Sul Campo Del Mare - Vilenica

V2-2010.PM52596/13/100, 12:14 PMSuzana Tratnikshoulder, not a drop spilled from the large upper opening. Which seemedquite unbelievable.But a mere few months later it would be the child’s mother who stood inthe middle of the workshop, her eyes reddened, trying to draw attention. Theworkshop foreman would bolt up the planks for the lunch always fixed by hiswife in the upstairs living space. The child’s father, on the other hand, wouldgo on rummaging through the spanner kit.“You’ve got to come home so we can talk this through,” the mother wouldstart, shocked but still calm.“I can’t, I’ve got heaps of work,” the father would reply, entrenching himselfin the engine over which he was leaning.“But you can’t just leave after seven years of marriage!”At this moment, the father would finally locate the right spanner and startbusily screwing around the engine. There would be a sense of the conversationstalling.“Come home, will you!”No answer.“Come home.” The mother’s voice would crack and she would edge, imperceptibly,toward the black shaft. “The child’s ill!”“Take her to the doctor, then.”The mother would return home by herself and tearfully repeat for days tocome how her marriage, once so solid, had suddenly hit the rocks. Her womenneighbours, too, would try to determine why such things should happen. Theywould often closet themselves upstairs, throw tarot cards bought in Austria,turn their coffee cups upside down, and generally try to divine in all wayspossible why families keep falling apart. It would seem quite unbelievable toeveryone. At one point the mother would embrace the child, enfolding her inthe smell of coffee wafting from her mouth, wailing: “Your father told me totake you to the doctor, as if he didn’t care a jot about you.” The girl would bedisturbed by the wetness of her mother’s cheeks, although secretly relievedthat she was in fact so well that it had been months since she last needed tohang around the overheated children’s waiting room, always hoping that theremight be no needles.“It’s all those sluts’ fault,” the first neighbour would repeat. “It’s always thesluts’ fault.” And the women would pause for a few moments, apparently satisfiedthat they had detected a defect in marriage again. To the girl alone, everythingwould seem the same as before. Sluts seemed to her like little oil cans,unclean and threatening, but yielding nothing at all once you grasped themand swung them around the shoulder axis.“Don’t touch greasy stuff,” the mother told the girl, unexpectedly comingfrom upstairs to re-knot the wool scarf firmly around her neck because theworkshop was cold. “Because I can’t ever wash it out.” The girl had grownused to no longer nodding assent at bits of advice or orders as nobody expectedit of her, and her oil can was tucked away under her coat. Besides, shecould not always tell which stuff was greasy. All she knew was that some wasnot, or at least should not be, for instance soil, a piece of fresh bread, one’s259