Chronicle in Stone (16 page)

“You picked a great day to come back,” my mother said.

“What do you mean?”

She didn’t explain. Grandmother and Papa kissed me.

“Why did Mamma say I picked a great day to come back?” I asked Grandmother.

“They shot someone today,” she said. “He was wounded.”

“Who?”

“Gjergj Pula.”

“Really? Who shot him?”

“No one knows. The police are looking for suspects.”

“Did they ever find Aqif Kashahu’s daughter?” I asked.

“What made you think of Aqif Kashahu’s daughter?” Grandmother asked, almost reproachfully. “She’s away visiting some cousins.”

A partisan. A boy from the town centre had joined the resistance. A week before he had been a boy like all the others, with a home and a door with a knocker, who yawned when he was sleepy. He was Bido Sherifi’s youngest nephew. And suddenly he had become a partisan. Now he was up in the mountains. On the march. The high peaks were shrouded in winter mists that rolled down the gorges like nightmares. The partisan was up there somewhere. Everyone else was down here. He alone was up there.

“Why do they say: ‘He joined the resistance’?”

“You wear me out with your questions.”

Start of winter. I was looking at the first frost that covered the world and wondering what foreign land’s shreds and tatters would be blown to us by the winter wind this year.

FOURTEEN

Two truckloads of deportees were to leave that afternoon. The main square was swarming with people. Italian gendarmes came and went through the crowd. Heaped in the back of the trucks, the people who were being taken away had turned up the collars of their old coats. Many of them were holding little bundles, others were empty-handed. Almost all were silent. The crowd around them buzzed. Some women were crying. Others, especially the older ones, were giving advice. The men talked in low voices. The deportees kept quiet.

“What have they done? Why are they taking them away?” a passer-by asked.

“They spoke against.”

“What?”

“They spoke against.”

“What does that mean? Against what?”

“I’m telling you, they spoke against.”

The passer-by turned away.

“Why are they taking them away? What have they done?” he asked someone else.

“They spoke against.”

Bruno Arcivocale, commander of the city garrison, crossed the middle of the square, followed by a group of officers. There must have been a meeting at the town hall.

The truck engines had been idling for a long time. Then their monotonous hum in the square suddenly grew louder. The first truck revved up. Words spoken in loud voices, shrieks and cries came through the roar. The second truck also got into gear. The deportees waved. One of them shouted:

“Long live Albania!”

The square was full of excitement. In the end, the trucks made their way through a crowd that had surrounded them on all sides and drove off at speed.

The square emptied out. Apparently the meeting at the town hall had begun. Many guards were posted around the square. The streets were deserted.

Darkness fell on the city without those who had spoken against. Strangely enough, new leaflets were out that night. Lady Majnur left her house before dawn to report to the carabinieri.

Ilir came over that afternoon.

“Want to speak against?” he asked.

“Yeah, let’s.”

“But let’s be careful of spies,” he added a moment later.

“Where should we go?” I asked.

“Up on the roof.”

We went to Ilir’s house and climbed up to the roof unobserved. The view was spectacular. Thousands of roofs stretched away endlessly, steep and grey, as though they had turned over and over in a fitful sleep. It was very cold.

“You start,” Ilir said.

I took the lens from my pocket and put it over one eye.

“Dadadada, tatatata!” I said.

“Rabalama, paramara!” Ilir declared.

We sat and thought for a while.

“Long live Albania!” said Ilir.

“Down with Italy!”

“Long live the Albanian people!”

“Down with the Italian people!”

We fell silent. Ilir looked as though he had had a thought.

“No, that’s not fair,” he said. “Isa says the Italian people aren’t bad guys.”

“What’s he talking about?”

“It’s true. That’s what he says.”

“No,” I insisted. “If their planes are bad, how can their people be good? Can a country’s people be better than its planes?”

Ilir was shaken. He seemed ready to think again. But then just when he was about to change his mind, he said stubbornly, “No!”

“You’re a traitor,” I told him. “Down with traitors!”

“Down with the fratricidal struggle!” Ilir replied, putting up his fists as if he was about to box me.

We looked all around, automatically. We realised that we could easily have rolled off the roof.

Without another word we climbed down single-file and parted in anger.

Everyone was talking about the people who had joined the resistance. There were partisans from all the neighbourhoods, from Lower Palorto, Gjobek, Varosh, Cfakë, the central districts and the districts on the outskirts of town. But only one young girl had taken to the hills from Hazmurat.

Someone had brought news of the first casualty among the partisans. It was Avdo Babaramo’s younger son. No one knew where he had been killed or how. The body had not been recovered.

Avdo Babaramo and his wife locked themselves in the house for several days. Then he hired a mule for three months, collected some money, and set out to look for his son in the mountains. He was up there now, moving around.

A war winter, that’s what all the women who came to visit called it.

One day when I went to answer a knock at the door I was struck dumb. It was my maternal grandmother, who usually came to see us maybe once a year, since she was too heavy to make long journeys. And she never went out except in the spring, because she couldn’t stand it if the weather was too hot or too cold. Yet here she was on our doorstep, her big face looking pale and worried.

“It’s Grandma!” I called up the stairs.

My mother came running down the stairs sick with worry.

“What’s happened?” she cried.

Grandma shook her head slowly. “Calm down,” she said. “No one died.”

Grandmother came to the top of the stairs and stood there like a statue.

“Welcome,” she said calmly.

“Thank you, Selfixhe. It’s good to find you all well.”

Grandma was so out of breath from climbing up the stairs that she could barely get the sentence out.

We all waited.

The two grandmothers went into the main room and sat facing one another on the divans.

“My daughter,” our visitor said through her sobs and tears, “my youngest has run off to be a partisan.”

My mother sighed and sank onto the divan. Grandmother’s grey eyes didn’t blink.

“I thought it was something worse than that,” my mother said softly.

Grandma continued to weep bitterly.

“A marriageable girl. Just when I was preparing her trousseau, she runs away, leaves everything. All alone in the mountains in this weather! She’s only seventeen! Left all her embroidery half-done, strewn all over the house. Oh my God!”

“Get hold of yourself,” said Grandmother. “I was wondering what on earth it could be. But look, she’s with friends. She’s gone, and crying won’t bring her back. Let’s just hope she comes back one day safe and sound.”

Wet with tears, Grandma’s face looked even more laughable.

“But what about the family’s honour, Selfixhe?” she moaned. “What will people say?”

“Her honour will depend on the honour her comrades win,” Grandmother said. “Make us some coffee, my child.”

My mother put the coffee pot on the stove. I could hardly contain my joy. Taking advantage of the general turmoil, I slipped downstairs and ran over to Ilir’s. I had completely forgotten that we were at loggerheads. He came out looking furious.

“Ilir, guess what! My aunt has joined the partisans.”

Ilir was stunned.

“Really?”

I told him everything I knew. He looked thoughtful.

“Then why doesn’t Isa go too?” he said at last, almost angrily.

I didn’t know what to say.

“He’s up in his room with Javer,” Ilir said. “They sit around all day spinning the globe round and round.”

We went upstairs. The door of Isa’s room was ajar. Ilir went in first and I followed. They pretended not to notice us. Isa was sitting in a chair, chin on his fist, looking very annoyed.

“They know better than we do,” Javer was saying.

“If they order us to stay here, it means that’s what we have to do.”

Isa said nothing.

“The front is everywhere,” Javer said a moment later. “Maybe we’re doing a better job by just staying where we are.”

Silence again. The two of us stood stock still. The older boys were still pretending not to see us. Suddenly Ilir said, “How come you two don’t go and join the partisans?”

Javer turned around. Isa seemed to freeze for a moment. Then suddenly he jumped up, spun around, and slapped his brother on the face.

Ilir put his hand to his cheek. His eyes glistened, but he didn’t cry. We trooped out feeling mortified. We went downstairs in silence and walked out into the courtyard. The windows of Isa’s room were right above our heads. We looked up in fury, then shouted:

“Down with traitors!”

“Down with civil war!”

Upstairs a door slammed. We ran off as fast as we could and found ourselves in the street.

By the time I got home, Grandma had gone.

In the days that followed, the only topic of conversation was about who had joined up. Every morning the women would open their shutters and exchange the latest news.

“Bido Sherifi’s other nephew has taken to the hills as well.”

“Really? Have you heard anything about Kokobobo’s daughter?”

“They say she’s gone off too.”

“The word is that Isa Toska’s people killed her.”

“I don’t know anything about it. Avdo Babaramo hasn’t come back yet. He’s still looking for his poor son’s body.”

“The poor old man. Wandering through the mountains in this winter weather.”

Grandmother, Kako Pino and Bido Sherifi’s wife were sitting on the sofas and sipping coffee when there was a knock at the door. To everyone’s amazement, it was Lady Majnur.

“How are you, ladies? How are things? I thought I’d call. We haven’t had a word since the air raids.”

“Welcome, Majnur
Hanum
,” my mother said.

Lady Majnur sat down next to Grandmother.

“I heard about your misfortune,” said Lady Majnur, shaking her head. “A terrible blow, Selfixhe. Most unfortunate.”

“Life brings many trials.”

“True, Selfixhe, very true.”

Lady Majnur’s glassy eyes followed Mamma as she went to make the coffee.

“They’ve gone up to the mountains to join up, the bitches,” she hissed.

No one answered.

My mother brought the coffee.

“Up in the mountains all the boys and girls sleep around without a second thought,” said Lady Majnur. “Just wait. You’ll see. They’ll all come back with babies.”

My mother turned pale. Lady Majnur’s face grew harsher. A gold tooth in the right side of her mouth seemed to be smiling for all the others.

“But they’ll catch them now, one by one,” she went on. “They have nowhere to go. They’ve run out of food and clothing. In the middle of winter, with all the wolves. Anyway, they say a lot of them can hardly move. Obviously not. Pregnant to the eyeballs . . .”

“Come, Lady Majnur,” said Grandmother. “Don’t talk that way. Those stories might be slander.”

There was a deep silence.

My mother turned away to hide her tears and went into the other room.

“You were harsh,” said Grandmother.

Lady Majnur’s glassy eyes tried to smile, but Bido Sherifi’s wife stood up. Then she exploded:

“Dirty witch!” And she went to join my mother in the other room.

“The end of the world,” said Kako Pino to no one in particular.

Lady Majnur stood up, puce with anger.

Grandmother did not budge. She was looking out at the winter-ravaged earth.

“Young boys and girls are getting together in the cellars to sing forbidden songs. They say they want to overthrow the old world and build a new one.”

“A new world? What will this new world be like?”

“They’re the ones who know, sister, they alone. But listen, come close and listen. They say that blood will have to be spilled for this new world to be built.”

“That I can believe. If an animal has to be sacrificed when a new bridge is built, what will it take to build a whole new world?”

“A hecatomb.”

“Good Lord! What are you saying?”

FRAGMENT OF A CHRONICLE

according to bulletin no. 1187. Countless Russian troops and tanks have been annihilated by the murderous fire of the Germans. A battle of apocalyptic scale. Only German and Italian troops, Mussolini has declared, could have endured a winter so harsh, the worst in a hundred and forty years. Timoshenko, wounded and bleeding, is roaming through the steppes of Russia which are now piled high with corpses. Trial. Executive measures. Property. New evidence brought by the Karllashis. Gillette razor blades. Registered trademark. Safety blades. I hereby prohibit all assemblies in the streets, squares and houses. I order the suspension of weddings and funerals. Garrison commander Bruno Arcivo

FIFTEEN

A notice was posted on what remained of a wall of the ruined house. We came to play in those ruins every day. Wallowing in their own misfortune, they were nonetheless kind to us. We took whatever we wanted from them, demolished small pieces of wall, shifted stones about, without much changing the look of the ruins. After enduring the flames, which had turned it into a ruin in a matter of hours, the house was now completely indifferent, and tolerated any fresh attack. Some iron bars protruding from the remnants of the walls looked like the fingers of a frozen hand. The notice had been hung right on those bars. Two old men had stopped to read it. It was typewritten, and in two languages, Albanian and Italian:

Wanted: the dangerous Communist Enver Hoxha. Aged about 30. Tall. Wears sunglasses. Reward for any information leading to his capture: 15,000 leks; for his capture: 30,000 leks. Garrison commander Bruno Arcivocale.

Ilir tugged on the sleeve of my jacket.

“That was his house,” he whispered to me.

“Enver Hoxha’s?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I heard Papa telling Isa one day.”

“So where is he now, this Enver Hoxha?”

“Far away. Somewhere near Tirana.”

I whistled in amazement.

“He went all the way to Tirana?”

“Sure.”

“Is Tirana very far?” I asked.

“Yes, very. Maybe we’ll go there too when we grow up.”

Someone else stopped to read the notice. We left.

Xhexho and Kako Pino were at our house drinking coffee with Grandmother. Xhexho carefully turned her cup upside down.

“It seems that a new kind of war has broken out,” she said. “I forget exactly what they call it, war with classes or class war, or something like that. Well, Selfixhe, it’s a war all right, but not like the others. In this war brothers kill each other. The son slays the father. At home, at the dinner table, wherever. The son looks his father in the eye, then he tells him he doesn’t recognise him as his father any more and bang, he shoots him, right between the eyes.”

“The end of the world,” said Kako Pino.

“Apparently,” Xhexho went on, “someone called Gole Balloma from the Gjobek neighbourhood is wandering the streets screaming that he’s going to skin Mak Karllashi alive, cure and dry his hide in his own tannery, make shoes out of it and dance around in them.”

“I’ve never heard anything so monstrous,” my mother burst out in indignation.

“There you are, Selfixhe,” said Xhexho. “We had thought all our troubles were over, but now it looks as if the worst is yet to come. Do you remember Enver, the Hoxha boy?”

“The one who went to study in the land of the Franks? Of course I remember him?”

“And so do I,” Kako Pino chimed in.

“Well, they say he’s the one leading the war now. He’s also the one who invented this new war I was telling you about.”

“That’s hard to believe,” said Grandmother. “He was such a well-behaved lad.”

“Yes, Selfixhe, very well behaved. But they say he wears dark glasses now so he won’t be recognised and that he’s the one running the war.”

“War, always war,” Kako Pino sighed.

“What can you do?” said Grandmother. “It looks to me as if this world can’t manage without war. As old as I am, I’ve never seen a day of real peace.”

My mother sighed.

“I heard that Karllashi’s daughter is back from Italy,” Xhexho said, breaking the silence. “God, what a scandal! She wears her skirt above the knee and has dresses of such thin fabric you would think she was in a snakeskin. You can see everything. She spends all day preening, paints her lips red, bleaches her hair, smokes, and speaks Italian. ‘Oh, Mother, what a filthy country,’ she complains. ‘Father, how could you bring me back to this hole.’ Oh this, oh that, all day long. That’s what the world’s coming to, Selfixhe.”

“What can you expect?” Grandmother asked once again. “That’s what happens to girls when they leave home.”

“Yes, exactly,” Kako Pino agreed. “Everything’s upside down.”

The next day, as if he had been listening to Xhexho, Ilir said to me, “Let’s go and have a look at Karllashi’s daughter, the one who’s just back from Italy.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Very. Her hair is gold like the sun. She sits at the window daydreaming, and her hair blows in the wind.”

We ran out, crossed Fools’ Alley, and stopped in front of the Karllashis’ house. And there she was, elbows resting on the windowsill, and it really did look as if she had sun in her hair. No other woman in the city ever had hair like that, except for one of the prostitutes, the one Ramiz Kurti had killed the year before, after which the brothel was closed for six months.

We stood in front of the Karllashis’ house for a long time. Two
katenxhikas
went by. One was all hunched up. Then Gjergj Pula passed by. He was so pale he looked as though he had come straight out of hospital. We stared at each other. Then Maksut went by with a severed head under his arm. Karllashi’s daughter left the window. We waited for her to reappear, but she didn’t. Now we didn’t know where to go. The street was deserted. Bido Sherifi’s wife appeared at her window, shook flour from her hands, and disappeared. Nazo’s door closed without a sound after Maksut went inside.

Suddenly shots rang out. A short burst. Then another burst. Then separate shots. Some people came running from Market Street, Harilla Lluka among them.

“Run!” he shouted. “Take cover! Someone’s been killed.”

Ilir’s mother came to the doorstep.

“Ilir, get inside!” she yelled.

I heard them calling me too. Doors were noisily slammed shut. More shots rang out.

The news spread like wildfire: Bruno Arcivocale, the garrison commander, had been assassinated.

Late that night the silence was broken by a knock at a door.

“It’s at Mane Voco’s,” said Grandmother, going to open the window to look out.

Outside we heard heavy footsteps, then some words in Italian and shouts of “My son, my son!”

Then silence again. Someone had been arrested.

Grandmother closed the window.

“They just took Isa away,” she said.

Arcivocale’s funeral was magnificent. There were speeches in the centre of town. Then the long procession marched to the cemetery while a military band played. Shiny musical instruments wailed mournfully through their lily-shaped mouths. Fascist officers, dressed in black from head to toe, walked slowly alongside, looking impressive and serious. Followed by the priests. Then came the nuns. The casket containing Arcivocale swung gently from side to side. Old ladies, women and children rushed to a thousand windows. The city watched the departure of its late commander. On the walls tatters of notices and ordinances torn by the wind would bear fragments of his name for some time: RCIV, ARC, OC, L. Then the rain would finally wipe them out and new notices and ordinances with the name of the new commander would go up.

It rained steadily for four days in a row. It was an ancient, monotonous rain. (“Once a rain fell upon the earth lasting thirty thousand years,” Xivo Gavo said in the introduction to his chronicle.) It was under this rain that Isa was hanged. The execution took place at dawn in the town centre. Groups of people came to watch. Two girls were also hanged along with Isa. Their hair dripped with rain. Isa was missing one leg. It made him look horrible, like an upside down cone. His glasses were the only thing that seemed alive on his battered face. The victims had pieces of white cloth attached to their chests bearing their names. Azem Kurti, Javer’s uncle and commander of the Balli Kombëtar, who along with Mak Karllashi’s son had taken part in the killing of Isa, raised the skirts of the hanged girls with his cane. Their thin white legs swung back and forth for a moment before coming to rest. Mane Voco’s wife broke away from the people trying to hold her back and ran through the streets screaming hysterically, “My son! My son!” She rushed all the way to the gallows and embraced Isa’s single leg, pressing it to her face and hair. “My son, my son, what have they done to you?” The conical form gave a jerk. His glasses fell off. The woman gathered up the shattered lenses and pressed them to her breast. “My little boy, my little boy.”

That same night Javer, who was still a wanted man, went to his uncle Azem Kurti’s house, where he had not set foot in a long time.

“They’re looking for me, Uncle,” he had said, “but I have repented.”

“Repented? You have done the right thing, nephew. Come, let me kiss you. I knew this day would come. Did you see what we did to that friend of yours?”

“Yes, I saw,” Javer answered.

“Bring us some raki and a hot meal,” Azem said to the women. “Let us celebrate this reconciliation.”

When they had sat down at the table, Javer said:

“Now, Uncle, you’re going to tell me all about the business with Isa.”

And Azem laid out the facts. Sipping his raki, eating his roast, he described the killing. Javer listened.

“What’s wrong, nephew? You look pale,” the uncle said.

“Yes, Uncle, I feel pale.”

“Those books have thinned your blood. Your fingers are thinner too.”

Javer looked at his fingers and then coolly took a revolver out of his pocket. Azem’s eyes opened wide. Javer shoved the barrel of the gun into his uncle’s food-stuffed mouth. Azem’s teeth rattled on the metal. Then, one by one, the bullets smashed his jaw, his forehead and his skull to smithereens. Morsels of half-chewed meat mingled with blobs of Azem’s brain as they rained down together onto the low dining table.

Javer left amid the wailing of his cousins. The next day the Bulldog flew over the city dropping multi-coloured leaflets saying, “Yesterday the Communist Javer Kurti killed his own uncle at the family dinner table. Fathers and Mothers, judge for yourselves what the Communists are like.”

That evening the bodies of six people shot dead in the citadel prison were brought to the main square. They were left there in a pile so people could see. A white banner bore this inscription in capital letters: THIS IS HOW WE ANSWER RED TERROR.

The rain had stopped. It was very cold at night. By dawn the corpses were covered with frost. They lay there on the square all that day. On the second morning, another pile of corpses was found on the other side of the square. A bit of cloth bore the words: THIS IS HOW WE ANSWER WHITE TERROR.

The police rushed in to get rid of the bodies, but they weren’t given time to complete the job. They were ordered to go after the terrorists first. None of the guards on duty the previous night had suspected a thing. Around midnight, the municipal road-sweeper’s cart, drawn by Ballashi, an old nag well-known to everyone in the city, had pulled up in the square. As usual, the cart was covered with a black tarpaulin. Just before daybreak someone passing alongside the cart happened to give the tarpaulin an idle tug, and that’s when the bodies fell out in a heap.

People came back from the town centre in consternation.

“Go and see.”

“Go and look, on the square. A real slaughter.”

“Don’t let the children see. Keep the children back.”

Grandmother shook her head pensively and said: “What terrible times.”

The city was soaked in blood. The bodies of the executed prisoners were still in the square. Now both piles had been covered with tarpaulins. In the afternoon Hanko, a crone who had not crossed the threshold of her house in twenty-nine years, went out and headed for the centre of the city. People were dumbfounded, and stepped aside to let her pass. Her vacant eyes seemed to see everything without looking at anything.

“Who is that man standing on that rock?” she asked, pointing with her cane.

“It’s a statue, Mother Hanko. It’s made of iron.”

“I thought it was Omer’s son.”

“It is Omer’s son, Mother Hanko. He’s been dead for a long time.”

Then she asked to see the bodies. She went to each pile of corpses in turn, lifted the frozen tarpaulins, and stared at the dead for a long time.

“What country are they from?” she asked, pointing to the Italians.

“From Italy.”

“Foreigners?” she said.

“Yes, foreigners.”

She put her hands on each face, as if to recognise the corpses.

“What about those?”

“Those are from our city. This one is from the Toro family, this one from the Xhulas, this one the Angonis, this one the Merajs, and this one the Kokobobos.”

Granny Hanko covered up the pile with her dry, withered hands and turned to leave.

“Why all this blood? Can’t you tell us anything, Mother Hanko?” a woman asked between her sobs.

The crone turned her aged head, but seemed to have forgotten where the voice had come from.

“The world is changing blood,” she said to no one in particular. “A person changes blood every four or five years, and the world every four or five hundred years. These are the winters of blood.”

So saying, she set off homeward. She was one hundred and thirty-two years old.