themselves. They were so light and thin, just skin and bones like me. They almost didn’t weigh anything … when they attacked, if the wind picked up speed, they would go flying over the edge of the field with the ball … If I compared them to the Falcons’ team across the train tracks in Moste! The way those guys marched up the embankment, well-fed, each of them carrying a soccer ball under his arm, with their captain out in front, the whole team in their pale pink uniforms contrasting vividly against the blue sky … The Salesian Home was as much home to gawky boys and girls as the new church next-door and the movie theater it contained. They always showed movies from all different times there … black and white ones, old-fashioned sepia ones, modern ones in color. And always two at a time: an adventure movie and a comedy, a detectivestory and a tragedy, an operetta and a serious drama … If I had a spare dinar, I would go sit in their big, red auditorium … The Salesian boys and girls acted like they owned the whole building. They ran around the place with bunches of keys to various main doors and side doors, to cabinets and closets, entrances and exits and various stairways … They didn’t behave like some closed little society that doesn’t let in any outsiders, but they did act as though they were themselves a bunch of Errol Flynns, Mickey Rooneys and Shirley Temples, day after day entertaining the public from the screen in the big auditorium … They had their own little rooms or classrooms with benches upstairs, where they studied, played and ate snacks that were brought up to them in laundry baskets … I couldn’t have joined them. One day I listened to them talking out on the soccer field. They were talking about sports and goals, about Biblical parables and piety in church … in fact it was neither the one nor the other, but some cross of the two. It was stupid and hypocritical.
Ham’s assistant lived in the butcher’s courtyard, in a little room over the stable. He was an Eagle, a member of the Slovene Lads. His red-stitched brown uniform, belt and hat with an impressive eagle’s feather hung from the wall. He played a small drum in the Slovene Lads’ brass band, and in the afternoons or evenings he would practice with his drumsticks on a piece of felt that he set over the drumhead, in order not to make too much noise. I told him that in the drumming school in Basel the beginners first practice on wooden footstools. That seemed to really interest him. He let me bang out all of Vogel Gryff … the introductory march of mardi gras in Basel. Only the piper was missing, soI whistled along … He was really impressed with the rhythm, because it conveyed the melody even without the winds. He tried it himself and mastered it in no time … I went to visit Jože a number of times. You got to his room by a stairway … He was a nice, honest guy from a farming family. He trusted me and I him. There was a picture of his girl, Tončka, on his night table. He had Vati make a choker for her out of lamb’s hide. He had a stack of other photographs showing him with his band. He kept an army style revolver on the shelf in his wardrobe. A formidable caliber. He had brought it back from his service in the army. It was wrapped in a thousand sheets of newspaper. He let me hold it. I spun the barrel, causing the hammer to go “click! click!” With the bullets that he kept in the box next to it, I could have ripped the whole room to shreds and put holes in all the chimneys … Mr. Ham made a little fun of Jože, especially on Sundays when he would dress up in his Eagles uniform and, with his drum in a sling on his side and his drumsticks in a holster on his belt, head off to practice or a meeting of the Slovene Lads in town. But because he was such a good worker, it wouldn’t have occurred to Ham to fire him … He and Ham worked so well together, you would have thought they were both
Ham’s assistant lived in the butcher’s courtyard, in a little room over the stable. He was an Eagle, a member of the Slovene Lads. His red-stitched brown uniform, belt and hat with an impressive eagle’s feather hung from the wall. He played a small drum in the Slovene Lads’ brass band, and in the afternoons or evenings he would practice with his drumsticks on a piece of felt that he set over the drumhead, in order not to make too much noise. I told him that in the drumming school in Basel the beginners first practice on wooden footstools. That seemed to really interest him. He let me bang out all of Vogel Gryff … the introductory march of mardi gras in Basel. Only the piper was missing, soI whistled along … He was really impressed with the rhythm, because it conveyed the melody even without the winds. He tried it himself and mastered it in no time … I went to visit Jože a number of times. You got to his room by a stairway … He was a nice, honest guy from a farming family. He trusted me and I him. There was a picture of his girl, Tončka, on his night table. He had Vati make a choker for her out of lamb’s hide. He had a stack of other photographs showing him with his band. He kept an army style revolver on the shelf in his wardrobe. A formidable caliber. He had brought it back from his service in the army. It was wrapped in a thousand sheets of newspaper. He let me hold it. I spun the barrel, causing the hammer to go “click! click!” With the bullets that he kept in the box next to it, I could have ripped the whole room to shreds and put holes in all the chimneys … Mr. Ham made a little fun of Jože, especially on Sundays when he would dress up in his Eagles uniform and, with his drum in a sling on his side and his drumsticks in a holster on his belt, head off to practice or a meeting of the Slovene Lads in town. But because he was such a good worker, it wouldn’t have occurred to Ham to fire him … He and Ham worked so well together, you would have thought they were both
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