Read Sworn Virgin Online

Authors: Elvira Dones

Tags: #contemporary fiction, #literary fiction, #novel, #translation, #translated fiction, #drama, #realism, #women’s literary fiction, #rite of passage, #emigration, #frontiers, #Albania, #USA, #immigration, #cross-dressing, #transvestism, #Albanian, #sworn virgins, #Kanun, #Hana Doda, #patriarchy, #American, #shepherd, #Rockville, #Washington DC, #Rrnajë, #raki, #virginity, #poetry, #mountains, #Gheg, #kulla, #Hikmet, #Vergine giurata, #Italian

Sworn Virgin (7 page)

BOOK: Sworn Virgin
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The doctor arrives at the Dodas'
kulla
the next day. They have coffee together, then he examines Uncle Gjergj, measures his blood pressure, touches his swollen throat, and leaves him some cough syrup for when his cough chokes him. He sees Gjergj smoking his pipe and doesn't smoke one with him, but nor does he preach at him. Then he gets up. At the door, Hana hands him the two books.

Katrina and Hana watch him as he walks away. The doctor carries a rifle, like a true man of the mountains. If it weren't for his city gait you could almost take him for a local. The Party has given him a special license to carry a rifle because the wolves are particularly aggressive this year. One day they tried to get into the health center, they were so desperate for food. Mountain folk are no longer allowed to carry rifles, only guards and shepherds have permission. Gjergj Doda has a rifle because he's a shepherd.

The snow lets up for a while. The men from the electricity company come to raise the power lines, but they too sink into the snow and can't get on with their work. They give up and leave, their tools and some giant iron hooks deposited in the offices of the agricultural cooperative.

In the penumbra of the
kulla
, Uncle Gjergj is rasping. He can neither talk nor sleep. Hana keeps him company. Aunt Katrina sits beside him, stoking the fire in the copper grate.

‘You should go, dear daughter,' Uncle Gjergj whispers. ‘You need to get back to school.'

Hana looks at him. She would like to hug him but doesn't dare. She says that in two days, as soon as the road is cleared, she'll take him to Tirana.

‘You're a stubborn one,' Uncle Gjergj says, his hands and chin trembling. He doesn't look at Hana for fear he'll begin to cry. Again she wants to hug him. But he falls asleep, hunched over, and Katrina lays a rough woolen blanket over his shoulders.

When they finally make it to Tirana it is already March and the weather down south is
mild.

‘We can try surgery,' a couple of doctors say, half-heartedly.

The public hospital is pulsing with activity. On the other side of the hospital wall there's a military academy. Hana, Katrina, and the patient sit on a green bench in the giant courtyard, waiting their turn for a second opinion. There's another group of doctors willing to examine Gjergj. Over the wall they hear an imperious voice whipping out orders, the clacking of heels, hands moving, the rhythmic clanging of metal. Weapons changing hands.

The village doctor is transformed. Shaved and well dressed, he has even put on some cologne.

‘Strange things city people do,' Aunt Katrina murmurs. ‘A man who wears
‌
perfume,
ku ku moj nanë
.'
6

The doctor does everything he can. He talks to the doctors and nurses. He rushes from one place to another. He brings them
byrekë
pastries, he says you never know, there's always
hope.

Hana went to the student-affairs office at the Liberal Arts Faculty and told them about her problem. She would have to miss a couple more days' classes; she just needed to take her father to see a few more doctors. Her parents were not familiar with Tirana and would not be able to cope without
her.

‘In your file it says your parents died when you were ten,' the secretary objected.

‘The man who is sick raised me as his own daughter, so he is my father.'

‘If you say so,' the woman muttered distrustfully.

Hana stared at her. She looked like a mole: brightly colored hair that failed to lighten her washed-out features, a rodent's jaw, foreign clothes. Rumor had it that her long-dead husband had been a diplomat. Hana had been warned by her classmates to watch out for this secretary. If she took against you it was bad news. She was a Party member and sometimes even raised her voice with Faculty members.

‘He's my father,' Hana insisted, as she left the office.

‘Two days. You have two days' official absence and that's it,' the woman shouted after
her.

The soldiers on the other side of the wall are marching. Aunt Katrina came down to the city wearing national dress. They're the best clothes she has. Decked out like this, she looks unreal.

Here in the city she seems less shy, she sits close to her husband and is not ashamed to touch him in public. Every now and then she lets out little shrieks of curiosity, breaking the silence. Uncle Gjergj is not unhappy to see his wife smiling.

‘How do you not get lost here all alone, my love?' Katrina asks her over and over. ‘All these people.'

Hana laughs. She holds Uncle Gjergj's hand tight. He looks so handsome today he could
‌
be in a Marubi portrait.
7
There are no signs of the disease on his face. Around his neck there is a red scarf, and he is wearing his dark-blue suit with a white shirt and a
qeleshe
on his head. He doesn't cough, he's not in pain, he doesn't ask any questions. He basks in the sun and lets Hana hold his
hand.

Later, the doctors examine him, exchanging perplexed glances.

‘We must operate,' they say. ‘There's no time to waste.'

They take Hana into another
room.

‘Are you over eighteen?' one of them asks
her.

‘I'm a freshman here at the university. I just turned nineteen.'

‘And you don't have any brothers or sisters?'

‘No, it's just
me.'

‘What's your name?'

‘Hana.'

‘Listen, Hëna—'

‘It's Hana, not Hëna.'

She loved her name. She loved the soft sound of the ‘a'
in the middle. Here in the south the vowel was more closed:
Hëna.

‘Hana sunshine,' her mother used to call her. She remembered her mother years back, when Hana was a little girl. She used to sing. If her mother hadn't been born in the mountains she would have been a singer.

Hana sunshine.

‘You need to make a decision, young lady,' persisted the doctor who seemed to be the most senior. ‘The sooner we perform surgery on your uncle, the better.'

‘He's my father. Is there hope, Comrade Doctor?'

‘We don't know
yet.'

‘Will he be in a lot of pain?'

‘He'll be in more if he doesn't have the operation.'

‘But there is hope; there must be hope!'

The doctors look at each other.

‘There are no guarantees. But we'll do what we can. If we manage to remove the whole tumor he could make
it.'

‘Did you tell him there was a chance? The doctors in Scutari said there was no hope, and now he's convinced it's true.'

‘Up there they don't know how to perform such a delicate operation.'

‘What are our chances, Comrade Doctor?'

‘Maybe thirty percent. Even if we can't eradicate the tumor, he'll still live longer.'

‘How much longer?'

‘Up to a year, maybe. Or more. Or less. Go and talk to your uncle. He doesn't want the surgery. You have to persuade
him.'

‘He's my father. I told you, he's my father.'

The hotel Hana has found for Gjergj and Katrina is modest but clean. The restaurant only serves rice and spinach.

‘I thought it was only us up in the north who were poor,' Uncle Gjergj comments. ‘But it looks like people in the city are not doing much better.'

He eats with gusto, even though it's painful to swallow. The waiter's uniform is crumpled. He doesn't show them much respect because he's heard their northern accents, but none of them minds. Katrina can't accept the fact that somebody is serving her at the table.

‘Relax, Auntie, this is what they do here. It's a restaurant.'

‘I'm so ashamed. Sitting here and being served by a man! What is the world coming
to?'

‘But he's a waiter. That is what he's paid to
do.'

Their room is on the third floor. Hana is going to the college dorm for the night. In the morning she'll get up early so none of her roommates can ask her any questions.

As soon as they get to their room, Katrina falls asleep. Her heart has not behaved very well today. Before leaving the hospital, the village doctor gave her some pills.

Hana and Gjergj stand out on the narrow balcony. He smokes. Down on the street, people are taking their traditional evening stroll; nobody wants to go
home.

‘Why do you want to make me have this surgery, dear daughter?' Uncle Gjergj asks. ‘You know there's no point.'

‘The doctors say there's hope.'

‘They're just experimenting on me, Hana. You're an adult now. You'll soon be a woman who knows about life. I've had my share in this lifetime. What's the point in my hanging on any longer?'

This must be the tenth time they've talked it over. His strength is leaving him. She can hear it in his voice, she can feel it in his hunched shoulders, however much effort he puts into standing up straight.

‘Do it for me, Uncle Gjergj. Let them do the surgery for
me.'

‘I
am
doing all this for you. I don't want to make you or Katrina suffer.'

‘What I'm saying is I want you to give it a try. Maybe the doctors will open you up and find it's not as serious as they're all saying it
is.'

‘I feel there's nothing to be done, Hana.'

‘I beg you,' she says, melting into tears. ‘Have the surgery. I've never begged you before.'

Gjergj says nothing for a long
time.

‘Just let me go,' he pleads, in the
end.

Under the balcony a military truck goes by. The soldiers are sitting in two silent rows. The streetlights tint their faces sepia.

‘What about Auntie? Don't you care about her?' Hana says, trying one last
tack.

‘Of course I care about her. We have talked, Katrina and
I.'

‘And?'

‘She wants me to have the surgery
too.'

‘You see? How can you give up? You've never balked at anything.'

‘What do you know, little girl?' Gjergj mumbles, his smile twisted. ‘I certainly have! Many a time … but there are so many things you don't know. Our mountains under the communists … I'm not the man you think I
am.'

What she's saying is heartless, she thinks. What
they
are saying, what she's asking him to do, this whole sea of words, it's all heartless.

‘Just do it for me,' she tries one last time. ‘I'm begging you on my knees. You've had a bullet stuck in your body for forty years and you've never complained. What's a scalpel to
you?'

Hana can't stop crying. Her chin touches her neck and the tears drip down onto her dress.

It's not a heart, I say, it's a sandal of buffalo leather, it tramps and tramps, it never falls apart
‌
but treads the stony paths.
8

‘Fine,' Gjergj says. ‘I'll do it. Now get out, before I change my mind.'

At that hour there are no buses, just the whirring of bicycle pedals: pairs of phantom wheels and the pale luminescence of the handlebars. The darkness hides the cyclists.

The dorm supervisor looks at her disapprovingly.

‘Didn't they teach you how to behave?' he complains. ‘What's a girl like you doing out alone at this time of night?'

Gjergj Doda goes in for surgery two days later. The doctors say it has gone
well.

‘Better than we hoped,' the village doctor, who had to go back to Rrnajë that day, pronounces. ‘I'll come and pick Gjergj up when they discharge him. I'll get an ambulance. He'll be in the hospital here for at least two weeks.'

Hana notices that the village doctor wears the expression of a prisoner condemned to death. She'd like to ask him if he has a girlfriend in Tirana; what he misses most
–
the movies, or restaurants where they serve rice and spinach; what foreign books he reads in secret.

While he is talking to her, he observes her intensely. She focuses on some graffiti painted on a broken wall. There are two letters missing:
IN ONE HAND A
ICKAXE, IN THE OTHER A RI LE
.

She adores Tirana. She never thought she'd be able to love asphalt in the bottom of a valley. So she understands the doctor's desolation.

She has also realized that she does not pass unobserved in the school corridors. Her silence strikes people. Especially the boys, who try everything to get her to talk. Hana does talk to them, and their discussions tire her. She has got used to them; sometimes she'll even laugh.

‘Why are you always sad?' a girl studying Turkish had asked her one
day.

‘I'm not sad. I'm waiting for something to happen that's worth talking about; anything else I just contemplate.'

‘I was told you write poems.'

‘Sometimes.'

‘Can I read some of them?'

‘No.'

The girl laughed

‘You're weird.'

Hana gave a hint of a smile. The other girl had a head of hair the color of straw not yet burnt by the
sun.

‘My name is Neve and I'm studying Turkish literature. Do you know Nâzim Hikmet?'

‘I've only read two of his poems, so I can't really say I know
him.'

‘Well, I'll give you some of his poems translated into Albanian. You'll really like him. I'll give you some that I had a go at translating myself.'

Hikmet sealed the friendship between the two girls. Hana fell deeply in love with the poet, and this might be one more reason why she loves Tirana. Here you could unearth new passions and meet new people, like Hikmet, like Neve, like the new words in her language, like all these writers who would never make it up to the mountains.

BOOK: Sworn Virgin
7.64Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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