Sul Campo Del Mare - Vilenica

V2-2010.PM52576/13/100, 12:14 PMSuzana TratnikOil(Excerpt)The girl stood in the middle of the workshop on the ground floor of a largetwo-storey house. The workshop seemed to have been built first and the livingquarters upstairs, still unpainted and stairless, added later. Her motherand the hostess climbed up the wooden planks laid from landing to landing.Walking on the planks instead of a staircase with a bannister reminded thegirl of a nightmare in which she was forced to jump from balcony to balcony,or dive from the terrace of a skyscraper, as if that was possible. But her motherneither tried to make her walk upstairs nor picked her up to carry her. Thetwo women hit on the idea that the child had better stay in the workshop withthe men, who were enjoined to take care that she would not stray near theshaft above which the car under repair was parked. Then they withdrew forlong hours to the dizzying floor upstairs, which was reserved for adult womenalone, as it seemed to the child deserted in the middle of the workshop. Socialisingwith the workshop owner and with her own father was, of course,out of the question. They were engrossed in their work on the dismantled carabove the black shaft. As soon as the girl came too near a tool or machine oilcontainer, or took a step toward one of the four walls lined with tool-ladenshelves, the two mechanics, roused for a moment, would wave their spannersat her in irritation, signalling her to move away at once, but otherwise theytook no notice of their surroundings. They examined the engine closely, dismantledit one way and another, took up individual parts, turned them aroundand whistled through their teeth on discovering a serious defect or sloppinessof their predecessors. People will tinker with something all day long andeven go to work for one single purpose: to discover mistakes. They’re impatientuntil they’ve found some, the girl reflected. And when they do, they becomeso wrapped up in them that they’re interested in nothing else at all.Until new defects turn up, that is.Every now and then the girl would edge toward the black shaft, on thestairless side of course, stopping before the mechanics could notice that shewas not standing still all the time. Then she would edge toward the tool shelves,testing herself again in her quiet game of progressing toward the workshopedges. She won the first round, coming close enough to the shelves to snatchfrom the first a cute, greasy little can filled with machine oil. Just as imperceptibly,she managed to return to the centre of the workshop. It was only whenshe was swinging the can, spilling a drop of oil on herself every now and then,that the men finally noticed her. They raised their worried heads from theengine, looked at each other, and smiled. Her father, waving his hand, told herto go ahead and play with the can as long as she didn’t touch other, moredangerous things. The little can was enticingly dirty, as were all things in workshopsand in the streets. Her mother certainly wouldn’t let her stand in themiddle of the workshop swinging a greasy can. But as the women were upstairsdrinking coffee, the girl had the opportunity to make a striking discovery.If she gripped the can tight and swung it forcefully around the axis of her257