Angel of Oblivion

by Maja Haderlap

  Will you bandage its wounds, I ask Mother.

  It will heal on its own, she says, bandages won’t help.

  Once we’re alone, I want to know what a partisan is. Mother is surprised. Grandmother has been telling her stories again? Partisans lived in dugouts and hid from the Germans, she answers. That was a long time ago and you shouldn’t worry about it. Grandmother says that Grandfather was one, too, I say.

  Mother goes into the house without a word. Grandmother comes outside immediately. I’m not going to let you tell me how to treat the girl, certainly not you, she says reproachfully and sits on the water well near the front door. Mother stays on the doorstep. I turn my face towards her, keeping Grandmother in sight. The low roof seems to extend imperceptibly towards the ground. For several minutes, the water in the well plashes in our silence.

  GRANDMOTHER decides to take over my upbringing. Enough of this singing falderal and useless stories, she declares. She is suspicious of my rapture for the books I bring home from school. What are you doing with that drivel, she asks when she catches me reading, a girl has to be able to do more than read. Dancing, for example, is just as important. After they were liberated from the camp, she taught the young women how to dance. Whenever anyone played music, she grabbed a woman and they spun in circles. It was a laugh and a joy after we escaped the devil, Grandmother says.

  When the radio at home plays a polka or a waltz, she takes me by the hand and shows me the steps while leading me in a circle. I hold onto to her forearms and watch her slippered feet move to the rhythm of the music. Before long, I’ve learned how to dance the polka and the waltz. On holidays, when Father plays his accordion, a steirische harmonica, Grandmother, beaming with pride, invites me to dance. The neighbors, who always come to our house on such occasions, are also delighted. How wonderful there’s dancing in this room again, they exclaim, we’ve missed dancing here for so long!

  While Grandmother turns me in circles, I try to picture what the dances in our sitting room, which they all claim they remember, must have looked like. There were so many who danced back when the girls still lived at home, girls scattered to the four winds, two of whom were sent back to our valleys only as ashes, so the stories go. I love the exhilarated atmosphere in our sitting room, which makes you feel like you are connected to the past, and I’m happy to see Grandmother smile.

  Her second lesson is how to play cards. As soon as I get home from school and find her darning socks or spinning wool, she says, come, let’s play a hand! She calls her favorite card game “Business, High Card Wins.” We play as farmers betting their farms and line up the farms in our valley, one next to the other, choosing candidates from among them, and among the farms in the next valley over, the properties left idle and abandoned. Grandmother plays on behalf of the homeless or for the farmers with the most land in the area. I play on behalf of the smallholder whose children go to school with me and whom I think I know. We line up successes and failures, just as we had lined the farms up before, we slap our cards down on the table and laugh at the losers who have just lost all their worldly goods. Grandmother knows exactly how much each property is worth, she knows how much sun each field and meadow gets, the fruit trees’ yield, the quality of each farm’s pork. As soon as she’s had enough of “Business,” she suggests a game of “Sixty-six” and we play for small coins and don’t bankrupt anyone.

  In her third lesson, she instructs me how to host guests.

  One should always ask them to sit, even if they’re in a hurry, because neighbors who don’t sit down in your home cause nightmares, Grandmother claims. You should always have a good salami, farmer cheese, and bread in your pantry for guests and never, ever serve ham that’s been infested with maggots like some farmers put on their tables when guests arrive like a rain shower. No one should ever claim we’re miserly, that would be the worst thing anyone could say about our farm.

  Elderly men from our area often come to visit Grandmother. Flori comes by almost every day because he’s also leching after Mother. He has respect for Grandmother and doesn’t grab her breasts every chance he gets the way he does with younger women. He has never reached his crooked fingers towards me, Grandmother says, and God help him if he ever tries! Flori lived on our farm before the War, she recounts, twice during the War she asked him to stay longer in the evening. The first time, she’d invited him and their closest neighbors to keep vigil with them because Grandfather had learned that our family was going to be deported the following morning. She cooked her best ham and the neighbors ate every last bite, but then no one came the next day to take them away after all. A year later, she’d asked Flori to testify to the police that the partisans had forced Grandfather to join them, that he hadn’t gone willingly. But no one believed Flori.

  Tschik, another regular visitor, doesn’t have gnarled fingers like Flori, but he does have a hole in the side of his nose. He constantly rubs his hand over his dark, smooth hair. When I ask him how he got the third hole in his nose, from which he blows cigarette smoke, he reveals to me that he fell face-first on a nail. Later he tells me that the truth is, he jumped from a balcony and hit his head in such an unlucky way that the wound never healed.

  Tschik lives in the sawmill near Rastočnik. He’s got a stovepipe sticking out of his window. He calls Grandmother teta, even though she’s not his aunt. He sighs when she brings up any incident that seems to connect them. Back then, when they came to deport her, yes, back on that October day when they arrested her, he was there too. He ended up in Moringen, in the children’s camp, Grandmother says, where Johi Čemer was also taken and both Auprich boys, Erni and Franz.

  A Gypsy man comes once a year and parks his van on the access road below the house. He sells duvets, tablecloths, and crockery. When he takes his plastic-wrapped wares and spreads them out on the farmhouse table and the wrapping on the embroidered and patterned fabrics gleams in the sun, the atmosphere in the sitting room is almost festive. He presents his wares and his young wife tells our fortunes. The cards say I will marry a rich man, live in a house, and be very happy, the woman claims. Grandmother is very satisfied. You see, you don’t have to worry about a house, she tells me. She wants the Gypsy woman to tell her on which day she will die and the young woman answers that she can’t read anyone’s death in the cards. Doesn’t matter, Grandmother says. In any case, Grandmother had a special loaf of bread made that she keeps in her wardrobe. When it starts to get moldy, she will die. Then she asks the Gypsy man to show her some towels and buys a few.

  Our hospitality is lavish. Grandmother says I should be aware that the poor man has been through a lot and she asks him to show me the number on his forearm. He rolls up his sleeve and uncovers the number, which suddenly appears to lift off from his arm and hover above it. In my memory, the camp number rises from its bearer as in a dream that I might have dreamt once in which a number floats here and there until it has found the proper arm on which it can land like a black butterfly.

  My number was 24834, Grandmother says, and at that moment she strikes me as at once sad and defiant.

  She also invites Jehovah’s Witnesses into the house when they stand in twos or threes at the door, wanting to explain to us the creation of the world. Grandmother sets the table while the Bible Students describe paradise, its inexhaustible rivers and streams, its wealth and the fruitfulness of God’s pastures and fields, His strict watch over weak and guilty humans who, after the Fall, were expelled from paradise much too soon.

  I suspect that Grandmother has secret powers because visitors show her so much gratitude. Their regard takes the form of gifts that she piles into the cupboards. Bottles of wine and spirits stand, unwrapped, next to unopened boxes of chocolates. When she finally opens a box of chocolates with great ceremony, removes the cellophane, and lifts the lid, most of the chocolates look like dried-up deer scat, Father says as soon as he takes a look. The chocolate is usually inedible and has to be thrown away. It doesn’t seem to make any difference to Grandmother.
She was delighted to receive the gift and shows her gratitude by keeping the chocolate and the wine in the cupboard for a long time without touching them, she says. Opening the presents right away would be vulgar and would show a lack of self-control.

  I’m rarely surprised anymore when visitors appear in our house and claim they grew up in our family. They speak in muted tones as if it’s unpleasant for them to admit they once relied on my grandmother’s help. They ask after her health and Grandmother tells them she’s convinced she will die soon. And so all of them try to talk her out of her illnesses, which spurs Grandmother to exaggerate her ills or her frailness even more.

  THANKS to the construction of the municipal road that makes access to our farms much easier, Grandmother leaves the village more often. Once a month, she goes shopping in Eisenkappel. The evening before, she checks supplies in the storehouse, sets out her clothing, and counts her money. With the small victims’ pension the postman delivers every month, Grandmother supports my parents. When she takes the money out of the envelope, she keeps in an old cardboard box with photographs and documents, she makes the sign of the cross over the bills before taking off the rubber band that holds them together. I’ve lost everything, my health, my happiness, she says, but now I have money to help.

  In the morning, a neighbor or a relative comes to pick her up and drive her to the Eisenkappel. She begins her shopping day in the Perko family’s foyer, where she sets down the bags of eggs and cheese she brought from home. After a cup of coffee with Maria, she sets off on her errands. First, she goes to the Majdič’s store and greets the merchants with a handshake. They offer her a chair, from which she makes her requests. Mrs. Majdič serves her with affectionate courtesy and speaks Slovenian without lowering her voice when another customer enters the store. When she has finished her purchases, Grandmother again leaves her bags in the Perko family’s foyer and walks to the Roscher general store. Her eyes gleam behind the lenses of her glasses when others recognize and greet her in the main square or when younger men raise their hats to her. In the Roschers’ store, she’s also served by the owner. Mrs. Roscher has a talent for placing the goods tenderly on the counter and Grandmother, in the meantime, also begins caressing a package of soup noodles here, a carton of breadcrumbs there. The goods pile up on the counter and an apprentice packs them in boxes, which are then stacked near the entrance for delivery to Lepena.

  As she continues her errands, Grandmother explains that in Eisenkappel, you have to know precisely where you’re welcome and to whom you can turn. She’s already had some bitter experiences, but the Majdič, Perko, and Roscher families have always been cordial. She often thinks of how it was, after the War, when she returned from the camp to Eisenkappel for the first time to register as a survivor with the authorities. People were angry and afraid. Her own uncle, for example, threw her out of his house when she came to borrow a bit of flour or grain because the storehouse at home had been looted. She felt so ashamed, so humiliated, she wanted never to have to beg again in her life. Never again, Grandmother repeated. The Perkos, Majdičs, and Roschers, on the other hand, gave her clothing, stockings, underwear, shoes, and rye flour. That, she will never forget.

  To conclude the shopping day, we visit Grandfather’s grave and light a candle. Grandmother says that she will soon lie under this earth, next to Grandfather’s bones and the ashes of her foster daughter Mici, sent home from Lublin. That’s where I belong, she says and I realize that her longing for death has a hidden source.

  Once a year she visits her eldest son, Tonči, and wants me to accompany her.

  We take the postbus to Klagenfurt and then another to Oberglan. Uncle Tonči picks us up at the bus stop in his Puch 500 and drives along the curving road to the castle where he works as forester and custodian.

  The attic of the castle outbuilding, where my uncle and his family live, smells of old wood, of dried herbs, of dust and melted schmaltz, of freshly laundered linens. As I climb the stairs with Grandmother up to our room, I secretly wait for this smell that calms and delights me. Surrounded by the thick castle walls, I feel safer than I do at home. The view from the window envelops me in a sense of security similar to what a fledgling might feel discovering an ancient and enormous stone egg into which it could retreat, confident that its shell has defied storms for centuries.

  In the coming days, I will be given a new outfit and feel like I’ve been reinvented. I sit reverently at the beautifully set dinner table and am amazed that Grandmother doesn’t find fault with the “waste of tableware” as she always calls table settings at home. She praises her daughter-in-law’s beautiful garden and marvels at her flowerbeds. She doesn’t pluck indignantly at any perennials as she does in our garden. What a lovely place you’ve got here, she says sitting on a garden chair between two large pieces of cake, which she gobbles up one after the other without showing the slightest embarrassment or justifying herself.

  She takes a walk with me before lunch, to stay out of her daughter-in-law’s way in the kitchen, she claims. We go to the stables on the estate, and she asks the groom if we can see the horses. The beautiful animals impress her and remind her of two black horses on the farm where she grew up that were only hitched to the carriage or sled on Sundays and spared on the other days.

  She explains castle etiquette to me and instructs me to greet the count and the employees on the estate in a clear voice and to give friendly answers to any questions. And I’m not allowed to tinkle in the yard or play in the castle’s inner courtyard. I must cross the courtyard quickly. Even better, we should take the path that passes the stables to get to the garden. That way we won’t run into his lordship.

  At that very moment, the count comes towards us and greets Grandmother with a slight bow and shakes her hand. I, too, dutifully offer my hand. He says he hopes we’re comfortable on the estate and asks after Grandmother’s health. I’m astonished when she claims she’s doing well and look at her in amazement. Grandmother is standing very straight and resting her right arm against her upper abdomen. It would seem she could easily begin chatting with the count then and there if I didn’t know how hesitantly the German language crosses her lips because it’s more or less just the language of the camps, as she maintains. I, at any rate, am waiting for the count to ask, as do all the strangers who stray into our valley, if I understand any German at all. I would say yes, of course, although I have my doubts, but the count doesn’t ask any more questions and heads off towards the stables.

  We walk on to the fishpond. The gravel path lays a veil of dust over Grandmother’s black shoes, made for her by Perko the shoemaker. She’s wearing her Sunday dress and has tied her kerchief at the nape of her neck. She has coquettishly turned up the sleeves of her blouse, revealing her sinewy forearms. At the large fishpond, we sit on the wooden pier. In the dark green, rather murky water we see trout and tench flit past against the shaded, swampy ground. On the way to the second fishpond, we miss the turn-off and search for the path in vain. Grandmother is irritated. We’ll have to turn back, she says as if insulted. As we make our way back, one of the count’s loggers comes towards us in a tractor. He stops and asks if he can offer us a lift, he has to drive past the castle in any case. We climb up on the hydraulic jack and are chauffeured, standing, to the castle. I’ve brought the runaways back, the logger says to my aunt who had come out of the house to see who’d arrived. Vera thanks him, and Grandmother is in a fine mood again. Everyone seems to know me here, she says. An ugly old woman stands out!

  TAKING trips has come into fashion in Lepena. The neighbors all suddenly come down with travel fever. They mull over all the places they’ve wanted to travel, or where they might venture again after so many years. Excursions to the shrines of the Virgin Mary in Brezje and Monte Lussari as well as the Mauthausen and Ravensbrück concentration camps are discussed at great length, although Brezje in Slovenia seems to be the preferred destination.

  Aunt Malka’s husband, Sveršina, knows his way around Mauthausen. He, M
alka, and my parents travel to the former camp with a group from Slovenia. On their return, they described how it was in Mauthausen, how many people were gathered on the grounds of the camp for the memorial service. The camp is now a museum, Father says. Sveršina showed them the barracks in which he was held and took them to the quarry where so many inmates died. Mother says she can’t conceive of how anyone could survive the concentration camps. Grandmother gives her hostile and uncomprehending looks. Father tells us about a group of former Polish prisoners who had decorated a house near the camp with flowers. It moved him so deeply to see how the two men from Poland embraced the owner of the house and thanked him for rescuing them that he couldn’t help crying, and suddenly tears glisten on Father’s cheeks. It’s the first time I’ve seen him cry and I feel helpless and confused.

  Grandmother decides she will travel to Ravensbrück this year. The trip will take a few days. When she returns and again lies next to me in bed, I’m relieved. She says the trip was very stressful. Women returned to the camp from all over Europe. She liked the speakers, she didn’t understand everything they said, but their tone of voice pleased her. She tells me that former prisoners had gathered on the grounds of the camp. Many women stood at the edge of a lake and wept. They threw flowers in the lake and leaned against each other for support. She was hugged by two French women and by some Dutch women who were standing behind her listening to the speakers. She mentioned two names that she would always bring up from then on, Mici and Katrca, the names of her foster daughter and sister-in-law, both of whom died in the camp. She always thinks of Mici and Katrca, Grandmother says. She brought back two books. Books in which you can read about what happened in the camp. Grandmother says she’ll show them to me, me and my unbelieving mother, when she’s finished reading them, if that time comes.