A Swarm of Dust. Evald Flisar

      PART ONE

      There was a full moon. Through the sparse branches of the pine trees it cast its light among the buildings. The meadows beside the stream were a silvery grey. The whole landscape had been transformed into sharp-edged patches of light and dark. Janek spent a long time crouching at the lower edge of the woods, despite the unpleasant night chill and the constant, unfathomable feeling that his surroundings were strange in some special way.

      He stared at the sky. Hints of thoughts flashed through his brain, but he was unable to connect them. This strange state had overcome him the moment that the landscape began to seem unusual and his eyes drank in the visible objects. His feelings dragged him along. He saw the silvery meadow in the valley and the dark track of alder by the stream. He knew that was what he was seeing, but that was all he knew, his mind was somehow distant. Normally when he saw meadows and a stream he thought about something, objects aroused different associations that were either whole or fragmented and scattered, but always thoughts and impressions found their way through. He would skip from grass to stream, to trees, to children chasing each other among the trees, to felling trees, to scooping water from the stream, and all these thoughts and impressions triggered associations that swarmed within him.

      Now the mental state of young Hudorovec was completely different. It happened just after he was struck by the unusual colour of the meadows. This halted the flow of associations that would at any moment have engulfed him and he focused entirely on the meadows and their appearance. He began to soak up this appearance, he began to soak up the colour and he felt the silvery colour was coming closer to him. He could sharply smell the night chill. It was the dampness coming from the valley, the damp earth, the damp grass, the dampness of the lazily flowing water, damp bark, leaves damp with dew, the dampness of the air.

      And he heard a fox yelping in the woods, he heard the gentle wind moving the leaves in the treetops, slowly flowing through them and making them tremble. He felt how the wind swept across the damp grass, shaking it slightly, how it licked the clods of earth in the fields, how it slightly ruffled the surface of the stream, how it caused the tiny scales on the tree bark to tremble a little, how it flowed through the air. He felt the ruffled coat of the fox and its hoarse call, he felt the mossy ground beneath its paws, he felt the stickiness of the fat, slippery footbridge across the stream and the solidness of the ground beneath him.

      He felt the expanse of the world, its hollowness, its extensiveness, he felt the distance of the sky above him and the closeness of the earth and its objects, he felt the form, the hardness and softness of substances and things, he sensed the tone of the sounds rushing to his ears. And he smelt all of this: he smelt the sap of the trees, the smell of the earth, the spruce needles, the brushwood, he smelt the smoke, he felt how the water in the stream smelled of mud and acorns, he smelt the warm plumage of birds, he smelt the wood close to him, his clothes, his skin, he smelt the stench from the woods, he smelt sweat.

      Behind him, in the settlement, a radio began to play. He knew that Pišta Baranja had a radio, but he did not know this as a thought, but rather felt it in a particular way, like the self-­evident fact that water is wet and that your hand will also be wet if you plunge it in. That the radio he could hear belonged to Pišta Baranja was alive in him like something for which there was no other explanation; something self-evident that touched the edge of awareness like a shadow, but a distinct shadow. And so he only heard the music coming from the radio; it did not draw him into any associations in connection with the music, the radio, the settlement. For him, the sounds were movements of matter and he grasped them in the same way he grasped the colour of the meadows, the stench of dirt, the rustling of the wind.

      Getting up and moving towards the settlement was a highly complex process of sensory perceptions and movements of matter. Perhaps the cold played the main role, but he could not say so with any certainty. Among the feelings bursting and splashing within him, the feeling of coldness was ever more frequent; after first appearing of its own accord, it then began to attach itself to others, it pierced him with a feeling of dampness – with a feeling of the wind, with a feeling of the stickiness of a tree trunk, with a feeling of the yellow light – and when a dog barked above him in the settlement it also awoke in him a feeling of coldness. The earth beneath him soon lost its hardness and roughness, and changed into a feeling of coldness. And when his stomach grumbled he felt his body, he felt its substance, he felt his posture, his stillness, he felt the possibility that he might move, he felt the pulse within him. In the veins on his neck his blood pulsed, and he felt how it flowed and at the same time felt how coldness flowed through him. He got up and went towards the buildings.

      Of course, it wasn’t that simple, for when someone who has been sitting motionless suddenly moves it is likely that some idea came upon him and triggered the desire for movement. And when someone feels cold, it is natural to be aware of this and to think: it’s cold, better get moving. This didn’t happen in the case of Janek Hudorovec, since he didn’t move with any intention. Wave a stick at a dog and he will jump, offer a bunch of hay to a cow and it will move towards you, frighten a wolf and you should flee, for it will leap at your throat! Perhaps Janek Hudorovec instinctively retreated from the coldness, just as an animal drags itself towards a fire or its den. He acted under some kind of delusion, but in spite of this everything remained clear: objects and his perception of them. In the same way that he had felt cold, he now felt warmth, flowing beneath the bed cover.

      He was not aware of time, but when his mother entered the house he saw that the moon was still shining through the small window, illuminating part of the wall and floor, but not his bed, which was in darkness. His mother put down the basket in which she had just brought the potatoes, flour and bread that she brought every evening. Then she went to her bed, which was lit by the moon, knelt down, turned back the cover and with her right hand straightened the pillow. Then she took the basin that was leaning against the wall by the door and put it on the wooden bench. There was a slight metallic noise as she did so. Then the sound of water being poured from a jug. The moon shone on her and the corner where she was standing. She reached for her belt, unfastened buttons and began to undress. She hung her clothes on a nail hammered into the wooden wall; then she began to splash herself with water and wash her naked body. Janek could see her clearly, but now his mother’s naked body filled him with no more feeling than had the silvery meadow or the outline of the trees. He perceived her body as substance.

      The scent of soap reached him, he heard rubbing as his mother washed her