It started with the visit in 1931 from America of Johanna, father’s elder sister, her husband Paul Krisch and son Herbert. She had left for Brooklyn in 1905, where she married Paul’s older brother who died nine years later, after fathering cousins Herbert and Ida. The determined Johanna soon married Paul, who became a model father to his brother’s family. Especially since he had lived in the home of his brother as a bachelor and was intimate with the family which also included Johanna’s youngest brother Franz who joined them in 1926.
 
Over the years the couple lived frugally, had saved their earnings and was now contemplating retirement in the empty home of the Krisch family in Grčarske ravne (Masereben), the Masern extension across a hill, two kilometers away. The hamlet was in a flat bottomed bowl of land surrounded by steep wooded hills which, due to its proximity of about three kilometers became an annex to Masern. This space of land was able to support only a small number of families and even in 1930 there were only eight houses, all owners of fractions of a Hide.
 
The Krisch house, a stone wall structure with a leaky roof, had been neglected by the aging parents after the departure of the two sons for the new world and empty for many years after both of them died. Father, the caretaker for the absent owners kept the house empty and locked, but he allowed the land to be used by the “landless” to prevent it from being recaptured by the forest.

The American visitors soon concluded that the house was not fit to stay in and moved into the empty room of our house for the duration of the visit.
 
During their stay, Johanna and Paul decided to renovate the house to make it suitable for their retirement in a few years. The house, its basic structure of thick stone walls intact, needed a total overhaul including a new roof.  Father agreed to act on their behalf when they were ready. This came to pass in 1938 and Father awarded Janez Pahulje, the husband of Aunt Angela his sister-in-law, the job of general contractor. This decision resulted in deep fissures throughout my mother’s family, producing a split that continued for three decades, one that even the best intentions on my part could not bring to an end.

- - - -

Father and Pahulje had agreed to meet in the Kren tavern at the cemetery end of the village.  Of the three public meeting places in Masern, it was the least frequented and therefore the large public room was likely to be empty in early afternoon, which was indeed the case. I accompanied Father on the way there. Pahulje had already arrived on his bicycle from Dolenja Vas, and was sitting in a corner at the far end of the room, having a beer. Father took a seat at a table near the door, the most distant spot from his wife’s brother-in-law, and told me to go outside and play.

They had not spoken for months and any communication between them was only via their respective wives, sisters who took messages to their mother who in turn passed them to the other daughter. By the end of 1939, the dispute had reached a level of hostility which precluded any direct meeting between the sisters and given the existing confrontation between their respective husbands, direct talk was, therefore, carefully avoided.

But this method of communication created confusion, since the two sisters invariably managed to color the original message with their own bias.  Grandmother realized that the messages she was passing on became distorted before they reached their destination. She therefore forced an end to this troublesome way of communication and brought about the direct confrontation between the principals which was about to begin in the empty guest room of the Kren tavern.

- - - -

It was predictable from the beginning that this arrangement between builder and client was destined to go wrong. Pahulje was known for his underestimates, overruns and delays in getting a project to completion, and was perpetually in financial difficulties over debts which he repaid with moneys he received as advances from new customers. Nevertheless Father, being aware of all this, turned a blind eye to the habits of his brother-in-law and when Johanna and Paul decided to start the renovations, Father awarded him the job.

Pahulje was anxious to start and obviously the first task on the list was the new roof. This effort was awarded to Franz Sbaschnig of Masereben, a distant relative of Grandmother Ilc who, with his crew of sons and nephews, had for years been constructing roofs in all the villages of the area.  He was the best around.

To start the project, Johanna sent Father an advance, part of which he paid to Pahulje for the roof. Pahulje in turn made a partial payment to Sbaschnig with the promise to pay the rest after the old roof was removed, the new skeleton installed and covered with clay tiles.

Sbaschnig started by selecting suitable fir in Johanna's forests, shaping the trees into beams on the spot where they fell, hauling the cut sections into the large barn on the Krisch premises and leaving them there to dry out during the coming winter and spring.
 
In early summer of the following year, the dimensions of the wall on which the old roof rested were measured and the dimensions reproduced on a flat portion of grass near the house. Wooden stakes were hammered into the ground in key places to become the template for the base beams of the new roof.
 
The construction of the roof was an event and all who could came to watch, including the children after school let out. It was great fun to see the skeleton of the new roof grow above the template under the crafty guidance of Sbaschnig yelling orders to his compliant crew. On to the horizontal beams, which were to rest on the three foot wide stone wall, were fitted the beams of the roof pitch meeting their opposites from the other side. The skeleton was held together with long wooden pegs driven into strategically drilled holes which were hammered back out after the entire structure was completed. All parts were carefully marked, then disassembled and stored so that the assembly sequence on top of the wall would flow without confusion.

The removal of the old roof and installation of the new one was during late midsummer of 1939, a time when the weather was most likely to be sunny and dry long enough to prevent rain from flooding the inside of the exposed house. Old Sbaschnig directed his crew as he had for decades and in less than a fortnight the gleaming red tiles were in place to keep out the wet for decades to come.

Sbaschnig demanded payment for the balance but Pahulje kept putting him off. He had long ago used the money Father had given him to pay off other debts.

Predictably, after not getting anywhere, Sbaschnig came to Father to obtain payment which led to bitter arguments between Pahulje and Father. Ultimately Sbaschnig appealed directly to Johanna in Brooklyn, who instructed Father to pay Sbaschnig and sue Pahulje to recover the funds.

Johanna's request was a difficult one for Father, but having suggested his brother-in law in the first place, he had no choice but to comply with his sister’s request. This is when the interchange via Grandmother Ilc began but which came to nothing and finally brought about the face to face confrontation now underway in the public room of the Kren tavern.
 
- - - -

I stayed near the entrance and gradually became aware of the rising voices behind the closed guest room door. I did try once to see what was going on but Father sternly directed me to stay outside. I noticed however that the two men were no longer at opposite ends of the large room but that each had moved closer to the center.
 
Soon there was a commotion and I began yelling which attracted, among others, the innkeeper Kren from the slaughterhouse that was part of his tavern. He separated the struggling adversaries and insisted they leave the premises immediately. Pahulje ran out clutching his left hand and cycled away.  In the struggle, Father had broken his thumb. Pahulje explained the cast by saying that he fell from his bicycle, but the news of the struggle had spread and all knew better. Father emerged from the room shaky but undamaged and with a now unchecked will to sue his sister-in-law's husband, a conviction he forcefully vocalized to his worried wife as soon as we got home.
 
- - - -

Grandma Ilc tried to find a less confrontational way to defuse the raging storm but without success. By now the two sisters were blind to reason and their rising fury, nurtured by many years of mutual rancor, only helped to solidify the hostility between their respective husbands. And Father, no longer restrained, filed his suit for recovery and damages on behalf of Johanna and Paul Krisch with the Clerk in the courthouse in Ribnica.

As the two families readied for a public fight, the two sisters lobbied the members of their family. Grandma Ilc was supportive of Father’s cause, partly because she had never liked Pahulje as an in-law and as one who never paid for the wine he drank at her tavern. Also, she was not fond of Angela who since childhood was a perpetual source of friction between her siblings, maintained airs, was above helping with chores, and generally annoyed her mother.
 
Janez, the second of Mother’s four brothers, was also supportive in large part because of the money owed him by Pahulje. Janez, a mason had often worked for his sister’s husband who paid slowly, if at all. But Janez had ceased to donate his labors to Pahulje and was no longer on speaking terms with him or his wife Angela, his younger sister. Janez also did not speak to his mother who had cast him out because he married, without her approval, a woman she considered below the family’s station. She did not come to the wedding and shunned wife and family for years. She relented years later when forced by age and frailty to overcome her pride and welcomed Janez and his family into the large house.

But Janez remained close to his sister Maria and was a strong supporter of her husband. Other more distant relatives and friends of Mother in Dolenja Vas all sided with her husband’s cause, knowing both the nature of the dispute and the habits of Pahulje. In Masern, relatives and friends of Father, while supportive, reveled in the dispute because they had advised him against awarding the work to Pahulje, a man whose reputation was well known. To them it promised to be a source of interesting gossip and welcome diversion from their daily routine.

- - - -

The contrarian was brother Jože, Mother’s youngest sibling. At thirty one years of age, this young lawyer agreed to take on the defense of Pahulje, his brother-in-law. Jože had also married below his station and like Janez, he and his family were banished from his mother’s house.  Apart from the offense that he had married a woman from a non-landed and poor family, she saw in his errant ways a lack of gratitude for her self-denial in getting him educated as a lawyer.

My own Mother’s feelings toward her brother Jože and his family were similar to those of her mother and it was therefore not difficult for her to adhere to her directive to have nothing to do with them. Her reasons did not fully mirror those of her mother, but were more due to a belief that Jože, like sister Angela was avoiding her for having a child out of wedlock and marrying an invalid farmer, a non-Slovene from an alien village six and one half kilometers away.  Neither Jože nor Angela came to her wedding and neither of them ever came to visit her in Masern. Pahulje did come by on his bicycle but only on business and Mother tried her best to avoid him.
   
Grandma’s prohibition extended even to the second generation. On my way to visit her in Dolenja Vas, I had to pass the Pahulje house, but was forbidden to go near it. I sometimes passed cousins Božena and Janez, Angela's two children, on the way to Grandma’s house, but we barely exchanged words. I had never met uncle Jože nor any of his family. They lived in Ljubljana, the big city very far away. When we finally met and got to know them decades later, the world was a different place for all of us.

In spite of her feelings toward Jože, Mother had asked him to be my confirmation sponsor. The confirmation was to be performed by the bishop of the diocese in the cathedral of Ljubljana.  She believed it was important for me to have a sponsor of stature for this important event in my life, the formal entry into membership of the church. Jože seemed the most eminent of the family and the importance of this event justified putting aside all enmities, even if only for a short while. But by agreeing to defend Pahulje in Father’s law suit, Jože renewed his lack of worth which even the size of this event would not overcome and he was dropped.

Mother asked her brother Janez to be my sponsor and he reluctantly agreed after she assured him that the event was not going to burden him financially. Grandma Ilc was persuaded to give her blessing and she even agreed to give the post-confirmation dinner at her gostilna which Janez and his family were allowed to attend.

I was not pleased with the change of sponsors, mainly because I was not going to get the pocket watch, the usual gift given to a young man by his sponsor on this special occasion. Janez could not afford such an expensive outlay and after many tears over this tragedy, I was consoled by Mother with the promise of a bicycle soon and a watch later. Both of them I got eventually, but being part of other events, are part of other stories.

- - - -

Father believed that the facts were clear enough in his favor and saw no need for a lawyer to argue his case. However, very near the hearing in court before a judge, he got wind of the tactic to be used by Jože on behalf of Pahulje, which threw him and Mother into panic.

According to this tactic, "Tschinkel had agreed to let Pahulje use the money for the roof to pay off a debt, since he had outstanding receivables to cover the amount.  Those receivables were delayed and as a result, he had no other funds at the moment to pay Sbaschnig. He needed more time to which Tschinkel had given his consent".
   
But this agreement was not documented and no independent witnesses were present to either substantiate Pahulje's claim or prove it false.

Mother reminded Father that I had been present and could testify that Father never agreed to the Pahulje claim. Father was reluctant but finally agreed to have me appear at the hearing as a surprise witness.
 
During the days up to the trial I was carefully coached by both on my coming role. I was to say that I was at the meeting but that I never heard Pahulje ask if he could use the money as he claimed. Of course this strategy was top secret; I was forbidden, on penalty of never getting a watch, to say a word to anyone, even Grandma Ilc.

The hearing was in the old courthouse in Ribnica, the center of our municipality for many centuries.

On the day of the hearing, all had assembled in the judge’s chamber, but I had to wait outside in the dimly lit vaulted hallway of this ancient building. I listened to their voices until the door opened and Mother asked me to come inside. She led the nine year old in front of the judge sitting behind the desk on a raised platform.

"Is this your witness?” he asked. "But he is a child. How dare you bring a child as a witness into my courtroom".
  
Mother stammered, Father covered his face and Jože and Pahulje smirked as I was shown out of the room. I stayed near the closed door to listen to the proceedings and uncle Jože making his final points.

But Mother recovered and now kept interrupting Jože. At some point she exploded at her brother. She accused him of lying and being ungrateful to a sister who "changed your diapers and wiped your behind". The judge managed to subdue her fury with threats of eviction from the room.

The judge ruled that Pahulje had no valid excuse to keep the money any longer and ordered him to pay it back. Pahulje said he could not since he had no available assets at the moment. The judge asked Pahulje when he could expect his receivables.  Pahulje said not for one year at least. The judge then offered a choice to Father. Either give Pahulje time to collect his receivables or demand liquidation of his assets. Father was not sure so the judge set a date for another hearing at which time Father had to state his decision.

On the way home the three of us stopped at Grandma’s, where Mother, who was still beside herself over her public humiliation, tried to persuade Grandma to her point of view, which was to auction Pahulje’s assets immediately. But Grandma, mindful of the trauma in auctioning her own property in 1911 counseled restraint, which was not lost on Father as he contemplated two equally unpleasant choices.

When he finally wrote to Johanna he recommended that Pahulje be given the time he required, with the proviso that if he missed the specified date, the auction would take place automatically soon thereafter. Johanna sympathized with her brother’s reluctance to force the sale of his wife’s sister’s home, the only assets that Pahulje possessed and agreed with the recommendation. At the next hearing, after Father reported his choice, the judge ruled that within one year, Pahulje had to settle the debt and if not, his property would be auctioned off without further delay.

The outcome of the trial was of course a victory for Pahulje, his wife Angela and brother-in-law Jože, but a humiliating defeat for our side, especially for Mother and her failed tactic of putting me forward as a witness. Friends in Dolenja Vas sympathized, but the opposition and its friends were free with their ridicule, duly reported back to keep her anger simmering.
 
- - - -

In Masern, the debates on the two alternatives in the tavern room at the Jaklitsch inn went on for days.  Most patrons believed the judge was excessively lenient in giving Pahulje more time. This belief became firm as the wine heated the debate and with it the certainty that Father should have opted for public auction immediately. After several such evenings of debate, Father stayed away, at least until the novelty of the event dissipated. In the meanwhile, his few loyal friends gathered at his shop, sympathized with his predicament and offered praise for the choice he made.

But time was on Pahulje’s side. He never paid, nor was his property auctioned off and my two cousins never lost their home. All this because in April l941, Yugoslavia was overrun by the Axis powers and part of Slovenia and its civil courts became part of the military courts of the occupier, the Italy of Mussolini.

Even prior to the expiration of the deadline given to Pahulje Father, the advocate for Johanna’s rights had moved to another country and she no longer had a local representative to force her claim. And by this time the courts were absorbed with issues more important that the roof of my aunt’s house.

While Johanna and her husband were the financial losers, the intangible emotional losses of the local adversaries were much more bruising, especially for Mother. The decade long tenuous relationships within her family were inflamed with renewed force and remained so for decades to come. Grandma shunned her daughter Angela and reconciled with son Jože only shortly before she died in 1948. On the other hand, she softened her attitude toward son Janez and his family and finally invited them to move in with her. This was even more important now that her oldest daughter and her family had moved to another world.

- - - -

One of the losers was me.  In addition to the much-wanted pocket watch I lost an unknown uncle Jože, the confirmation sponsor who could afford to buy me one.  Also, I had never met his wife Iva and their children Janez and Marjanca. I also lost Angela, a barely known aunt and her children, my cousins Božena and Janez.
 
But I met them decades later in 1974, when I returned to Slovenia for the first time since 1941. Since then they all became valued relations and dear friends.

After several visits to her family house in Dolenja Vas, now owned by brother Janez, Mother became reconciled with Angela and Pahulje but never with brother Jože. Her resentment toward the younger brother lingered for decades. And she made her feelings toward them apparent in not so subtle ways.
 
Mother re-established contact with Janez during her first return to Austria in 1958 to visit her daughter in Graz. Mitzi had married in September 1950 and remained there with her family when Mother, Father and Paul left for America in September of 1952.  I had left for New York on my own in May of 1950.
 
During this visit, Mother also went to Dolenja Vas where she was welcomed by brother Janez and family in the house of her childhood. While staying there, Janez, long reconciled with his siblings, urged her to visit Angela and Pahulje living only 200 meters away but Mother was not yet ready. Neither was her sister and the two kept avoiding one another and did not meet.

In the late 50s, living conditions in Slovenia, including Dolenja Vas, were dismal and Mother made it her mission, on her return to Brooklyn, to improve the lot of brother Janez and his family. But not the others who were not much better off.

She kept sending used clothing collected from neighbors, paid for food packages and sacks of flour to be sent regularly by various relief agencies.  Grateful letters only encouraged her to do even more. In this she purposefully ignored the families of Jože and Angela who were equally in need. This evidently was her revenge, especially to Jože who lived in the city where foodstuffs were even more difficult to come by.

The zeal with which she helped Janez and his family was not lost on her other siblings who soon realized what the older sister was doing. Unfortunately this did not contribute to healing and the life-long friction between them, taken to full force by Johanna's roof, continued.

- - - -

On my first return, Anne and I were met at the airport by cousins Božena, Janez and Marjanca. It was a happy meeting and a reunion with Marjanca, uncle Jože’s daughter who as a teenager had visited us in New York some years before. While in Ljubljana we visited the cousins in their homes, met their spouses and children and surrounded by overwhelming hospitality, we cemented new friendships within the family members of our generation. Visiting the relatives of Mother’s generation was to follow in the next few days. The most keenly anticipated of these was meeting uncle Jože and his wife Iva for the first time in their house in Ljubljana.

While Iva was welcoming and gracious, Jože appeared distant and brusque and I very soon discovered the trace of condescension and sarcasm Mother had talked about. Pointed comments, quickly diverted by his family members, made plain that he was not yet reconciled with his elder sister and by extension, her elder son. I began to suspect that with his rather unfriendly demeanor he was reciprocating for the brutal verbal attack of Mother on Marjanca when she came to visit us in New York in 1965. In this assault, mother vented upon this unsuspecting girl of nineteen all emotion pent up about Jože since the trial of 1940 and brought forth a flood of tears and frantic packing to return home which I managed with difficulty to prevent.
 
Anne and I ended this initial visit with an understanding that we would meet again which we did on a pleasant outing with the whole family to Bled and the foothills of Triglav, the set of three mountain peaks that are the national symbol of Slovenia.  Unfortunately Jože due to business reasons could not participate.

The following day Anne and I drove the 60 km to Dolenja Vas to visit Uncle Janez and family where we were welcomed with joy and affection. As expected, Janez was happy to see us and we quickly became good friends.  His wife had died some years ago and his daughter Mira was now the woman of the house. She and her sister Angelca were delightful cousins, as were their respective husbands, and we all became aware of how much family togetherness had been lost in our long separation of over one quarter century.

Knowing that they had long ago become reconciled with the Pahulje family, I asked Janez to inquire if Angela and her husband would receive us. After an enthusiastic response, Anne and I walked the 200 meters to the Pahulje house where, without much hesitation, we all accepted each other as if nothing had ever separated us. Pahulje was very welcoming and Angela more lively and bubbling than described by Mother, making me wonder why the differences of the past were not resolved in the amicable manner we now related to each other.  Nevertheless, I soon detected traces of a cutting edge in Angela's manners which sensitive siblings such as Mother would soon find abrasive and lead to confrontation. I noticed no such edges in Pahulje, even after much time together in the following days, which made me realize that the difficulties with Father due to contractor business problems were driven to extremes by the two sisters and their decidedly different temperaments.

- - - -

It was on that day that I conceived the notion of giving a family dinner in which all the relatives were to take part. The intent was to produce a lasting reconciliation.  Testing the waters, all parts of the family appeared enthusiastic about my proposal.

Cousin Janez Pahulje, Angela’s son, an architect living in Ljubljana and his wife Anna suggested the restaurant at the Bellevue hotel, well known for its cuisine since it also doubled as a school for chefs. The Bellevue was on the slope of the hill overlooking the city and directly opposite the old fortress in the center of the town.

We inquired and yes, they would prepare a meal for 25 people on Thursday at 18.00 hrs and serve it in a separate dining room. Cousin Janez telephoned around and all agreed to come.

The dinner was to be held on the day before our departure to Istria and the Dalmatian coast.  In the days leading up to the event, members of the family invited us to their homes where we cemented our re-established family ties. We had not yet visited cousin Janez who insisted that we come to his home if only for a short few minutes before the dinner. As elsewhere hospitality overflowed, the few moments multiplied and it became high time to make for the Bellevue. On the way there, Janez was to pick up his parents at the bus depot where they were arriving from Dolenja Vas and bring them to the hotel in a taxi.

Anne and I were to follow Anna, the wife of Janez, through the center of the city to the Belvedere. It was getting late so she would drive fast, but since her little car was bright red, I would have no difficulty in following her close behind.

We set out from the edge of the city and I carefully tailed the little red car. As we reached the center, the traffic thickened and for a few moments I lost sight as other cars got in between, but we soon saw the red car make a right turn at the intersection.

As I followed, the traffic got lighter and as the day darkened it became obvious that we were driving toward the outskirts. No doubt, Anna knew a shortcut to the Bellevue. The assumption turned to doubt, when she made a right turn toward the underground garage of a multi-story apartment house and once inside, stopped.

The door opened and out stepped a man. During the few moments at the intersection where I fell behind, another red car, identical to that of Anna got between us and made the turn to the right.

The frantic explanation of our predicament convinced the man to lead us to the Bellevue. No other red car coming between us we arrived there a full half hour late.

Waiting for us at the door were Pahulje and his family, all in great distress.  Anna had arrived on time without us but was certain we were not far behind and would arrive momentarily.
 
Uncle Jože who had come early was not pleased and his displeasure turned into anger and then into rage and shortly before we arrived he had gathered his reluctant clan and left. The pleading by Pahulje and others to wait a bit longer had no effect. Jože let all present know that this was an unforgivable insult by his nephew, predictable since he was the son of his forever rancorous and scheming elder sister.
 
- - - -

All my good intentions had turned to disaster, the outcome the opposite of what I had hoped for. While the meal was as good as expected, the mood at the long but half empty table was subdued and no amount of good Slovene wine could overcome the gloom and bring the party to life. In retrospect, better planning could have averted the catastrophe, but hindsight brought no comfort except the knowledge that it could have been avoided, traffic and switched cars not withstanding.
   
To recover and make amends, early the following morning Anne and I went to a florist near the law office of uncle Jože in the center of the city where we bought a large bouquet of flowers. So armed, we entered his office where we were received by the startled Iva who accepted both my apologies and the flowers. Not so Jože who growled - "what do you want" - but softened a little at the urging of Iva, his son Jože and Borut, the husband of Marjanca, all of them being sympathetic to my misfortune and my attempt to correct it.
 
The deeper after effects of the incident became apparent later and lasted, as was the case with the roof, for years.  I had started a new cycle.  While not immediately obvious, it was predictable, given the ease with which members of Mother’s family would remake a minor thoughtlessness into a serious slight not lightly to be forgiven, and forgotten only after much water under the bridge.

While Jože perceived my thoughtlessness as an intentional insult, it was Pahulje who, unwittingly, enlarged the incident by rushing to my defense. He was furious at Jože's precipitous lack of patience and slight toward me and my wife and his fury infected the others who stayed, including uncle Janez and his family. His unhappiness with Jože was undoubtedly reinforced by knowing the root of my good intentions which he got to know during our time together in Masern and Dolenja Vas. But with his zeal to defend me, he started another cycle of animosity lasting for years to come.

- - - -

Nevertheless, there was a silver lining. The incident, while isolating uncle Jože, solidified the other members of the family, including Mother. On her next visit to Dolenja Vas she quickly marched the 200 meters to the house of her sister who, together with her husband, was equally eager to end the rancor lasting half a life time. After that, on future visits she would stay for weeks with Angela and Pahulje in Dolenja Vas where she, like her brother Janez, was made to feel at home. I also was welcomed there and began to wish Father were alive to joke with all of us about the follies of the past and sweep away the years of senseless antagonism and unpleasant memories. Especially those about the roof that was ultimately responsible for the loss of so much valuable time together.
 
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