A Swarm of Dust. Evald Flisar
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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,