A Swarm of Dust Read online

  Geder was known to be a freak, in his solitude he read books, he was educated up to a point, but he looked down on the others in the valley. The farmers did not like him. They talked about him, discussed his personal affairs and passed on gossip. At the same time, they were afraid of him, probably because he always behaved in an arrogant fashion, often ignoring them. The priest knew the valley well, he knew that the soul of the farmer was not a complex thing. In every arrogant person the farmer sees something higher, something more powerful and hates the person because he also fears him. The priest knew that Geder was no exception, for there was no one in the valley who liked him. Whoever did something that raised him in the eyes of others became the subject of envy.

  In the countryside it was impossible to do anything that elevated you in the eyes of others. Above all, no one should do anything spiritual, whatever it might be. Everything was strictly determined, everything confirmed by ancient customs. If someone came back from Germany, having worked day and night, and distributed among the neighbours some third class rags that he supposedly bought there, he would be talked about everywhere; people would know him, would talk about him at every opportunity, but all would regret they were not in his shoes. It needs to be acknowledged that this man would not be liked at all – quite the opposite: they would not like to see him, for he would remind them of his money and the awareness that this money was not theirs would bring about intolerable suffering! If someone were to criticise something publicly and was bold enough to revolt against the municipal bureaucrats, in other words if he was less cowardly than the others, he would not become a hero in their eyes – he would be a fool. And if the bureaucrats then took their revenge against him, then people would laugh, voicing their satisfaction at the fact that he brought it upon himself.

  The priest knew that on the sly, everyone delighted in the misfortunes of those close to them, they were envious of anyone who had a measure of wheat more than them. And he also knew that they had no respect for him. The women brought him gifts, they helped him one way or another, they went to mass, but for them he was just a figure embodying age-old traditions, he wasn’t a real person. He always had the feeling that they saw in him something self-evident, as self-evident as the fact that wheat ripens in the summer and not the autumn.

  The priest did not contradict Geder’s opinion, even though he thought somewhat differently. Or at least, it seemed to him that he thought somewhat differently. At the same time, he often had to acknowledge that he saw the valley in its true colours precisely through Geder’s words. He knew the peasant mind, but he never found the courage to condemn it. And if he were to contradict Geder’s words, he would have to speak in its defence. But he was incapable of that, for with each year that went by he was more disappointed in his parishioners. The years had made him accustomed, and he had accommodated to the nature of the valley so that his disappointment was not apparent. In Geder’s discourse he often felt undertones of guilt, as if with the fury that Geder poured on the valley he was excusing his solitude, which the priest knew was not voluntary, but forced upon him by circumstances. But he did not delve into this, for he feared what might come to the surface; he satisfied himself with shallow conversations that risked nothing.

  The farmers who knew that Geder had a low opinion of them defended themselves. You, Geder, they said, you say that we farmers are worth no more than dung, that we are lazy and cowardly. But tell us: are you any different? Or are you perhaps not the worst of all! You always put yourself above us, but who are you, what do you have? Your house is falling down around your ears, we can see that from the valley, you have only one cow and its ribs are sticking out, you buy a pig in the winter for slaughter because you don’t have your own, your hens perish, your fields are full of weeds, you are dirty, and yet you look upon us as dung!

  The priest knew that much of this was true and yet he often took Geder’s part, almost as if he wished to apologise to him for something. Thus he had got used to such thoughts, which he had taken for his own in the firm belief that they grew from his own experience. Perhaps because, by some strange coincidence, Geder always confirmed what had grown in the priest’s own heart but dared not come to the surface until supported by Geder’s words.

  They also talked about faith. Geder said that he did not believe in the God that the priest served up in church.

  ‘It seems to me that there is a God, but not as described by you and the Bible,’ he said. ‘But in spite of that I think we can talk about faith, or precisely because of that. If I believed in your God, we could deal with this in church, don’t you think? But as far as this valley is concerned: are you convinced that all these churchgoers are really believers? A funny question, I know. You would say it was heretical. But I have an idea – such ideas are called theories, I read that somewhere – I have a theory that none of these people believe in God, but they believe more in the habit of believing. They pray and go to church only because that’s what their parents and grandparents did, and that’s what they do everywhere. These people do not live, Father. These people are because it is the habit that they are and they are what the habit is. 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, e
ven 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, the pines began to sway and the ropes began to pull the house hither and 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 sha
pe 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.