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by Lojze Kovacic

Genres: Biographical; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

The first volume of this three-part autobiographical series begins in 1938 with the expulsion of the Kovacic family from their home of Switzerland, eventually leading to their settlement in the father's home country of Slovenia. Narrated by Kovacic as a ten-year-old boy, he describes his family's journey with uncanny naiveté. Before leaving their home, he imagines his father's home country as something beautiful out of a fairytale, but as they make their way toward exile, he and his family realize that any attempt to make a home in Slovenia will be in vain. Confronted by misery, hunger, and hostility, the young boy refuses to learn Slovenian and falls silent, his surroundings becoming a social, cultural and mental abyss. 

Kovačič meticulously, boldly, and sincerely portrays the objective, everyday world; the style is clear and direct. Told from the point of view of a child, one memory is interrupted by fragments and visions of another. Some are innocent and tender, while others are miserable and ruthless, resulting in a profound and heart-wrenching description of a period torn apart by conflict, reflected in the author's powerful and innovative command of language.

Release date: January 28, 2020

Publisher: Archipelago

Print pages: 384

Sample

THE ITALIAN SOLDIERS would cook spaghetti and vegetable soup on mess vehicles that were parked in the courtyard of the casino. They doled some of it out to kids… Karel, Ivan, Andrej and I would run there with canisters… We would wait in the entryway next to the Rio Café until the soldiers in the courtyard had eaten their fill. Then the cook would call out that we could approach one of the kettles on the high flatbeds. The ladles they used were as big as helmets: our gallon containers had never held so much spaghetti and tomato sauce, or rice with big chunks of meat… Now, in addition to breakfast, at which we crumbled into our coffee white melba toast from the crates we’d brought home, we could also look forward to hearty and truly filling main meals at our table… Then the Ninth Army Corps of the Ljubljana Region issued a decree that by a certain date all inhabitants had to return any weapons, clothing or foodstuffs that they’d looted from the barracks of the former Yugoslav Army. Anyone failing to do so who was found to have such items in their possession after the two-week grace period had passed would be punished: 1; 2; 3… Vati and I hid the crates as best we could, under some rags and old clothes… No, we weren’t going to give up that glorious toast at any cost, not even under threat of the death penalty… Sadly I was no longer able to take it with me onto the street because there were spies everywhere, and we couldn’t let anyone, not even the most innocent person, know that we had government-issued supplies at home.
At that time, they began using machines to cut down the gigantic bronze statue of King Aleksandar that was surrounded by a railing in the Star Park… It had been barely a few months since the formal unveiling, which the young King Petar II had attended wearing the uniform of an air force lieutenant… Before that, our whole school had gone to watch them use pulleys to hoist parts of the monument onto its high marble cube of a pedestal… an enormous boot in a stirrup… the muscular hindquarters of the horse… the king’s gloved hand holding the reins… half of his head with a pince-nez and that narrow hat. Now all of that bronze lay around in scales of varying sizes or dropped onto the sand… 
I would go with Karel and Ivan to collect thorny-husked wild chestnuts off the roofs of the butchers’ sheds, which were also about to be demolished. Beyond the barracks, the tall columns and the denticulated roof of the new market were already going up, reaching from the Dragon Bridge to the Triple Bridge… From the river, its facade looked like a synagogue… The plans for it were by the same white-bearded, little man who had designed the chapels and a temple in the grove of the dead at Žale Cemetery… From the barracks to the fence posts of the new market, we could see Italian soldiers in the company of young women. There were market vendors, housemaids, salesgirls, all sorts of them… We crept to the edge of the flat roof in order to see… They would be hugging and kissing. Some of the girls would be pressing those dark, wavy haircuts to their breasts, while others would be trying to fend them off, so that the soldiers had to pick up the girls’ arms and put them around their necks… I felt sorry for the
poor girls, but not all of them were equally deserving of pity… Once we caught one sitting on the seat of a bicycle that was leaning against a fence, with an Italian soldier standing on a block of wood in front of her… Ivan practically burst out laughing. Karel and I had to stifle him with our hands… The girl on the bicycle was still pretty young, blonde, wearing a blue apron – she was probably from one of the fruit vending stands in the market… She had her legs lifted up. She had thighs like some statue, like columns, hair on her ass and fur up front all the way to her navel… The fur opened up… like a mailman’s pouch… Ivan couldn’t stifle his laughter. Idiot! The Italian glanced up… He had his trousers bunched at his feet like a basket… “Avanti!” he roared… and he grabbed onto his red grenade… We jumped to our feet and ran over the rooftops until we reached the Dragon Bridge… Somebody whistled to us. It was some other soldier who was walking between the sheds and signaling something to us… “Hey!” he shouted. He pointed to a barrack and made that gesture… Poking the index finger of his right hand into the gap formed by the thumb and index finger of his left… That meant fucking. Gestures like that didn’t suit grown-ups at all. He pointed toward the barrack again, and we nodded. He turned around, took one step, and then, as if suddenly realizing something, turned back around. “Arrividerci!” we waved at him… Although these weren’t real soldiers in any sense of the word… more like pranksters in their baggy, comedic uniforms… you still had to take them seriously, if only on account of the grenades they carried and their hot temper, much less so because of the carbines, which were more suited to cavalry than foot soldiers.