Chronicle in Stone (12 page)

The whole city waited, holding its breath. Women were asking from the windows:

“Is it fixed?”

“Not yet.”

“Lord help us.”

Everyone was asking that question, morning, noon and especially towards evening. The defect was apparently serious. That was when the anti-aircraft battery that later shot down the first English plane arrived. Two days later, the old antiaircraft gun was fired for the first time. The joy felt by everyone, especially the children, was indescribable. Unlike the salvos of the battery, the boom of the old anti-aircraft gun was lonely and powerful. There was really something regal about it. But that day it didn’t manage to hit anything. Nor did it make a hit on any subsequent day.

As we sat in the shelter Ilir would say to me, “It’s formidable. Today it will get one for sure.” But it never did. Every day we would come up out of the shelter gripped by sadness. We would stand close to the grown-ups to hear what they were saying. And what we heard was disheartening. They had no faith in it. After every bombing they would repeat resentfully:

“It’s too old to shoot down today’s planes.”

Over the preceding weeks, when the city had repeatedly changed hands, our anti-aircraft gun had missed every shot. During the Italian occupation it had fired at English planes. When the Greeks came its targets were the Italian planes that bombed us four times in succession. Neither of the retreating armies had touched the gun. The evacuations were quick and chaotic, and it was too much trouble for either army to dismantle the gun at the top of the fortress. Or perhaps, in their disarray, they forgot it or pretended to forget it, confident that when they had retaken the city they would find the veteran weapon just as they had left it.

On one of those days when the city had no government an unknown plane was spotted in the sky, coming from a direction from which none had ever come before. Perhaps it was the same bewildered pilot who had flown over last week and dropped leaflets in German that began: “Citizens of Hamburg!”

In recent days the appearance of stray aircraft in the skies over our city had become commonplace. They must have wandered off course after some battle, or were pretending to be off course while flying towards the enemy. Turning from their set itinerary at the earliest opportunity, especially when the weather was bad, they would leave their companions and loop idly in the sky until their flying time was up. They acted pretty much the way we did some mornings when, instead of going to school, we played truant until it was time to go home for lunch.

The unknown aircraft flew slowly, looking weary and bored. It must have been coming out of some battle, even though the direction it came from seemed suspect. Later on, trying to figure out why the bemused pilot had suddenly dropped a bomb on us, people guessed that he must have noticed that he had one left (usually these stray pilots dropped their bombs deep in the woods or up in the mountains) and must have said to himself, as he flew over, “Well, why not just drop it on this city whose name I don’t even know?” And he dropped it.

But this time the city couldn’t stand the blow. During the long days of apathy, the long barrel of the old anti-aircraft gun had let its imagination run wild. Its repressed desire to get mixed up in the affairs of the sky was slumbering within it, ready to awaken. And when unknown planes flew over the city, the temptation to open fire at the intruders was particularly strong.

It was one of those rare days when we had gone out to play. We had gone pretty far, to the foot of the citadel, near the isolated house of Avdo Babaramo, the old gunner. Often, in the shelter or the coffeehouse, old Avdo would tell war stories, and though we had never seen anything but pumpkins and cucumbers in his hands, and certainly never cannon shells, he nevertheless enjoyed the respect of all.

We were playing right in front of Avdo’s house when we heard the noise of an engine. Some passers-by stopped and, shading their eyes, searched the sky for the plane.

“There it is!” someone said.

“Looks like an Italian plane.”

Uncle Avdo and his wife came to the window. Other passers-by had stopped in the street to look.

The plane flew slowly. The lone, loud hum of its engines came in waves. Silence fell over the onlookers. Then suddenly someone turned towards Avdo Babaramo’s window and called, “Uncle Avdo, why don’t you take a shot with our anti-aircraft gun for once? Shoot that pig looping about up there.”

The crowd murmured. As for us kids, our hearts pounded with excitement.

“Yeah, shoot it down, Uncle Avdo!” two or three voices shouted.

“Why provoke the devil?” Uncle Avdo answered from the window. “Leave him alone.”

“Come on, Uncle Avdo!” we all cried, “shoot it down!”

“Shut up, you little devils!” someone said. “Quiet!”

“Why should they be quiet? They’re right.”

“Shoot it down, Avdo. There’s the anti-aircraft gun, sitting right up there. Doing nothing.”

“Why look for trouble?” asked Harilla Lluka from the middle of the crowd. “Better leave him alone. We’ll only make him angry and he’ll bomb us to bits.”

“We’ve had enough of that already, son.”

At first Avdo Babaramo’s face grew dark, but then he brightened up. A thin blue vein stood out on his forehead. He lit a cigarette.

“Shoot it down, Uncle Avdo!” Ilir shouted, almost sobbing.

Suddenly a black object fell away from the belly of the plane, and a few seconds later we heard an explosion.

Then something so wonderful happened that we would have thought it impossible. The angry crowd started shouting, “Shoot the lousy dog down, Avdo!”

Uncle Avdo had walked out to the gate. His eyes flashed. He swallowed repeatedly. His wife followed in alarm. The plane was flying slowly over the city. Somehow Avdo found himself in the midst of the crowd, which pulled him along the steep road leading up to the citadel.

From every side came the cry: “Shoot! Shoot the pig down!”

The path led directly to the tower where the anti-aircraft gun sat. Uncle Avdo, now at the head of the crowd, entered the citadel gates.

“Hurry, Uncle Avdo! Hurry, before it goes!” we kids were shouting.

They didn’t let us into the citadel. We stayed outside, clapping our hands impatiently, for the plane was heading off towards the mountains.

“It’s going, it’s going!” everyone shouted.

But suddenly the plane turned and started coming close again. It really seemed to be flying at random.

Sudden voices rang out from afar: “His glasses! His glasses!”

“Quick, his glasses!”

“Uncle Avdo’s glasses!”

Someone tore down the hill and, a moment later, came charging back up just as fast, carrying Uncle Avdo’s antique spectacles.

“He’s about to shoot!” someone shouted.

“The plane’s coming back!”

“Like a lamb to the slaughter.”

“Shoot, Uncle Avdo. Blow him away!”

The antique anti-aircraft gun fired. Its sound was no more powerful than our screams. Our hearts were bursting with joy. Everyone was shouting now, even the old ladies.

It fired again. We had expected the plane to come crashing down after the first shot, but no. It continued to fly slowly over the city. It was as if the pilot had dozed off. He was in no hurry.

At the third shot the plane was right over the main square.

“Now he’ll get him!” a raucous voice shouted. “There he is, right under our noses!”

“Shoot the lousy dog down!”

“Get the son of a bitch!”

But the plane wasn’t hit. It flew off north. The gunner fired a few more rounds before the plane was completely out of range.

“Uncle Avdo hasn’t got the hang of it yet,” someone said.

“It’s not his fault. He’s used to the old ones.”

“What, the Turkish guns?” asked Ilir.

“Maybe.”

We sighed. Our throats were parched.

The anti-aircraft gun fired again, but the plane was too far away now. There was a hateful indifference in its flight path.

“The pig’s getting away,” someone burst out.

Tears welled up in Ilir’s eyes. In mine too. When the final shell was fired and the crowd began to disperse, a little girl started sobbing.

The people who had gone up to the tower were coming down now, with Avdo Babaramo in the lead. He was pale. His hands trembled as he mopped his brow with a handkerchief. His haggard gaze wandered, not focusing on anything. Avdo’s old wife made her way through the crowd and came up to him.

“Come, my darling,” she called. “Come and lie down. You must be exhausted. This is not for you. Not with your heart trouble. Come on.”

He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t. His mouth was dry. Only when he had crossed the threshold of his gate did he turn to look back. Setting his jaw in a half-smile, half-grimace, he muttered with great effort:

“It was not to be.”

The people left.

“It was not to be,” the gunner repeated, passing his gaze over all those present as if seeking their approval before they left him alone with his defeat.

“Don’t worry about it, Uncle Avdo,” a boy told him. “Some day it will be our turn. And we won’t miss.”

Uncle Avdo closed his door.

The crowd dispersed.

OLD SOSE’S NEWS
(in lieu of a chronicle)

My joints hurt. We will have a hard winter. War has broken out everywhere, a murderous war all the way to the Celestial Kingdom, where the people are yellow. The English are sending banknotes and gold to all countries. Red-bearded Stalin smokes his pipe and ponders, ponders. “You know a lot, Englishman,” he says, “but I know just as much as you.” “Oh, my dear Hançe,” said Majnur, the lady of Kavo, to poor old Hançe the day before yesterday, “when will this war with the Greeks be over? I’m dying for a Lake Ioanina eel.” “Enough, wretch,” snapped Hançe, “my children are starving and you talk of Ioanina eels.” They quarrelled and cursed each other: you ragamuffin, you Italian lackey, you this, you that. As soon as the town hall re-opens Avdo Babaramo will be fined for firing the gun without authorisation. They say the war with the Greeks will be over before the first mountain snowfall. The Kailis’ daughter-in-law is pregnant again. Both of the Puses’ daughters-in-law are in their ninth month, as if they had worked it out together. Granny Hava is bed-ridden. “I won’t live to see winter,” she says. Poor old Lady Qazim finally died too. May the earth be kind to her.

TEN

It rained all the next day. The city lay stunned after the previous day’s defeat, its roofs and eaves drenched. Sadness trickled down the slates. Unyieldingly grey, it slid down the steep roofs, steadily renewed by the fresh sadness that poured from sorrowful reservoirs in the sky.

The next morning the city awoke to find itself occupied again. The Greeks were back. This time their mules, cannon and supplies were everywhere. On the metal pole atop the prison tower, where the Italian tricolour had flown, the Greek flag now waved. At first it was hard to make it out. The wind never stopped blowing, but it never blew in just one direction so that the banner could unfurl and be seen properly. Towards noon, when the wind shifted and the rain started again, the outlines of the large white cross could at last be seen on the weary silk.

“Did I have to live so long just to see Greek jackboots?” Grandmother lamented. “Why didn’t I die last winter?”

We were in the main room. I had never seen such despair in her eyes, in all her features. I couldn’t think of anything to say to her. I took the round lens from my pocket and put it over one eye. The distant cross over the prison tower fluttered as if it were angry. Then it displayed itself in full, quite brazenly. It was just a pattern on a piece of silk. I wondered how two crossed lines on a piece of fabric could arouse such grief. A piece of material waving in the breeze had plunged an entire city into consternation. It was strange.

That evening people spoke of nothing but the Greeks. Terrible predictions were made. Many years ago, before the monarchy and even before the republic, the Greeks had occupied the city for a few weeks. Many people had been killed. Then as now, that same flag with the white cross had flown from the prison tower. And since the flag with the cross was back, all the rest would follow.

Xivo Gavo’s little window stayed lit far into the night. The old chronicler’s neighbours all thought he was describing the return of the Greeks. It later turned out that he had devoted only a single sentence of his chronicle to the event: “On 18 Nov. the G. entered the city.” No one could account for this laconic mention of such a calamity, and still less for his use of a single letter to represent the multitude of Greeks.

The next morning the cross was still there, dominating the city. The symbol of evil had been raised. Everyone expected the worst.

The Greeks began to walk around the streets in their khaki uniforms. Ordinances signed “Katantzakis” were again posted in the square. The coffee houses were packed with Greek sounds. They were thin and sharp, full of
s
’s and
th
’s that cut like razors. All the soldiers carried knives. Treachery hovered in the air. Impending slaughter. The city would have to be sluiced with a rubber hose. But it was raining. Maybe they wouldn’t need the hose.

There was no massacre on the first day. Nor on the second. They had put a big sign in the town square saying
Vorio Epire
, “Northern Epirus”. Commandant Katantzakis lunched and dined with some of the rich Christian families.

A Greek sergeant fired several shots, but no one was hit. He did, however, get the city’s only statue in the thigh. It was a big bronze statue in the town square, erected back in the days of the monarchy. The city had never had statues before that. The only representations of the human form were the scarecrows in the fields on the other side of the river. When plans to put up a statue were announced, many fanatical citizens who had hailed the anti-aircraft gun had been somewhat sceptical. A metal man? Was such a novelty really necessary? Might it not cause trouble? At night, when everyone was sleeping as God had ordained, the statue would be out there standing erect. Day and night, summer and winter, it would stand. People laughed and cried, shouted and died. But not the statue. It would just stand there and not utter a sound. And everyone knew how suspicious silence was.

The sculptor who came from Tirana to inspect the proposed site of the pedestal barely escaped blows. A bitter polemic raged in the city newspaper. At last the majority of the population resigned itself to having the statue. It arrived in a huge lorry with a tarpaulin over the back. It was winter. They set it up at night in the main square. To avoid trouble there was no unveiling ceremony. People stood and stared in wonder at the bronze warrior with his hand on his pistol, who gazed severely down into the square as if asking, “Why didn’t you want me?”

One night someone threw a blanket over the bronze man’s shoulders. From then on, the city’s heart went out to its statue.

Anyway, this was the statue the Greek sergeant shot. People rushed to the square to see the bullet hole. Some of them went starry-eyed and imagined that they themselves had to limp. Others actually were limping, as if they had been hit in the thigh. The square was in turmoil. Suddenly Katantzakis, escorted by several guards, appeared at the edge of the square, walked across it diagonally, and went into the town hall, where the Greek command was headquartered.

An hour later, in the spot reserved for proclamations, a sign was posted, in Greek and Albanian and signed by Katantzakis, ordering the arrest of the sergeant who had shot the statue.

That afternoon Xhexho came over.

“Oh my poor dears, do you know what we’re in for now?” she cried the moment she came through the door. “They say Vasiliqia has come back.”

“Vasiliqia?” exclaimed Grandmother, going pale.

“Vasiliqia?” my mother repeated in horror.

My father, hearing their voices, came in from the other room.

“What’s this, Xhexho? Vasiliqia’s back?”

There was a pause during which all you could hear was Xhexho’s wheezy breathing.

“If only I had died last winter,” lamented Grandmother. “Under the earth I would be spared such things.”

“I should have been so lucky,” Xhexho agreed.

“I thought nothing in this life could surprise me any more,” Grandmother said, “but Vasiliqia coming back? Anything but that.” There was a terrifying resignation in her voice.

Papa cracked his long sinewy fingers.

“They say she’s worse than ever now,” Xhexho went on. “It will be a catastrophe.”

“Woe betide us,” my mother wailed.

“Where is she?” my father asked. “When will we see her?”

“She’s locked up in Pasha Kauri’s house. They’re just waiting for the right day to bring her out.”

There was a knock at the door. It was Bido Sherifi’s wife, along with Kako Pino, Nazo’s daughter-in-law (more beautiful than ever amidst these horror-struck faces), and Mane Voco’s wife, holding Ilir by the hand.

“Vasiliqia?”

“Is it true? She’s back?”

“How dreadful!”

All the old women had facial tics. Their wrinkles leapt about so furiously it seemed they would come loose and fall off. I had the feeling I was already entangled in those wrinkles.

“So it is, Selfixhe,” said Xhexho, folding her arms on her chest.

“You’ve brought us tidings of death, Xhexho.”

“The end of the world.”

I had already heard about Vasiliqia. The name of this woman, who had terrorised our city some twenty years before, was linked in my mind with words like “cholera”, “plague” and “calamity”, and like them, cropped up in most of the curses people levelled at one another. For long years the name Vasiliqia had hung over their heads like an ever-present threat. Now it had stepped forward out of the universe of words and was plummeting down upon us, assuming the body, eyes, hair and mouth of a woman dressed in black.

More than twenty years ago this woman had arrived in our city with the Greek occupation forces. She would wander the streets in the company of a patrol of Greek gendarmes, weapons at the ready. “That man there has the evil eye,” she would say to them, “seize him.” And the gendarmes would grab him. “That boy over there looks suspicious. He’s no Christian. Grab him, cut him to pieces and throw him in the river.”

She moved through the streets, went into coffee houses, sat staring at people in the main square. The Greeks called her the holy maid. The streets and coffee houses emptied out. She was shot at twice, but was not hit. More than a hundred men and boys were executed on her orders. Then one fine day she walked off with a column of soldiers, heading south, back where she came from.

The city had never forgotten her. Once she had left the real world her name, “Vasiliqia”, had entered the abstract realm of words. “May the eye of Vasiliqia cut you down,” old women would curse. Vasiliqia became more and more remote, as distant as the plague (for plague, too, had once been very near), perhaps even as remote as death. Embittered by her long absence, all of a sudden she had now come back.

Evening fell. Pasha Kauri’s windows were draped with blankets. Why hadn’t they brought her out? What were they waiting for?

The city kept vigil with Vasiliqia on its mind.

The next day, around mid-morning, Xhexho came over again.

“The streets are deserted,” she reported. “Gjergj Pula was the only one I saw, going up to the market. Did you hear that he’s changed his name again?”

“To what?” asked Grandmother.

“Yiorgos Poulos.”

“The scoundrel.”

Gjergj Pula lived in a neighbourhood near ours. The first time the Italians came he had changed his name to Giorgio Pulo.

There was a knock at the door. Bido Sherifi’s wife came in, followed by Nazo’s daughter-in-law.

“We saw Xhexho coming in. Is there any news?”

“Better to be dead and buried than to hear the news there is,” said Xhexho. “Have you heard what they’re saying about Bufe Hasani?”

Grandmother nodded in my direction. I pretended not to be listening. Whenever Bufe Hasani’s name came up, Grandmother was careful not to let me hear.

“He has taken up . . . with a Greek soldier.”

“What a disgrace!”

“His wife is beside herself. ‘I thought it was all over when the Italians left,’ she wept, ‘when that damned Pepe took off, stinking of hair-cream from twenty paces. But now that filthy husband of mine has got his hooks into one of those
spiropoules
. A Greek, sisters, a Greek!’”

Nazo’s daughter-in-law’s almond eyes sharpened. Bido Sherifi’s wife pinched her cheeks, leaving traces of flour.

“That Bufe Hasani has his mind made up, and he has the cheek to say so. He says he’s going to pick a lover from every occupying army. A German if the Germans come, a Japanese if the Japanese come.”

“What about Vasiliqia?”

Xhexho snorted.

“They’re keeping her locked up. Who knows what they’re waiting for.”

In the afternoon Ilir came over.

“Isa and Javer have got revolvers,” he told me. “I saw them with my own eyes.”

“Revolvers?”

“Yeah. But don’t tell anyone.”

“What are they going to do with them?”

“They’re going to kill people. I was looking through the keyhole and heard them arguing about who they were going to kill first. They’re making a list. They’re still there in Isa’s room, arguing.”

“Who are they going to bump off?”

“Vasiliqia first, if she comes out. Javer wanted to put Gjergj Pula second, but Isa was against it.”

“That’s odd.”

“Let’s go listen through the keyhole.”

“OK.”

“Where are you going?” my mother asked. “Don’t go too far. You never know, Vasiliqia might come out!”

Isa and Javer had left the door ajar. We went in. They had stopped arguing. Javer was even humming a tune. Apparently they had reached agreement. Isa’s glasses looked bigger than usual. The lenses gleamed. They turned to look at us. They had the death list on them. You could tell from the way they looked.

“Can we go out and play,” Ilir asked, “or will Vasiliqia come out?”

Isa stared at us, not moving. Javer frowned.

“I don’t think they’re letting her out,” he said. “Her time has passed.”

There was a long silence. From the window you could see the road and part of the airfield beyond. The cows were still grazing on it. A vague memory of the big plane came back to me in flashes, as it had already several times. Far above the boring talk of Vasiliqia and the shameful behaviour of Bufe Hasani, its gleaming metal sparkled, so distant that it strained my eyes. That’s a point: where was it now? The image of the dead bird with its wings folded under it now mingled in my mind with Suzana’s frail, almost transparent limbs, and the three of them together — plane, bird and Suzana — mixing a young girl’s flesh, alloy and feathers, swapping life and death, had forged a single and
extraordinary
being.

“Her time has passed,” Javer repeated. “You can walk the streets without fear.”

We left. The streets were not as empty as Xhexho had said. Çeço Kaili and Aqif Kashahu were tramping over the cobblestones. Çeço Kaili’s red hair looked like a flame fanned by the wind. They were often together these days. Perhaps grief at their daughters’ disgrace had united them. One day Ilir had heard some women say that for a father, having a daughter who had been kissed by a boy was practically the same thing as having a daughter with a beard.

Both men looked glum. Lady Majnur had come to her window with a twig of marjoram in her hand. The houses of the other ladies which stood beside hers had their windows tightly shut. The Karllashi house, with its massive iron door (the hand-shaped iron knocker reminded me of the English pilot’s severed arm), was silent.

“Should we go to the square and see the hole in the statue?” asked Ilir.

“OK.”

“Look, Greeks!”

Soldiers were standing around in front of the boards where cinema posters were usually put up. They all had very dark complexions.

“Do the Greeks belong to the gypsies?” Ilir whispered.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. None of them has a violin or clarinet.”

“Look, that’s where Vasiliqia’s locked up,” Ilir said, pointing at Pasha Kauri’s brown-painted house, where some gendarmes were standing guard.

“Don’t point,” I warned.

“Don’t worry,” Ilir said. “Her time has passed.”

The Addis Ababa Café was closed. The barbershops too. A few more steps and we would cross the square. From afar we could see that the posters at the base of the statue had been torn by the wind. Sss-zzz. I stopped.