Free Angel of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap

have to track down over hunting trails and streambeds, the hideouts and refuges, the bunkers in which our people went to ground, as they say.
    This year a windstorm causes a lot of damage to the count’s forested slopes. The gales leave behind a broad swath of destruction in which trees lie split, broken, and uprooted on the ground. Loggers from all the count’s crews are called up to clear the fallen trees. For weeks, the whine of saws, the dull thuds of axes, and the cracking of trunks hang over the valley.
    On weekends, the loggers gather at our farm to sharpen and repair their tools. Their trousers are spattered with pitch stains that gleam like small swamps. Circular buds of dirt spread from the middle of these swamps and seep into the cloth like shadows of pitch clouds. The loggers’shirts are soaked with sweat, the sweaters and jackets they lay over their shoulders are fraying at the sleeves and hems.
    Father sits on a bench, repairing a saw he calls “the American lady.” He hammers gently on the saw. It bobs up and down to the beat, making a humming noise.
    You’re making the saw dance, Michi says. As soon as I put her in your hands, she’s in a good mood. Uncle Jozi tells his crewmates that he’d like to do a radio show. In fact, he’s already put in a request for a recording device from the Slovenian department of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation. He wants to talk to people and record their conversations. If they don’t mind, he’d like to do a story about them, too: Count Thurn’s loggers.
    You’re not loggers anymore, Father says, you left the forest a long time ago.
    You have think of the future, Michi answers, you can’t just go into the forest every day as if there weren’t anything else, as if there were no other way of earning a living. He’s signed up with the Socialists, he announces. They’d promised they would find him something else.
    You want to go into politics, Father counters, but you’ll never be mayor, there’s no way they would ever let you, a Slovene, be mayor.
    You have no idea, Michi says.
    I know what I know, Father says.
    Father tells them that earlier in the week he crossed the green border into Slovenia from the Mozgans’ ridge, where he’s been cutting wood for the farmers, and had a beer at the Kumers’. The women were amazed thathe ventured across the border. They asked after people in Lepena and told him to say hello to everyone they knew. Thanks, thanks, the loggers say as they set off on foot for home. Only Jozi climbs onto a motorcycle and drives off with a wave of his hand.

W HERE is the border, actually, I ask Father.
    Up that way, he says and points at the ridge that encloses the valley in a semi-circle.
    I’d like to go to work with you one day, I say.
    Father is so surprised by my request that he promises to take me to the logging stand the next day. He has to take some tools up anyway.
    Early in the morning, his motorcycle is outside the stable, a Puch with a dark, gleaming gas tank that looks like the body of a black dolphin. Father ties the knapsack bulging with tools and a canister of fuel onto the luggage rack. I sit on the back seat and wrap my arms carefully around his waist. He tells me to hold on tight so I won’t fall off on the way. In the first curve he yells, you’re wobbling, hold on tight or we’ll start skidding. After the initial fear that floods over me when Father brakes into a curve, I let myself get carried away as he accelerates on the straight stretches.
    He parks his motorcycle behind the Mozgans’ farm, slides a few iron clamps under his belt, and shoulders his backpack. We start off walking slowly. The gasoline sloshes in the canister. You have to stroll on steep terrain or you’ll get out of breath, Father says. Then he picks up his pace.I lag behind and take advantage of flat stretches to catch up with him. Were you here during the war? I ask.
    Yes, we had a bunker higher up, he says. Your grandfather ran the