2023-09-08 17:53:00
“In the spring a young woman moved into the ground floor apartment.” Considering that a crystal bowl proudly presented in the first act is likely to break at the end, then this harmless first sentence in Drago Jančar’s new novel does not bode well. It has something to do with the pistol that was passed around at the beginning of the story and is later fired.
The Slovenian author once again sets the characters and plot in his hometown of Maribor. Twelve-year-old Danijel describes the arrival of the beautiful Helena, whom the boy immediately takes a look at. He peeks into the apartment through the gap between the lace curtains on her front door and sees Pepi, the good-natured and cumbersome plumber, placing his size 48 shoes next to the sofa. A few weeks later, whenever Pepi is out doing an errand, a certain Ljubo with a mustache and a leather jacket will rattle into the street on his motorcycle, go to the disco with Lena (and probably to bed too) and everyone in the neighborhood will do the same Tear your mouth. Since she is basically engaged to Pepi.
Jančar confidently embeds this love triangle – it will end badly – in Yugoslavia after the Second World War. The crumple zone between the socialist fatherland, reckonings, Tito worship, tradition and what is called fate is the specialty of the winner of the Austrian State Prize for European Literature 2020.
Danijel has to swear the pioneer oath at school; his father was in a concentration camp and spends nights at home meeting with his partisan friends in the kitchen; his mother takes him to see the Capuchins. He learns something like philosophical education from the retired history teacher Fabjan, and stories from the Bible from Father Aloysius. Drago Jančar uses the information that comes to Danijel to create an ingenious storytelling method. The twelve-year-old, as an observer of his friends of the same age, the adults and the events between spring and late autumn, dreams of faraway places and other perspectives.
And finally, the adult Danijel, as a first-person narrator, reflects on his role and the events of that time. In these passages the text shimmers like a mirage.
Book tip: Drago Jančar. When the world came into being. Translated by Erwin Köstler. Zsolnay, 270 pages, 27.50 euros.
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