Sworn Virgin (10 page)

He looks daggers at her, tries to say something but lets out little more than a grunt.

‘Yeah, I know, Uncle. I'm a woman and I shouldn't be talking like this. I should know my place.'

He grabs the stick that he keeps by his bed and thumps it on the table. His hand is so unsteady that the stick falls onto the worn-out
kilim
.

‘I'm sorry,' she says, as soon as she gets over the shock. ‘Forgive me … Will you forgive
me?'

She hugs him. She curls up between his shoulder and his chin. Gjergj's heart is a drum that has lost its
beat.

‘You can't go alone, my little one,' he whispers in her ear. ‘It's dangerous.'

‘I'll try. Look, I know how to take care of myself.'

‘There are wolves out there, my daughter. This place is full of wolves.'

There is a brief, transparent moment of silence. Then Hana decides to play along with her uncle.

‘It's summer, Uncle Gjergj. The wolves aren't that hungry.'

She gives him a couple of pills that are supposed to help him sleep. Then she goes up to her room and stands by the window listening to the late afternoon: the dialogue between plants and animals, life twisting up and then stretching out. A year ago, Hana would have been moved by such beauty; now she is calmly detached. She feels grown-up and she likes
it.

‘You're Hana Doda,' she says to herself out loud. ‘Hana Doda, daughter of Felicità.' Her mother's name had been Happiness. Aunt Katrina always said she had had a beautiful voice. Hana remembers her singing around the house. Why was she thinking of this
now?

‘Now I have another problem. See,
Nanë
? You've come along at the wrong time.'

Everything is wrong. Even this summer, that seems like a wonderful painting but isn't, if you look at it carefully. This summer looks more like a mediocre poem. Albanians write a lot of poetry, they're crazy about poems, but they're scared of telling stories. You need persistence to narrate a story, as well as discipline. Full sentences don't allow you to cheat or be lazy. Poetry does: it's more worldly-wise, more fleeting, more musical. Narration is for monks, inscribing manuscripts all day until they're hunchbacks.

‘Don't you see,
Nanë
? I've got other things to think about. Go away!'

Hana waits until the memory of her mother fades. She can feel it shrinking fast, and then vanishing.

She feels
lost.

She takes it out on her English dictionary with its blue, black, and yellow jacket. It's called Hornby. Mr Hornby thinks he's so great that he can teach you a language. She wonders whether the gentleman is still alive. Is he sad? Lonely? Ugly? She imagines him to be thin and bespectacled, not good-looking. With a pencil she scratches a picture of the imaginary Mr Hornby on the book jacket.

‘Serves you right,' she says rancorously.

At the first light of dawn she sets off for Scutari and returns to Rrnajë late that night. Everything has gone well. She didn't meet any wolves, and she has the drugs. When Uncle Gjergj sees she is back he looks at her with infinite
love.

The driver that had given her a ride into the city was in his fifties and had no desire to make conversation.

‘So you're Doda's niece,' he had said at the start of the journey. ‘I knew your dad. He was a good guy. How's Gjergj?'

‘Sick.'

‘So I heard, I'm sorry.'

That had been the end of their exchange. The truck had gone so slowly that if Hana had walked beside it she wouldn't have had to pick up her
pace.

‘I do this trip once a month,' the driver had said at the end of the journey. ‘If you want I'll take you down every time. You know it's dangerous, don't
you?'

Hana had nodded.

‘Has Gjergj arranged a marriage for you? Have you been promised since birth?'

‘No.'

‘Be careful, girl. And give my best to your uncle.'

Gjergj's room smells stuffy. She changes his neck scarf, which is soaked with sweat. In the courtyard Enver is making a ruckus, bleating like crazy and kicking the door to his
pen.

‘You see, it wasn't so bad after all,' Hana whispers to the old man. ‘The pharmacist was really kind and wrote down all the instructions for
me.'

Gjergj gestures that he's thirsty. She brings him water.

‘I have to feed the animals now, then I'm going to buy a little fresh cheese.'

Hana doesn't know how to make cheese yet. She'll have to learn. Aunt Katrina did everything; she can't do very
much.

‘You're a good girl,' Uncle Gjergj mutters. ‘Such a good girl, you're my boy. You're like a son; the things you're doing are men's jobs. Going off alone and coming back in the middle of the night across the mountains. You need the courage of a man to do those things.'

Hana laughs out loud, pleased with the compliment.

‘If you'd been born in the city you would have been a real ladies' man, Uncle Gjergj.'

‘I am,' he answers. ‘You have to go back to Tirana, get back to your studies. Have you forgotten?'

Hana answers that she can't leave him in this condition and he says yes you can, what else can happen to
him?

‘There's no discussion, Uncle Gjergj. I'm not leaving you alone.'

‘It's an order, Hana. I'm not asking you. I'm ordering you to
go.'

Their short argument takes a long time. Uncle Gjergj loses his thread and smiles. He seems to take stock of every phrase and delays looking at his interlocutor until he has decided to expel his words, one after the other, slowly. Hana has learned to adapt to his rhythm.

‘Classes are over, Uncle Gjergj.'

‘But they start again in September, right?'

‘Why should I go back? I'm not going back to school, it's not worth it at this point
…'

He starts moving, as if he wants to get up, and then looks at his stick but can't reach
it.

‘Ok. I'll go to Tirana,' she eventually concedes.

‘Go to the student office and make all the necessary arrangements to enroll again in September.'

She sets off, leaving her uncle to the sporadic care of the village nurse. She gets a ride with the agronomist from the cooperative, who is taking a jeep down to the city for an important meeting. She gets a train from Scutari, which breaks down in Lezhë, so she has to wait for whatever ride she can
find.

She gets to Tirana at nightfall. It is hot, the roads smell of melted asphalt. The center of the capital city is dark. In order to save what little power there is, they don't turn the streetlights on. She's happy to walk along the clean streets, wending her way to her dorm. It is almost empty, as most of the students are home for the summer vacation.

Hana has the room to herself. She goes to bed and sleeps soundly.

The next morning the Liberal Arts Faculty is deserted. The heat is overpowering. The bad-tempered secretary gives a highly acid, ‘What do you want?'

‘I've come to say that I'd like to do my last exam in August.'

‘Who said you could?'

‘I'm a student in this Faculty.'

‘Who didn't take her exam and disappeared from the face of this earth without any justification.'

‘My mother died, Comrade Secretary.'

‘How many mothers have you got? One seems to die every year.'

Hana stares at her reflection in the glass pane of a cupboard. She thinks she looks quite pretty, in a blue and red checked shirt with two big pockets. She shifts her attention back to the secretary.

‘My aunt, who became my mother after my parents died in a car accident many years ago, she died. And my uncle, her husband, is very sick with cancer. He's all I have left.'

The woman tries to look sorry, but fails. All she can do is tone down her sarcasm.

‘You could have come and asked permission.'

‘I didn't have time. I asked my classmates to do
it.'

‘That's not sufficient, young lady. The trouble with you mountain people is that you never learn to obey rules.'

Hana looks back at herself in the glass and adjusts her curly hair. She directs a faint smile at the perfumed hyena who, in the meantime, has improved the color of her hair-dye.

She is suddenly seized by the thought that she has to go to the sea. She leaves the office before the secretary can open her mouth again.

It is Friday.

The sea is majestic, polished and shimmering like a perfect dream. Nothing detracts from its immensity, neither the garbage rotting on the beach nor the ungainliness of the few bathing costumes on
show.

She has found a quiet spot near Durrës. There are only two families with kids. She looks around, then closes her eyes and tries to empty her mind of thoughts. She only partly succeeds. Her demons are still there, but they are polite and almost harmless now. They smile at
her.

The sand burns her feet. She has thrown her deformed shoes under a rock and tied her hair in a ponytail.

She steps into the water in her pants and shirt, with all the money she has in her pocket. She can't afford to have it stolen because it's her return fare to Tirana. The folded bill will enjoy a swim in the sea. The salt will fix the color of her black pants. The water will wash the smell of dung out of her shirt.

The salt is drying on her skin and the tightening sensation forces her back to the here and now. She'll be taking this salt home with her, for she has no change of clothes. They will dry off and she'll be fine. She'll be fine, she says. And she really is fine, for the three hours she's at the beach.

So we go as we came,

goodbye, my brother sea.

The next day she goes to the college library and returns all her borrowed books. It's nine in the morning and at that time there are only a couple of professors. The librarian is a man to be respected; his smile is reassuring and his manner affable. He asks Hana if she wants to take any other books
out.

‘No, this time I'm just returning them, thanks.' The man goes back to his
work.

She spends an hour in the reading room, leafing through a volume of Emily Dickinson's poetry. There's no point taking notes; it's best to leave without saying goodbye. But she can't resist. She takes out a pencil and some paper and copies out a few poems.

The librarian looks over at her every now and then from his
desk.

‘You can take it if you want,' he says in the
end.

‘I live in the north and I can't return it on time. I can't come down specially.'

‘You can keep it until the end of August.'

‘I'm not coming in August,' Hana says, waiting for some kind of response. Go on, ask me something, she begs in silence. But the man doesn't ask her anything. He turns away, hunched, as he files the index cards in their file, writes something in a register, and forgets all about
her.

‘Have a good day,' Hana says, too softly to be heard, and leaves the library.

When she gets to the gate of the School of Philology she looks one last time at the edifice, built by the Italians during the Fascist occupation. Her clothes are starting to itch. The sun beats down even more fiercely than yesterday; sand and sweat make swirling lines like maps or flowers on her pants.

Hana starts walking fast towards the center, but just as she is past the Italian embassy gate a boy's voice calls her. She turns round. It's Ben, the classmate who studies French.

‘That's the third time I called out your name,' he complains. ‘Are you deaf or something? Hello? Hana?'

She's unsure whether to hold her hand out or
not.

‘Here she is! The girl who just disappears without any warning. How are
you?'

‘Fine.'

He says he's sorry about her aunt's death, the girls from the dorm told him. Hana tries to control her breathing; her heart is beating fast. She stares right into his eyes so that he can't see the effect he's having on her. Calm down. Stay still. It's just some guy trying to be nice. And you're such a mess in your crumpled pants.

He asks her where she's going. She says she's going home after returning her library books. She smiles. Ben says he is on his way to the Faculty. His hair would make a girl jealous, it's so glossy and healthy-looking. His eyes burn into you when you look at him. Their slant makes him both hard to grasp and insistent at the same time. It doesn't make sense, she thinks. He's just trying to be nice. Ben smiles.

‘I've been looking for you,' he says. ‘I've been waiting for you for a long time.'

If she really had to force herself to like a guy, given that it was the cool thing right now to be in love, Hana would choose Ben. That way she wouldn't seem so out of place. She would choose Ben
–
but it was only a silly thought.

‘I'm going to miss my train.' It's not true. She has plenty of time, but she'd better get out of this situation before her heartbeat becomes unbearable.

‘Can't we have a drink together somewhere downtown?' he asks. She says she's not used to expressions like ‘let's have a drink' or ‘I've been looking for you.' She stops, regretting it already.

‘I'm sorry. I know I'm really rude sometimes.'

The new soldier on guard duty is staring at
them.

‘Let's move,' Ben proposes. ‘You're not allowed to stand here for long. I'll walk with you wherever you're going. Let's sit down for five minutes, please.'

It's the first time she's ever sat in a café with a boy. Luckily the place is almost empty and this helps her behave more naturally. The café only offers dry-looking cakes and half-melted ice cream. Hana orders a lemonade that tastes like soda water while Ben has a cup of coffee.