Sworn Virgin (4 page)

Hana walks away and Shtjefën does not try to catch up. The distance between them increases.

‘With all that raki, Hana Doda, here you
are.'

Hana stops and turns round angrily.

‘Are you drunk, Shtjefën?'

‘No.'

‘Well say what you mean, then.'

‘This is the way I speak.'

‘That's not true. Tell me, are you scared? Did you say I could come just because Lila wanted me to? Do I embarrass you? Tell me the truth.'

She listens to her hostile, aggressive words and thinks that maybe she's the one who is drunk around
here.

‘Does my presence here make you feel strange?' she asks, sweetly.

Shtjefën's heavy body seems to
sway.

‘With all the raki you've drunk and all the tobacco you've smoked, your voice still has something feminine about it. Jonida noticed. And anyway, no, I'm not scared of anything, not for me and not for us. But for you this is a hard place. America doesn't give you anything for free.'

Hana laughs at
this.

‘So you really have forgotten the mountains, Shtjefën. You've forgotten how hard it
is.'

Shtjefën thinks about
this.

‘You're going to tell Jonida everything tomorrow?'

‘Don't worry, I'll do it properly.'

‘She's growing up so fast that it's hard to keep up. Lila and I work like crazy and we can barely make ends meet. Sometimes I get back from work and Jonida's already in bed, and when we're having breakfast together at the weekend she already has new words in her head. In five years she might be in college, and I'm thinking, God, how am I going to …
?'

Hana is getting used to Shtjefën's unfinished sentences.

Back then she didn't know him well. She remembered that a long time ago he was the best dancer in those cursed mountains. Once he had even been sent to the National Folk-dancing Festival at Gjirokastër. His sword dance had won the men's top prize.

Pictures of Shtjefën and the other guy dancing with him used to hang on the ‘Socialist Emulation' notice board in the district hall, right in the center of the village. Their arms bearing the glinting swords were thrust up high, their felt skullcaps pushed back, their red and black vests open like wild roses. Hana remembers that it had not been long after the dance that she took the decision to become a man. At Shtjefën's dance she hadn't yet known.

Lila and Shtjefën had just got married.

When she had gone back to Tirana, where she had been in college, the village of Rrnajë seemed so remote to Hana it made her head spin. She remembered wondering what she had been doing in that dump. She remembered calling to mind memories of cities and abstract poems written by foreigners in faraway lands. She remembered feeling like a stone at the bottom of a dark well. Her uncle was sick and bedridden; her aunt had just died. Hana had only the animals for company, and the poems she used to write now and
then.

‘Shall we go back?' Shtjefën asks Hana. ‘I'm beat.'

Much later, when the Dibras are all asleep, Hana steps out onto the tiny kitchen balcony. She leaves the door open for a moment so the room where she'll be sleeping gets some air. Then she shuts the door, lights a cigarette and smokes it as calmly as she can, leaning on the balcony, trying to empty her mind. When she is able to do this, it is a particularly pleasurable exercise. She leaves her thoughts out and lets the silence in. It is a great sensation; she is full and empty at the same time. Her head lets air in, and the air acts as a kind of fan that refreshes the inside of her mind. She becomes aware of the pulse of her existence. It beats in her weak stomach, pauses for a while in her kidneys, which have never given her trouble. It is a simple, quiet journey. She feels like a rather undemanding tourist, lacking all curiosity. There is nothing she doesn't already know in there; nothing new to discover.

She runs her hand through her short, thick hair. Her shower that morning has softened it. Lila had urged her to use the conditioner after the shampoo and she had obeyed. She had even quipped something stupid like, ‘You're already on a mission to civilize your cousin,' which had annoyed Lila. ‘Don't start that crazy stuff,' Lila had answered. Hana had laughed.

Here you are. That's how they say it. Here you are. Her first American solitude. Her first night in this suburb, so like the films.

It feels like centuries since she left Rrnajë. She feels the shoulders and then the collar of her shirt. Lila's washer and dryer have already washed the smell of the mountains
away.

She feels as though she is not herself; her name isn't Hana, her name isn't Mark. This feels like someone else's journey. She is watching the performance of a surreal dream.

So we go as we came,

goodbye, my brother sea.

There is no going back. She's been saying it for a year. If she leaves, there is no going back. At times, it sounds like a threat. At others, like a
joke.

‘Show them who you are, Mark Doda,' she had said out loud, on her own in the
kulla
that
‌
was slowly going to ruin.
⁵
‘Show them you have the balls.' The metaphor had made her laugh. But since then she had repeated it over and over. Show them who you
are.

She is trying with all her strength. All she has to do now is work out how to go
on.

One step at a time. First talk to Jonida, and see how it goes. Then talk to Lila, and see how it goes. She listens to the night; it's past three. There's no cock crowing. There are no mountains. Just night.

Back at Rrnajë, the Rrokajs' mad calf had started imitating the cock's crow every morning, at three on the dot, driving everyone crazy. Its translucent hide was dazzlingly white and it had two red patches on its face and one on its belly; it was the kind of animal that justified the expression ‘good looking and stupid.' Soon after it was born, it had tried to suck milk from a goat. The village children laughed their hearts out. The goat kicked the calf
away.

‘What now?' Hana asks the night. She can see dawn coming reticently, hesitant on the horizon. She stubs out her second cigarette, decides she's had enough of these foolish thoughts and that now she can go to bed. She hears the balcony door open suddenly.

‘You're not tired?' Shtjefën asks her. ‘I'm off to work soon. So if you go to bed now, I'll be disturbing you for the next half hour before I leave.'

‘No problem,' Hana whispers. ‘I can sleep through anything.'

Shtjefën makes room on the balcony for Hana to go back in. He goes towards the bathroom. Hana closes the kitchen door, takes her pants and shirt off quickly and puts her light flannel pajamas on. She doesn't have time to fold her clothes; she thinks Shtjefën might come out of the bathroom before she's done. But he takes his time. She hears the shower running. She pulls the comforter up around her shoulders. Then she decides that tomorrow she'll talk straight to Lila about the division of labor in the house, and falls asleep.

The next day it's raining gently. This doesn't seem to pacify the hysterical traffic and the regular wail of fire sirens. The water lands on the sidewalk and trickles away in dirty brown rivulets. The flirtation between the trees and the fall goes on. The green leaves are compromised by touches of seasonal sunset red. Only the heat never lets up. It's relentless, obstinate, hard to
bear.

Near the Dibras' apartment there's a supermarket, and there's a post office on the other side of the road. Downtown is a few minutes away by
car.

‘This location is great,' Lila tells Hana. ‘When you need to go shopping or mail a letter, you can walk. For everything else in this country, you spend your life in the
car.'

Lila blends in perfectly with all this, Hana thinks. She is clean and carefully groomed, and she's used eyeliner.

There are pancakes for breakfast. Lila announces that they're going to the mall to do some shopping, then starts firing questions at her incoherently. Hana listens.

She listens until Lila bursts out, ‘What's got into you? Cat got your tongue?'

She shrugs. Her cousin points at the plate of pancakes, which has a transparent plastic lid on
it.

‘Try some. They're good,' Lila says. ‘They're like our
petulla
.'

Hana tries them with maple syrup and melted cheese. They each drink two big cups of coffee.

‘It's so nice to have you here,' Lila says with feeling. ‘I have girlfriends here but there are some things about us I can't share with them. Now you're here I feel less alone.'

‘But you have your family,' Hana objects. ‘How can you feel alone?'

Lila empties her coffee
cup.

‘Your daughter is your daughter,' she answers. ‘I'm the one should be listening to her problems, not the other way round … but maybe from your point of view that's hard to understand.'

On the wall there are photos: Jonida when she was little, Shtjefën and Lila on their wedding day with the whole clan proudly dressed for the occasion, a recent picture of Jonida during a volleyball game, Lila with a group of women. Hana wants to know where they were taken. Her cousin tells her about her nursing course and her graduation.

‘That's as far as I got,' she says with a sigh. ‘And I don't think I'll be able to go any further.'

‘Why
not?'

‘Because I'd have to go back to school for years and I have a home to run and a daughter to take care of. I can't afford to pay for another course. It's too late
now.'

Hana starts clearing the table and Lila lets her do it. They don't say another word until they leave the house and get into the car, a rusty old Toyota Corolla.

‘I'm taking you to a great place now,' Lila announces.

They get onto a road that's called the 355 South, three lanes in both directions, more cars than she can imagine. Hana is overwhelmed with painful nostalgia for her old truck, which she sold to Farì, a mechanic she knew in Scutari. An old contraption from the days when Chinese cars were all there was, it wasn't even worth the 500 euros she got for it. She was amazed she had made any money at
all.

‘Tomorrow we'll go and register for your driver's license. You have to go through the whole works, eye screening, a knowledge test, and then your learner's permit. I'll take you out in Shtjefën's car, which is in good shape, unlike this old clunker. Remind me later on, I'll make a call.'

‘There's no hurry.'

‘Yes there is. Next week I'm going back to work and I won't be able to drive
you.'

‘There's no hurry.'

‘Stop saying there's no hurry, will
you?'

The mall is gigantic and sleek.

‘You can even go to the movies here,' Lila explains. ‘You can come in the morning, buy anything in the world, eat, catch a movie, and go home after a good
day.'

‘Is there a Barnes and Noble bookstore?' Hana asks, before they go inside.

‘No, they don't have one here.'

‘So it's not true you can buy
anything
here.'

Lila pushes her through the
door.

‘And how do you know about Barnes and Noble?'

Hana doesn't answer. She repositions her man's sports jacket over her shoulders. She likes wearing it without putting her arms in the sleeves. She looks broader in the chest that way, especially when her hands are in her pockets. She looks at the tips of her shoes. She's a 5½, and it was hard back in Albania to find men's shoes in her size. She always had to buy her underwear in the kids' department.

‘We haven't come here just to stand around all day, eh!' Lila says, grabbing Hana by the arm. ‘Come on, I need some caffeine.'

Hana turns around and holds her
gaze.

‘What the hell's got into
you
?' she asks. ‘Of all the cousins in your family you could invite over here, you had to choose the weird
one?'

‘Is this something we have to solve here at the mall?' Lila quips.

‘Why did you do this whole thing?'

‘We've been talking about it for a year on the phone.'

‘Answer me,
now.'

Lila's profile is suspended between weariness and exaltation.

She doesn't want to talk, Hana realizes. All Lila wants to do is drag her into the depths of the mall and take her around the wonderland she thinks will help her to help Hana. Indeed, Lila doesn't open her mouth. She pulls her towards a café with little tables, where they take a seat. Lila goes and orders two espressos and comes back with a
tray.

‘You were not a happy man, Hana. That's
all.'

‘That's not true.'

‘Ok, then, you tell me why you came.'

Hana looks out at the people carrying shopping bags of every shape and size, kids holding hands in a circle, two oversized women with their belly buttons showing. She can't believe
it.

‘You were not a happy man and you know it, just like you know this is coffee we're drinking. It's Italian, and delicious. And anyway, let's stop talking in this tragic way. I want to have fun today and be lighthearted. I want to enjoy you as you are now, in your last few hours as a
man.'

Hana drinks her coffee in silence. The glass dome of the lobby lets in an uncertain sunlight that's trying to get past the clouds. Americans use weird words. A shopping center is a
mall
. In Albanian,
mall
doesn't squeeze money out of you, you carry
mall
around with you, you rock it gently in your arms.
Mall
is homesickness that consumes you, like
saudades
.