Angel of Oblivion

by Maja Haderlap

  Uncle Jozi brings two baby goats to our farm for the summer. It is my job to tend them because, left on their own, the two kids would get lost or run away from the farm. One day, when I’m crying, the playful animals discover my tears taste good and lick my face with their small, rough tongues. I can’t help but laugh and from that day on, I bring lettuce leaves to the pasture to lure the kids to me. I give them the run of my face and let them clean my nose and ears with their tongues. It tickles and drives away all dark thoughts. Their soft, light-colored bodies calm my fingertips as they relentlessly rub the kids’ fine coats, trying to absorb some of their whiteness.

  Before the start of the school year, Mother sends me to the seaside with a group of farmers’ children. I need to learn to swim, she tells me, and to get some rest. She lays out all the necessary clothing, stitches my initials into each item, and takes me to the office of the Farmers’ Insurance Association in Klagenfurt where the other children are already waiting with their parents for the bus that will take us to Bibione. On the bus we are each given an orange cardboard nametag to hang from our necks and a large snack to ease the pain of saying goodbye to our parents.

  In Bibione, I struggle against an overwhelming anxiety that paralyzes me as soon as I go into the water for swimming lessons. Every little wave that touches my face, every mouthful of salt water that runs down my throat makes me frantic. When the salt water stings my eyes, I fear I won’t ever be able to see again and shoot up from under the water like an injured fish fighting to stay alive. My fear of drowning darkens the sun-drenched days. The colors of the long, sandy beach and the grayish blue of the sea cannot push aside the baleful shadows of the count’s fish pond.

  Then, one day, I pluck up my courage and swim in shallow water. My arms and legs move as if revived from rigor mortis, still panicky at first, but gradually more confidently and smoothly. Life looks more promising, I think, as long as I’m certain I can feel solid ground beneath my feet.

  I make friends with one of the girls, and as we walk along the beach on the last day I tell her that I have to say goodbye to the sea because this is probably the last time I’ll ever see it. I can’t confide to her that I’ve already started getting used to seeing things for the last time, the glittering ocean of stars in the night sky, for example, or the beach chairs and umbrellas on the seaside, or Father at home kneeling down to repair a chainsaw, or Mother holding up a bunch of carrots as she comes in from the garden, or the angry, green-tinged lizards I pester with wooden sticks when I’m tending the cows. My friend gives me a surprised look and I can’t explain even to myself why, from time to time, I’m convinced life holds no future for me.

  Two decades later, my aunt will tell me as we swim in the count’s pond that Iris suffered from epilepsy and had an attack in the water. Why are you only telling me this now, I will ask her. Because it needed to be said, Vera will answer, whenever she swam in this pond, she always thought of that tragedy. If I’d known, then as a child I’d have been able to deal with the fact that I survived much better and wouldn’t have been terrified every time I went into a swimming pool, I will exclaim. I wouldn’t have lain in dark water for entire nights, alone and invisible, a tiny corpse that could talk and lived among people constantly bumping into her.

  THE small wood behind our house, which I have to cross on the way to see Michi and his family when I want to watch television, is growing rampant. I thought I knew it inside out. I’ve walked in this wood countless times and could find my way through it with my eyes closed. Now I have to summon all my courage just to set foot in it. I used to think I could smell every section of the path, every little clearing, the places where the trees had grown tall or were still short, and, with my eyes closed, could sense the sequence of hazel, raspberry, and willow bushes, or tell when the canopy of fir trees opened up or closed in above me. Now the wood is no longer familiar. It has joined with the forest and turned into a sea of green, full of prickly needles and sharp-edged scales, with a heaving, surging underbrush of rough bark. As soon as I look out my bedroom window, the wood creeps into sight or lurks with its rippling, jagged surface behind the meadow. I’m afraid it will overflow its banks one day and leave the forest’s edge, flooding our thoughts the way I now feel the forest occupies the thoughts of the men who work with my father or visit us to go hunting with him.

  Going into the forest, in our language, not only means felling trees, hunting, or gathering mushrooms. It also means – as they’re always telling us – hiding, escaping, and ambushing. Men and women slept in the forest, they cooked and ate there, too, not just in peacetime, but also during the war. Not into our wood, no, it was much too sparse for that, too small and too easily controlled. They set off into the larger forests. Many people took refuge in the forests, a hell in which they hunted and were hunted like game.

  The stories revolve around the forest, just as the forest encircles our farm.

  In the forest were hidden the best places to hunt, to gather berries and mushrooms, and the best feeding grounds, secrets you never disclose. Even more secret are the places that no paths or tracks lead to, places you have to track down over hunting trails and streambeds, the hideouts and refuges, the bunkers in which our people went to ground, as they say.

  This year a windstorm causes a lot of damage to the count’s forested slopes. The gales leave behind a broad swath of destruction in which trees lie split, broken, and uprooted on the ground. Loggers from all the count’s crews are called up to clear the fallen trees. For weeks, the whine of saws, the dull thuds of axes, and the cracking of trunks hang over the valley.

  On weekends, the loggers gather at our farm to sharpen and repair their tools. Their trousers are spattered with pitch stains that gleam like small swamps. Circular buds of dirt spread from the middle of these swamps and seep into the cloth like shadows of pitch clouds. The loggers’ shirts are soaked with sweat, the sweaters and jackets they lay over their shoulders are fraying at the sleeves and hems.

  Father sits on a bench, repairing a saw he calls “the American lady.” He hammers gently on the saw. It bobs up and down to the beat, making a humming noise.

  You’re making the saw dance, Michi says. As soon as I put her in your hands, she’s in a good mood. Uncle Jozi tells his crewmates that he’d like to do a radio show. In fact, he’s already put in a request for a recording device from the Slovenian department of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation. He wants to talk to people and record their conversations. If they don’t mind, he’d like to do a story about them, too: Count Thurn’s loggers.

  You’re not loggers anymore, Father says, you left the forest a long time ago.

  You have think of the future, Michi answers, you can’t just go into the forest every day as if there weren’t anything else, as if there were no other way of earning a living. He’s signed up with the Socialists, he announces. They’d promised they would find him something else.

  You want to go into politics, Father counters, but you’ll never be mayor, there’s no way they would ever let you, a Slovene, be mayor.

  You have no idea, Michi says.

  I know what I know, Father says.

  Father tells them that earlier in the week he crossed the green border into Slovenia from the Mozgans’ ridge, where he’s been cutting wood for the farmers, and had a beer at the Kumers’. The women were amazed that he ventured across the border. They asked after people in Lepena and told him to say hello to everyone they knew. Thanks, thanks, the loggers say as they set off on foot for home. Only Jozi climbs onto a motorcycle and drives off with a wave of his hand.

  WHERE is the border, actually, I ask Father.

  Up that way, he says and points at the ridge that encloses the valley in a semi-circle.

  I’d like to go to work with you one day, I say.

  Father is so surprised by my request that he promises to take me to the logging stand the next day. He has to take some tools up anyway.

  Early in the morning, his motorcycle is outs
ide the stable, a Puch with a dark, gleaming gas tank that looks like the body of a black dolphin. Father ties the knapsack bulging with tools and a canister of fuel onto the luggage rack. I sit on the back seat and wrap my arms carefully around his waist. He tells me to hold on tight so I won’t fall off on the way. In the first curve he yells, you’re wobbling, hold on tight or we’ll start skidding. After the initial fear that floods over me when Father brakes into a curve, I let myself get carried away as he accelerates on the straight stretches.

  He parks his motorcycle behind the Mozgans’ farm, slides a few iron clamps under his belt, and shoulders his backpack. We start off walking slowly. The gasoline sloshes in the canister. You have to stroll on steep terrain or you’ll get out of breath, Father says. Then he picks up his pace. I lag behind and take advantage of flat stretches to catch up with him. Were you here during the war? I ask.

  Yes, we had a bunker higher up, he says. Your grandfather ran the couriers. I did the cooking. It was very dangerous.

  Were you afraid? I ask.

  I should think so, I was only a child, a few years older than you.

  Behind us we hear frightened game take flight.

  It got a whiff of us, Father says.

  Under the crest of the forest, between mighty spruce trees with thick branches that almost reach the ground, a hut appears. It is completely covered with bark, layer nailed upon layer over a wooden frame. We used to sleep here when we were felling timber, Father says. He opens the lock and stores the tools and the fuel canister next to the unused cots.

  First I have to go to the logging stand, he says, then we can cross the border.

  His work area looks neat and is marked off by piles of branches. Stripped and unstripped logs are arranged on the ground, with branch stumps or pared, as Father says, and between them, fragrant piles of sawdust. The logs have sloping edges, the cut surfaces of the trunks shine like freshly carved wooden plates.

  Father stands in the middle of the clearing and looks over the stand, then he gathers the scattered splitting wedges and covers them with branches. I’m looking forward to a beer now, he says and points toward the border.

  To my surprise, the border runs close to the logging stand. From the crest of the forest I can see the Yugoslavian side of the slope and to my amazement it looks exactly like the Austrian side, just a continuation of the familiar landscape. Father leans his weight on a fence post as he leaps over the border. He tells me to crawl across under the barbed wire, lifting the bottom strand so I don’t get caught on the twirling spikes.

  Suddenly he is in a hurry again. With long strides, he rushes downhill through a sparse wood. Fern leaves slap at my face. He waits for me below the wood. He sits on the grass, looking down at a low-lying valley that seems to disappear in the depths.

  Over there, behind the Raduha, Father points at the ridge of a mountain, that’s where I went to school during the war, he says. Not long. Fourteen days it must have been. I went to school there, in Luče. He and his brother were the band’s couriers, on a farm. After they ran away from home, they were only allowed to stay in the bunker with their father for two weeks. Then they were taken to the Savinja Valley because it was liberated territory. They had to abandon their command center in January because the Germans attacked the valley. The Germans fired so many shots over the field, that dirt sprayed everywhere, Father says. He and the other couriers buried the typewriters in the ground. They dug a hole, threw in some straw and piled the typewriters on it. Then they spread more straw on top, and then dirt, and grass, and snow, until nothing was visible. They set off in the afternoon and walked all night. The next day, Germans chased us again, Father says. The snow came up to my hips. One of the commanders told me I wasn’t going to make it.

  He spits hard as if he needed relief after telling the story.

  At the Kumers’, we are greeted by two women who know his name. Zdravko, they call, Zdravko, how nice that you’ve come back! They serve Father a beer and me a slice of bread with liverwurst.

  On the way home, Father looks at me with an absent smile. I think how good it would be if Father took me into his confidence and repeated the story he told me earlier then asked me what I’ve been through and I could tell him how I’m bullied on the way to school and that I dream of him confronting my classmates and demanding they stop threatening me at once. In the hope of being able to count on Father, I make him a silent promise that I myself don’t understand, a commitment to accompany him on his way home and on his way to school, through this very landscape, maybe, or in his memories. As we make our way uphill through the forest I wonder if I should stay in my child’s body or should grow out of it, and for this day I decide to stay in my short skirt, cotton tights, and rubber boots.

  When we arrive at the customs path below the border, I look for footprints in the soft ground, in which puddles have formed. Father says the customs officers must have the day off because it’s Sunday, and laughs at his own joke.

  We reach the Austrian side without being seen, and Father asks if I’d like to go with him as a beater on a hunt now that he’s seen what a good walker I am. I say yes and resolve to overcome my fear of the forest. On the way to the Mozgans’, there’s a clearing with a view of the farms scattered throughout the valley. We pause and look out from the green undergrowth. Like two fish, it occurs to me, peering out from the seaweed. I saw the perky fish on television and imagine Father and me peeking out from the thicket with our big eyes and disappearing into it again, raising a small cloud of sand that slowly sinks back down in the murky water. A sea of stalks, I think. Soon we’ll reach the shore.

  When I climb up behind Father on his motorcycle, I’m happy. I wrap my arms tight around his waist and press up against his back. It is late afternoon as we drive down the winding Koprina Road. The sun hovers level with us. Father stops in a hairpin turn and smokes a cigarette. There used to be a fence here, he says and exhales a puff of smoke.

  Before we reach the bottom of the valley, we cross a wooden bridge toward a rundown house hidden amidst plum and apple trees. As we climb off the motorcycle, Jaki, one of Father’s fellow loggers, stands leaning on his scythe in front of the door. The mown grass lies in waves around the house.

  I was going after the thistles, Jaki says. Were you at the felling strip? Father nods.

  If you don’t mow regularly, it all gets overgrown, Jaki says. He was up at the Blajs’ place earlier today. The grass has grown high there, too.

  Father looks up at the lonely property still in the sun.

  Too bad no one is farming the place, he says. Who’d have imagined it would turn out this way.

  How many brothers was it who died in the camp? Jaki asks.

  The three older ones, Jakob, Johi, and Lipi, Father says. Lipi’s ashes were sent from Natzweiler, the others died in Dachau.

  I hear the resounding name of Dachau, which I’d heard before, but Natzweiler is a new one, and I forget it again immediately.

  His uncle died up there, too, Jaki recalls. He had just deserted, Jaki says to me, feeling my gaze on him, and he was wounded in the first battle with the Germans. He dragged himself over the field to the Jekls’ and lay bleeding below the road behind a bush. The German patrol passed him without seeing him. But then the last soldier looked down and shot him. The Jekls had to bury him next to the road.

  That’s right, my father says, I know the spot.

  The dead leave their chill in this spot from which the sun has now withdrawn. I wonder if the cold that is making me shiver also has something to do with the evening and with the forest creeping up to the houses. The light rushes up into the sky. Father sinks into immobility. I ask him if we can finally go home.

  Yes, yes, he says and tells me not to tschentsch him like my mother. He only decides to get back on his motorcycle when Jaki wheels his own around the side of the house. The three of us drive down the gravel road, but at the fork where we should have turned left, Father turns right and stops at the side of the road. />
  You can walk home from here, if you want, he tells me, I’m going to have a beer.

  I take the shortcut across the field that belongs to the inn, where lethargic, sated cows switch their tails. I balance on the two tree trunks laid across the Lepena stream and hurry up a bank behind which I can hear our pigs squealing in their sty.

  THE forest has not been able protect its solitude since men sought refuge it in, since it lost control of their straying, since loggers and hunters have ranged through it searching for prey, since it was declared bandit territory.

  The way someone went into the forest or came out of it revealed everything about him, it was said. Was he carrying a gun, did he have a red star on his cap, was he wearing two pairs of trousers at once and two coats so he wouldn’t freeze, was his shirt unbuttoned, his trousers torn and stained with pitch, was he carrying a dead deer in his backpack or bringing bacon to the Green cadres up near the highest fir trees? Was he carrying a basket of mushrooms, a bucket filled with berries, or courier letters in his pockets? Was his shirt clean, did he smell of pitch and bark, or did he stink, rank and unwashed, of dirt and cold sweat, of blood and scabs?

  My father’s hunting friends wear ironed trousers and jackets the color of trees, they carry the smell of moss in their hair and put fir twigs in their hat bands when they’ve bagged their prey. The heads of horned game dangle from their backpacks. A gun was trained on each animal, then they were felled. Blood and sweat still drip from their muzzles, the dew of the last breaths they took. The dark gleam of their eyes will continue to shine a while from their delicate heads. Their skulls stripped of pelt and fur will simmer in peroxide baths until they are bleached and lifted from the cauldron like trophies.

  Hunting is part of the family myth, every hunting day is a celebration, that’s how it has always been, Father says. He still goes deerstalking at dawn and at dusk, oils his rifles and shotguns, cleans the scope, counts the cartridges. The game is still boiled and braised in the kitchen, the smell of chamois stew whets our appetite. His hunting friends still come in and out of our house telling their stories. He still looks forward to the annual hunt and to the drive he will take me on since I am such a good walker.