The Fall of the Stone City (7 page)

Sometimes his customers, for one reason or another (when faced with threats for instance, or when an engagement that the rhyme celebrated was broken off) asked him to remove a verse from his
repertoire, again for a fee. This would cost more than the original composition.

That was Blind Vehip’s daily routine. Occasionally, but very rarely, he would take it into his head to compose a rhyme without a commission, “from the heart”, as he put it. His
usual rhymes were topical but his verses “from the heart” were obscure and elusive.

At the end of April he produced a verse about Big Dr Gurameto, perhaps his grimmest yet.

His listeners did not say what they thought of this verse. At first they merely frowned, turned their backs and walked slowly away. Gurameto no doubt understood the rhyme completely but he was
totally aloof to anything that happened on the street and took no notice. Then the audience began to grow steadily at Blind Vehip’s usual spot at the crossroads of Varosh Street and the road
to the
lycée.
Dr Gurameto passed here regularly on his way to the hospital but never turned his head.

Two weeks later, Blind Vehip, perhaps smarting at the snub or maybe simply on a whim, produced a new version of his rhyme. Now the words made your flesh creep.

The archaic word “corse” that old people still used to refer to the dead made it seem more frightening; perhaps this was what led Big Dr Gurameto to swallow his pride and, early one
evening, stop in front of old Vehip. He waved a couple of idlers away with his hand. “What have you got against me?” he said.

The blind man recognised his voice and shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing. What could I ever have against you? Just look at yourself, compared to me.”

“You’re lying. You’ve got it in for me. But you won’t tell me why.”

The blind man paused for a moment, and then said curtly, “No.”

Dr Gurameto was famously reticent but his silence was still striking.

“That dinner seems so long ago,” he eventually said in a low voice. “I can barely remember it myself. Why bring it up now?”

“I don’t know.”

Gurameto turned his head to make sure no one was listening. “Do you really believe that I invited the dead to dinner that night?”

“I don’t know what to say,” the blind man replied.

Gurameto stared at him fixedly. “Vehip,” he said. “I want to ask you something, as a doctor. Do you remember when you lost your sight?”

“No,” the blind man said. “I was born like this.”

“I see. So you’ve never seen living people.”

“Neither the living, nor the dead,” said Vehip.

“I see,” repeated Dr Gurameto.

“That comes as a surprise to you, I can tell,” the blind man said. “You’re surprised that I’ve never seen the living, but still more surprised I’ve never seen
the dead.”

“That’s true,” said Gurameto. “Blindness is close to death. I won’t interfere with you. I’m not threatening you and I won’t promise anything. Make
whatever rhymes you like.”

As he walked away, he heard the blind man’s voice behind him. “Long live the doctor!”

1944

CHAPTER SEVEN

The German Army retreated from Greece and Albania at the same time. It looked like a routine redeployment of troops. An unending column of vehicles rumbled all night along the
asphalted highway. Daybreak came feebly, ash-grey. A fine rain turned to sleet, making the windows of the houses opaque. It seemed only natural for the city to show no interest in this great
historical event.

The regiment housed in the Grihot barracks joined the long convoy and the troops from inside the city itself followed them. There were neither farewells nor appeals to the people to cover the
withdrawal with rearguard attacks against the encroaching forces of communism. The old threats to blow up the city now seemed stale and empty.

The Germans lowered the swastika flag and left the national flag with the lonely eagle in the centre. With no sign of pride or shame and no reaction to the city’s indifference, the Germans
climbed into their vehicles and set off to find new terrain.

A NEW ORDER

Just before noon the communist partisans entered the city from not one but three different directions. They stared at the great houses of Gjirokastër with awe and smiled
hesitantly, uncertain where to put the welcoming flowers the citizens threw at them.

The mules could barely climb the steep lanes and looked wearier than the fighters themselves. Most were laden with mortar barrels and crates of ammunition, yet the partisans led them by the
halter as if they were carrying grain or cheeses wrapped in cloth.

The young women among them attracted particular attention. They wore their hair in all kinds of styles, plaited, cropped, with long tresses or fashionable fringes. There had been contradictory
rumours about them: either they were “Red virgins” who would kill at the slightest affront or they were wild about men.

The scene looked so peaceful, yet the city’s fears of what the partisans might do turned out to be well-founded. The first knocks at the gates of houses were followed by the wails of women
and screams. “He’s innocent.” “Traitor! Get away, bitches.” “No!” And then the stutter of gunfire. “Territorials”, as the local communists were
called, helped the patrols to carry out arrests of prominent nationalists.

Just after noon, at the precise moment when the flag was hoisted over the city hall, the partisans arrived at the hospital to arrest Big Dr Gurameto. He was handcuffed while in his surgical
gown, halfway through an operation, before the partisans realised he should be allowed to wash his bloody hands. But the doctor merely said, “Why should I bother?” thinking he would be
shot at once. He walked unsteadily and glanced instinctively at the flag above the city hall, which was now different in a slight but unexpected way.

“Get a move on!” said a partisan as Gurameto stumbled. The doctor looked down at his handcuffs, as if to protest that he was not used to managing in these things, but the partisan
didn’t understand him. “Move!” he said again.

The eagle on the flag still had two heads as before, not three as had been rumoured.

“This way,” said the partisan when they reached the crossroads.

“What have I done?” Big Dr Gurameto wanted to ask, but the flag caught his eye again. Instead of a third head, which it was optimistically claimed would symbolise the unity of the
communists, royalists and nationalists, a pale star shone above the double-headed eagle. “I see,” the doctor thought, staring at the fabric of the flag as if it could answer his
question.

Both sides of the street were thronged with idlers and a few musicians carried mandolins. Messengers hurried past. The flag fluttered enigmatically in the wind and gave no answer.

A breathless messenger appeared and ran alongside the patrol for a few paces, struggling to say something.

“Halt,” said the patrol leader and stopped first himself. The messenger muttered something into his ear and the patrol leader looked at Dr Gurameto in surprise. Then, taking care not
to stain his hands with blood, he removed the doctor’s handcuffs.

“Pardon our mistake, doctor,” he said quietly.

The territorial, who had been watching the scene with curiosity, whispered to the partisan. The other man nodded. As Gurameto turned to walk away he thought he caught a mention of Little Dr
Gurameto’s name but he could not be sure.

The doctor walked down the street, looking for a tap to rinse his hands, but he couldn’t remember if there was one nearby. He was almost back at the hospital when he recognised the same
patrol again, now coming from the opposite direction. In their midst was Little Dr Gurameto, handcuffed as he himself had been a short time ago.

The two doctors inclined their heads towards each other to suggest they could not tell what was happening, when the explanation flashed through Big Dr Gurameto’s mind. The territorial,
used to the idea that the rise of one entailed the fall of the other, had persuaded the patrol that the release of the big doctor must lead to the arrest of the little one. Gurameto was sure that
his colleague would go free too. He entered the hospital, cursing in German.

Little Dr Gurameto was indeed released a short time later. The two doctors embraced as if after a long separation, to the delight of the nurses. But at that moment another patrol, with set
faces, appeared at the hospital entrance. The two doctors glanced at each other, wondering what this could mean. Would they be put in handcuffs again? But what the patrol asked was unimaginable.
They wanted to arrest two patients as “enemies of the people”. Both were fresh from the operating table and one was still under anaesthetic.

The two Gurametos dropped their heads in their hands. “Are you crazy? This man has an open wound, and you want to tie him up!”

“You’re the crazy one here,” barked the patrol leader. “We have orders, full stop. Do you think you can stop us?”

The nurses joined the doctors in protest but the patrol would not be deterred. They produced the handcuffs, secured them this time on both doctors and set off for the city hall.

The patrol brought both doctors back to the hospital an hour later. The partisans were a noisy rabble. The two doctors’ hands were now free. A grey-haired man who claimed to be an
impartial legal expert was trying in vain to calm everyone as they yelled, shouting each other down and brandishing revolvers and syringes under each other’s noses. “This is unheard of!
This man’s at death’s door. He has one hand cut off and you’re going to shackle the other one. Where’s your humanity?”

“You call this humanity?” shouted a partisan. “You let criminals kill and maim and then tuck them up in hospital to save them from the people’s courts?”

The grey-haired lawyer negotiated a compromise: the wanted patients would be neither arrested nor released. The nurse in charge remembered there was a room in the hospital’s west wing with
a grille over the window. Remzi Kadare had left legal instructions that he should be incarcerated here if he lost his mind.

They carried the accused patients there and left a partisan with a rifle and two grenades in his belt to guard the door.

DAY TWO
,
DAWN

The elderly judges, who were known as “the three hundred”, had not exercised their profession for a very long time. That morning they turned up at the door of the
city hall, which was now known as the Committee. They brought all their ancient insignia and testimonials, in the conviction that they could still be of service to their country.

The Committee chairman could not conceal a certain satisfaction as he heard them out. His words of thanks at the end of the meeting made it clear that his pleasure was genuine. These three
hundred were throwbacks to a vanished era but they had grasped sooner than all Albania’s pansy intellectuals that the revolution demanded ruthless violence.

The former judges listened to the talk of a new era and new laws, plainly surprised that such things could exist. Their services were declined but as the old men left, they remarked on how
flattered they felt at being turned down so courteously.

DAY MINUS TWO

Besides the arrested patients, three others in the surgical ward had still not come round from their anaesthetic. A kidney patient was the first to surface and was met by a
nurse who tried to explain to him that they were now living under a new order. It was not easy for the patient to take this in. As the other inmates woke up, the kidney patient launched into an
explanation of what had happened. The others clustered round him as if listening to a fairy tale. The kidney patient said that important events had taken place in the city and in this very ward,
but they had been fast asleep and had known nothing about them.

When the kidney patient saw that the others did not seem surprised, he started at the beginning again. All hell had been let loose in the city while they had been absent, as if down a rabbit
hole. “The era we were in no longer exists, see? The times have moved on. Hours, days are passing and we are still stuck somewhere – I don’t know how to describe it. Out of time.
In reverse or minus time.”

“I don’t understand this,” said a patient on crutches. “Say it straight. What’s this new time you’re talking about?”

“It’s called a new order. It’s what happens when the system changes. The first day is usually called zero hour. Then the numbering starts, one, two, three and so on. When they
gave us the anaesthetic it was, let’s say, a certain time on such-and-such a day. We went under, and out of time. But time paid no attention. Time doesn’t wait, it goes on, and we were
left behind. They’ve reached day two but we’re not even at zero. We’re minus. Now do you see it?”

“I see bullshit,” said a third patient.

“We have a time deficit,” he continued, ignoring him. “We’ll have to hurry to catch up to zero, and then we’ll see.”

“You’ve got us in a proper muddle,” said the appendix case. “Just tell us who’s won. In fact, I don’t care who it is as long as it’s not the
communists.”

“I think it’s them,” said the third.

“No!” said the other patient. “Anyone but them!”

“In this new order you mentioned, are you allowed to kill your wife?” asked one patient on crutches. “Like in Yemen for instance.”

“What can you be thinking about?”

“I told you what I was thinking about.”

“Your wife? I don’t think so. But other people . . . perhaps.”

A SEQUENCE OF DAYS AND MONTHS

Of all the expressions involving time, the most common was “the new era”.

On some days it seemed that such a thing really had come to pass. Everything appeared bathed in triumphant, dazzling sunlight, as if fresh from the suds of the washtub. But then another morning
would dawn, ashen and exhausted, to confirm the view that time is the last thing in this world that is capable of renewal.