Chronicle in Stone (13 page)

“Listen,” I said.

Ilir froze, open-mouthed.

A muffled rumble came from the distance. Someone on the square looked up at the sky. A Greek soldier shaded his eyes with his hand.

“Planes,” Ilir said.

We were in the middle of the square. The rumble grew louder. Suddenly the square seemed to have become much larger. The Greek soldier shouted out loud, then bolted. The sky trembled so much that I thought it would crumble.

Yes, it was him! His noise. His roar.

“Quick!” screamed Ilir, pulling at my sleeve. “Hurry!”

But I was frozen stiff.

“The big plane,” I mumbled in a daze.

“Down!” someone yelled sternly.

The howl was deafening now. It engulfed the sky and smothered the blast of the old anti-aircraft gun, whose shells disappeared into the void.

“Get dow-w-w-n!”

A fragment of a shout reached me from afar, and suddenly I saw, directly overhead, three bombers that had surged up from behind the roofs at dizzying speed. He was one of them. Yes, I would know him anywhere. He was huge, he had his great grey wings all stretched out, he was cruel and blinded by war, and he dropped his bombs: one, two, three . . . Heaven and earth crashed against each other. A blind force hurled me to the ground. Why was he doing it? What for? My ears ached. Enough! I couldn’t see anything. No ears, no eyes. I must be dead.

When everything was still again I heard a hoarse sob. It was me, crying . . . I got up. Miraculously, the square was still flat, though just a few moments before it had seemed hopelessly upside down, forever twisted. Ilir was lying face down a few steps away. I went to him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and shook him. He’d grazed the skin on his forehead and hands. I was bleeding too. Wordless, crying our hearts out, we set out quickly but sadly for home. On Market Street we ran into Isa and Javer who were running towards us, very pale. When they saw us, they gave a shout and grabbed us in their arms, then ran home with us at the same frenzied pace.

The Italians came back to the city. In the morning the road was filled with mules, guns and endless columns of soldiers. The Greek flag with its white cross was taken down from the prison tower, giving way to the Italian tricolour with its fascist insignia.

It was soon obvious that this was not just another passing occupation. The siren, the searchlight, the anti-aircraft battery, the nuns and the prostitutes all followed the soldiers in. Only the aerodrome stayed empty. Instead of military aircraft just one strange orange plane came to land there. It was ugly, with a flat nose and short wings, and people called it “Bulldog”. It looked like an orphan all alone there on the tarmac.

ELEVEN

Greece had been defeated. It was snowing. The windowpanes were covered with frost. I stared blankly at the swarms of refugees on the road below. In tatters. Snowflakes and rags. The world seemed filled with them. Somewhere down there lay Greece all in shreds, and in the winter wind its ghostly remnants flitted this way and that like clumps of goose-down or scraps of cloth.

The refugees trudged up the city streets in endless streams. They were all famished and frozen stiff — soldiers and civilians, women carrying babies in wicker baskets, old men, officers without their pips — all pounded on doors in distress, begging for bread.

“Psomi! Psomi!”

The haughty city looked down its nose and gazed at the defeated. Its gates were high, its windows out of reach. Pleading voices rose up from below as from the brink of death.

“Psomi! Psomi!”

So that’s what the rout of a nation looked like. From conversations overheard in the shelter I had gathered that of the countries we knew from our postage stamps only France and Poland had so far suffered defeat. They too must have filled the world with tatters and the word
psomi
. (Ilir told me it was impossible that the French and Poles also called bread
psomi
, but I insisted that all defeated countries called it that.)

Snow covered everything. It was cold. The chimneys smoked steadily. Beneath the heavy roofs, life, disrupted by recent events, settled down again. The Angoni vs Karllashi trial resumed. Llukan the Jailbird, with his blanket over his shoulder and his bread wrapped in a kerchief, crossed the neighbourhood on his way to the prison, greeting passers-by right and left. Lame Kareco Spiri also seemed at ease again. Kako Pino was summoned to a wedding in Dunavat; Nazo’s cat disappeared.

Life seemed to be back to normal. The nuns looked even blacker against the snow. The searchlight beamed with new lustre. Only the aerodrome remained deserted. It was utterly empty now. Not even cows. Just snow. I was getting ready to turn the crusaders loose (who would mix with the refugees), and the lame man too. But that very day, just when life seemed to be settling back into its old routine, the bombing started again.

The cellar, which had been abandoned for a while, was now full again. It was warm there in winter.

“Here we are again, flocking like chicks around a hen,” said the women, greeting one another as they energetically, almost joyfully, unrolled their blankets and mattresses. They were all there: Kako Pino, Bido Sherifi’s wife, Ilir’s mother, Lady Majnur (still holding her nose), Nazo and her pretty daughter-in-law. Only Xhexho, who had disappeared once again, was missing. Çeço Kaili still wouldn’t come. Aqif Kashahu now sent only his sons, at whom Bido Sherifi stared in terror, God knows why. Aqif himself, his deaf mother, his wife and his daughter stayed home.

The snow muffled the rumble of the planes and the roar of artillery. The sound of the old anti-aircraft gun was still different from the others. But by now no one expected it to do any good. It was like an old blind man teased by kids, who responds by throwing stones that never hit their mark.

The English planes paid us regular visits every day. They would loom in the sky almost to a schedule, and people seemed to get used to the bombings as a disagreeable part of a daily routine. “See you tomorrow at the coffee house, right after the bombing.” “I’ll be up at dawn tomorrow; that way I think I’ll have the house cleaned before the bombing.” “Come on, let’s go down to the cellar, it’s almost time.”

But no one suspected that the cellar’s days were numbered.
That its time had passed
.

That judgment was uttered by a man who came down the stairs wearing a black cape over his shoulders.

“Who’s that?”

“What does that man want?”

“Make way for your visitor. He’s a foreign engineer. He wants to check the shelter.”

“An engineer?”

The interpreter threaded a path through the blankets and mattresses where the sick people and pregnant women were lying. The foreigner in the black cape followed. He asked for a chair.

“Good God, where did that man come from?”

“Don’t look at him like that.”

“What’s he going to do with that knife? Lord have mercy!”

The man in the black cape stood on the chair they had brought him. He took out of his tool-bag a knife with a finer point and a sturdy hammer. He gave his bag to the interpreter, then raised his right arm and hit the ceiling with the hammer in several places. Then he handed the hammer to the interpreter, and took one of the knives. His arm shot up and with a jab, almost taking it by surprise, he dug the knife into the ceiling. We all held our breath. The man pulled the knife out slowly. Bits of rubble fell to the floor with a clatter. The tip of the knife had turned slightly white. He got down from the chair, moved a little further over, got up again, and did the same thing again, this time with both knives. Now both blades were white with plaster. The foreign engineer got down off the chair and said a few words to the interpreter.

In a loud, mechanical voice, the interpreter translated, “This cellar is unsuitable for use as a shelter. Whose house is this?”

My father came forward.

“Your cellar is inadequate as a shelter,” he repeated to my father with the same indifference, looking past him at the wall as if he was reading off it.

My father shrugged.

The foreigner said something else.

“The engineer says the cellar has to be evacuated immediately. It would be dangerous to stay here.”

No one said a word. The engineer’s knives had slashed not only the walls but everyone’s flesh too; you could tell by the painful way their wrinkles tightened and contracted.

The man in the black cape strode towards the exit. His cape billowed out behind him as he went up the steps, cutting off for a moment the feeble light that streamed in from outside, then letting it in again.

“My God,” said a neighbour of ours who suffered from rheumatism. “Where are we supposed to go now?”

Some of the women began to wail.

“Where are they going to put us now?”

“Enough,” Bido Sherifi cried. “We’ll find another shelter somewhere. Stop crying.”

“It’s not the end of the world.”

“We’ll find a place. There has to be another place.”

“They say they’re going to open the citadel to the public.”

“The citadel?”

“Why not? It’s possible. Come on, let’s get the blankets together,” Bido Sherifi said to his wife.

One by one people started to go. The cellar was emptying. By afternoon the last to leave, the sick and the pregnant women, were gone. The door creaked in complaint. We were left alone.

All was silence. I went upstairs. You could hear worms gnawing at the wood. So quiet you could hear a worm munching . . . I listened for a long time to a monotonous crackling whose source I couldn’t locate. The time of the worms has come, I thought.

I went downstairs. There was no one in the hallway. The lamp was there, and the candle too, its black wick bowing its head sadly. I lit it and, holding it gingerly, started down the stairs to the cellar. I could feel the smell of people drifting up. The candle’s flickering light swept over the white walls. On the ceiling I could see the small wounds left by the knife of the man in the black cape.

The engineer in black was all we talked about during that time. He showed up everywhere, and everywhere he declared cellars unsuitable as shelters. Just as he had done at our place, he would start by asking for a chair and then, with a quick, almost sly thrust of his arm, he would stab old cellars to death. One hundred and sixty-three cellars large and small were cleared out in just four days. On the fifth day, before heading back to Tirana, the engineer got roaring drunk on the local raki and, getting into his car, said that he was sorry to be leaving behind a city doomed to destruction but that it wasn’t his fault, he had done all he could, the days of his visit had been terribly painful for him too, but in the end no one could fight fate. There comes a time, he said, when not only cities but even kingdoms and empires must perish.

As if to bear out the engineer’s words, the English bombing suddenly intensified. Forty-nine people were killed in four days. In the town hall the council met in continuous session to decide whether to open the citadel to the public. They had been deliberating for three days when the inhabitants of Lower Dunavat breached the citadel’s western gate without waiting for the council’s decision. On the same day the people of the market district forced the eastern gate.

That day, from morning to evening, there was a long migration to the citadel.

Doors slammed shut in our street all night.

“You going too?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“We’ll decide later this evening.”

“There may not be enough room for everyone.”

“I think it’ll be all right. The cellars under the citadel are huge.”

Kako Pino came over for a consultation.

“What are we going to do? It’s the end of the world.”

“We’ll see tomorrow,” my father said.

Bido Sherifi came in.

“Tomorrow,” my father repeated. “Go to Mane Voco’s,” he told me, “and ask them what they mean to do.”

I ran into Mane Voco in the street. He was on his way to our house.

A little later Nazo and her daughter-in-law knocked at our door.

“So, tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow before dawn.”

It was one of the happiest evenings of my life. People knocked at the door endlessly. No one dreamt of going to sleep. We wrapped things in big bundles and carried them down into the cellar to protect them from fire. Bido Sherifi, Nazo, Kako Pino and Mane Voco also brought bundles over. The cellar had become useful again.

“Go to bed,” Grandmother told me two or three times.

I just could not. Tomorrow we were going to the citadel. We would say good-bye to the steps, doors and windows of our house, leave the familiar words behind and enter the unknown. Everything there would be magical, terrifying and extraordinary. It was the very place where Macbeth lived.

Morning came, cold and dull. A light rain was falling. There was a knock at the door.

“Well, are you ready?” Bido Sherifi called from the street.

“Ready,” my father answered.

“Come here, let me kiss you,” Grandmother said. I stood there dumbfounded.

“Why, aren’t you coming with us?”

She stroked my head.

“No, I’m staying here.”

“No! No!”

“Be quiet!” my father told me.

“Hush, my darling. Nothing will happen to me.”

“No! No!”

Another knock.

“Hurry up,” my father said, “they’re waiting for us.”

“Why are we leaving Grandmother all alone here?” I cried out reproachfully.

“She won’t come,” my father said. “I tried all night to convince her, but she won’t budge.” Then, turning to Grandmother: “Look, for the last time, come with us. Please.”

“I won’t leave the house all on its own,” she said calmly. “This is where I’ve spent my life, and this is where I want to die.”

Another knock.

“Bless you all,” said Grandmother, kissing each of us in turn.

The door closed behind us and we were in the street. It was still drizzling. We set off. Others joined our group along the way. You could barely see the citadel walls through the mist. A line of people several hundred metres long stretched out from the western gate. Carrying bundles, blankets, trunks, suitcases, books, pots, chairs, carpets, wash-basins, pitchers, cradles, grinders and bowls, they moved forward slowly, stopped, waited a long time, and moved again. It was a long way to the gate. Everything was soaked by the rain. People coughed, stood on tiptoe to see what was going on at the head of the queue, asked, “Why have they stopped moving? ” and coughed some more.

By noon, we were finally getting close to the guard post. The ancient walls, streaming with rain, rose up on either side. The gate was high but narrow. When we went through (by now my joy had vanished), we found ourselves in total darkness. There was a terrifying echo of footsteps. The children began to scream in terror. We couldn’t see a thing. We were feeling our way along blindly. Someone screamed. Suddenly, somewhere up ahead of us, we saw a jagged piece of sky. We walked in that direction. The crack widened overhead until we felt raindrops on our heads again.

“This way! Come this way!” someone yelled frantically.

We climbed a few stairs, then crossed a relatively flat area and entered an arched tunnel that led to a small platform.

“This way!”

We were led into another tunnel that was completely dark. The floor was on a sharp incline, and it was hard to stay upright. Then another piece of sky cut into the blackness. This time we came out onto a sort of open esplanade, bounded on either side by battlements. Right in front of us, rising to a great height as if it were trying to take a bite out of the sky, loomed the prison.

“This way!”

We crossed the square and went into another vaulted tunnel. I reckoned we must now be right under the prison. A muffled commotion came from somewhere up ahead of us.

At last we came upon a strange sight: under the majestic, high-vaulted ceiling dripping with water, amidst the bundles and blankets, cradles and countless random items, sat thousands of people, immobile or shifting about, silent or noisy, coughing, sneezing, crying.

For a long time we wandered among the throng and the piles of luggage, looking for a place to settle down. Our ears rang with the amplified noise bouncing two and three times off the high arches. There was no empty space anywhere. Someone advised us to look in the second gallery, and pointed the way. We went. It was just as crowded as the one before. Finally Mane Voco, who was leading our group, found a narrow strip that seemed to have remained unoccupied because of the icy draught that blew in through a crack in the wall. We put our things down and started to spread out our mats and thick woollen blankets. You could see part of the city through the chink in the wall. It was way below us, far below, sunk in its grey depths, majestic and scornful.