Authors: Maja Haderlap
When the day comes, the hunt is discussed early in the morning, the hunters are served doughnuts and hot tea. The area is divided up, sections of the forest assigned, positions designated. I’m to go with old Pop, whom I know well. Pop’s face looks like a coarse-grained desert landscape. He is the oldest in the group and, it is said, the one with the worst eyes. Once they wanted to test him and his eyesight, the story goes, and they stuck a house cat in a rabbit’s pelt. They wrapped the fur around the cat and tied it on with string. Hissing and scratching, the cat fled up the nearest tree and Pop couldn’t believe his eyes because he could have sworn he saw the first rabbit that ever climbed a tree.
Grandmother pulls me aside. She has heard that the hunt will end at the Gregoričs’ farm. She wants me to say hello to old Gregorička for her. She carried me out of the camp when the camp was being evacuated and I was too weak to walk, Grandmother says. For three whole days, Gregorička carried me, helped me walk, and pushed me in a wheelbarrow until the SS had disappeared. Gregorička lost her mind in Auschwitz, even before she was transferred to Ravensbrück, and from that point on, she swore that the devil who put her in the camp would lead her out again. When she was younger, she was a strong woman who could take on any man, Grandmother recalls. I nod and say that I’ll give Gregorička her best.
Pop holds my hand as we walk towards our section of the forest, beating our sticks against the trees and bushes. Shotguns over their shoulders, the hunters have hurried on ahead of us. The dogs drive hares and foxes in their direction, we hear only a few isolated shots and see only a few animals take flight.
The line of game laid out in front of the Gregoričs’ farm that afternoon is as short as a wake, and the schnapps is soon drunk. We’re invited into the farmhouse. They say they’ve cooked up some goulash for the
Schüsseltrieb
, the closing feast. Old Gregorička is sitting on the bench at the table. I go up to her to pass on Grandmother’s greeting and give her my hand. Hers is cold and moist. She smells of urine. Gregorička does not understand who is sending their good wishes and looks at me blankly. Sveršina tries to explain. The strong old woman nods and sways her powerful body back and forth while we eat. I watch her from
the corner of my eye and can’t help thinking of Grandmother and how this Gregorička was capable of throwing men into the air and carrying my weakened grandmother out of the camp.
One hunter tells us that a neighbor of his, who had fought with the partisans during the war and had just died, once told him that he saw a white stag when he was out on watch, not in a raised hide, and he had an intuition that his partisan bunker had been betrayed. He warned his comrades, but they wouldn’t listen. The police did, in fact, raid the bunker the next day. It was a sign and you have to heed signs, the hunter says. Sveršina says it’s nonsense. Intuition, what do you mean, intuition, he blusters. The fear of falling into the Gestapo’s hands had nothing supernatural about it. After he brought Kori to the partisans, it wasn’t long before the police showed up at the Brečks’ farm. Someone must have gotten wind of it and the next thing you know, he was off to Mauthausen!
Father asks the hunters if they still remember who was the best shot in Lepena. Well, he says, well, you don’t remember. It was old Farmer Mozgan’s wife, he says after a short pause, as if playing the queen of spades. She was a legendary poacher and bagged some powerful roe. What do you say to that, Father wants to know, what have you got to say with the puny little hares you’ve bagged, you can only dream of being as good a shot as Mozgan’s wife. She sat up in the hide with her knitting and when a deer came grazing, she didn’t bat an eye, just raised her rifle and bang and done! But she didn’t make it through Ravensbrück, Sveršina throws down the joker, that was the end of her, yes, the end of her.
Night is falling when the hunters head home, and I realize that Father has had too much to drink. He stands unsteadily and complains about the long way he has to go to get home. They press a flashlight into my hand and send me off with the words, you know how to look after your father.
I lead the way and try to light up the path for Father and me. He tells me how often he has gone this way alone and how well he knows it.
The forest begins to draw in the darkness. A keen-eared silence surrounds us and seems to be lying in wait for our footsteps. I wonder how I can keep Father talking so the stillness won’t get the upper hand. As we step out of the forest and stop in the field behind the Auprichs’ farm, I ask the name of the farmhouse we can see higher up, outlined below the top of the wooded hill. That’s the Hojniks’ farm, Father says, the Nazi police went on a rampage there as well. The family was supposed to be hauled off, but old Hojnik refused to leave. He was beaten to death on the spot. They shot his son and daughter-in-law and threw all their bodies into the cottage and set it on fire. Father’s voice cracks suddenly. He speaks in a strained tone. I find it irritating.
A light wind sets in. The trees begin to groan as soon as we step back into the forest. Amid the rustling of the leaves, I can just make out the sound of voices and screams. I ask Father to give me his hand. He laughs and takes a big step forward to reach my hand. At that moment, he loses his balance and slides sideways down a steep scarp and ends up lying flat on the ground behind a bush. The flashlight, which fell when he grabbed for my hand, goes out. I can barely see him in the dark and hear him swearing far below. How the devil am I supposed to get back up there, he moans. I think he is hurt and get ready to slide down to him. Stay up
there, he shouts, stay right there, I can make it up on my own. He starts to crawl up the slope on all fours. The flashlight’s gone, how am I supposed to see anything in the dark, Father complains and kicks his boots into the ground to get his footing. When he is near me, he says, you can pull me up now, and I pull with all my strength. I just need to rest a bit, he says, and then we’ll keep going. He sits down on the forest floor and seems to fall asleep a second later. I crouch next to him and feel my eyes fill with tears. The forest and the darkness let all their ghosts loose and they grab at me wildly. I raise my head and try to make out the moon that tonight is hiding behind the clouds. A dark sphere in the sky seems to be sinking towards me. I’m afraid I’ve drawn it down with my crying, and I close my eyes. The darkness takes hold of me and fills my chest intoxicatingly.
Father lies next to me, as if drugged. After an eternity, he opens his eyes and says, you know, the best thing to do when you’re afraid in the forest is to sing partisan songs. He often did, and it always helped. Do I know any, he asks. I don’t. Fine, then I’ll sing, he says. And Father sings as best he can some partisan fighting songs, though he can only remember a few verses and repeats them over and over until we finally reach home.
Mother is waiting up for us in the kitchen, angry and worried. I don’t want to upset her so I don’t say anything about the calamities on our way home. I’m afraid that death has taken root inside me, like a small black button, like a lattice-work of dark moss creeping invisibly over my skin.
T
HE WAR is a devious fisher of men. It has cast out its net for the adults and traps them with its fragments of death, its debris of memory. Just one careless act, one brief moment of inattention, and it pulls in its net. Father is immediately snagged on memory’s hooks, he’s already running for his life, trying to escape the war’s omnipotence. The war suddenly looms in hastily spoken sentences, strikes out from the shelter of darkness. It leaves its captives trembling in its net and withdraws for months at a time to prepare a fresh attack as soon as it’s forgotten. If ever it grows feeble, they welcome it into their homes and smile at its armor, certain they can win it over, they set a place at the table, make up a bed for it.
Father was the youngest partisan, his cousin Peter tells us when we’re gathered in the sitting room to celebrate Grandmother’s birthday. The youngest partisan, do you still remember, you were barely twelve years old. Yes, Father says but he’d much rather forget all about it. At night he sometimes wakes with a start and has no idea where he is. In my dreams,
I’m still running for my life like I did back then on the Velika Planina, Father says.
Mother of God, the others say, now that was a dog’s life!
The day our provisions ran out and the commando came, it was up and out, down the mountain, through the German soldiers, over, out, Father recalled. That was some kind of noise. At two in the morning, they slid down the mountainside in deep snow, down a chute that was used to send tree trunks into the valley below. The Germans trained searchlights up from Kamnik. It was so bright, every movement was visible. There was shooting in the valley, and all you could see were red and blue streaks. Leaves and branches rained down from the trees and one partisan was lying on the ground yelling help me, help me, Father tells us, but he just ran as if the devil were on his heels. They’d gotten separated while escaping, he and two other partisans ran across the road and right in front of a German soldier with a machine gun. I’m a dead man, Father told himself, now I’m going to get shot, but the German made it clear that he should disappear. He waved Father on. Quick, quick, the soldier said. He was a good one, Father says, one of the good ones, I’ll never forget him. Father’s group reached the river and the commander yelled: Cross through the water, we’ll never make it over the bridge! The first one who stepped in the river vanished, washed away like nothing. They’d clung to each other and made it across. The water rushed over him and his brother – and this in January. Because in war it’s like being hares in a hunt, only much worse, Father says.
Yes, Peter confirmed, we were the hares and hunger was our commander.
He often remembers how hungry he was then, how his stomach was at the core of his delirium and put him in harm’s way. When he thinks of it now, how careless he and Lojz were at the Kebers’ farm because they believed the farmer’s wife would give them bread, he still gets goose bumps. I can hear the Germans, Peter says. Shoot, shoot, bandits! they’d shouted. Lojz had fired and Peter had shot his revolver. There was no possible retreat, they couldn’t run up the mountain so they ran across the field, Lojz in front and Peter behind. Then the police dog caught him and tore his pant leg. He fell head over heels and lost his gun. The officer chasing him yelled: Stop, boy, stay where you are! But he kept running like mad. Then the Germans started shooting, all at once, terrifying, but the mountain swallowed them up, him and Lojz.
O
N days like these, Father sometimes loses his grip. At the beginning of a celebration, he seems almost shy, wants to be put in the mood, drinks a lot of hard cider or wine. The family’s high spirits get him cracking jokes. The relatives convince him to get his accordion and finally make some music. Father plays with abandon, calls everyone onto the dance floor and stamps his foot to the beat. After a while, his look changes. A second being inside him pushes its back up against his eyes. They turn blank, like false windows you can’t see into or out of. He becomes irritable. Our relatives decide they can no longer take him seriously and start to think about leaving. The nervous ones whisper that it’s about time to go and clear their throats. It was so much fun, they say, we should do this more often because it does everyone such good to sit together, to dance and sing.
As soon as the last guest is gone, Father’s eye-demon takes full possession of him and leads him in a wild polka, flinging him in all directions. The polka to the left throws Father into utter dejection, the one to the right sends him into a mad rage that erupts in ear-splitting cries and is sparked by small misunderstandings.
My brother and I are sent out of the room and in our distress we don’t know what to do. We stand around the kitchen or run outside. We’re convinced the war has moved into our house for a few days and is not prepared to give ground.
We play partisans when once again Father, hunting rifle in hand, threatens at the top of his voice to shoot us all. We run up the slope into the forest, huddle behind a hazel bush, crawl on our stomachs along the edge of the forest, our invisible weapons at the ready, and, lying in the grass, we look down at our parents’ house and debate when it would be safe to leave our cover and go back to our rooms.
One time Mother flees with us, which makes us anxious because we’re afraid she’ll draw Father’s attention to our hiding place. Our numbed lungs can barely expand. I look at my brother and hope he doesn’t understand everything that’s going on, but I’m not quite sure. I watch Father, how he wages war with us in a new form, and I see myself floating free from the husk of my body, and I look down at myself as if at a doll lying in the grass, head drawn in between its shoulders. Even if I’m hit, I won’t die, I think, because I’ve left my body.
A dormant cannon, an undetonated missile has wandered out of the past and onto our farm by mistake and is seeking shelter under the plum trees in our wood. We’re the unintended targets, which we never should have been but in the heat of the battle, we’re forced to stand in for the real thing.
As soon as Father, overcome with exhaustion, nods off and the gun slips from his hand, we exhale. Mother takes his gun and locks it in the
hunting closet. We clean up our hiding place and gingerly hurry past Father as he sleeps, his head propped on his elbows. He seems to sigh in his sleep and lies like a gnarled plum tree branch in the field behind the house, on the floor near the doorstep, or on the corner bench in the kitchen.
The dance in the opposite direction opens with Father’s self-incriminations. He rhythmically repeats that he’s worth nothing, never has been worth anything, a dog is what he is, a dog hiding under the table. Come, little doggy, he says, come out from under the table. Come on now, tu tu tu tu, he coaxes, tu tu tu tu!
But the little dog won’t move. It has crawled into a corner, as have I, already guessing what will happen when Father leaves the house. That’s not true at all, I try to reassure him. How could he possibly say he’s a little dog, how could he even think it, I ask and see my sentences hanging in the air like a line that has broken off before reaching its goal.