Tina Vrščaj

Translated into English by Erica Debeljak

It’s always windy on Slope.

Eva tries to plant roots in the soil. But the wind blows the soil away.

Sometimes she doesn’t walk on the ground but hovers above it. When she sweeps the leaves in front of the door, the broom doesn’t touch the floor but moves the leaves with its spinning currents of air.

The paintings are left in a corner of the room to be hung later. The house plants have landed on the compost but the pots remain on the windowsill. Chipped.

Eva imagines flatlands as far as the eye can see. She dreams that they live in another house. The neighbours would have children as old as theirs. They wouldn’t drink in front of the children and wouldn’t pretend to be other than what they are. They would ride bicycles. Even little children can ride bicycles where it is flat. They can pass a ball between them without it rolling down the hill. Children cannot tumble into the abyss.

The girls are still new and smell fresh. They are newcomers to the world.

The seeds bore fruit easily as if she had been pollinated by the wind.

The first came first. What an arrival! White angels delivered her in a coach. Then the second, again a riveting event. Her first little sound was already crylaughter. Look: the first was brought by angels and the second was born a happy child.

The moment they came into the world, they opened their eyes to the house with the paintings in the corner, some lying aslant, and clothes on the floor. The clothes multiply on the hardwood floor, the armchairs, the couch, the beds, even the table. Least of all in the closets that smell old. All of these mountains are proof that Eva has a messy attic. Her mother used to say:

Clean your attic, what you have upstairs.

The place her mother has nothing to do with.

All of a sudden, there are twice as many clothes and each month many of them are too small. The children grow. In the evening, they get dressed in long pyjamas and wake up in the morning in short pants. Every week something gets lost and is looked for all day. Then they get bags of hand-me-down clothes from friends. The new and used clothes form a steep hill in the entryway. They wait for the first washing.

The first period of life with the first baby is inundated with the smell of milk, poop, and washing powder. The baby nurses, poops, and the poop finds its way from the nappies to the clothes, always in the same order and always at a faster tempo, because there is no time between repetitions. Eva nurses the baby and then, her shirt wet with milk, turns on the faucet and waits for the water to get warm to wash the baby’s bottom, change her nappy, and dress her again. Another pile grows at her feet. There is already a pile in the bathroom and the door will not close. There is a pile in the washing machine. The machine is so overburdened that it jumps, as if it wants to hurl itself against the wall in anger. There is a pile of washed clothes in the laundry basket that Eva rushes to hang outside while the baby’s eyes are closed and the sun is still shining.

She repeats the whole procedure. And again. And again… Like a hamster on a wheel.

The beginning of the second baby’s life is inundated with the smell of milk, poop, and washing powder. The second time is the same. But everything is different. Eva surrenders more quickly to the sleepless nights. She finds it easier to listen to the baby crying because she knows it will pass. Sometimes she is completely calm when she hears the crying. She knows that this is crylaughter and expresses a deep wonder for life.

Sometimes she is distracted. That’s just the way it is with babies and toddlers: everything escapes her control. Just like milk coming out of her breast all by itself, even when there is no sucking little mouth nearby. A single tender thought and her shirt is wet. Dirty nappies pile up in front of the door. Leftovers pile up on the counter, waiting for someone to take them out to the compost. Toys pile up underfoot. Sometimes a foot breaks one.

The mess in her attic is not guilty for all of this.

It is something else.

The moment the little girls look outside of the house, they merge with the slanted horizon.

And when they learn to walk, one after the other over a period of two years, their little legs waddle uphill. The little one in slippers. They need encouragement:

“Lift your feet!”

They would probably have already begun running if it were flat, but on Slope they hesitated. Sometimes Eva spanked them on their bottoms. And then inspired them with wisdom:

Legs remember what they can do, and every step is necessary.

It is a moving scene when the little legs go up the steep hill.

But sometimes they couldn’t do it. And then she, small but tough, picked up both of them like sacks of potatoes under her armpits, two armpits for two girls, and she went. They went. It didn’t bother them that they were hanging upside down.