Angel of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap Page B

he says, you can pull me up now, and I pull with all my strength. I just need to rest a bit, he says, and then we’ll keep going. He sits down on the forest floor and seems to fall asleep a second later. I crouch next to him and feel my eyes fill with tears. The forest and the darkness let all their ghosts loose and they grab at me wildly. I raise my head and try to make out the moon that tonight is hiding behind the clouds. A dark sphere in the sky seems to be sinking towards me. I’m afraid I’ve drawn it down with my crying, and I close my eyes. The darkness takes hold of me and fills my chest intoxicatingly.
    Father lies next to me, as if drugged. After an eternity, he opens his eyes and says, you know, the best thing to do when you’re afraid in the forest is to sing partisan songs. He often did, and it always helped. Do I know any, he asks. I don’t. Fine, then I’ll sing, he says. And Father sings as best he can some partisan fighting songs, though he can only remember a few verses and repeats them over and over until we finally reach home.
    Mother is waiting up for us in the kitchen, angry and worried. I don’t want to upset her so I don’t say anything about the calamities on our way home. I’m afraid that death has taken root inside me, like a small black button, like a lattice-work of dark moss creeping invisibly over my skin.

T HE WAR is a devious fisher of men. It has cast out its net for the adults and traps them with its fragments of death, its debris of memory. Just one careless act, one brief moment of inattention, and it pulls in its net. Father is immediately snagged on memory’s hooks, he’s already running for his life, trying to escape the war’s omnipotence. The war suddenly looms in hastily spoken sentences, strikes out from the shelter of darkness. It leaves its captives trembling in its net and withdraws for months at a time to prepare a fresh attack as soon as it’s forgotten. If ever it grows feeble, they welcome it into their homes and smile at its armor, certain they can win it over, they set a place at the table, make up a bed for it.
    Father was the youngest partisan, his cousin Peter tells us when we’re gathered in the sitting room to celebrate Grandmother’s birthday. The youngest partisan, do you still remember, you were barely twelve years old. Yes, Father says but he’d much rather forget all about it. At night he sometimes wakes with a start and has no idea where he is. In my dreams,I’m still running for my life like I did back then on the Velika Planina, Father says.
    Mother of God, the others say, now that was a dog’s life!
    The day our provisions ran out and the commando came, it was up and out, down the mountain, through the German soldiers, over, out, Father recalled. That was some kind of noise. At two in the morning, they slid down the mountainside in deep snow, down a chute that was used to send tree trunks into the valley below. The Germans trained searchlights up from Kamnik. It was so bright, every movement was visible. There was shooting in the valley, and all you could see were red and blue streaks. Leaves and branches rained down from the trees and one partisan was lying on the ground yelling help me, help me, Father tells us, but he just ran as if the devil were on his heels. They’d gotten separated while escaping, he and two other partisans ran across the road and right in front of a German soldier with a machine gun. I’m a dead man, Father told himself, now I’m going to get shot, but the German made it clear that he should disappear. He waved Father on. Quick, quick, the soldier said. He was a good one, Father says, one of the good ones, I’ll never forget him. Father’s group reached the river and the commander yelled: Cross through the water, we’ll never make it over the bridge! The first one who stepped in the river vanished, washed away like nothing. They’d clung to each other and made it across. The water rushed over him and his