Angel of Oblivion

by Maja Haderlap

  On the weekends I spend at home, I hear Grandmother explaining the branches in our family tree to Father and correcting him when he mixes up his first and second cousins. She lists all the neighboring properties and the names of those who lived there and who survived the camps or died in them. She sketches the holdings without writing, weaves a fine net from farm to farm, drawing the names together over the hills, a curious network, a secret community of the overpowered.

  Grandmother lists the holdings in the Lepena Valley, the Dimnik holding, along with the Knolič, Šertev, Gobanc, Hirtl, Gregorič, Auprich, Hojnik, and Skutl holdings, and the crofts that belong to the Hrevelniks, the Winkels, the Kožels, the Peternels, the Čemers, the Blajs, the Kokežs, the Potočniks, and the upper Mozgan croft, in the Remschenig Valley, the Kach, Makež, Papež, Črnokruh, and Struz crofts, and the Šopar, Ponovčar, and Tonov holdings, in the Lobnik Valley the Vivoda, Brečk, Topičinik, Mikej, the Stopar, the Wölfl, the Tavčman crofts, in Ebriach the Peruč croft, the Jereb and the Pegrin croft, the Pegrin farm, and those of the Smrtniks, the Šajdniks, the Urhs, in Vellach the Šein, the Kristan, the Podpesnik and the Vejnik farms. The names of the camps hang upon the murdered and on the survivors like small labels with inscriptions and they fade on those who have passed away. They disappear with the farms and holdings, are overrun with grass and underbrush, they are no longer visible, hardly a trace or pile of debris is left, not even a moldering wooden shed or an overgrown footpath.

  As always, Death makes his yearly rounds. He watches a young neighbor hang herself and her suicide will devastate everyone as never before. Another one gone much too young, they say, another one who slipped, crashed, fell backwards while the living grasped at life and refused to look into the abyss that makes them dizzy. Grandmother says it’s time for her to go. She uses the deferment Death has granted her, as she puts it, to spend time with acquaintances and to talk. She laughs with Malka Knolič, whose cheeks turn even redder than usual when she and Grandmother recall their return home from Ravensbrück, and Grandmother lets Tonči drive her to see her sisters-in-law. A shawl draped over her shoulders, she sits with her sisters-in-law in their new kitchen, which they show her proudly. She breathes with difficulty and rests her bony hands, covered in thin, liver-spotted skin, in her lap. Her head has shrunk, her nose and chin protrude from her skull like two sharp bumps. Grandmother looks like a distillation of herself. She is held up by a bony frame that houses her shallow breath. She has arrived at the goal, she says, now she finally looks like a woman from a concentration camp.

  IN THE dorm, I find my retreat in the Slovenian school library on the building’s ground floor. I go there almost every day. My worries about Father and Grandmother’s stories coalesce into a thought world, which I guard well and which hides a secret, the secret of the menace that always hangs over humanity. I believe I should not talk about this secret because I have a sense it is a precarious mystery and because I assume that in speaking, I could expose the awkwardness and the fears that form my inner nature, that lie at the very core of my being.

  The census for minority groups in Carinthia is a school in itself, and I get the point of the slogans emblazoned on posters: Vote German if you don’t want to become a Slovene! So the Slovenian language is not welcome in this land, I think and side with the publicly disparaged because in my eyes, and in the eyes of those I live with, it is important and because for the first time I understand how many shades of meaning the word “belonging” can have.

  I have grown into a group and have a recurring dream in which I march at the head of a procession of Slovenians. I know them all, but they don’t seem to see me, even though I am naked. When I notice my nakedness I think, nothing can happen to me now because I’m dead, no one can harm me because I’ve become invisible.

  Despite my nocturnal invisibility, my body plays tricks on me. It seems to be working against me internally and relentlessly. Under my skin, it multiplies and extends itself, it strives and ferments. It won’t stop growing, it won’t stop calling attention to itself even though I want to disappear. My body sneaks up on me from behind and knocks unexpectedly at my door. It wants to be let in, wants me to open myself up to it although I am still not considering doing so. Sometimes it appears as a little toe or gapes at my birthmarks, it protrudes from my chest as nipples or stirs like a hairy slug on my crotch. My body sits grumbling on my shoulder or crouches on my back just as I myself am always on my own back, butting my head against the inside of my skull, presumptuously straining towards speech.

  I am overflowing with language, brimming with Slovenian word-shapes I release into the void because I don’t know what to do with them. Sentences surround me like a haze that rises towards me from the books I read. Sentences like undigested word particles that move about freely, that I can exhale, that I can breathe out of my lungs again. Sentences like a membrane with which I can hold off anything that might be touched or should be said, but not by me. I am, as they say, a funny girl, who wears a mask to distract others from the melancholy that has spread inside me. For months, I feel like an animal caught in the process of molting, its head caught in the skin it’s shedding, unable to free itself. I could lash out if anyone came near me, but I don’t realize that.

  FROM the day Grandmother can no longer get out of bed, our farm is in a state of emergency. It’s the middle of winter. Mother has just given birth to her fifth child, a girl Father refuses to recognize as his own. I am outraged, but my protests don’t make the slightest impression on him.

  My second Grandmother, whom I call Bica, and Leni, one of my grandfather’s sisters, take turns visiting and helping out on the farm. Grandmother complains of shortness of breath. Her heart simply doesn’t want to go on, she says. In February, she sends for the priest to administer the extreme unction. Her cheeks are sunken, her skin finally molds itself exactly to the bones underneath. We know that the relatives and neighbors who drop in when they happen to be nearby are here to say goodbye to her. During the day, Father is busy clearing snow because the snow refuses to let up this February. Then the weather turns abruptly warm. The snow melts unusually quickly. By the end of March, the ground is dry. Traces of snow linger only in secluded corners and shadowy nooks, as if to spice the air with a hint of wintery cold. Classes, in the meantime, are taught in the mornings because politics finally decided to build an appropriate school.

  One morning in mid-March, I am called out of the classroom. I am told that my Grandmother has died. Even though I’ve been expecting this, I’m in a state of shock. I picture myself repeatedly rising up, inwardly, in horror. On the bus trip home, I can only think of how horrified I am.

  Grandmother is already laid out when I arrive home in the late afternoon. She lies somewhat elevated below a south-facing window in the living room. Her winding sheets are draped over the improvised trestle table that supports the casket. Mother’s sheets have been used in the arrangement, with her embroidery adorning the front of the bier. As usual, a small table has been placed in front of the casket with the silver-colored candleholders, the black crucifix, and two bowls of holy water to bless the dead. Two more candleholders have been placed near Grandmother’s head and their candles will not be lit until evening. Grandmother’s body is dressed in her Sunday best. She is wearing a black skirt and jacket and a silver-gray kerchief. Her pale hands, folded together with a rosary wound around them, stick up over her ribcage.

  I go up to the coffin and lay my hand on her cool, stiffened fingers. Through my tears, I study her face, which is particularly clear in its emptiness. I look at her body as if at a shuttered house and would like to make my presence felt, I would like to call out to her, but I remain behind, a poor hapless thing, among the living. While I weep, Grandmother enters into me as one of the departed. In my thoughts, she grabs the rake leaning against the side of the house and begins to rake the freshly mown grass into piles under the linden tree near our front door. She tries to convince me to slip a few stones into the backpack of a g
uest who wants to buy some of her smoked ham so that he’ll have something to carry. She taps me on the crown of my head with her long fingers and says, we get along just fine, don’t we?

  Father sits, blinded by tears, on the bench near the oven. Leni bustles back and forth between the kitchen and the pantry. She gives the impression of having taken charge of the household as she did once before, when Grandmother was arrested.

  The first mourners arrive. The living room gradually fills, those leading the prayer kneel before the bier and lean their elbows on the wooden bench. The prayer for the dead begins like a choral murmur, like a singsong in monotone.

  I have time to get used to having Grandmother’s dead body in the house. Mother is still at work in the stall and my baby sister is asleep in a carriage on the second floor over the bier. In the pauses between prayers, hot tea and cider is served with coffee cake. Steam and smoke rise from the large pots in the kitchen under Aunt Leni’s and Bica’s supervision. Father and Tonči want to keep vigil tonight, the rest of us should get some rest because there will be a crowd of mourners the next day. News of Grandmother’s death won’t reach most of our relatives until tomorrow, observes Tonči, who has taken on the task of letting everyone know.

  Early the next morning, the first wreaths are delivered and they are propped against the wall behind the casket. I go to Grandmother’s body before breakfast. For a moment, I have the feeling that she had slept through the night like the rest of us and has only just passed. Mimi, a neighbor, is sitting on the wooden bench, staring fixedly at the dead woman. Tears as round as peas roll down her cheeks in a slow sequence and drip from her chin onto her hands. Since I first met her, I have been struck by Mimi’s powerful hands that form a whole with her sturdy body. I found your grandmother in the barrack right after she’d crawled out from behind the boxes where she had hidden. She looked so pitiful, I barely recognized her. For a few moments, Mimi’s tears seem to fall faster. Mimi had been transferred to Ravensbrück from the girls’ concentration camp in Uckermark and was told to go to block six, where they were all politicals. There she ran into my Grandmother and other neighbors with whom she later made her way home. They arrived home together, Mimi tells me. I know, I say, Grandmother told me. Mimi wipes her eyes and cheeks with a handkerchief and resumes her earlier posture.

  I go into the kitchen, following the others’ voices. Leni is serving coffee and trying to convince Father that he should be happy to have another girl in the house because houses where girls are growing up are always full of people and are never dull, boys come to visit and you’re never home alone for long. Girls bring good luck, she says. Father gives a pained smile and dunks his coffee cake in his coffee. I also want you to send your children to school, Leni continues, when I’ve reached the point where your mother is now, I want educated people standing at my grave, you understand? You have to educate the young people, let them learn! It’s alright, Aunt, Father says. For a moment he looks like a little boy being scolded by his mother and actually seems to duck his head.

  The conversation bores me, and I secretly wish Leni would start in with her preaching again. And, in fact, after a pause she says, you can’t go on like this Zdravko, you can’t spend your life thinking only about dying. You have to stop! I know how it feels not to want to live any longer, but you’re going to destroy everyone around you. Father turns pale. He stands up and puts his coffee cup on the warm stove.

  You can’t even be left in peace at breakfast, he says and leaves. Leni turns to Bica, who was listening, and asks, am I right, I am right, aren’t I? Bica nods. After a pause she says, but my daughter is part of the problem, too. Why does she have to be so cold and turn her own husband against her.

  The women are busy in the kitchen all morning. Coffee cake is baked for the mourning guests, and the bread oven in the room where Grandmother is laid out gives off so much heat they’ve opened the window to keep the decomposition of the corpse from accelerating. During the day we are drawn to her and believe we have to make ourselves useful around the bier. The burning candles must be watched, the melted wax cleared away, the wick trimmed, the wreaths propped against the wall made secure, the winding cloth with the white lace smoothed, the water in the vases changed, the bowls of holy water refilled. The dead woman is our sweet babe that must be cared for and dressed up for the guests.

  Mother asks me to offer my room to relatives. Someone might want to stay overnight and we need to keep a few extra places to sleep ready for them, she says. I tell her I could sleep in Grandmother’s bed without giving it another thought.

  In the evening, the expected mourners begin to stream into the living room. Those who can’t find anywhere to sit in the room stand in the hall or in the open doorway and, craning their heads, try to keep the body in sight as they pray. The house seethes with the murmuring of the mourners crowding around the corpse. The mood is gloomy. It seems as if something were brewing deep inside of each of those present that looks like grief for the departed but is, in fact, a long suppressed sentiment, a knot of emotion that demands release. I wonder if the mourners are actually weeping for themselves. The dead woman allows them to lament without drawing attention to themselves, allows them to grieve without looking ridiculous.

  In the intervals between prayers, I serve tea and pastries.

  Later, after most of the mourners have left, a few of the more persistent take a seat in the kitchen. They drink coffee and prepare to keep vigil through the night.

  I go to the outbuilding, lie down in Grandmother’s bed and, feeling comforted, fall asleep immediately. Past midnight, I wake with a start. It suddenly occurs to me that I’m sleeping in a deathbed. The initial sense of familiarity evaporates at once. I consider jumping out of bed because I sense I won’t be able to cope with the waves of anxiety breaking over me. Premonitions of death wash over me, stiffness, numbness, carrion, the verb “to pass,” the raging sea with the ship of death, the black sail over the dead water, the quicklime, too much to bear. Through the window, I can see the brightly lit kitchen in the main house and the living room illuminated with the glow of the candles. I put on my clothes and step outside. The night is clear, the clouds swept from the sky with its bright, twinkling stars. Three men stand below the house with their backs to me, peeing. They’re talking and do not hear me coming. As I get closer, I recognize Father with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. Stanko is telling them that whenever he sees a cigarette glimmer in the dark, a firefly flutter past, or even someone strike a match, it’s always a shock for him, because it reminds him of the partisans who smoked in the dark. Suddenly, in the night, the partisans would be standing behind his parents’ house or behind his back. To him, those faint gleams were signs that things could get serious again, that they would have to see to the wounded or offer provisions.

  Yes, well, Father says and spits, are you coming back inside with us?

  No, Stanko answers. He wants to go home and marvel at the peaceful night. He says goodnight, not before adding that I am probably also one of those who startles people.

  Father brings cider up from the cellar and goes into the kitchen with Sveršina and me. I can’t sleep in Grandmother’s bed, I say to explain why I’m awake. The mood in the kitchen has lifted. Cyril sits at the table with Leni, rubbing his hands, because he won at cards. A loud snoring comes from my room over the kitchen. That’s my wife, Cyril says, she’s asleep in your bed. At home she snores so loud you can hear her out on the street. Sveršina slides in behind the table and says, since Zdravko isn’t allowed to play cards he’d like to take the opportunity to ask Leni how it was when she took over the farm. I can tell you about that, too, Father says. What is it you want to tell, Leni interrupts Father, you were such a mess when we told you your mother had been arrested that you threw yourself on the ground in front of my house and started eating the grass. Do you remember? Leni asks. Father answers no. There you go! A week after they tortured you, your mother was arrested. It was too much for you. I
can still see you as a ten-year-old boy, Leni says, I know how you were doubled up with cramps.

  I am suddenly wide-awake. What happened? I ask. Well, they hanged him, Leni says. Who, I want to know. Your father, she says. How come? I ask because nothing else occurs to me. Tell her about it, Leni says to Father, for whom the conversation is now uncomfortable. He scratches his head and says, they just wanted to know if Grandfather had joined the partisans and if he came home now and then, that’s all. What do you mean, that’s all? I ask. The police came from Eisenkappel to our farm, very early, I took care of the cows before going to school, they gathered around me in a circle, down there, by the mill. They asked about Grandfather and if I knew when he was coming home, Father recounts looking around at us to see if we even want to hear his story. He sees my astonished expression and continues. After I protested several times that I didn’t know anything, the police officers took ropes out of their knapsacks and tied one around my neck. Then they hanged me from a branch, a branch on the walnut tree that stood next to the mill. They pulled me up with the rope until I started to faint and then let me down again. Then they pulled me back up, three times in a row. Then Grandmother ran out of the house and begged them to let me go, she begged them to let me go for God’s sake because I still had to go to school. Ain’t gonna make it to school, the police said and went up to the house and turned everything upside down. After that, they took him to the Čemers’ farm, Father recalls, they’d just arrested Johi Čemer and beat him so badly that Father couldn’t bear to look at him. One police officer spoke to him in Slovenian and told him that he would beat the two of them even worse if they didn’t tell the truth, they should just finally tell the truth. All day long, they dragged him and Johi to one bunker after another that had been betrayed to them, but they didn’t find any partisans. At two in the morning, they brought him to the police station in Eisenkappel and let him sleep on the bare ground. They threw me a blanket, but that was it, Father says. In the morning they took me to another room and hung me up on a hook in the wall, a kind of clothes hook. Then a police officer beat me with a whip, Mother of God, Father says, beating a child with a whip. It was a thick whip with lots of cords. As the officer was beating him, he kept asking if Grandfather was at home. But I didn’t say a thing, Father announced. So they let him go. The police officer told him Mici had to report to the station. Then I ran like the devil. Mother met me on the way home. I was beaten black and blue, all over my face and my legs. I was terrified, Father says looking a little surprised that he spoke so long.