A Swarm of Dust. Evald Flisar

herself in between them so that the blows rained down on her. The father and sister were allies and were often absent. His mother was the one who had to go from house to house with her basket, begging; she was the one who had to humbly grit her teeth when people made fun of her, or shut the door in her face, or if the children followed her along the road, yelling; she had to cook, fetch firewood, look after the house, their clothes. But when her husband and daughter returned, she was insulted, scorned, beaten. Hudorovec had an old nag that he rode around, he often met with untrustworthy people and got involved with strange goings on, sometimes he was even absent for long periods and children teased the mother that her man was dead and buried. All the money he gained simply disappeared; what he didn’t drink, he lost at cards or squandered it in some other way. No one in the family ever knew what he was up to or where.

      Young Hudorovec devoted all his thoughts and every step to his mother; he lived with her, suffered with her. He regarded his father and sister with repugnance and fear, but he never revolted, he never tried to run away from this hopeless situation. He was calm and quiet, he obeyed every word of his tormentors. He was somehow convinced that this was the only possible state, for he knew nothing else and so could not long for it. For years things had remained unchanged, at least as far as he remembered, and his relationship with his mother was always the same. She never complained about her husband or daughter, they never even spoke about it, it simply happened and seemed to him self-evident, just as he did not think about his relationship with his mother, but simply lived and felt it.