A Swarm of Dust. Evald Flisar

thither. Cracks started to appear and then the house collapsed.

      Since then, they had avoided anything so ambitious. But the overcrowding was getting worse. It was not so bad in the summer, when they cooked outside and even slept outside, scattered through the woods, and there was no hunger then: there was always something to do for the farmers, the road was being widened, they did the odd bit of building, dug ditches, picked apples. Most were in Slavonia or Banat doing seasonal work. And there was blessed peace at home. Some wove baskets, made brooms and other objects, which the women then sold around the villages. They bred dogs and sold them, they also cut firewood and again there was work and bread. In the evenings they played their fiddles in village inns and at weekends at celebrations. Sometimes there would be bloody fights, but that was normal, that strengthened the positive atmosphere. In the summer the atmosphere in the gypsy settlement was always at its peak. They knew how to live so intensively, that they never gave the slightest thought to autumn.

      But the time came when the sun disappeared and darkness shrouded the valley, rain began to fall and cold crept across the land. Then they all huddled inside, and had to look for shoes, hats and warmer clothes, for there was no work anywhere, doors were closed to them, seasonal workers returned from the four corners of the wind, worn out, deadly weary, and overnight melancholy sneaked into the rooms where the kids clambered over each other, where it was smoky, dirty, sooty; women gave birth in the presence of men and children, and the rain mercilessly poured and found its way through the roof. At such moments, the inhabitants of the hamlet were gripped by an unusual calm, they spoke quietly, but at length and intensively, they hardly went anywhere, children scratched away at fiddles, school age children leafed through dog-eared exercise books. Then winter came, the schoolchildren got the right to shoes so they could get to school and back, while all the others had to hang around in their shacks, packed in like sardines. They sat smoking bad tobacco, patching, knitting, the whole time wondering how to get firewood, how to get cheap clothes and shoes, as well as the odd potato and other things.

      At that time three people appeared in the settlement. The man was incredibly big, with a hairy face, hands like bear’s paws, with his bulky shape reminiscent of a bear’s. On his back he carried three big bundles. He was panting so hard that the air whistled, on his tousled hair he had a torn hat, his eyes were enormous, whitish and bulging, as if they had been stuck to his face. With him were a woman and a very small boy. The woman, too, was loaded down with things. She was good-looking, of medium height and well built, with silvery black hair and eyes. She was probably approaching forty, certainly not more. The boy was probably about thirteen, but could have been older, for his irregular and almost ugly face showed an unusual seriousness. His small, protruding eyes were reminiscent of a grown-up’s and sometimes showed a kind of absence; if you were to look into his face for a long time it might make you shudder. The boy was also carrying two full bags on his back.

      Everyone gathered outside, since it was unusual for a stranger to appear there and this little group looked particularly interesting. Then the big bear asked who was the ‘boss’ and they all pointed to Pišta Baranja. The bear announced that they were gypsies from far off, that their name was Hudorovec, that where they had lived until now there were many gypsies named Hudorovec, that they had left because … life there was strange and so on. The bear spoke a foreign dialect that the gypsies could barely understand. They looked at him and did not particularly believe him since this Hudorovec, which is what he claimed to be, did not look at all like a gypsy, for he was as big as an old beech tree and they never grew so big, they were small and skinny and well proportioned, while this one had incredibly long legs and a short torso, and his face was very unusual, long, oval, a bit like a pear. The wife, on the other hand, was clearly one of them, you could see at first glance, and also the boy, if he didn’t look quite so strange.

      But suddenly Hudorovec began to speak Romany, for he realised no one understood his dialect. Immediately all their faces cleared, and everyone gathered round and shook their hands, for this was a convincing proof: no one but a gypsy could speak Romany, that was crystal clear. Questions began to rain down on them, Pišta Baranja invited them inside, they put down their stuff, one word led to another and Hudorovec said that … if no one had any objections … if it wasn’t too much of an imposition … that they might stay here, see how it went and so on. Why not, they all replied, stay, there’s room for three, they’d work, the summer wouldn’t be so bad, they could make their own house, there was plenty of wood and more than enough mud. And so it ended up that Pišta Baranja let them have some space in the second extension to his house, they put all their stuff there, and they ate with the Baranjas and sometimes with the Horvats.

      On the first day young Hudorovec accompanied the other school kids and from then on attended school regularly. Time passed. The community took in Hudorovec as one of their own, for they could see that he was a real gypsy – a little odd in his habits, it was true – but he had lived elsewhere and he would adapt, no problem.

      The sun returned, things began to blossom, trees and plants took on a lively green colour, and the first groups of gypsies began to leave the settlement. The Hudorovec family was there, eating with the others in turn, but they didn’t do a thing, they just settled in; the boy fought with the little Horvats, Baranjas and Šarkezis, the mother gossiped with the women, while the father was a strange one and spent most of his time wandering through the woods. All three of them had quite an appetite. And then Pišta Baranja called a meeting, a delegation went to Hudorovec and said … we’ve nothing against you, Hudorovec, you’re not in the way, you’re a gypsy like us and we’d give you the shirts off our backs … but build yourself a house, we’ll help you, and you have a woman to cook for you … it’ll be good for you and for us.

      And so they rambled on, it was difficult for them to say these things and they would have preferred not to, but they had no choice. They had noticed that there was a difference between them and Hudorovec, that he was very much his own man, and they became uncomfortable, for at these words Hudorovec did very little, they had seriously offended him, he frowned but he did not move, nor did he say anything. They were not prepared for such a reaction, they didn’t understand it. Hudorovec felt humiliated. But the others had experienced so many humiliations that they no longer felt new ones, and it was impossible to cause offence amongst them. And now Hudorovec was acting so oddly! It had never occurred to them that they might hurt his feelings, for they had only given him good advice. And yet he was being like this!

      After this conversation he stayed quiet for two days, he looked so disgruntled that his eyes bulged even more, he took to sitting in the woods, gasping for breath as if he had asthma or was carrying a heavy load. Then one day he reappeared and called his son. And they proceeded to move all the family’s possessions out into the open.

      The others stared: ‘Hudorovec, what the devil are you playing at, what’s wrong with you, man, we’re not throwing you out, take those things back inside!’ But Hudorovec said not a word and his eyes became sharper and brighter with satisfaction, for this was his idea of revenge. They all saw that the man was stubborn, defiant and that he could not be dealt with in a reasonable way, their way.

      Then he produced an axe from somewhere and began to carry it around, so that all the Baranjas, Horvats and Šarkezis could see it, and he did it without a grin, his face oddly distorted. The mother and boy used to sit among the trees the whole time. She would cook something in a pot and the boy would gather firewood. They kept whispering to each other, they spoke to no one else, and the community thought them strange, impossible to understand.

      Then one day the sound of an axe being used came from a nearby wood: Hudorovec and his son were cutting down trees. The wood lay below the top of the hill and spread across its slopes into the valley. To the left were some bushes above which stood the gigantic old chestnut tree. When a number of straight trees had been cut down, they moved to the other slope, across the stream and cut their way forward. Every evening they went down from the stand of beech trees, across the meadow and the stream and up into the woods. While the father swung his axe, the boy had to stand guard on the edge of the wood, which belonged to a local farmer, or so the Baranjas and Horvats said. The sound of trees being cut down continued to come from the woods. Then they dragged the timber into the valley, to the stream and beyond it to the settlement. It was hard work. The boy would have collapsed under the