Indeed, as I watched him gulping the soup it seemed to me almost bewildering that mankind had invented anything as ridiculous as a spoon. My cousin put down his bowl and I saw that it was quite smooth and white and empty, as though it had just been washed and polished.

‘This afternoon’, he said, ‘I shall collect the money.’

I asked him what kind of business he intended to expand.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘a very small affair, but one which keeps a man going nicely through the winter.’

And so I learnt that my cousin Joseph Branco farmed in spring, summer and autumn, working on his land, and that in winter he was a chestnut roaster. He had a sheepskin coat, a donkey, a small waggon, an oven and five sacks full of chestnuts. With all this he would set off early in November through various Crown Lands of the Monarchy. If, however, some place particularly attracted him he would spend the whole winter there, until the storks came. He would then tie the empty sacks round the donkey and take himself off to the nearest railway station. He hired out the donkey, went home, and became a peasant again.

I asked him how it was possible to expand such a small business, and he replied that all kinds of possibilities existed. One could, for instance, sell baked apples and baked potatoes as well as chestnuts. Also, the donkey had grown old over the years and he might buy a new one. He had already saved two hundred crowns.

He was wearing a brilliant satin jacket, a flowered plush waistcoat with bright glass buttons and, round his neck, a beautifully plaited heavy gold watchchain. My father had brought me up to love the Slavs of our Empire, as a result of which I tended to take any folkloric material as symbolic, so I promptly fell in love with this chain. I wanted to possess it. I asked my cousin how much it was worth.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘I had it from my father and he had it from his father, and one doesn’t sell that kind of thing. But as you are my cousin I will gladly sell it to you.’

‘For how much, then?’ I asked.

I had assumed, remembering my father’s teaching, that a Slovenian peasant would be much too proud to trouble his head about money or value. Cousin Joseph Branco thought for a long time and said ‘Twenty-three crowns’. How he reached this exact sum I dared not ask. I gave him twenty-five. He counted the money carefully, made no attempt to give me back two crowns, pulled out a big blue checked handkerchief and put the money away in it. Only then, having tied a double knot in the handkerchief, did he take off the chain, at the same time extracting his watch from his waistcoat pocket and laying both down on the table. It was an old-fashioned heavy silver watch with a little key to wind it up. My cousin hesitated before taking it off the chain, looked at it tenderly, almost sorrowfully, and finally said: ‘You are after all my cousin! If you’ll give me three crowns more I’ll sell you the watch as well.’ I gave him a five-crown piece. Again he gave me no change. He took out his handkerchief once more, slowly undid the double knot, added the new coin to the others, put everything into his trouser pocket, and looked me frankly in the eye.

‘I admire your waistcoat too,’ I added after a few seconds, ‘and I should like to buy that as well.’

‘Since you are my cousin,’ he replied, ‘I will also sell you the waistcoat.’ And without a moment’s hesitation he took off his jacket, undid his waistcoat and handed it across the table to me. ‘It is fine material,’ said Joseph Branco, ‘and the buttons are of the best, and since it is for you it will only cost two and a half crowns.’ I paid him out three crowns and in his eyes I saw, unmistakably, his disappointment that I had not paid him five yet again. He seemed put out and stopped smiling, but in the end he tucked away his money as carefully as all the rest.

I was now, in my opinion, the owner of the most important things which distinguish the true Slovene: an old watchchain, an old turnip of a watch, heavy as lead, with its own little key, and a coloured waistcoat. I did not lose a second, but put everything on at once, paid the bill and called for a cab. I accompanied my cousin to the hotel where he put up, the Grünes Jägerhorn. I asked him to keep the evening free, and to wait till I came for him. I thought I would introduce him to my friends.

[IV]

FOR FORM’S SAKE, as an excuse and to pacify my mother, I had entered the law faculty. Admittedly I did not study.