other to give to Gisela … That was the end! That evening or the next morning, after checking the sales or the lists on the cases, Mr. Velikonja, who was very precise, noticed that he was missing two silly little toy watches … When I arrived the next morning, he just gave me a rude glance and said nothing … I sat down on the shoe grater next to the steps, but Velikonja went in and out past me as if I were thin air … I could feel his resentment like a sort of sad, lazy spell reminiscent of sleep. That’s how two stupid little toy watches cost me a friendship …