A Swarm of Dust. Evald Flisar

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

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