Dušan Šarotar

Now that everything has settled down, as among brothers, and the
last birds flew away far into the heart of the country, it all appeared
all the more unreal. Poppies blossomed in unmowed acacia
groves, the stone glowed in the early summer sun, the bees grazed
elder blossoms and the water of the forgotten brook flowed
tenaciously away into the unknown. Everything was as it had
always been, and yet; in that tiny grey cloud floating in the
afternoon stillness, there was something about it that had to
disturb the attentive eye. All that seeming loftiness, false absence
sketched into this beautiful landscape, bore witness of pain, of the
loneliness of man who created these perfect colours.

Translated by Janko Lozar

The dull and steady tapping first disturbed a vagabond lying in a
hayrack on the edge of the wood, then the hand of a boy halted,
secretly caressing his mistress, in a secluded house a child shrank
under his blanket, listening to the heartbeat of a plush doll,
someone’s hair suddenly stood on end when going for a piss in his
nightclothes in the backyard, the dull and steady tapping disturbed
an old Jew, who dreamt of festive bread, a hunter, setting out for
poaching, laid down his gun, a priest, just before getting up,
covered his head with his dress in fear of the church clock
breaking down, even the ill and those in need of rest were waking
up in fear, thinking that the last hour was drawing near, at the bar
the last party stood up after hobnobbing all through the night, and
stopped dead in the middle of drinking someone’s health on
hearing the dull and steady sound of tapping. It was at the break of
dawn, even before the baker took the very last loaf of bread out of
the oven, at the moment when the faint light painted the sky grey,
it was then that someone recognized the dull and steady tapping
and said that someone was sharpening his scythe.

Translated by Janko Lozar

The elders used to say that years ago, when winters were still
white, harsh and deep, a silky wind would howl, taking away all
those who trudged the white field, and that when the summers
were still long, hot and high, with soil glowing into the night, dry
winds would blow, drying up every throat. Even the spring had a
wind of its own, carrying invisible life over the meadows and
woods, bedewing every eye and softening the heart, they would be
strikingly expressive about the autumn wind, it was that rustling
wind carrying the horn of plenty, intoxication, as well as dying
away, dreams and rotting. Now that the imagination of the elders,
who were able to invoke birth and death, rapture and especially
that inconceivable and sombre yearning, resembling the sluggish
river current, in just few words, is slowly but surely becoming
extinct, it is also the feel for the wind that is dwindling away. Only
the rare few, if anyone at all, can still give ear to the more and more
dull and nameless sway of the wind hopelessly searching for souls
to resonate in them once again.

Translated by Janko Lozar

When you’re not here and return ever so rarely, you feel that
nothing ever changes here. You can still feel the bygone wind
swaying balloons on Sundays, spreading the fragrance of corn on
the cob and gingerbread from behind the old church. You carry
within you images of witty old men and sparkling eyes of old
women in their old-fashioned blouses. Their clenching wooden
hands watching over tiny purses where they keep a penny for the
mass and another one for the candy. Lonely elderly ladies,
gathered for the sermon, marvel at children and their boisterous
playing at cat and mouse among the crowd. Beside the road on the
other side, market stalls with black dresses, water pistols, plastic
jewellery and watches running on batteries. With gipsies behind
the desks, dressed in their Sunday’s best, counting money with
cigarettes hanging from their mouths. From the speakers, hanging
down the trees, a dull voice spreads, disturbing no one, least of all
those looking around for children lost in the crowd. In the first row
someone mourns the loss of his relative, and on the other side men
stand under a tree drinking their beer, behind the church boys chat
bashfully with girls from the neighbouring village, high above in
the belfry pigeons sit about, bobbing their tiny little heads as if
they were the only ones who understood the words carried by the
wind into the sky.

Translated by Janko Lozar

There is no echo here, and nothing returns. Here everything slowly
drifts towards the horizon. Only now and then someone would
slip out that he saw the river stopping, slowing down its eternal
current and for a moment, as if lost in thoughts, turning against the
current. They say that’s where whirlpools arise. All that is above,
the shimmer of light, the shadows of clouds, is pulled down
towards the dark and cold ground. And all that the river has carried
and hid in itself for a long time suddenly floats to the surface.
Those who have ever witnessed such beauty know they have to
keep quiet about it.

Translated by Janko Lozar