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Grandmother says she’ll show them to me, me and my unbelieving mother, when she’s finished reading them, if that time comes.
    Not long after this, we hear that Smrtnik from Ebriach has bought himself a van that seats eight people. A lot of people go on trips with Smrtnik, we’re told. Grandmother doesn’t wait long and organizes an expedition to Brezje. She decides I will have to go with them because it’s time I went on a pilgrimage with her.
    Early in the morning we cross the Seeberg Saddle Pass and are stopped at the border. I hand the Yugoslavian customs officer my first passport. He speaks Croatian or Serbo-Croatian and wants to impress upon us that we are at the border of a special nation that must examine all travelers who wish to enter it. Smrtnik takes over communications because he’s had experience with customs officials. After we’ve crossed the border, the men on our pilgrimage begin recounting their border adventures in years past. The only story that makes an impression on me is how our neighbor Peter, whom I know well, smuggled the skeleton of a cave bear across the border in a basket over the course of several nights, but that was still before the war.
    The church in Brezje is overflowing. With those who are praying, we push our way up to the altar on which a Madonna with a crown and scepter sits enthroned. A few women fall to their knees and shuffle on their knees up to the altar. To give my appeals weight, I imitate these women and decide that I’ll just have to settle for dirty tights. Grandmother kneels, makes the sign of the cross, and stands up. Someone offers her his seat on the pew. During the mass I shift impatiently from one foot to the other and try to imagine what’s going on in the minds of those who are singing and praying. Finally, I sit on Grandmother’s lap. She tweaks my thigh to make me aware that I’m fidgeting. If you don’t calm down, I won’t bring you next time, she threatens.
    When we step out of the church after the lengthy mass, the space outside looks to me like a high, shining nave and the inside of the churchlike a small cell in which we’d yearned to be outside, just as we’d earlier streamed into the semi-darkness to find purification. In the square in front of the church we pass merchants’ stalls. Grandmother buys rosaries and wooden spoons. I get a pack of cookies and a devotional image with a picture of the church with the Madonna of Brezja floating on a small, round cloud above it.
    We are shown to a table in the tavern on the other side of the square. We sit under the framed photograph of the president, who looks down from the wall under his garrison cap with a red star emblazoned on its front. Studying the photograph, Smrtnik claims that no matter which corner of the room you stand in, Marshal Tito looks directly at you, he follows you with his eyes, so to speak. You can test it when you walk into the room. Two men stand up from our table and go to the men’s room so, they say, the Marshal will look straight at them when they return. Just as they come back in the room, our noodle soup is served. The two men don’t linger on the threshold long, where they’d stopped to catch the Marshal’s eye. From joy or relief at having prayed so exhaustively, they order wine to assuage their thirst. Grandmother announces that she can handle Cviček, too, and drinks a toast to her traveling companions. Besides, she has to fortify herself for the two remaining destinations, for Begunje and Bled.
    The village of Begunje is not far from Brezje. We’ll want to visit a former prison, Smrtnik says, many people were tortured and killed there during the War.
    We get out of the car in front of a high, white wall and enter the former castle in which the Nazis had installed prison cells. Lists of those who were shot to death, signed by the Carinthian Gauleiter, hang on the walls of the prison wing. A woman guides us through the rooms and, before we enter a dark cell, turns