A Handful of Sand. Marinko Koscec

immediately invest any gains in opulent meals and unlimited quantities of wine. This regularly resulted in cycles of drunkenness, lamenting, lifeless staring at the ceiling, and promises that it wouldn’t happen again. No one knows why–whether perhaps it was the return of repressed horrors from the concentration camp, but he came up with the idea of spending some of his earnings on hunting gear. The only photograph I have of him, the only one he left for posterity, shows him in that uniform with a green velvet hat, brilliantly polished knee-high boots, a bulging cartridge belt and a rifle over his shoulder. He’d actually never been hunting before buying the stuff, nor did he for several years afterwards. He showed off in the gear in vain, dreaming of a mountain of feathered and furry delicacies. One day he finally joined a hunting party and went out for some kill. When he took aim at a flock of wild pigeons, the cartridge exploded in the barrel and blew his face off.

      Thanks to his connections, Father managed to have one family evicted and then the other. Finally he bought the house from the government. But now it was too big for the two of us alone, and too rich in ghosts.

      * * *

      Sorrow began to accumulate in me at a very early stage. I didn’t call it that straight away, and even later I only used that word as a blanket term for things whose exact reason and origin I couldn’t discern. When there was pressure from the outside I found the strength to resist; but in periods of peace, when the latest breaches had been stopped, I was plunged into an unjustified mood of dejection and listlessness, which revealed the extent of my weakness.

      Money, together with the absence of my father, was the central theme in our house for as long as I can remember. Both issues lay at the root of every conversation although we were at pains not to mention them; perhaps for that reason they guided our every step like a hidden magnetic pole. Mother would never borrow money even when there was someone she could have borrowed from. She was a staunch proponent of belt-tightening and making-do. We repaired cracked glass with adhesive tape and pretended that the loss of the picture on the TV screen didn’t bother us. The TV was reduced to a radio, but so what? Mother did the laundry by hand for months until we’d saved up enough for the repair man to come. I learnt to deal with the plumbing and electric wiring without any instruction, which I definitely should have been proud of. Yet I came to hate that house with which we lived in symbiosis. We were vitally addicted to it, and it mirrored our inner states and limitations, never hesitating to show its disdain for all our efforts to retard its ageing. As restless as it was thankless, it added fresh cracks to the collection on the walls, rescrawled its mouldy graffiti in corners only just repainted, left rust on metal, and heralded each spring with clogged drains, peeling woodwork and a leaking roof. Selfish and ungrateful like a pre-pubescent child, it demanded constant attention to restrain even just the outward signs of decay and made us pay dearly for any neglect. And outside there was always something crying out to be pruned, cut, dug, heaped up or incinerated, and at the very least there was sweeping. Together with the everyday martyrdom of dishes and laundry, shopping and garbage, that cycle of Tantalian torment, neatly tailored to human size, demanded to be borne until it had consumed every last ounce of joie de vivre.

      As more and more tasks fell into my responsibility, my desire for revenge also grew: to leave the house to the mercy of the elements, weeds and pests. I rejoiced at the thought of camping amid the ruins. And the more sickly Mother became and the less she was able to look after things herself, the harder she took their imperfection. Her illness, combined with life’s tragic twists and turns, seemed to mellow her and she lost her imperious ways; I tried all the more to gratify her and anticipate her remarks, aware of how much it pained her to be losing control of things. In her bedridden last months I also read a mournful rebuke in her eyes for things she couldn’t see from her bed, like the matted cobwebs up on the first floor and all that happened in my life outside the house.

      Not that I grew up in great poverty. True, of all the literature I devoured I was most inspired by descriptions of fantastic feasts and the names of exotic dishes I could only imagine, but I had almost everything the other kids my age had. The only difference was that I didn’t have them at the same time, and that delay often hurt, but I learnt to live with it. My clothes, although seldom new, were always neat, and every year there was just enough to spare for me to go on summer holiday. Mother didn’t consider renouncing hers to be a sacrifice at all; she’d seen more than enough of the world.

      My first proper sexual experience was at the seaside during my studies. There had been inconclusive attempts prior to that, more because it was something others had long boasted about, than due to any true desire on my part. Nor is it really correct to call them attempts because the initiative came exclusively from the other side; but the girls whose curiosity I evidently aroused gave up on me one after another as soon as they saw beneath the surface. Later, too, I never got anywhere near flirting, although I was strongly attracted to women. One could say painfully attracted: I craved for their feminine curves, their softness and warmth; but I never made any moves.