Suzana Tratnik was born in 1963 in Murska Sobota, in Slovenia. She obtained her BA in sociology from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, and her MA in gender anthropology from the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis in Ljubljana, where she lives and works as a writer, translator, and publicist. She published six collections of short stories: Pod ničlo (Bellow Zero, 1997), Na svojem dvorišču (In One’s Own Backyard, 2003), Vzporednice (Parallels, 2005), Česa nisem nikoli razumela na vlaku (Things I’ve Never Understood on the Train, 2008), Dva svetova (Two Worlds, 2010), and Rezervat (Reservation, 2012), two novels: Ime mi je Damjan (My Name is Damjan, 2001) and Tretji svet (Third World, 2007), the children’s picture book Zafuškana Ganca (The Hany Rattie, 2010), as well as a monodrama Ime mi je Damjan (My Name is Damjan, 2002), a radio play Lep dan še naprej (Have a Nice Day, 2012), and two expertises: one on the lesbian movement in Slovenia, and another on lesbian literature. She received the national “Prešeren Foundation Award” for Literature in 2007. Her books and short stories have been translated in about twenty languages, while she herself has translated several books of British and American fiction, non-fiction, and plays, including works from authors such as Judith Butler, Adrienne Rich, Leslie Feinberg, Michael Cunningham, Jackie Kay, Mary Dorcey, Katy Watson, Ian McEwan, Dennis Cooper, and Truman Capote.

 

OIL

By Suzana Tratnik

The girl stood in the middle of the workshop on the ground floor of a large two-storey house. The workshop seemed to have been built first and the living quarters upstairs, still unpainted and stairless, added later. Her mother and the hostess climbed up the wooden planks laid from landing to landing. Walking on the planks instead of a staircase with a banister reminded the girl 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 mother neither tried to make her walk upstairs nor picked her up to carry her. The two women hit on the idea that the child had better stay in the workshop with the men, who were enjoined to take care that she would not stray near the shaft above which the car under repair was parked. Then they withdrew for long hours to the dizzying floor upstairs, which was reserved for adult women alone, as it seemed to the child deserted in the middle of the workshop. Socialising with the workshop owner and with her own father was, of course, out of the question. They were engrossed in their work on the dismantled car above the black shaft. As soon as the girl came too near a machine part or container, or took a step toward one of the four walls lined with tool-laden shelves, the two mechanics, roused for a moment, would wave their spanners at her in irritation, signalling her to move away at once, but otherwise they took no notice of their surroundings. They examined the engine closely, dismantled it one way and another, took up individual parts, turned them around and whistled through their teeth on discovering a serious defect or their predecessors’ sloppiness. People will tinker with something all day long and even go to work for one single purpose: to discover mistakes. They’re impatient until they’ve found some, the girl reflected. And when they do, they become so 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 the stairless side of course, stopping before the mechanics could notice that she was 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 workshop edges. She won the first round, coming close enough to the shelves to snatch from the first a lovely greasy little can filled with machine oil. Just as imperceptibly, she managed to return to the centre of the workshop. It was only when she 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 the engine, looked at each other, and smiled. Her father, waving his hand, told her to go ahead and play with the can as long as she didn’t touch other, more dangerous things. The little can was enticingly dirty, as were all things in workshops and in the streets. Her mother certainly wouldn’t let her stand in the middle of the workshop swinging a greasy can. But as the women were upstairs drinking 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 her shoulder, not a drop spilled from the large upper opening. Which seemed quite beyond belief.

But a mere few months later it would be the child’s mother who stood in the middle of the workshop, her eyes reddened, trying to draw attention. The workshop foreman would bolt up the planks for the lunch always fixed by his wife in the upstairs living space. The child’s father, on the other hand, would go on rummaging through the spanner kit.

‘You’ve got to come home so we can talk this through,’ the mother would start, shaken but still calm.

‘I can’t, I’ve got heaps of work,’ the father would reply, entrenching himself in the engine over which he was leaning.

‘But you can’t just leave after almost thirteen years of marriage!’

At this moment, the father would finally locate the right spanner and start busily screwing around the engine. There would be a sense of the conversation stalling.

‘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 to come how her marriage, once so solid, had suddenly hit the rocks. Her women neighbours, too, would try to determine why such things should happen. They would often closet themselves upstairs, throw tarot cards bought in Austria, turn their coffee cups upside down, and generally try to divine in all ways possible why families keep falling apart. It would seem quite beyond belief to everyone. At one point the mother would embrace the child, enfolding her in the smell of coffee wafting from her mouth, wailing: ‘Your father told me to take you to the doctor, as if he didn’t care a jot about you.’ The girl would be disturbed by the wetness of her mother’s cheeks, although secretly relieved that she was in fact so well that it had been months since she last needed to hang around the overheated children’s waiting room, always hoping that there might be no needles.

‘It’s all those sluts’ fault,’ the first neighbour would repeat. ‘It’s always the sluts’ fault.’ And the women would pause for a few moments, apparently satisfied that they had detected a defect in marriage again. To the girl alone, everything would seem the same as before. Sluts seemed to her like little oil cans, unclean and threatening, but yielding nothing at all once you grasped them and swung them around the shoulder axis.

‘Don’t touch greasy stuff,’ the mother told the girl, unexpectedly coming from upstairs to re-knot the wool scarf firmly around the child’s neck as the workshop was cold. ‘Because I can’t ever wash it out.’ The girl had grown used to no longer nodding assent at bits of advice or orders as nobody expected it of her, and her oil can was tucked away under her coat. Besides, she could not always tell which stuff was greasy. All she knew was that some was not, or at least should not be, for instance soil, fresh bread, people’s heads, good beef, hair. ‘Stay here and don’t go out in the street,’ her mother added before retreating up the planks again, back to the workshop foreman’s wife. Although the main street was still quite far away at the time.

The girl no longer remembered when they had finally left the workshop that evening. All she knew was that they returned home on foot, trudging through the dirty street snow because it was Sunday and because mother liked to say that a family was there for going places.

When the two of them were actually packing up at home about twelve months later, the mother stressed that the girl should collect all of her stuff because they would not be coming back in a hurry. But the girl was fitting into her bag only what her mother had meticulously spread on the bed, mostly clothes, shoes, books and notebooks. Since her grandparents were sulking in the large family kitchen, it was obvious that her toys, stored in a wooden chest near the stove, were out of reach. It was safer that way. The girl could not stand the reproachful glances of grandpa and grandma, who had been angry all winter long with the young family, now really gone to the dogs, as they indignantly told the neighbours. Besides, she was sure that their fury had been fanned by her mother not taking her to the doctor, as her husband had advised. And because they hadn’t gone to the doctor, they probably had to move out themselves now. Still, the girl would rather move out than be treated for an illness she didn’t have. Although she didn’t care a bit for the cellar room on the other side of town where they’d moved. It was murky, with a pervasive smell of sodden moss, and when they brought in all their belongings, the room turned out to combine the kitchen, sitting room and bedroom. They had no corridor, toilet or bathroom of their own at all. Nor their own backyard. All these were to be shared with strangers.

‘Once you’ve put your stuff away, you can go out in the backyard, just watch out for grease,’ said the mother. The girl had little work to do. The clothes went into the closet, the shoes into the common corridor, the books and notebooks on the shelf above the sofa. It flitted through her mind that there was not much to tidy up. She hadn’t been able to bring all her stuff anyway, neither the toys from the kitchen chest, nor the hen coop, nor the ribbon of grass in front of her house, nor the large stones on the edge of her former backyard, among which lizards used to dart in the heat. All these, as well as the wide state-owned plot of land, had been left there, and since she was gone, they had served nobody else, most certainly not her grandparents and other angry people.

Having donned the coat that jarred on her mother because of a mysterious, lye-resistant oil stain on the inside, the girl stepped into the open. Crossing the backyard, which she didn’t care for as it didn’t belong to her but to that large brown house of many temporary lodgers, she headed for the main street. She had to learn the strangers’ ways.

She relished every day when she could leave that house for school. She took to lingering at school even after class, attending singing lessons, the traffic safety workshop, gym. Thus she discovered a free time which had the advantage of not having to be spent where one didn’t like it. And always she was very pleased because she was so well throughout the winter that she wasn’t laid up with a single flu in the big brown house.

Ever since their move, the girl’s way to school had been a long one and her mother had been earning a labourer’s wages, which meant that they could not afford electric heating in their room. The workshop foreman’s wife had given them a used oil stove, which wafted a pleasant smell once you tossed a lit matchstick inside. Once a week, the mother and the girl would don their winter coats, take a ten-litre can, and make their way down the main road to the petrol station. As the can in the mother’s right hand was greasy, the girl had to walk on her left. Years later, she could no longer remember what they had talked about on all those long walks to the petrol station and back again. All she knew was that while a morose assistant was pouring heating oil into the can, her mother would glance surreptitiously towards the workshop. Never again did they enter the half-built, unpainted, stairless house, never again did they approach the boards leading to the women’s upper storey, or the black shaft where cars were to be repaired and sworn at. ‘At least they gave us the stove,’ the mother would comment. It must have been the very oil stove which used to stand in the workshop, unlit. But the girl prudently never mentioned it to her mother, knowing only too well that people will grow unreasonably angry on learning that they had been given something of no use to others. The proper gifts were only those which were equally needed by everyone. Just as the serious damages were those which equally hampered everyone.

The long winter of that year did not spare them the Christmas celebrations. Although the only festive feature was the cake at school, and then it was time to go home because the school emptied out at once after class. What awaited the girl at home was the big brown house and an afternoon visit to her grandparents. Her mother rubbed her cheeks with red lip grease so that the old people wouldn’t think they were starving. When they came to the house of their birth, grandpa was piling wood into the stove, rubbing the small of his back, while grandma truculently repeated to the girl: ‘You don’t like my cake anymore, so I haven’t baked any this year!’ But the old woman’s teasing was all in vain, as a cake had already been baked for the girl at school. She left her mother with grandma in the kitchen and slipped out. In winter, the wide state-owned plot of land was always so white and so empty. She stood by its edge, gazing into the whiteness until the nearest neighbour called to her in a whisper, and when the girl ran up to her, the woman thrust a bag of still-warm cake into her hands, telling her to hide it under her coat so that grandma wouldn’t notice. Then the neighbour hastily asked if she ever saw her father. The girl shook her head violently, for her mother’s words about her last meeting with her father still reminded her too vividly of seeing the doctor in spite of perfectly good health.

When mother and girl returned to the brown house inhabited by all manner of people, ‘cripples, paupers, and street folks’, as grandpa had said earlier that day, they were in a dreadful hurry to fetch heating oil from the petrol station, for the holidays were at everyone’s door, including theirs. So they had to fetch oil and trudge all that way not once but twice because everything would close for the next few dragging days. The second time, the way back was even longer. The mother shifted the full ten-litre can from hand to hand several times, and the girl accordingly changed sides. She was not allowed as much as to touch the handle because she might ruin her mittens, while her hands would continue to reek even into the new year. Anyway, it never occurred to her that a ten-litre can was several times heavier than an empty one at the end of the long walk back. Applied problems of this kind were still beyond her ken. Suddenly, her mother dropped the can, with a lively splash of the oil inside, buried her face in her oil-greased hands, and said how terrible it was to have everything slip from your hands. But then she grasped the slick handle again, and soon they were home.

When the fireworks explosions had unmistakably proclaimed the coming of the new year, the girl slipped from the spacious lower porch frequented by the paupers and cripples from all walks of life, including an aging snob or two, and ran down to the cellar room. She pulled out the drawer of the rickety sofa, where she kept at the very bottom, next to a notebook filled with juicy swear words, the can of machine oil wrapped in newspaper. Ever since she’d snatched it from the workshop a year ago, she liked to carry it with her, preferably under her coat. To school, too. When necessary, she would pull it out and oil her fellow student’s bicycle chain. She gave herself airs particularly on pouring a few drops on the teacher’s brakes. When the teacher thanked her and rode away on her bicycle, its brakes no longer screeching, she found herself surrounded in the school playground by a host of children, all asking her to oil a bike, or a schoolbag handle, an unyielding shirt button, or even the metal buckle on a trouser belt. She learnt to grease whatever creaked or refused to yield. But when she was alone, she gripped the handle of the oil can tight and swung it around the axis of her shoulder, without spilling a single drop. Which had already become a routine.

Translated by Nada Grošelj