Chronicle in Stone Read online

  . . . dragging me by the hair, what are you . . .?

  I climbed up on the roof. From there I could see Suzana’s house. The white sheets were hanging in the yard. The juk . . .

  I lay down on the warm slates and looked up at the sky. A little cloud was drifting north. It kept changing its shape.

  “We can endure a lot, Selfixhe, but may God stop the spread of affairs of this kind. Better the plague.”

  Grandmother had gingerly picked up the bucket and emptied it. She stared for a long time at the wet black ashes, then shook her head. I was about to ask why she was shaking her head like that, but that handful of black ash robbed me of any inclination to speak.

  The little cloud in the sky lurched ahead as if it was tipsy. It had turned long and skinny now. Life in the sky must be pretty boring in the summer. Not much happened then. The little cloud crossing the sky the way a man crosses an empty square in the noonday heat melted away before reaching the north. I had noticed that clouds died very fast. Then their remains drifted in the sky for a long time. It was easy to tell dead clouds from the living.

  I was surprised to see Suzana the next day. She walked by our gate, accompanied by her father like a proper young lady. She didn’t even turn to look at me. I thought she seemed completely alien. That evening, they passed by again. This time, when she saw me at the gate, she raised her head high and squeezed close against her father. Her father looked at me askance. He was very handsome.

  In the days that followed Suzana came out accompanied by her mother. Holding onto her arm like a proper young lady again. Her mother looked at me as you’d look at a mad dog. Who knows how many of those barbed-wire words were running through her mind, the old witch!

  I spent the whole summer and the beginning of autumn at Grandfather’s. It was the longest summer of my life. I was sleepy all the time. The days went by without incident and often without their names. When you’d unpacked the hours from the day and then the night and piled them all up, you could toss out the boxes they came in, which is all that “Wednesday” or “Sunday” or “Friday” really are.

  The season dragged on. It started to get cold again. The first claps of thunder rumbled somewhere over the horizon. Babazoti’s house got gloomier. Grandma quarrelled more and more with my younger aunt, who came and went happily, not paying the slightest attention to her mother, humming a song which had just come out:

  We’re all so hungry and broke

  Townspeople and plain country folk . . .

  Grandma would listen and shake her head thoughtfully, as if to say: “This girl will break my heart.”

  The first rain fell. It was time for me to go home. The sky was overcast. The wind blew in from the northern mountain passes. I went down Citadel Street, crossed the Bridge of Brawls, and was making my way through the town centre. It felt funny to be among the grey stone walls rising high on either side. The streets were strangely empty. Except that in a little square near the market a small crowd of people stood listening to someone making a speech. I stopped to listen. I didn’t know the speaker. He was a medium-sized man with greying hair who opened his arms wide from time to time as he spoke.

  “In these times of turmoil we must try to love one another. Love will protect us. What can we gain from fratricidal struggle? Son will rise up against father, brother will fight brother. There will be rivers of blood. Let us drive civil war out of our town. Let us keep death out. For centuries the unhappy Albanian has gone through life with the heavy burden of a weapon on his back. Other nations think of food, but we Albanians care only for guns. Let us cast off that weight of steel, my brothers, for steel speaks only of strife. What we need is reconciliation. Civil war . . .”

  The neighbourhood streets were completely deserted. The doors had a sly look about them. I walked faster. Where were all the people? I was almost running. My footsteps rang off the stones with a scary sound. More boarded doors. The metal door-knocker shaped like a human hand . . . No room at the inn! . . . But no, our gate, at least, stood ajar, waiting for me. I pushed it open and went in.

  “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