Читать книгу A Swarm of Dust - Evald Flisar - Страница 4

PART ONE

There was a full moon. Through the sparse branches of the pine trees it cast its light among the buildings. The meadows beside the stream were a silvery grey. The whole landscape had been transformed into sharp-edged patches of light and dark. Janek spent a long time crouching at the lower edge of the woods, despite the unpleasant night chill and the constant, unfathomable feeling that his surroundings were strange in some special way.

He stared at the sky. Hints of thoughts flashed through his brain, but he was unable to connect them. This strange state had overcome him the moment that the landscape began to seem unusual and his eyes drank in the visible objects. His feelings dragged him along. He saw the silvery meadow in the valley and the dark track of alder by the stream. He knew that was what he was seeing, but that was all he knew, his mind was somehow distant. Normally when he saw meadows and a stream he thought about something, objects aroused different associations that were either whole or fragmented and scattered, but always thoughts and impressions found their way through. He would skip from grass to stream, to trees, to children chasing each other among the trees, to felling trees, to scooping water from the stream, and all these thoughts and impressions triggered associations that swarmed within him.

Now the mental state of young Hudorovec was completely different. It happened just after he was struck by the unusual colour of the meadows. This halted the flow of associations that would at any moment have engulfed him and he focused entirely on the meadows and their appearance. He began to soak up this appearance, he began to soak up the colour and he felt the silvery colour was coming closer to him. He could sharply smell the night chill. It was the dampness coming from the valley, the damp earth, the damp grass, the dampness of the lazily flowing water, damp bark, leaves damp with dew, the dampness of the air.

And he heard a fox yelping in the woods, he heard the gentle wind moving the leaves in the treetops, slowly flowing through them and making them tremble. He felt how the wind swept across the damp grass, shaking it slightly, how it licked the clods of earth in the fields, how it slightly ruffled the surface of the stream, how it caused the tiny scales on the tree bark to tremble a little, how it flowed through the air. He felt the ruffled coat of the fox and its hoarse call, he felt the mossy ground beneath its paws, he felt the stickiness of the fat, slippery footbridge across the stream and the solidness of the ground beneath him.

He felt the expanse of the world, its hollowness, its extensiveness, he felt the distance of the sky above him and the closeness of the earth and its objects, he felt the form, the hardness and softness of substances and things, he sensed the tone of the sounds rushing to his ears. And he smelt all of this: he smelt the sap of the trees, the smell of the earth, the spruce needles, the brushwood, he smelt the smoke, he felt how the water in the stream smelled of mud and acorns, he smelt the warm plumage of birds, he smelt the wood close to him, his clothes, his skin, he smelt the stench from the woods, he smelt sweat.

Behind him, in the settlement, a radio began to play. He knew that Pišta Baranja had a radio, but he did not know this as a thought, but rather felt it in a particular way, like the self-­evident fact that water is wet and that your hand will also be wet if you plunge it in. That the radio he could hear belonged to Pišta Baranja was alive in him like something for which there was no other explanation; something self-evident that touched the edge of awareness like a shadow, but a distinct shadow. And so he only heard the music coming from the radio; it did not draw him into any associations in connection with the music, the radio, the settlement. For him, the sounds were movements of matter and he grasped them in the same way he grasped the colour of the meadows, the stench of dirt, the rustling of the wind.

Getting up and moving towards the settlement was a highly complex process of sensory perceptions and movements of matter. Perhaps the cold played the main role, but he could not say so with any certainty. Among the feelings bursting and splashing within him, the feeling of coldness was ever more frequent; after first appearing of its own accord, it then began to attach itself to others, it pierced him with a feeling of dampness – with a feeling of the wind, with a feeling of the stickiness of a tree trunk, with a feeling of the yellow light – and when a dog barked above him in the settlement it also awoke in him a feeling of coldness. The earth beneath him soon lost its hardness and roughness, and changed into a feeling of coldness. And when his stomach grumbled he felt his body, he felt its substance, he felt his posture, his stillness, he felt the possibility that he might move, he felt the pulse within him. In the veins on his neck his blood pulsed, and he felt how it flowed and at the same time felt how coldness flowed through him. He got up and went towards the buildings.

Of course, it wasn’t that simple, for when someone who has been sitting motionless suddenly moves it is likely that some idea came upon him and triggered the desire for movement. And when someone feels cold, it is natural to be aware of this and to think: it’s cold, better get moving. This didn’t happen in the case of Janek Hudorovec, since he didn’t move with any intention. Wave a stick at a dog and he will jump, offer a bunch of hay to a cow and it will move towards you, frighten a wolf and you should flee, for it will leap at your throat! Perhaps Janek Hudorovec instinctively retreated from the coldness, just as an animal drags itself towards a fire or its den. He acted under some kind of delusion, but in spite of this everything remained clear: objects and his perception of them. In the same way that he had felt cold, he now felt warmth, flowing beneath the bed cover.

He was not aware of time, but when his mother entered the house he saw that the moon was still shining through the small window, illuminating part of the wall and floor, but not his bed, which was in darkness. His mother put down the basket in which she had just brought the potatoes, flour and bread that she brought every evening. Then she went to her bed, which was lit by the moon, knelt down, turned back the cover and with her right hand straightened the pillow. Then she took the basin that was leaning against the wall by the door and put it on the wooden bench. There was a slight metallic noise as she did so. Then the sound of water being poured from a jug. The moon shone on her and the corner where she was standing. She reached for her belt, unfastened buttons and began to undress. She hung her clothes on a nail hammered into the wooden wall; then she began to splash herself with water and wash her naked body. Janek could see her clearly, but now his mother’s naked body filled him with no more feeling than had the silvery meadow or the outline of the trees. He perceived her body as substance.

The scent of soap reached him, he heard rubbing as his mother washed her feet. She lifted one and stood on the other. He saw her large breasts shaking, he saw the roundness of her belly shining, and when she rubbed her back with a towel she leaned slightly backwards. He saw the blackish shadow beneath her belly. None of this seemed unusual to him, he was cut off from experience. And so he could not be surprised that his mother had stripped off in front of him. The thought could not take hold that maybe she did not see him and was convinced that he was not there.

Then she put the towel down on the bench, left the water in the basin, rummaged among the things on the edge of the bench, found some scissors, went over to her bed, sat down, bent over and began to cut her toenails. With each one he heard a slight click. The moon shone on her back. Janek could see her vertebrae, dividing her back into two halves. When she had finished her toenails, she lay back, raised her hands in front of her face and began on her fingernails. Once again, they could be heard hitting the wall and the floor.

Then she stopped for a moment, placed her hands beside her and looked at the ceiling, as if in thought. Janek could hear her breathing. He could see the slight rise and fall of her breasts. It seemed as if she was trembling a little. Probably the cold was getting to her. But she still lay there without getting under the cover.

What happened within him that he suddenly got up and moved towards her? Our interior world is such an anthill of perceptions, feelings, thoughts, emotions and impulses that at certain moments, even with the sharpest eyes, it is not possible to penetrate it. Allowing for the possibility that we might be wrong, we might say that within young Hudorovec in those moments when he was cut off from experiencing, there expired all the strange anxiety that women and sexuality evoked within him. When the sensory and perceptual world prevailed, weakening his mental capacities, his instincts became stronger and his reactions began to resemble the reactions of animals, guided by the impulses of the real world. At such moments his sexual drive must have been stronger. We all know how dogs behave; we’ve all seen them pairing on the road in full sight. First the sniffing, then the running, the agitation, a kind of wooing, in between some snapping and sharp teeth, hackles rising, and finally the submission of the female and the action of the male. All this happens without the presence of the mental world, it happens beneath the wings of the sensual, within the framework of instinct.

When Janek shuffled over to his mother’s bed, he certainly wasn’t struggling with fear, with indecisiveness. He was not clear what he was doing, since he had never done anything like this before. He was being drawn to his mother’s naked body on the bed, just as the animal male is drawn towards the female when he sees or smells her. His mother started in fright and exclaimed: ‘Janek!’

In young Hudorovec’s mind associations were triggered: his mother’s shriek was like the hoarse bark of the fox he had heard in the woods. But that was just a momentary flash that quickly vanished. He was not aware of his mother’s fright, he did not perceive it. He touched her body, which trembled, he felt the smoothness of her skin, he felt the warmth, her smell. He ran his hand over her belly, across the dark shadow beneath it, to the thigh, the knee, then back, to the breast, the neck. All his sensations condensed into one: the hot pulse of blood, the tension of the body yearning to explode, the absence of any thought, impetus, a feeling of flying, a feeling of falling and rising.

In each person, in the most intense sexual spasm, there is a small spark that draws attention to the nature of the act in which he and some other person is present. In young Hudorovec this was absent. He was completely in the domain of sensation. After a brief trembling brought on by her son’s strange behaviour, his mother experienced a kind of spasm. The next cry that came from her throat was one of unknown joy. A strange heat washed over her, she held Janek’s body, which was no bigger than hers and very thin, and then she began to tear his shirt off, crying out and whispering strange words, as if hallucinating.

‘Don’t be scared, Janek … don’t be afraid … we all do this and you must, too … my heart would pain me if you didn’t … don’t be afraid … I’m your mother … I’ll show you how … you’ll see, you’ll see … ’ Suppressed gasps mingled with her words, as she stripped him completely with hungry hands. ‘You see, in here.’ She turned him towards her, locking him with her legs, grabbing his hair and wildly kissing his eyes. She raked her fingers across him, all the while gasping, panting and whispering. At the beginning Janek only breathed deeply, but then strange sounds emerged from his throat, a strangled noise. He took hold of his mother’s hair and roughly pulled her towards him.

‘Ow, that hurts, Janek …’ she sighed. ‘But let it hurt, let it hurt … it’s nice if it hurts.’ Then he bit into the skin on her shoulder and she cried out in pain, he began to slap her, to beat her all over so that she was gasping. ‘Hit me, Janek … hit me … more … you’re a good boy, Janek … you must beat me, you must punish me, you must always beat me … till my dying breath I’d do anything for you … Janek … my son …’ Towards the end she wheezed, his spasm ended, he unclenched his fists, he lay on her body, then he rolled aside. He saw that she was bloody from his bites and mottled from the blows. He looked at his own body, his member, which seemed red in the moonlight. An association immediately flashed into his brain, as he remembered the red tongue of a panting dog by the stream.

Then something snapped inside him. Thoughts rushed upon him. Through the bustle there trickled all that he had experienced, all that had stifled him. With all these dark feelings inside him, he turned to his mother’s bitten body, their nakedness. An image of his actions began to appear: he remembered he had beaten his mother … he felt dizzy, objects slipped away from him … his ears were filled with silence, he passed out.

When he came to, he was lying beneath the cover on his own bed. His mother was leaning over him and dabbing his face with a wet cloth. She was dressed. Previous feelings overwhelmed him again. They choked him, then they flowed away, the dark mass shattered, and he began to sob, convulsively and silently. ‘Janek!’ she said, ‘you mustn’t cry. You must go to sleep. Then it’ll be all right. Everything’ll be all right!’ The sobbing became a long, inconsolable cry. His mother stroked his cheeks for a while and then she threw herself on the bed beside him and began to sob too. When they had no tears left, their bodies shook with silent convulsions. The spasms gradually became sparser.

A coldness began to grow between them.

Summer came, dry and windy. There was no rain; it seemed as if the countryside would burn up in the drought. Old Baranja deteriorated, his skin turned yellow and limp, he was shrivelling into a skeleton. He spoke to no one, he hid in his house and no one saw him the whole week. Sometimes he could be heard cursing, throwing things at the wall and choking as he coughed. It seemed as if he could pass away at any minute, but Baranja fought back. In the evening, when the sun was no longer so fierce, he appeared once again in front of his house and lifelessly lingered on the threshold. He was no longer coughing so badly. Emma had to bring him schnapps. Whenever he sat outside, the bottle was beside him.

In early July three gypsies came, two Horvats and a Šarkezi. They were tired and morose looking, they threw their wooden suitcases down in the corner and grimly said they had been let go. More soon followed. They began to sit around in front of their houses; the settlement began to change into a mortuary. School kids started wandering around the villages all day as the school year had ended. The sun on the dried-out front yards was dazzling. Even in the shade of the trees it was insufferably hot. No one spoke, the gypsies moved slowly and lazily, sleeping most of the time, and even the dogs no longer barked, but lay around, tongues lolling. People were overcome by a dull lethargy. They spoke with great difficulty and hoarsely, opening their mouths only when it was unavoidable, and then only half way.

During the day Janek did not hang around the settlement. He suddenly had the feeling that a stench of dirt, sweat and inertia was coming from the houses. The smell was nothing new, he had smelt it before, but now it began to disturb him, to make him feel nauseous. Beneath the hot sun the smell was particularly intolerable, it hung in the air among the trees and made it difficult to breathe. Maybe the smell was also an excuse, since he did not want to linger. Maybe he dared not admit to himself that he was being driven from the settlement by something else, a kind of fear that he would speak to someone, that he would make eye contact with someone, for he was filled with what felt like guilt and beneath the hot sun among the buildings that feeling was very strong, insupportable.

If he was not lying in the grass down by the stream, he was wandering through the woods, which in that hot summer were unusually quiet. Sometimes he was lured far away, across the valley and into the hills on the eastern side, even straying onto the lowland. Now and then he sat on some rotting tree stump to rest and then he was driven on again aimlessly, he stopped by streams and watched them, he looked at the trees and touched their crusty trunks; sometimes he scared a hare out of the bushes, which went crashing into the woods, another time a whole column of deer passed by. He cooled down and quenched his thirst at forest springs. Whenever he came to the edge of the trees, he stopped and looked at the landscape before him, then turned and went back. He did not walk across fields, orchards or meadows, he kept to the woods where he was seen by no one, where he felt alone with the damp silence and the sappy smell of wood.

During this wandering, the feeling of anxiety was not so intense, it became a deadness, a laziness of the arteries, a numbness of body and mind. Thoughts flowed idly through him, like the forest streams running among the dry grass. This numbness lasted quite some time, but now and then it was interrupted by sudden outbursts of sharp and unfamiliar feelings. Sometimes he was overwhelmed by an undermining fear and he did not know its source, nor did he even try to work it out, but rather succumbed to it with a trembling sense of enjoyment. Other times he was overcome by a shrill sense of joy. He would roll on the moss, run his hands over tree bark, hug their trunks, leap around and yell, and then chase the echo from the woods. But in a moment it all vanished, as in a whirlpool, and then everything flowed back to its former lethargy, to the dead decanting of thoughts, to the endless wandering through the woods.

He always returned late at night. And every night he and his mother pleased each other. It usually lasted until morning, when she went into the village to work and he disappeared on his familiar paths. They barely spoke; sometimes they whispered as if afraid they might wake someone, but even that was rare. They were scared they might say something loud enough to break something, destroy it. The whole time they had the feeling that what they were doing was mysterious and that it could bear no voices, apart from the cries and gasps emitted during lovemaking.

At night his spiritual lethargy was transformed into sharp sensations that had hitherto been alien to him. He still beat his mother, tormenting her more every night. When he heard her gasp with pain he felt a particular passion. It was not unlike that time when he and Pišta Baranja had killed the puppies that no one wanted. They were little fluffy balls, still blind, crawling over each other and squealing and shaking their snouts, and when he touched them he felt how warm the little creatures were and how their blood was pulsing just below their skin. When Pišta Baranja grabbed the first one by its leg and bashed it against a tree, he broke out in sweat and felt fixed to the ground. This was despair or something like it, a kind of fear at incomprehensible action, but the more the fear grew, the more another feeling grew alongside it that suppressed the fear. And when that feeling prevailed, he leapt on the little creatures, trembling, saliva dripping from his mouth, his eyes glassy, and he bashed one puppy against the tree for so long that he shattered its blind head and reduced its body to pulp. Then he put his hand into the bloody mass of flesh and groped it.

Making love with his mother filled him with a similar feeling; he tortured her until she bled and the more she panted with desire, the stronger grew the wish to make her suffer as much as possible. So she no longer felt enjoyment, but a kind of torment. The wildness of their relationship grew from night to night. When by chance they saw each other during the day he looked at her glassy–eyed, feeling a tremulous fear of her, but at the same time an intense hatred. The whole time he was gripped with a desire to torture her. She stared at him with docile humility. The whole time she reminded him of those crawling puppies, tumbling over each other. When on occasion he was weary of rushing through the woods and lay down on the moss and closed his eyes, he saw her convulsive movements, her distorted face in the moonlight, he heard her cries, and all this swirled together inside him, creating strange images, fading away and then returning. And when he walked among the trees all that floated before his eyes were images of their coupling, every object reminded him of some shade of night and he was flooded with the desire to hit, to beat, to torment.

One evening, he didn’t know how, he returned home before dark. The sun was going down behind the hill, but it was still quite light. In front of Baranja’s house he saw Emma walking to and fro. He realised she was hanging clothes on a line between two pine trees. On the bench in front of the house was a wooden tub and she had just finished doing the washing. He saw her look at him as soon as he emerged from the trees and the whole time she watched him as he continued towards home. He was about to go inside when he heard her calling him. He stopped, but then moved quickly forward. ‘Janek!’ she called again, louder this time. ‘Come here, something’s happened to your mother.’ He was struck as if by lightning. He looked up, towards her, his legs took him in her direction, but something held him back. Emma wiped her hands on her apron and then kept beckoning with her finger. Her face bore a mysterious expression.

‘Come,’ she said and disappeared round the corner, then up into the woods. He followed her. His every vein was taut, and confused feelings flowed through him. When they got to the edge of the woods at the top of the slope she whispered to him to go quietly, and without meaning to he began to put his feet down without making a sound. Emma stopped behind some dense acacias and gestured to him again, then she pointed through the bushes. He came closer.

Behind the thorns and brambles, around a large white hornbeam was a bed of moss. His mother was kneeling there, smoothing her creased skirt. Then she buttoned up her blouse. Beside her stood a tall, thin farmer, fastening his trousers. It was Geder. His mother picked up the basket that was leaning against the hornbeam and looked at Geder, but said nothing. They both turned and left, Geder to the left, towards the nearby road, his mother towards the gypsy settlement. Long after the rustle of her steps faded, Janek remained staring at the tree and the moss beneath it. The only feeling that gripped him at that moment was contempt for Geder, for he was certain that the man had not beaten his mother and so she would not be satisfied. Her words came back to him: you must beat me … then it is better …

Geder did it just like that, as if mother meant nothing to him? Just like that? The past, from which he’d been cut off for so long, assailed him and he slumped to the ground, seething with memories. Images appeared and vanished. He saw how once, in those other places, in school, he had stolen a large piece of bread from some farmer’s girl, how he had flown home with this bread, where his mother was ill and there was nothing to eat, and his father and sister were ignoring her; he saw how he fell to his knees beside her bed and shoved the dried up bread into her hand and said: bread, mother, bread … eat it.. And he remembered how he felt when he sat in the corner and watched his mother chewing the bread and looking at him with bright eyes. It was like a strange trembling, a yelling within him. And before him danced the priest, the one here … do you love your mother, he asked … Love, love … He broke into a sweat, he realised he felt something different towards his mother than he had before and he was overcome with torment at the memories. It all seethed inside him. The sense of confusion was so strong that he could not see clearly. He got up again and the contempt for Geder reappeared, for he should have beaten her, otherwise she was not happy. And mother must be happy. He felt tears running down his cheeks. Mother … he sobbed inside. He would always beat her, he would always yield to her, he would always do what she wanted.

Through his tears he saw Emma crouching beside him, looking at him in fright. But there was also a kind of mockery in her eyes. ‘Janek,’ she said, ‘didn’t you know? They’ve been doing it for ages. Will you tell your father?’ Amazement grew within him. Emma talked on; he didn’t quite know what she was saying, but some of her words struck him sharply. ‘If they can, so can we … I’d like to … do you want to, Janek, my husband’s away … Janek … do you want to … ?’

‘You don’t understand!’ he yelled, startling her. He saw her wide open eyes, he saw her timidly withdraw. He was filled with confusion, it stirred within him, disintegrated. He was thrown upwards, and then down into the woods, where it was already getting dark …

That night he was wild like never before. He bit his mother’s breasts and shoulder, drawing blood. Then at the end he whispered: ‘Was it good, mother? Was it good?’

‘Yes, son,’ she whispered, stroking him.

‘If it hurts, it’s … better?’

‘Yes, son … ’

‘Shall I keep beating you?’

‘Yes, son … ’

Then they fell silent. He wanted to ask why the tall man didn’t beat her, why she didn’t ask him to do it. But something stopped him. Maybe he did, he thought. With this hope his loathing for Geder evaporated, to be replaced with something else. When he was drifting off to sleep, Geder assured him that he did beat his mother, that she was happy, and he felt he liked Geder, he even stroked his sleeve …

… then he drifted off completely …

… oblivious …

From then on his mother no longer returned late at night and Janek no longer wandered the woods until dusk. In the evenings they sat inside, eating corn bread or boiled potatoes, speaking quietly, a benign peace between them. They enjoyed watching each other’s gestures, the former sense of alienation had gone, they kept meeting each other’s eyes and feeling comfort in their closeness. The evenings were still humid and the moon kept shining.

One evening they heard a noise outside and a moment later the door opened. On the threshold stood the enormous figure of old Hudorovec.

They turned to stone.

Janek’s mother was poking the fire beneath the pot, Janek was sitting on the bed.

‘Home already?’ she asked in surprise, still mechanically poking at the fire.

‘Home, wife, home!’ said the old man. Janek was surprised that he gave ‘wife’ a strange emphasis. Usually he said ‘woman’. And he had never spoken so quietly, coldly, crisply. He put his battered suitcase in the corner. He closed the door behind him. He did everything slowly, pensively. Then he began to unfasten his belt.

‘What about you? You’re home, too?’ he asked, looking at her.

‘What do you mean?’ his wife whispered.

Her voice was hoarse, it trembled slightly.

‘You should be up there, with that one. Eh, wife?’

‘What are you saying?’

Hudorovec, meanwhile, had removed his belt and ran it through his open left hand. Then he stretched it in front of his chest, as if testing its strength. He was doing everything coldly, thoughtfully.

‘Come here, wife!’ he ordered. She froze.

‘Out, boy!’ He turned to Janek. ‘Did you hear me?’ he yelled, when Janek failed to move. Now his coolness was gone, his face distorted, saliva flew from his mouth, his eyes glistened.

‘Out!’ he yelled once more. Then his enormous paw grabbed Janek by the shoulder. As he flung him towards the door, Janek’s head struck it so hard he felt dizzy. Again the bony fingers reached for him and the next moment he was outside the door. It closed behind him. He got up, rushed at the nearest pine tree and grabbed hold of it, shaking.

From inside he heard his mother moaning. He could hear the blows of the leather belt. Hudorovec was panting and swearing. It sounded as if he was banging her head against the floor.

‘Whore … ’ he gasped, ‘bitch … ’

‘Stop it, stop it!’ pleaded his wife. ‘I had no choice, husband … my dear husband! How was I supposed to live, when you go off, not caring whether we die of starvation!’

‘You could work, you slut! Take that … and that … And the boy could work … ’

‘I did, I did … ’ she insisted, but she was becoming quieter. She cried out a few times, then she was silent. The blows kept falling.

Janek ran off through the woods. On the hill he stopped and watched the trunks of the beech trees trembling with light. He realised it was lightning. There was thunder above the plain, a wind had started up, a storm was coming, the first in quite some time.

Long into the night he was washed by the rain. He turned his cheeks to the sky. He opened his mouth and eyes to feel the falling drops. The treetops were shaking. The flashes of light shimmered, never disappearing.

The priest sat at the open window. He was looking across the valley to the village at the end of the ridge. He had a chilling recognition, for everything that he had planned to think calmly about was revealed in the first moment; but because it was revealed too quickly, he was confused. He felt he would be unable to focus, at least at the beginning, so that the delusions would be fragmented and deceptive.

It had started with the tall chestnut tree above the valley, which was over three centuries old. It was a special thing, not only in appearance, but also in its significance. The wood around it had long ago been cut down, long before the priest came to these parts. Where the trees had been felled there were saplings growing and thick bush. Next to this miniature wood the chestnut seemed even bigger, like a great grandfather or guardian. It could be seen from the other side of the valley and from the north, where the low hills became a higher rise, and even from the plain, from the south, when it was clear. For many years it had been washed by storms and had lost its crown a number of times during turbulent nights. Since the winds blew mainly from the west, over the years it had wearied and leaned crookedly over the valley. It aroused unpleasant feelings, especially on stormy summer nights, when it swayed menacingly before the flashing background. But lightning hadn’t struck it for many years.

People created a legend: when the burning hand from the sky shattered the solitary old tree or it was touched by unworthy human hand, then great misfortune would befall the valley. The legend had been woven from one generation to the next. The priest knew that all in the valley paid homage to the tree; they paid for masses to be said in its honour and spoke of it in whispers, cautiously. He also had a strange respect for it himself: whenever he went by he felt a special solemnity and hurried his step. Instead of fading away, the belief strengthened from one generation to the next, for children received it from their parents at that age when they are most open to the miraculous, the fairy-tale. The priest knew that the child’s soul is like a freshly ploughed field; when it absorbs faith, it carries it within, without being aware of it, for the rest of its days.

But the monotony of the empty belief had gone on for so long that no one really believed in the prophecy. He had spoken about this quite often with Geder, the tall, skinny farmer, who lived a solitary life on the edge of the village. Then it suddenly happened. It must have been the suddenness of the event that made the priest succumb so excessively to the mysterious premonition. One night, a storm raged above the valley, the like of which hadn’t been seen for a long time. It was the first storm of the year: it was barely the end of April and the heavens had opened. The next morning the whole valley was gripped by horror. The previous evening they had seen the sacred chestnut swaying violently on the hill, illuminated by lightning, but the next morning where it should have stood there was only clear blue sky, washed by the storm.

The priest once again looked across the valley and tried to work out whether the sky was really lighter. Of course it was, since it was early morning. He might not have realised what had happened if old Nancashka hadn’t rushed into the presbytery, fallen on her knees and sobbed that God had sent a sign and that the centuries-old chestnut tree was no more … It was then he turned and looked out of the window and saw empty sky. He was stunned, the ground felt unsteady beneath his feet. What disturbed him most was that a circle had been broken and he would need to work out what was happening.

‘What can you do,’ he tried to calm the almost hysterical woman, ‘we haven’t had such a storm … ’

‘No, Father!’ she almost yelled. ‘The chestnut was not uprooted, someone chopped it down! Can you imagine how much effort was involved? Only the devil could have done it!’

And she rushed off, as if the devil really was hot on her heels. The priest was awash with uncertainty; a feeling that continued all that day and all night, and even more so the next morning – a Sunday, when more people flocked to church than he had ever known. He stood in the pulpit. They stared at him, waiting for him to announce a miracle. How much despair flooded his heart, how many lies and doubts awoke in him, how clear it became that things were happening of their own accord, spontaneously, irrationally, far from folks’ beliefs and their demands to elevate the trivia! He would prefer to avoid explaining the event, for he did not wish to pretend. He knew that he was in dire need of reflection, that he could say nothing that he would not doubt the next moment. But the people were staring at him, they were all eyes. It struck him that he could not reveal to them the ruin that existed inside him. He began to speak.

‘The old chestnut tree,’ he said, ‘which was and is no longer.’

He was interrupted by a man’s voice from the congregation. ‘It still is, Father. After the storm it was wreathed in mist and for some time we couldn’t see it from the village. It’s standing there, where it always has. Go and look.’

The priest saw the staring eyes of the congregation grow even bigger, darker, as if they had alighted on something completely incomprehensible. Almost as if they had expected that the prophecy had come true. He was gripped by waves of despair, he lowered his eyes and right below the pulpit he saw Geder with a scornful look on his unshaven face and blinking eyes that said: You don’t believe in God, Father, and nor do these people! Then he hung his head even lower. Again he had the feeling that the ground was unsteady beneath his feet. His legs carried him from the pulpit and in the sacristy he leaned for some time against the cold wall. Eventually, he gathered enough strength to go before the altar and lead mass.

It began after that Sunday. He was increasingly conscious of how much deceptive light there was about him. And the valley, with its superstition, had shown itself to be an empty surface beneath which life followed its own laws and things happened of their own accord. Geder, who visited him a few days later, confirmed his suspicions. When the priest expressed his surprise that the irrational scare among the people had so quickly faded, Geder said that it was natural, for among these people faith, of whatever kind, was like straw: it burned up as soon as it was lit. But if the Church would confirm that the old chestnut tree was sacred, people would begin to panic, for the Church was the law that needed to be followed out of habit. They would have confirmation that what they believed was true, they would have support. But there was no belief among the people, although there was always a widespread conviction that the chestnut tree was an expression of some higher order.

The priest never forgot what he said to Geder.

‘You, Geder, are the only one in the valley with your own world and probably even you are not capable of believing in it. You can be reconnected with the world of the people you belong to socially only by an accident that brings together those different worlds. But that which comes unexpectedly, cutting across man’s path and intentions comes from one source. If the chestnut really is connected with an evil that may cause harm, then it doesn’t matter whether we believe in it or not. For when evil is present, it is impossible to withdraw from it. Faith is thus not important, but rather the evil that is manifested. However, we can console ourselves that the evil that may befall the valley can be foreseen. It will either be a bad harvest, or an accident, or a death. But that is not real evil, that is nature, it’s what happens. And if what happens is reality, then evil is something that is not real, because it does not happen in accordance with nature but against nature. The evil that might affect you, Geder, or anyone else in the valley has only one source. When we talk about evil, we must talk about the source of that evil. And that source, Geder?!’

Geder was known to be a freak, in his solitude he read books, he was educated up to a point, but he looked down on the others in the valley. The farmers did not like him. They talked about him, discussed his personal affairs and passed on gossip. At the same time, they were afraid of him, probably because he always behaved in an arrogant fashion, often ignoring them. The priest knew the valley well, he knew that the soul of the farmer was not a complex thing. In every arrogant person the farmer sees something higher, something more powerful and hates the person because he also fears him. The priest knew that Geder was no exception, for there was no one in the valley who liked him. Whoever did something that raised him in the eyes of others became the subject of envy.

In the countryside it was impossible to do anything that elevated you in the eyes of others. Above all, no one should do anything spiritual, whatever it might be. Everything was strictly determined, everything confirmed by ancient customs. If someone came back from Germany, having worked day and night, and distributed among the neighbours some third class rags that he supposedly bought there, he would be talked about everywhere; people would know him, would talk about him at every opportunity, but all would regret they were not in his shoes. It needs to be acknowledged that this man would not be liked at all – quite the opposite: they would not like to see him, for he would remind them of his money and the awareness that this money was not theirs would bring about intolerable suffering! If someone were to criticise something publicly and was bold enough to revolt against the municipal bureaucrats, in other words if he was less cowardly than the others, he would not become a hero in their eyes – he would be a fool. And if the bureaucrats then took their revenge against him, then people would laugh, voicing their satisfaction at the fact that he brought it upon himself.

The priest knew that on the sly, everyone delighted in the misfortunes of those close to them, they were envious of anyone who had a measure of wheat more than them. And he also knew that they had no respect for him. The women brought him gifts, they helped him one way or another, they went to mass, but for them he was just a figure embodying age-old traditions, he wasn’t a real person. He always had the feeling that they saw in him something self-evident, as self-evident as the fact that wheat ripens in the summer and not the autumn.

The priest did not contradict Geder’s opinion, even though he thought somewhat differently. Or at least, it seemed to him that he thought somewhat differently. At the same time, he often had to acknowledge that he saw the valley in its true colours precisely through Geder’s words. He knew the peasant mind, but he never found the courage to condemn it. And if he were to contradict Geder’s words, he would have to speak in its defence. But he was incapable of that, for with each year that went by he was more disappointed in his parishioners. The years had made him accustomed, and he had accommodated to the nature of the valley so that his disappointment was not apparent. In Geder’s discourse he often felt undertones of guilt, as if with the fury that Geder poured on the valley he was excusing his solitude, which the priest knew was not voluntary, but forced upon him by circumstances. But he did not delve into this, for he feared what might come to the surface; he satisfied himself with shallow conversations that risked nothing.

The farmers who knew that Geder had a low opinion of them defended themselves. You, Geder, they said, you say that we farmers are worth no more than dung, that we are lazy and cowardly. But tell us: are you any different? Or are you perhaps not the worst of all! You always put yourself above us, but who are you, what do you have? Your house is falling down around your ears, we can see that from the valley, you have only one cow and its ribs are sticking out, you buy a pig in the winter for slaughter because you don’t have your own, your hens perish, your fields are full of weeds, you are dirty, and yet you look upon us as dung!

The priest knew that much of this was true and yet he often took Geder’s part, almost as if he wished to apologise to him for something. Thus he had got used to such thoughts, which he had taken for his own in the firm belief that they grew from his own experience. Perhaps because, by some strange coincidence, Geder always confirmed what had grown in the priest’s own heart but dared not come to the surface until supported by Geder’s words.

They also talked about faith. Geder said that he did not believe in the God that the priest served up in church.

‘It seems to me that there is a God, but not as described by you and the Bible,’ he said. ‘But in spite of that I think we can talk about faith, or precisely because of that. If I believed in your God, we could deal with this in church, don’t you think? But as far as this valley is concerned: are you convinced that all these churchgoers are really believers? A funny question, I know. You would say it was heretical. But I have an idea – such ideas are called theories, I read that somewhere – I have a theory that none of these people believe in God, but they believe more in the habit of believing. They pray and go to church only because that’s what their parents and grandparents did, and that’s what they do everywhere. These people do not live, Father. These people are because it is the habit that they are and they are what the habit is. I’ve put it rather oddly, but look … The other day, for a change, I was in church and I watched these people. There were some young lads laughing during your sermon. I’m sorry, but I saw it with my own eyes. And they were eyeing the girls on the other side. The girls were pretending that they didn’t know they were being looked at, but they were blushing and I know very well what those girls had on their minds. I’m sorry, maybe it’s inappropriate what I’m about to tell you, but what the girls are thinking about in church, no less than the boys, is that thing that I won’t talk about now. That’s what they’re thinking about! For these peasants, Father, are very fond of it. I ask you, where are their thoughts of God?! You would rely most of all on the old ladies who always kneel in the aisle. But let’s be honest, why do all these women, old and young alike, go to church? Let me tell you, Father. I had a wife, people say this and that, but you and I know how it was. She used to come to confess to you, but maybe she told you something different to how it was. For a long time, almost to the end, she almost forced me to go to church. I told her I simply didn’t believe in God and it would be a sin if I went, but she said … imagine … you believe what you want, but what will people say, everyone goes and you could do what your father used to do, why should you act any different from others? You should see how devoutly Matay stares at the altar, but otherwise he’s a savage! I ask you. She was just caught up in a habit. So where does God come into it, and faith? And my wife, Father, that’s what the people of this valley are like. They’re not people, they are objects that habit plays with and that Habit is your God. And I’ll tell you something else: my wife believed in spirits, in witches, in various mysterious signs, in ghosts, in moving lights and so on. That’s just superstition, Father, as you well know. I often said to my wife: Listen, you believe in God, so how can you also believe in ghosts and such like, it’s heresy! And she said I was a Calvinist, that I was possessed by the devil! You can’t explain anything to a person in the grip of Habit, because such a person has no sense or whatever it is. I don’t know how to explain that.’

The priest was aroused from his ruminations by the evening chill slipping through the window: he didn’t want to close it because he liked perusing the valley. It was wreathed in dusk. He went over to the cupboard and unfolded the confessional robe made from thick, warm material. Then he sat down again, crossed his arms and leaned forward slightly. The valley lay below him. In its way it was coming closer to him. He could think more easily like this. When everything was unclear, everything that disturbed him was revealed.

Besides Geder’s, there was one other separate world that defied peasant superstition and that was the world of the gypsies. The priest knew it well since they attended church and came to confession, but in spite of that it had often seemed to him that he knew only their exterior and that he could not penetrate the depths of their character, even if he wanted to. He had read a number of books on this stubborn race that history had broken, trampled on and cheated a hundred times, but never destroyed. Even in those books he did not find the truth, since they were far from the essential nature that he knew and they failed to clarify the incomprehension that hung over the gypsies like a shadow. In their customs and their inability to adapt he saw something ineffable, something that defied thought, explanation; something that simply had to be accepted. He condemned all those who rummaged among the roots of gypsy life in order to somehow erase it, to blend it with peasant or worker’s blood. He also condemned those who went so far as to demand the status of national minority for the gypsies. They could not be erased since no one had managed to do so in a thousand years, yet neither could they live as a nation, otherwise they would have become one long ago.

The priest knew the nature of this character, its uniqueness and stubbornness. He knew that the gypsy did not control his own nature, that he constantly undermined himself and his principles. But he did this spontaneously, without evil intent. If he promised to come tomorrow to help with the harvest the promise would be a serious one. But the next day it might happen that he didn’t come. If anyone accused him of lying they would be unjust, for when he swore he would come his intention was firm. But since the previous day much had changed. The sun had gone down, the moon had sailed across the sky, the sun had risen again, the wind was blowing … and the gypsy thinks with the weather, he moves in the way that nature moves. His forebears’ traditions reach back a thousand years, controlling him and his blood. His actions are dependent on coincidence, on the moment. There is nothing in the world that the gypsy clings to or completes. With the exception of music. Music is a part of the tradition that belongs to his life.

That was how the priest saw the gypsies who lived in his parish.

The inheritance of blood can break through even the most intellectual crust that had been laid over it. That was probably why nothing came of any of the agreements that gypsies had signed with well-meaning men. In the priest’s view, in all the attempts to integrate the gypsies there had been too much bureaucracy, too much morality and not enough cunning. After the war they had been moved to Banat and Bačko, given fields and ‘a better life had been pressed into their hands.’ And what had happened? The nomads had been gripped by homesickness. Not a week went by without them returning to their old homes, as if they had buried treasure concealed in the poor earth. And they said that not even the devil was going to get them away from there. Every attempt to ‘civilise’ them had ended in failure. In one of the lowland gypsy settlements they had built a public toilet, because of the terrible smell among the houses. And what had happened: two families had knocked some walls down, nailed some boards up and moved in, so that the toilet was no more.

An assortment of strange things would happen that the priest was only too familiar with, even though he had only one small gypsy hamlet in his parish. He thought that hamlet was the most suitable expression since it contained only four homes. The population, of course, was considerably bigger. How big could not be determined, because most of the inhabitants moved around all the time. Besides which, anyone trying to undertake a census would experience a wealth of difficulties since the hundred or more residents of the hamlet shared only three surnames: Baranja, Horvat and Šarkezi. And what was worse: the men were almost all called Pišta, Karči, Miška and Evgen, and it was almost impossible to find another first name. If most people were not away from home most of the time, then the postman would find himself in great difficulty. Fortunately, there was not a great deal of written correspondence and many of the inhabitants were illiterate. But in spite of this, it was often difficult to know who to hand a letter to if, for instance, it was addressed to Pišta Baranja, there being five or more in the settlement. In such cases the letter would be opened and from the content and signature, they worked out whose it was. The priest had often been there, in the small wood beneath the hill; and with time their past had been revealed to him.

Pišta Baranja had three sons, two of them married, and four daughters, two of them also married. One son and the daughters each had two or three children, four of which had children themselves, and there were always new ones on the way. His brother had also sired a similar brood. As soon as the younger generation reached the age of thirteen, then new kids began to appear. It was like an anthill. The priest often tried to systematically categorise these human ants, but he quickly tired, for the names of the young ones were the same as the names of the old ones. What was more, in the case of many children it was not even clear who they belonged to. If he wanted to get to the bottom of this Sodom and Gomorrah, he would need a two-metre filing cabinet with many drawers, but in the end it would still defeat him. He knew that this confusion of people and names had already defeated at least one judge.

Of course, it was impossible for this mass to cram into four houses, so the buildings were constantly being added to and extended. Pišta Baranja’s house had three wings and two of these had smaller offshoots. It was the same in the case of the others. Young and old went into the world for work, but many returned. In addition to all those who left, there was still a horde that asked farmers for work, went begging or took on casual labour.

The houses were built of wood and mud. The priest still recalled: once, when living conditions become particularly cramped, Ignac Šarkezi decided to build a two-storey house. Everyone was inspired by the idea and they all helped. There was plenty of wood nearby and, of course, mud. So that the construction would not collapse, they fastened it with ropes to three large pine trees, which were supposed to provide stability. A ladder led up to the first floor. But then one day a terrible wind blew, the pines began to sway and the ropes began to pull the house hither and thither. Cracks started to appear and then the house collapsed.

Since then, they had avoided anything so ambitious. But the overcrowding was getting worse. It was not so bad in the summer, when they cooked outside and even slept outside, scattered through the woods, and there was no hunger then: there was always something to do for the farmers, the road was being widened, they did the odd bit of building, dug ditches, picked apples. Most were in Slavonia or Banat doing seasonal work. And there was blessed peace at home. Some wove baskets, made brooms and other objects, which the women then sold around the villages. They bred dogs and sold them, they also cut firewood and again there was work and bread. In the evenings they played their fiddles in village inns and at weekends at celebrations. Sometimes there would be bloody fights, but that was normal, that strengthened the positive atmosphere. In the summer the atmosphere in the gypsy settlement was always at its peak. They knew how to live so intensively, that they never gave the slightest thought to autumn.

But the time came when the sun disappeared and darkness shrouded the valley, rain began to fall and cold crept across the land. Then they all huddled inside, and had to look for shoes, hats and warmer clothes, for there was no work anywhere, doors were closed to them, seasonal workers returned from the four corners of the wind, worn out, deadly weary, and overnight melancholy sneaked into the rooms where the kids clambered over each other, where it was smoky, dirty, sooty; women gave birth in the presence of men and children, and the rain mercilessly poured and found its way through the roof. At such moments, the inhabitants of the hamlet were gripped by an unusual calm, they spoke quietly, but at length and intensively, they hardly went anywhere, children scratched away at fiddles, school age children leafed through dog-eared exercise books. Then winter came, the schoolchildren got the right to shoes so they could get to school and back, while all the others had to hang around in their shacks, packed in like sardines. They sat smoking bad tobacco, patching, knitting, the whole time wondering how to get firewood, how to get cheap clothes and shoes, as well as the odd potato and other things.

At that time three people appeared in the settlement. The man was incredibly big, with a hairy face, hands like bear’s paws, with his bulky shape reminiscent of a bear’s. On his back he carried three big bundles. He was panting so hard that the air whistled, on his tousled hair he had a torn hat, his eyes were enormous, whitish and bulging, as if they had been stuck to his face. With him were a woman and a very small boy. The woman, too, was loaded down with things. She was good-looking, of medium height and well built, with silvery black hair and eyes. She was probably approaching forty, certainly not more. The boy was probably about thirteen, but could have been older, for his irregular and almost ugly face showed an unusual seriousness. His small, protruding eyes were reminiscent of a grown-up’s and sometimes showed a kind of absence; if you were to look into his face for a long time it might make you shudder. The boy was also carrying two full bags on his back.

Everyone gathered outside, since it was unusual for a stranger to appear there and this little group looked particularly interesting. Then the big bear asked who was the ‘boss’ and they all pointed to Pišta Baranja. The bear announced that they were gypsies from far off, that their name was Hudorovec, that where they had lived until now there were many gypsies named Hudorovec, that they had left because … life there was strange and so on. The bear spoke a foreign dialect that the gypsies could barely understand. They looked at him and did not particularly believe him since this Hudorovec, which is what he claimed to be, did not look at all like a gypsy, for he was as big as an old beech tree and they never grew so big, they were small and skinny and well proportioned, while this one had incredibly long legs and a short torso, and his face was very unusual, long, oval, a bit like a pear. The wife, on the other hand, was clearly one of them, you could see at first glance, and also the boy, if he didn’t look quite so strange.

But suddenly Hudorovec began to speak Romany, for he realised no one understood his dialect. Immediately all their faces cleared, and everyone gathered round and shook their hands, for this was a convincing proof: no one but a gypsy could speak Romany, that was crystal clear. Questions began to rain down on them, Pišta Baranja invited them inside, they put down their stuff, one word led to another and Hudorovec said that … if no one had any objections … if it wasn’t too much of an imposition … that they might stay here, see how it went and so on. Why not, they all replied, stay, there’s room for three, they’d work, the summer wouldn’t be so bad, they could make their own house, there was plenty of wood and more than enough mud. And so it ended up that Pišta Baranja let them have some space in the second extension to his house, they put all their stuff there, and they ate with the Baranjas and sometimes with the Horvats.

On the first day young Hudorovec accompanied the other school kids and from then on attended school regularly. Time passed. The community took in Hudorovec as one of their own, for they could see that he was a real gypsy – a little odd in his habits, it was true – but he had lived elsewhere and he would adapt, no problem.

The sun returned, things began to blossom, trees and plants took on a lively green colour, and the first groups of gypsies began to leave the settlement. The Hudorovec family was there, eating with the others in turn, but they didn’t do a thing, they just settled in; the boy fought with the little Horvats, Baranjas and Šarkezis, the mother gossiped with the women, while the father was a strange one and spent most of his time wandering through the woods. All three of them had quite an appetite. And then Pišta Baranja called a meeting, a delegation went to Hudorovec and said … we’ve nothing against you, Hudorovec, you’re not in the way, you’re a gypsy like us and we’d give you the shirts off our backs … but build yourself a house, we’ll help you, and you have a woman to cook for you … it’ll be good for you and for us.

And so they rambled on, it was difficult for them to say these things and they would have preferred not to, but they had no choice. They had noticed that there was a difference between them and Hudorovec, that he was very much his own man, and they became uncomfortable, for at these words Hudorovec did very little, they had seriously offended him, he frowned but he did not move, nor did he say anything. They were not prepared for such a reaction, they didn’t understand it. Hudorovec felt humiliated. But the others had experienced so many humiliations that they no longer felt new ones, and it was impossible to cause offence amongst them. And now Hudorovec was acting so oddly! It had never occurred to them that they might hurt his feelings, for they had only given him good advice. And yet he was being like this!

After this conversation he stayed quiet for two days, he looked so disgruntled that his eyes bulged even more, he took to sitting in the woods, gasping for breath as if he had asthma or was carrying a heavy load. Then one day he reappeared and called his son. And they proceeded to move all the family’s possessions out into the open.

The others stared: ‘Hudorovec, what the devil are you playing at, what’s wrong with you, man, we’re not throwing you out, take those things back inside!’ But Hudorovec said not a word and his eyes became sharper and brighter with satisfaction, for this was his idea of revenge. They all saw that the man was stubborn, defiant and that he could not be dealt with in a reasonable way, their way.

Then he produced an axe from somewhere and began to carry it around, so that all the Baranjas, Horvats and Šarkezis could see it, and he did it without a grin, his face oddly distorted. The mother and boy used to sit among the trees the whole time. She would cook something in a pot and the boy would gather firewood. They kept whispering to each other, they spoke to no one else, and the community thought them strange, impossible to understand.

Then one day the sound of an axe being used came from a nearby wood: Hudorovec and his son were cutting down trees. The wood lay below the top of the hill and spread across its slopes into the valley. To the left were some bushes above which stood the gigantic old chestnut tree. When a number of straight trees had been cut down, they moved to the other slope, across the stream and cut their way forward. Every evening they went down from the stand of beech trees, across the meadow and the stream and up into the woods. While the father swung his axe, the boy had to stand guard on the edge of the wood, which belonged to a local farmer, or so the Baranjas and Horvats said. The sound of trees being cut down continued to come from the woods. Then they dragged the timber into the valley, to the stream and beyond it to the settlement. It was hard work. The boy would have collapsed under the weight a hundred times if his father, at the front, had not cursed and threatened that he’d skin him alive if he didn’t keep up. The mother did not help, she had fallen ill and was drifting through the trees like a shadow. Finally, when the timber was all in a heap, Hudorovec silently chose a space near the other houses and began building.

Then the Baranjas, Horvats and Šarkezis came and said that they would help, and that they had quite a bit of experience, and they’d do the roof first, and a lot more mud would be needed … and here and there … and this and that … Hudorovec didn’t say a word, but they helped and he didn’t drive them away. They kneaded the mud, adding wheat husks they had acquired from nearby farms. It wasn’t long before the Hudorovec family had a new home.

The priest didn’t know exactly when the young Hudorovec began to trouble him. Certainly not until the mother brought him to church. That was when he began to stand out in his mind. But it possibly began before, during conversations with village teachers who spoke with fear of the boy’s strange qualities. Although the other schoolchildren reacted with him in a relaxed way, he seemed too taciturn. He was completely different from the other Roma children. They represented a good third of the school and were a special branch on their own. Even their appearance was different from the farmers’ children: ragged and dirty, their books and exercise books tatty and creased, they were as careless as you could imagine, although they were clearly bright. They liked getting into fights and were always causing trouble. But from the first day, Hudorovec was a surprise. He was placid, hard-working, different. He came to school in poor, but clean clothes. He gave the impression that he simply didn’t care what was happening in school. He never listened and during lessons he stared thoughtfully at the bench in front of him. But whenever the teacher asked him a question he answered quietly, slightly hoarsely, without any awkwardness, and always gave the answer that was expected and sometimes more.

Yet he always spoke coldly, looking at no one, staring into space, as if he saw in front of him nothing but air. The priest’s eyes were immediately opened after the first mass that the mother attended, bringing the boy with her. He spoke to Geder about it that very evening and was almost a little excited, which was unusual for him.

‘You know, Geder,’ he said, ‘on Sunday I met the Hudorovec family. Actually, not all of them, the father wasn’t there. Her and the boy. And that boy, I tell you … In the presence of the mother I asked him if he sincerely believed in God and he stared at me for a while as if wanting to take a good look at me, and what I felt was akin to horror, because he wasn’t really looking at me and didn’t see me. Then he suddenly said, very calmly: “I don’t know, Father”. I was stunned by his honest reply. When I chatted with him I realised that this child – for he’s still really a child – lives in a strange state of obsession, which he clearly cannot grasp rationally, or else is afraid of. He reminded me of someone who is about to act, but still does not know whether he will do so or not. And I get the impression that he does not know what the action should be. He looks as if he is caught up in this tension, this suffering! If you could see his face! Take a look at him some time, look in his eyes and you’ll see a kind of disgust, as if he has been completely shocked by something. And yet when he stares like that into the distance, his eyes almost glow, as if he is longing for something beautiful. To say that the boy is torn would not fully describe it, since it’s not that simple. And listen: evidently he’s the best pupil in the school. I asked him what the teachers were like, how they got on and he said: “I give them the answers they want to hear”. I looked at him in disbelief: “Surely you answer what you think is right, don’t you?” And after a while he shakes his head. “Why ever not?” I asked him. Now he replied very decisively: “What they say does not come from them, but from elsewhere, and it seems to me that what they don’t know is different … They scare me. I want that other thing, what I call theirs, even though it scares me … ” That’s roughly what he said, Geder. I couldn’t repeat his exact words, I was a bit shaken. But imagine! The child seems intelligent, but Geder, I’ll say this only to you: I get the impression that he’s not quite right. A strange child, strange and mistrustful. That also worries me, Geder, because you never know when it might grow into something sinister.’

It was the last day of May. Young Hudorovec was sitting on the hill and looking at the land below. He was crouching on the grassy edge of the fields that sloped down towards the valley and among which were houses, vineyards and orchards. He could see the plain all the way to the horizon, but on the right the outline of the mountains was very hazy because of the mist; you could see them properly only when the air was very clear. On the plain were villages, woods and fields; far away were two bell towers, indicating a small town. He liked these strange places very much, for where he had lived until now everything was very different. For quite some time he had enjoyed coming up here in the evenings, to get away from the settlement. As soon as he got accustomed to the idea that the distant horizon was new to him and in his mind he began to seek other new things, then his thoughts strayed to the past of their own accord and images, events, faces appeared before him.

Where he grew up there was no plain, there were hills everywhere, although not so high, and when you climbed to the top of one you saw more of the same. There, the view was always interrupted. Here, when he looked into the distance nothing disturbed his view. You could see where the earth met the sky. He soon noticed something interesting about this; when they first came to the plain his mother said that the people there, whenever they were thinking about something, looked straight in front of them as if staring into the distance; but in their old home, when people were thinking, they looked down, or even up at the sky, as if they couldn’t see into the distance and this had become part of their habits.

This was the first thing that gave him pleasure: that he could look ahead and see no end in front of him. He quite enjoyed staring into space. Everyone said he thought too much. Now, when there was no longer any barrier before him, the images in his mind became denser, more visible – as if they had come closer. Sometimes he reached out his hand, because he had the feeling that he could touch everything that he could see in front of him. He felt relaxed in some way, whereas where he’d lived before everything felt more cramped. Of course, he never thought about this fully consciously. It was just a feeling flowing in his veins. The new world had possessed him so completely that past events, even though not all that remote, seemed wreathed in mist. Although his thoughts often strayed to the past there was quite a bit of effort involved, he had to try hard to extract the image from the mist. When he looked more clearly he saw that it wasn’t actually mist, but rather traces of this new world obscuring the images from the past. It was as if the new world was preventing him from looking at the past. But this was again only a surface appearance that he could barely penetrate. It wasn’t the new world that was holding him back, but he himself, unwilling as he was to return to the anxiety of the past. He was not clearly aware of any of this. But within him floated an uncertain awareness that there must be something in the past that he was afraid of and wished to save himself from. For on remembering the past he felt anxious, whereas as soon as was submerged in his new environment he felt a relaxed sense of joy.

But the more he tried to suppress the past with the new world, the more he actually uncovered it, or it revealed itself to him, for in spite of the fear of anxiety, there was a desire for it somewhere inside him, probably because it wasn’t merely anxiety, but was mixed with longing. He noticed that in this new environment it wasn’t only him who changed, but also his mother. In a special way, she distanced herself from him; it felt as if she was no longer near. She was like a performance in front of him, but one that tormented him with a physical closeness that he no longer perceived. His father, on the other hand, had not changed at all; he still saw him as a rough body right beside him, he could smell his sweat, his words rang in his ears like hammer blows, his laugh was just like it was in the old place.

There had been no settlement in the old place: they had lived in a ramshackle house in the woods and the nearest gypsy family was five kilometres away. Below the wood was a village. The village children chased him, threw stones, called him ‘smelly gypo’ and accused him and his family of stealing things. He didn’t like going into the village, he only went to church, as he had been taught, and to school. Otherwise he wandered through the woods, saying little, growing up solitary and wild. He had a sister who was two years older than him; she was different, she enjoyed meeting up with the village rascals, she was mean and rude, she beat him as much as their father, who had the habit of responding to every little thing with the flat of his hand. In such moments his mother was the only one who defended him, he always ran to her and cried. It seemed that she loved him much more than the others. Sometimes, like an animal, she resisted Hudorovec’s violence, putting herself in between them so that the blows rained down on her. The father and sister were allies and were often absent. His mother was the one who had to go from house to house with her basket, begging; she was the one who had to humbly grit her teeth when people made fun of her, or shut the door in her face, or if the children followed her along the road, yelling; she had to cook, fetch firewood, look after the house, their clothes. But when her husband and daughter returned, she was insulted, scorned, beaten. Hudorovec had an old nag that he rode around, he often met with untrustworthy people and got involved with strange goings on, sometimes he was even absent for long periods and children teased the mother that her man was dead and buried. All the money he gained simply disappeared; what he didn’t drink, he lost at cards or squandered it in some other way. No one in the family ever knew what he was up to or where.

Young Hudorovec devoted all his thoughts and every step to his mother; he lived with her, suffered with her. He regarded his father and sister with repugnance and fear, but he never revolted, he never tried to run away from this hopeless situation. He was calm and quiet, he obeyed every word of his tormentors. He was somehow convinced that this was the only possible state, for he knew nothing else and so could not long for it. For years things had remained unchanged, at least as far as he remembered, and his relationship with his mother was always the same. She never complained about her husband or daughter, they never even spoke about it, it simply happened and seemed to him self-evident, just as he did not think about his relationship with his mother, but simply lived and felt it.