Newcomers Page 5

  *Where are you?

  †Mother, father is dying!

  ‡Stones!

  §Have you gotten us lost?

  ‖No, no! This is the right path to the village.

  aGive me the little tadpole.

  bNow we’re entering the quarry.

  cWhat?

  dCareful, be very quiet now. That’s the Gypsy encampment.

  NOW IT BECAME EASIER TO WALK. There were no trees. Down below it was high water. It seemed as though we were walking on air … Still, the path had its own devilish ideas. From some rise it descended again … and when we finally reached the bottom where it became dark and forbidding, its dark soul snarled at us again. It leveled out and opened up and showed us a bland stretch leading up to … the end. There it confronted us with a small iron footbridge, beneath which the high water foamed and surged … An undeniably wild stream that a bit farther on emptied into a river. How to get over it?… We had to take care not to slip off the narrow iron walkway that kept getting sprayed from below … Vati went first and set down the suitcase … Then a second time, with Gisela. She didn’t cry out, so he wouldn’t lose his balance. Then he struck another match. Mother glided across like a ghost and kneeled down on the far side. As soon as I started out on the bridge, the froth from the stream engulfed my feet … and the bridge shook at all of its gaps, so that I would have preferred to slip off it into the depths than go on.… In any case, on the far side the meadow was even slushier and in places completely flooded, and the molehills jutted up out of the lakes like little fortresses made of sand … The river rushed off toward a bend, probably like someplace in South America, and there wasn’t a single tree or bush beside it. I was able to walk alongside … Big, wide and taut as a road, it was possible to see across it to the other side, where there was a thick, dark forest … of pines and firs. Mother called out … “Ich habe den Schuh verloren!” She had lost a shoe … it was white. We had to go back over the squishy meadow all the way to the decisive stream. Planks … some sort of worm-eaten wooden troughs lay all around, half-filled with water. I inspected them and turned one of them over: don’t tell me these were once boats, bits of smashed river-going vessels? Excited as I was to discover it, the mud made exalted squishing sounds beneath my feet. Vati searched the waterfront and mother with him … Who was it they’d searched an entire country for to find the right foot to fit in a shoe?… I found it! It was lying heel up in a puddle, so it wasn’t obvious … I brought it to Cinderella. She shook the sand out of it and put it on right away … The meadow rose like a potica … At the end of it we came to a nice, dry sandy path that split in two: one path rose toward something white … probably some house or other … and the other, darker path went alongside a sort of forest of straw-like spears. “Das ist Kukurus,”* Vati said. He didn’t know which path we should take. He lit a match. When it ignited, a cross with Jesus on an old lath appeared under a round tin roof. I noticed the drops of blood on his face under the crown of thorns and a bunch of flowers tucked in between the nails through his feet. So alone in the night, in a cold foreign land … Of course he wasn’t afraid, because he was the Son of God and he had his Father in Heaven to protect him … It was really good that we had him for company now. “Ein Kruzifiks!” said mother … Vati shone a match on the first and second paths. “Ich gehe dorthin zu diesem Haus fragen,”† he said. And indeed up he went to the white house, even though it could have been a trap. And indeed he knocked on the door … I heard knock! knock! on wood … and I even heard some human speech. I will never be so brave as to go wake a stranger in the middle of the night to ask a question … He came trudging back down in his squishing clothes and shoes … “Da hinauf müssen wir gehen,”‡ he said, pointing toward a deep, dark path through the cornstalks … Mother began whining again. “Ich werde die Schuhe ausziehen.”§ The mud on the path was black and greasy, a regular coal cream. I took my shoes off too and made contact with the cold mud through my stockings. At intervals Vati would light a match … but the mud got deeper the farther we went, as though it were continually being kneaded and then left to rise … I couldn’t go any farther in it … Vati began walking more closely alongside the corn, mother as well, so I tried walking on the grassy border to one side … I tripped and went flying and got covered in mud. So I tried going farther in among the corn … tall, knuckly reeds with dangling leaves, reminiscent of branched candelabras … Their fuzzy tails waved at the top, while something like hard bananas wrapped in straw husks jabbed at my face. It rustled and fluttered. I couldn’t see three feet ahead of me for all the fragile spears jutting up. I kept running into them … they smelled raw … this was a regular Africa, a savannah overgrown with reeds … The earth was muddy here too, but at least had some sand … I held on tight to mother’s bag and sandals, but each time the leaves, the hard bananas with their threadlike mustaches slapped at my face … I ought to have a machete, like Ali in Timbuktu. It went slowly. Here and there some shoots, sharp tiny stumps, started to stab my feet in the sandy earth. I set the sandals down and stepped into them. Amid all the corn and constant rustling I could neither see nor hear anything. Suddenly I sensed I was alone. Then there was a mighty cracking sound through the stalks and an instant later I noticed something white and black like a mole hill … a monster went storming off right in front of me, it took off like a blacksmith’s hammer hurled up into the sky. I screamed for all I was worth and raced out of there … Mother and Vati were standing on a rise, they shone in the dark, and she was shouting desperately, “Bubi! Bubi!” … “Da bin ich!”‖

  *That’s corn.

  †I’m going up to that house to ask.

  ‡We have to go up there.

  §I’ll take my shoes off.

  ‖Here I am!

  NOW BOTH OF THEM were walking comfortably alongside each other down a broad path, which I had all to myself. For the first time everything around us got quiet. Went mute. The trees, the river, the shrubs. Finally they got to see something that had left them dumbstruck. Oh, it wasn’t easy to surprise them!… Down below the gray water lay still. On the far side was the railway line … which led off into the darkness … into the excitement of the wilderness … Now the path dissolved into a plain that was thickly strewn with big, white stones … Skulls with toothless jaws, egg-shaped balls with their ends gently set one on another … all crunched underfoot. Brrrr, brrrr, they tumbled aside … Were these ruins or a riverbed? It led uphill … toward railroad tracks alongside a forest, where a striped boom barrier jutted up in the air. A crossing! And almost directly across from it a fence … a long, skinny tree trunk that lay atop two meter-high forks stuck in the ground. And next to it Christ on the cross, with ordinary rosaries left in various glasses and cups. God was everywhere in the world, and without exception he ruled here too. Perhaps this country was even a little more pious than others, because they had Jesus outdoors, at night, in the open air … I could barely see anything due to sleepiness, but I knew that from the very first day here I was going to have to be much better behaved than I had ever been up till now … Vati lit a match. Beyond the fence there was a meadow … so big that wherever you looked, green showed through the shadows. “So, jetzt sind wir angekommen,”* he said. He lifted the trunk off its forks as coolly as though it were the lattice gate on a cowboy ranch …

  We proceeded along some other fence toward a house that shone white in the high grass to the left. This whole meadow that stretched off toward a fog-shrouded forest, as huge as an airport … was this uncle’s? The house had to be white or at least yellow to show in the dark like that, and its windows were edged in black and had wide ledges … The roof came down to the level of our heads as we walked past, and from the sound of it the river was close by … Vati went all around the house and came right back … “Keiner hört etwas.”† … The house was asleep. Or else there wasn’t a living soul in it. A whole bucket of water came pouring down off a tree behind us when father broke off one of its branches … Did he have a right
to do that? He tapped on the nearest windowpane with his stick. A face appeared in the darkness, then a light … an actual flame in a kind of bottle. The face said something from behind the windowpane … it was a long, white face with a mustache … Uncle Karel! He opened the window, which was as small as the window on the door of a WC … and he stuck his head out. “Das its der Onkel.”‡ I was suddenly petrified with respect. Vati said something to him in his foreign language … while I looked at uncle, at his white, sleepy face, his long, handsome head sticking out into the darkness, his dark, close-cropped hair, and the nose that shone above his mustache. But especially his eyes, which were as big and black as buttons. “Wir müssen um das Haus.”§ Vati proceeded as though he were a little drunk, and walked at a slant … The house stood on a slope. When we reached it, it was even farther down. We had to go in single file, because the hill was so steep. The water sounded closer and closer … It washed up into the bushes, not too far down from the house … I went past a small window with adhesive tape still stuck to it in the shape of an X at the level of my head. It was open and the smell of fresh mortar and sand wafted from inside … At the corner stood a strange device that was two meters tall. With a big log aimed at the sky on two stakes set far apart … and it creaked and groaned. Maybe it was some kind of machine that had no real function, maybe it was just for show … Then there was a black heap that stank nastily and two barrels that gave off the smell of carrots or vinegar … and now at our feet we no longer had water and mud, but cement … When the door opened, the light illuminated a gray vaulted ceiling. Uncle was holding it open … he was wearing a hat, an undershirt and skivvies … we went in … to the warm, sleeping darkness of the house, as though we were walking into sleep … The stone entryway was black … and warmth drifted out of some deep hole in the wall, where red coals were glowing … My whiskered uncle opened another black door … it had a big iron box on the door for a lock, like the ones that can be seen on castle doors. This door opened into a wide, warm room with a low ceiling … There were two narrow beds in it, both made high with comforters and pillows … someone was lying in one of them and next to the door there was a big stone chest with a bench around it … “Jetzt sind wir endlich zuhause,”‖ said Vati. He said something to uncle and pointed to mother, who laughed and offered her hand … to Gisela … and to me. I studied him when he lifted the light to his eyes. He had a genuinely handsome, pale, slightly triangular face. Emphatic black eyebrows and mustache and big eyes like two buttons. Only his bare feet sticking out of his long underwear were strangely shapeless, as though he constantly lived in water. Otherwise he was as handsome as a film star … Only one thing was strange: such a handsome man, yet so badly dressed and living in such an impoverished shack. I would never have been able to compare him to Vati. Vati was made out of silk … fragile, small, with a goatee, wearing his broad-rimmed hat, narrow trousers, with a thin cigarette in a holder. His hair always shone blue and gray. I would never have guessed that he and Karel were brothers … “Die Tante Mizi, meine Schwester. Sie ist krank.”a … On the other bed by a window in the corner an old woman with a scarf on her head lay in her clothes … When I got close so she could look at me, too, I saw she had eruptions all over her face that were wet and as red as smeared makeup. She reached a hand out from under the quilt … Good God, it was like some inflated bird claw, its upper side covered with little sores. Vati bent down toward her, said something cheerful and laughed … She opened her mouth and I saw a few teeth, stumps and bits of gray metal … she answered in a creaky voice … She studied mother’s face carefully, very seriously … Oh, I knew instantly what she was thinking, because she took a big swallow. She looked at me and smiled, she had very bright, sharp eyes despite all the scabs and oozing eruptions … which covered her forehead, too, like boils … I had to look away. Mother sat on the bench by the chest, barefoot, holding her hand over Gisela’s eyes. She wouldn’t let her go near our aunt. I sat next to her, something stung like the devil on my back, and I stopped coughing … “Ziehen wir uns aus,”b mother said. Vati and our dark-haired uncle sat in the middle of that strange … room, one of them on a chair, the other on a footstool. Father’s speech was cheerful but timid, refined and curious, while uncle spoke loudly, as though he were talking to someone in front of the house … that was the spirit! I took off my stockings … they came off my feet like a hippopotamus hide, and the sandals were just muddy lumps … What hadn’t they seen that night!… Mother was dressing Gisela in her nightshirt straight out of the open suitcase … a bit irritated, as though she were back home in Basel. Uncle sat with the knees of his long legs pulled up under his chin, and he looked at her and said something through his mustache. Vati looked over at her. “Heute Nacht schläfst du, Lisbeth, mit der Zwetschge in diesem Bett. Du kannst das nasse Zeug über den Ofen hängen.”c Father pointed past me, to where there were some rods that had rags hanging from them. “Frag den Karl …”d mother said, but Vati headed her off in embarrassment, “Er wartete beim Zug um sieben, aber das Telegramm hat er später nicht bekommen wegen des schlechten Wetters. Es hat gehagelt und die Felder und viele Obstbäume sind kaputt.”e I looked at uncle. There was something about him that suggested he was laughing internally. Perhaps the strange light was at fault for that, or his mustache, or the late hour … Vati’s sister chimed in here without lifting her swaddled head from the pillow … I didn’t care to look at her a second time, because I knew that from now on I was going to have to love and respect her. “Karel wird auf dem Heuboden schlafen, ich und Bubi auf dem Ofen. Nur für heute Nacht …”f Mother … who had always been fearful of touching … spread some towels over the bed that was Karel’s and that she was supposed to sleep in with Gisela. Our aunt looked at her, her cheek resting on her pillow … “Daß ihr nicht hinunterfallt,”g mother said. “Nein, nein,” Vati brushed her comment aside. Uncle lifted me … upsy!… onto the stove. What hands he had! Like whips! A bag lay on the stove whose contents crinkled … straw or onion skins? “Das ist Kukuruz,”h Vati reassured me. “In allen Betten sind Kukuruzblätter.”i I tried to catch a glimpse of uncle’s face, to see if it had that smile or if it was just a shadow … He left the room for another lamp and a blanket. The rags that hung from the rods over my head were yellow and spotted and didn’t come close to smelling of Persil. Only now, from atop this odd stove, did I get a really good look at the room. Black straw-like stalks jutted out of cracks in the white plaster. Beneath a cross in the corner above our aunt’s bed, two dark painted pictures stood on a small shelf alongside a tiny flame in a red glass … they were the woman and man from church who pointed at their bare chests with red, bleeding hearts that emitted flames and rays of light, but also had swords and a crown of thorns planted on them. That was probably Jesus and his mother, Mary … Aunt’s eyes were closed. She was either sleeping or she was bored. Mother and Gisela lay hugging each other. Uncle Karel arrived with a thin, hole-ridden blanket. He stood in the doorway with a second, dust-covered lamp in hand. When he spoke with Vati, who was holding that first lamp, the clean one, I noticed under the mustache on his pale yellow face that grin like a taut string … I could see the very same grin in his eyes, which were even more pronounced … No, this wasn’t a smile … this was scorn. This made me sad. Vati blew out the light. He lay down beside me. The space over the stove was hard and very hot. All I could see of the desolate room were two gray windows and the red light beneath the pictures. Aunt Mica was snoring. “Bubi! Vati!” mother quietly called out. “Ja! Ja!” the two of us answered. She always worried until everyone was home and under the covers … After that there was only the sound of the corn husks crinkling in their bed. It was great to go to sleep in this African hut, even if much of what came before sleeping had resembled dreams. But there was tomorrow …

  *We’re there.

  †Nobody can hear anything.

  ‡This is your uncle.

  §We have to go around to the other side.

  ‖At last, we’re home.


  aAunt Mitzi, my sister. She’s sick.

  bLet’s get undressed.

  cTonight, Lisbeth, you’ll sleep with the tadpole in this bed. You can hang the wet clothes over the oven.

  dAsk Karl.….

  eHe waited for the train at seven, but he didn’t get the telegram later on account of the bad weather. It hailed and the fields and many of the fruit trees are ruined.

  fKarel will sleep in the hayloft, and Bubi and I will sleep over the stove. Just for tonight.

  gMake sure you don’t fall off of there.