JANKO POLIC KAMOY
317
is spinning around me, I am spinning around the furniture, the furniture is
spinning around us. I feel somebody's hand on my shoulder, somebody's
glove in my hair, somebody's rustle in my ear, somebody's perfume in my
nose.
My eyes are burning.
My godmother is pulling me close, the black, wide, flimsy arm of her
dress around my neck. She is comforting me and I am still crying. And my
cheeks are burning...
.I
cannot see her, but I know very well what she is
like. She has a full figure, like my mother, but her eyes are darker, her hair
black. Her face is somewhat paler, her step both light and firm. She has a
crooked smile. And only one of her eyes smiles. She holds her head bent
to one side. She is very much like my mother and everybody says they are
like sisters, but now I feel she is something completely different. I cry, but
not with anger. She mentions my sister and says to me: "Poor darling!" I
moan even more. And she holds me closer, comforts me more silently,
strokes me more gently, kisses me more warmly. My face is red from cry–
ing, from shame and happiness. And the more I cry, the more I am
ashamed. And the more I am ashamed, the happier I am. And I can only
kiss her hand-white and soft and cold-with my red and warm lips.
She is leaving. Her thighs rise alternately. She has pulled up her skirts.
Her black stockings and her white neck both shine under the lamp. Only
her scent is left behind....Why can't I sleep now? Why are they making
me eat supper? How foreign and unbearable are now my brothers, my
father, even my mother! ...And how happy I'd be if my godmother were
my mother. ...
No one is crying today. My brothers did not cry at all. They say very
little. Milan hasn't eaten all day. Joso-very little. I dared not eat either,
even though I was terribly hungry.
My mother tried to make me eat, but I just waved her off haughtily
and gloomily, like Milan did. Now Milan is my ideal because everyone
agrees (Red Pepper and the milkmaid too) that he loved my sister dearly
and that he is a very handsome and serious young man. Mother and Father
eat a little. It's all right for them to eat (that's how I figure it) because they
cried. I cried most of all, but nevertheless I dared not eat until Father
became angry.
I am rather uncomfortable. I don't know what my parents, my broth–
er and neighbors think of me now. Have I shown that I loved my sister
inillleasurably and that I am terribly sad because of her death? I believe I
have. My godmother must have told them. But at the same time, I believe
I have not shown them at all that I am no longer a child. If I could smoke
silently like Milan or look down on my plate and drink like Joso....They
