Newcomers (28 page)

On the day before that Sunday Vati spent all night long sewing my first confirmation suit out of his own black suit … By morning it still wasn’t finished and he sewed on its right sleeve with just a few stitches. With a white ribbon and a bunch of lilies of the valley tucked into my sleeve cuff I came running into the church at the last minute … I was already late and I had to push my way through the crowd of excited and flushed parents who had come to watch the first communicants and therefore had filled up the entire back of the church … I shoved my way through them, under their bags and bouquets, and suddenly my sleeve came off at the shoulder, slipping over my elbow like a stovepipe, and I only caught it at the last minute … the cotton or horsehair or whatever it was that served as a lining poked out at my shoulder … “Gottv​erfluc​hteter​teufel,”
^†
I swore like Vati … I had to shove the sleeve back up toward the shoulder and press my arm to
my side, as though I’d just been inoculated … The vicar looked at me furiously with those charcoal-rimmed eyes of his … only my communion candle was left on a little covered table … I grimaced in pain in an
I just got kicked by a horse outside
posture … Idiot! Life was always veering off into some comedy or other … you would have burst with laughter if something like this happened in a movie … Another problem was when we went in a long, fingery line, our hands clasped around candles, up to the communion table. One row got up, then the next one left and caught up with it … The light, the reflections, the organ, the singing and the spectators all blinded me … For the first time my tongue was going to feel the light touch of Jesus, who was contained in a white, thin little disk, and my mouth instantly swelled … He was going to break into me like the highest saint of all saints, without there really being anything for him to find in me, in this dark little cell crammed full of perversion and greed, in this heart of a murderer … and I had to reassure him that nothing awful was going to happen to him, that I would try to protect him from the evil forces of my soul and body … tuck him away in some quiet corner of myself, where he would be shielded from me … But what was going to happen to me when he really entered me, taking over my body, my soul, my whole being?… Was I going to change, become illuminated, behave more nobly?… was his light, bony hand going to guide mine, would the future be brighter and nicer … From now on was I going to feel the lightness of strength and faith … Would I get to perform some glorious feat in the process … would I become a model student, build a house for Vati, a garden for Gisela, would I tame mother, find Clairi
a husband? Would I become a soldier? Awaken the love of a beautiful princess and become betrothed to her, and be in her heart as she was in mine …? A massive table in the rectory was laden down with delicacies … there was a cake in the middle that was as big and white as Mont Blanc with a layer of sand … there were cookies already out on plates … and dishes of cherries in sugar glaze … I could barely wait to sit down and dig in. Then they took a picture of all of us … white candles in hand … the girls wearing their little wreaths and veils … mine was the only black suit in the picture amid all the white ones …

Had I told the priest everything at Saturday confession? No, I hadn’t! What was I going to tell that fat bag of flesh, that red crocodile hide in his black cassock who could barely breathe on his dark side of the grill! I wasn’t going to tell any of them anything about the delectable things I did with my pee-pee and repeated over and over again until the little thing was just a poor, skinny fuse … Nothing about Anka or the little gypsy girl, nothing about my shoplifting, or the tobacconist lady, nothing about my angry thoughts. That stayed in my head. I couldn’t and wouldn’t put it out in the open … and then he wouldn’t have understood my accent, anyway … God already knew what sort of a labyrinth I had in my head. I wasn’t about to confide anything to the blacksmith bellows rasping behind the bars of that little cell, even if it smelled of flowers and ambrosia itself … No, I didn’t believe that even one of them was Jesus’s apostle. They were ordinary people in uniforms who made faces … like the police, or sergeants, or train conductors, whether they were talking about ordinary things or singing hymns … I’d sworn, I’d lied, that’s what I’d told him the last time … 
One bright morning in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight … Those were the kinds of things I’d confessed. Once the hurt priest said to me, “Oh, how Jesus is crying now!” There was something relaxed in his voice, like a storyteller’s … I could practically see twelve-year-old Jesus in his little shirt, shedding tears over the storm gutter at the corner. I almost opened my mouth to tell him everything, that’s how much the humanity of his voice moved me … but thank God, I didn’t … Once outside I assigned my own penance, more than the priest had given me … Instead of one Our Father I prayed ten, instread of two Hail Marys I recited twenty … That was for all the infractions that God alone knew about and for that reason were his concern only … “You must have had a lot of sins, if you had to do that much penance,” my schoolmates said when I came back out after half an hour … they judged the sinfulness of your sins based on how much time you spent confessing in church. They were determined to mark you one way or another … Oh, then I began to finish my prayers in a flash … I didn’t pray my real penance until I was back outside … sometimes crouching behind the fat entryway pillar that supported a golden painting over the doorway … And from there I would move to a bench in the park. Did it count if I prayed just in my head? No … surely not, I had to at least move my lips as I prayed, otherwise it would be too convenient … Nothing, not a single thing counted for anything if you didn’t use your muscles in the process …

Then every Saturday afternoon I began having to attend the pieties that were designed to prepare you for holy confirmation. At confirmation you became a soldier of Christ … that was something real
that you could get enthusiastic about. The preparatory pieties were held in a different place each time … first in the cathedral, then in a church in Trnovo … We prayed, sang and studied, listened to the sermon of a priest who told us that there was a fog in our souls that we had to cut through with a knife. That provoked some laughter, because it was true. Now I began to look differently at the paintings over the altar, especially the ones on the ceiling … Jesus conveying the big golden key of St. Peter on the rock … A big, handsome ship sailing through shadows … full of sails to the very top of its masts … setting about for Mount Ararat … All of the townspeople were on its deck, all of them calm. Among them I recognized some dead people from Basel … I even recognized the man holding onto a camel and the one who was at the wheel … Captain Noah … He had his mouth open. He was shouting commands … The ship went on … With my whole heart I followed it across the whole ceiling … On the far side was Jesus, resurrecting Lazarus in some cramped room … A banquet. Troubadours playing for coins. And women around a king, giving him all kinds of advice … a whole mountain of advice … Bloody women, they were always spoiling eternity … I’d had it up to my ears with their gossipy tongues … The Last Supper, Judgment Day … I believed in the paintings that depicted events. But I didn’t believe the modern ones that just had one saint standing with his hand raised in an oath, as if he were in a telephone booth where just one person could call … My sponsor was a student, an owl, the St. Vincent’s conference had assigned him to me, Vati explained. I was promised a new suit, underwear, and shoes. I went to get measured. In the nuns’ garden, amid
the geraniums and touch-me-nots, a skinny, pious tailor measured me for a belted jacket and three-quarter pants made of mottled cloth … I also got shoes with soles that stuck out on the sides and looked like submarines, and a white shirt with a collar that reached halfway down my chest … The confirmation took place in the cathedral … This was the first time I got to see the bishop up close, the one that Mrs. Guček and the whole town knew liked looking at women, and had a red nose because he was fond of drink … There was no other bishop in town, so this had to be the same one that everybody picked to the bone … This was the first time I saw the bishop, whom they called pastor … he really was dressed all in gold … with a tall gold cap, a gold cloak and a gold, curved St. Nicholas rod. He didn’t strike it as hard as they’d threatened he would. The blow wasn’t manly or athletic or feminine or anything at all … My student sponsor in his outgrown sport coat and wide necktie stood behind me … There were street vendors outside and he had bought me a bag of candy and oranges … Then we went to some little house in Moste next to a factory, where we played roulette for prizes … The whole sidewalk outside was packed with us and it took us nearly an hour to get inside. There were ten of us who’d had sponsors appointed … We gathered in some room at a round table. The grand prize was a pocket watch on a chain that was hanging over a chest of drawers. At first we won tea and potica. When my turn came, I tossed a little ball onto the red spinning wheel with silver numbers on it … The ball kept bouncing crazily back and forth before magically stopping on the number that had also been assigned to the pocket watch on a big label … The
grand prize! Incredible!… God was shining his grace on me! Then a nervous conversation, a brief argument erupted between my sponsor and a little man in a black necktie and hat who was the organizer … I was holding the watch, which was silver with a green dial … “The watch,” said the little man, “cannot be his, because he’s from a different precinct.” What did that mean? I could see my prize, my treasure disintegrating. I have to admit, my sponsor offered a spirited defense, even though he was quite undistinguished and gesticulated a lot … but he was just a lowly youth, a student, and he had to give way to the little man’s arguments. I had to return the watch through a whole forest of hands so they could put it back over the chest of drawers … I really was on the verge of crying … Instead I got a different prize, a kilogram box of “Dr. Francek’s Chicory” … At home Vati fulminated. “Diese Schweinhunde von katolischen Pfaffen …”
^‡
Mother and sister searched through the bag … aside from a few jellybeans, lollipops, hazelnuts, and one orange there was nothing … not one single dinar, not even a cent. I gave the whole bag to Gisela. All I had were the shoes and the suit, which, because the fabric was cheap, mother predicted would fray, wear out and fall to pieces within very little time … First communion and confirmation were behind me … without too much pain I’d passed one subject at school: religion.

V
ATI WENT EVERY DAY
to read the
Morning
and the
Slovene
on the bulletin board across from the baker’s where they got posted … After
school he would send me to read the afternoon edition and the
Slovene Nation
. I was supposed to read just what he specifically told me to read: the war … foreign affairs … the want ads, the for sale ads … the prices. I couldn’t always find everything or understand it … There were too many maps and headlines, especially on the first few pages, which were full of exclamation and question marks … I liked reading the captions under the photos best. An armored division in Spain, where fat General Franco in that silly army cap had won … little Japanese tanks somewhere far away, on the other side of the world in Manchuria, where rice grew with snakes all around … a complex roller device that Hitler’s bomber pilots were using to learn to hit their targets more accurately … One day toward the end of August there were a lot of people crowding around the bulletin board … a dark thicket, in trench coats, shirtsleeves, caps, holding ice cream cones … I stood at the back, unable to see anything through a layer of people reading that was ten feet thick … They were standing so close together, leg to leg, pocket to pocket, that I couldn’t squeeze through them … This had to be big news, because everyone came away with faces that looked like what they’d just read was some sort of food they were still trying to swallow … From the end of the fence I began to move toward the start of the bulletin board … from the last page of the newspaper toward the first … They wouldn’t let me get near it … they were leaning into the board with their arms … their heads dangling over the front page like pears, as glue continued to drip thickly off the board from under the newsprint like honey … Finally I shoved my way past the front edge to the row of pages … 
and was greeted by a lot of grumbling, they wanted to chase me off to the children’s corner … A picture showed Hitler and that other scary man. The one with the low forehead and the fringe-like hair from the caricatures, who led the Jews and the communists, Stalin.
NON-AGGRESSION PACT BETWEEN THIRD REICH AND SOVIET UNION
 … A photo showed German foreign minister von Ribbentrop in a uniform and Mongol-faced Russian minister Molotov in a black suit … “Has Europe been divided into spheres of influence?” it said … At the bottom of the page was a picture that showed Hitler in his short mustache and Stalin in his bushy one, each grabbing from either side parts of a jigsaw puzzle labeled “Poland” … Vati was so surprised when I told him about the pact that he dropped everything and ran outside in his house robe to look at the bulletin board … He came back looking confused. “Juden und Deutsche zusammen! Im Traum hätte ich das nicht geglaubt …”
^*
The tavern on Bohorič buzzed like a beehive … Everyone was buying newspapers … crowding around radios … talking in clusters on the sidewalks … trench coats fluttering at the street corners … Two superpowers had united … Now it was Poland’s turn!… What response would England and France have? Chamberlain and Marshal Pétain?… And America? Roosevelt?… I knew we were going to move soon. That worried me a lot more. To Town Square, the house of Mrs. Hamman … into a big apartment … there in the center of town Vati’s fur business was going to prosper a lot more. They coached me for it … from now on I was going to have to
work harder and be a lot better behaved … Or else they would put me in a reformatory, and that sort of education – oh boy! – that was like being in the army … for every infraction the schoolmasters beat you with a belt … they had already got me transferred to my new school, Graben … There at the very least I was going to have to earn Bs, not like now when my report card showed nothing but Cs … I had already asked around about the man who was going to be my new teacher, named Mlekuž. A strict, unbending man! He would have what it took to tame children …