“Of course it was impossible, after that … mistake,” said her friend.
The rattling of the chains dragging the dictator’s statue through the centre of Tirana kept interrupting her thoughts. It was this sound, louder than any earthquake, that divided past from present. Everything that had once been impossible suddenly became real, such as his invitation over dinner, a week after they had met, to a three-day conference in a Central European city.
She had said nothing. She had lowered her eyes in shame and a mist had crept over the evening after dinner, and over the whole world.
All through that sleepless night, the same questions turned feverishly round in my brain. What was this invitation? Was it sexual? Of course it was. What else could it be? Alone in a hotel. Three days, in other words three nights, with a man that you have still not embraced. Oh God, it couldn’t mean anything else. And she started again: what if he didn’t mean what she thought? What if they didn’t share a room? But of course they would. It could only be a double room. A double bed too.
One week later, he told me on the telephone in a restrained, almost cold, voice that the tickets had arrived. He left me no time to reply, or even feel a rush of anger. In an almost seigneurial fashion, he was issuing to a young woman an invitation for a trip, for love, for sex. Curtly, he informed me where he would give me my ticket and told me the departure date.
All my protests starting with “How dare he …?” were useless and insincere. Obediently, with head bowed, for all my pretensions to be a young woman of discrimination, I went to the Café Europa, where he was waiting with the ticket. It hadn’t been as difficult as I expected to justify the trip. Remember that flood of invitations from associations, NGOs, religious sects, minority groups, all those “alternative” types. “Be careful they’re not a group of lesbians,” said my fiancé with a supposedly knowing grin. One week later, my face drained by insomnia, I found myself at Rinas Airport. We greeted each other from a distance. He had a brooding look, and I liked that. I could have borne anything at that moment except small talk.
It was a day of fog and rain. The aircraft barely carved its way through the clouds. I was totally numb. The journey seemed endless … At one point I wanted to leave my seat and sit next to him, so that I could at least lay my head on his shoulder before we crashed.
After our arrival in the evening, still strangers, we at last found ourselves in the taxi heading towards the great city. The headlights of oncoming cars slid past, in turn lighting up his face and leaving it in darkness, as if it were a mask.
We did not speak. He put his arm round my shoulder. I limply waited for him to kiss me, but this did not happen. He seemed even more dazed and absent than I was.
For a moment, my gaze caught the eyes of the driver in the rear-view mirror. He seemed to be staring at me instead of the road. I knew that this was because I was tired, but I moved aside slightly to be out of his line of vision. Besfort felt my movement and drew me closer. But still we did not embrace. In the hotel room, as we opened our bags, we seemed not to look at each other.
In the late-night bar, we kissed for the first time. I was about to say something, but instead blurted out something else entirely: “My fiancé and I haven’t taken precautions recently …”
There was no taking back what I’d said. It seemed to me later that it was these words that melted everything away.
His eyes were fixed on my knees, as if he was seeing them for the first time. I felt his stare penetrate the black fabric of my miniskirt to the point where my thighs met, where he was now invited to enter without protection …
“Shall we go upstairs?” he said after a short time.
Freed from shame, and with reddened cheeks, I did not hide my eagerness. Let’s go upstairs as fast as we can, to the seventh floor, seventh heaven …
When I came out of the bathroom and lay down beside him, before removing the towel from my chest, I whispered, “Am I too thin?”
He did not understand what I said, or pretended not to. We caressed each other and I thought of the words of Zara the gypsy woman, yet I could not say them for shame, however much I might have wanted to. But he looked at me for a moment in surprise, as if I had spoken them. A special light, of desire mixed with exultation, seemed to flash through his eyes, or perhaps I only took it as such, out of surprise or because of his words, “My little darling.” After our caresses, he was at first a little inhibited, but then everything went well.
It was only later, after I had returned to Albania, that fear gripped me. He had accompanied me to the airport before continuing his own journey to Brussels, where he was to stay two weeks for his work.
There was no word from him for a long time. I was obsessed with all the usual speculations of a woman who gives herself to a man for the first time and wants at all costs to be appreciated. Had it been wonderful for him, as they say, or did I disappoint him, even slightly? Were those sweet words of his sincere? Was his initial inhibition the usual kind of tension experienced by modern men, no longer the shame it once was, but even rather chic, or was it a sign of disenchantment?
The thought that the journey had been a mistake stabbed at me incessantly. I would have given anything not to have made that trip.
I felt a pain in my chest, slight at first, but later more noticeable, sometimes on the side of the heart and sometimes on the opposite side, and I liked to think of this as a sign from him. I was not naïve enough to think that love could really cause pain in my breasts. But I preferred to believe that I was in love rather than pregnant, although this was also a thought that occurred to me, but without distress, as if it were happening to a different body.
The window frame was still empty, without his silhouette. She thought of getting up, taking a shower, putting on her makeup and, made beautiful for the new day, waiting for him on the settee. She rehearsed the procedures in her mind, but, still hungry for sleep, turned her body over to the other side. Instead of sleep there came to her a kind of by-product, a drowsy vision of the lane alongside her school, where, just past the slogan, “The People Do What the Party Says; The Party Does What the People Want”, clumsily written on a wall, stood the low house of Zara the gypsy woman, with a persimmon tree in the yard. During the long holiday afternoons, like many other girls, she had entered the gypsy woman’s dilapidated door without anybody much noticing. The whole atmosphere was different there: the smell of ashes in the hearth, the photos on the wall and especially the conversation, which was like nothing else. With faces crimson from shame, the girls asked all kinds of questions about love, or what the gypsy woman called “fun”. She would answer calmly, never showing annoyance, in terms that made your entire body tremble. “Breasts and buttocks? Of course we know what makes them swell – fun. And if you think you are skinny, listen to Zara. Men who appreciate these things go crazy for thighs like yours.” Rovena thought her knees would give way. “Don’t be stingy with it,” she heard the woman say, pointing below her stomach. “Be generous. We’ll all be in the grave one day.”
These words turned all the films she had ever seen and all the books they had studied at school on their head. A few weeks later, with a new confidence in her movements, she bent down to embrace her and whispered in her ear, “I’ve done it …” The woman closed her eyes in happiness. Then she motioned to her to come close again. She seemed to want Rovena to tell her what had happened but in different words. And Rovena did so. Bluntly, in words considered dirty, and which she had never used before, she said, “I’ve …”
“You’re a real star,” said the gypsy woman softly, and her tired eyes and wrinkled face glowed.
That was two months before the December day when the gypsy woman was interned. A purge was under way against vice. Women suspected of loose morals, homosexuals, gamblers and people who encouraged degeneracy were also carted off. Zara belonged to the last category. Criminal investigators in beige suits cropped up on school premises. In panic, Rovena accepted a proposal from a student she b
arely knew. She thought that this was the best form of safety. I’m not a virgin, she whispered in his ear on the first afternoon when they had gone to bed. He pretended not to hear her.
When the regime fell, she was engaged. Every day, long-forgotten things reappeared out of the mists. Words like “lady”, “miss”, “your grace”, forms of baptism and prayer. But the word “engagement” was one of those that slipped out of use. “Engaged?” asked her girlfriends at the university, with undisguised amazement. To her, the word seemed like a worn-out garment. She used it less and less, and then not at all.
And now you say that nothing is like it was before, she said to herself. That was true then. Everything changed completely, but now … Oh God, what about now? Was everything now the same?
In fact, her meeting with Besfort at that reception turned her life upside-down even more than the fall of the regime. He was frank in his admiration for her, and invited her to one of those dinners that were so common in the frenetic Tirana of the time.
When they met face to face again, their conversation turned once more to beautiful women. He made it no secret that he was talking about her, and nor did she pretend not to notice it. She had known for a long time that she was beautiful.
Enthralled, I heard him say that beautiful women, as distinct from pretty ones, were very rare. According to him, they were different in every respect. They thought differently, loved differently and even suffered in a way that was absolutely different.
I could not take my eyes away from him, until, after a prolonged stare in my direction, which was not his usual style, he said to me, “You know how to suffer.”
Psychic, I thought. How did he know?
I must have frozen, because he hastened to add, “Does that offend you?”
In fact it had seemed to me a kind of insult, I replied. I was beautiful, and there did not appear to be any reason why I should know suffering. Suffering was for others.
Reading my mind, and doubly psychic, he said that nobody should be ashamed of suffering. Then in a voice that struck me as cold he added that what he had said was intended as flattery, because he was sure there were no beautiful women who did not know how to suffer.
I blushed for what I had said, which now seemed to me idiotic. Attempting to make amends, I added a further idiocy: I did not think that I was that sort of person.
He smiled to himself and shook his head several times, like someone faced with a misunderstanding too radical to be explained.
After a silence, as if suddenly remembering that I was still very young and entirely without experience compared to himself, he added, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.” Then, without the slightest sarcasm, he said that the ability to endure suffering was a gift, especially the high-class suffering of beautiful women.
Grateful for this respite, I smiled at him and said, “Are you encouraging me to suffer?” And, looking him knowingly in the eye, I added, “Perhaps you don’t have to …”
I need no encouragement. I will suffer for you. That’s what I wanted to say, but I lapsed into silence.
He kept his eyes lowered, and I sensed that he had taken these words for what they were: an open declaration of love.
Before we parted, in a relaxed and almost boisterous tone, he said that if I were willing he could take me on a three-day trip to a Central European city. Half in fun and half in earnest, we played for a while with this idea, which would have been lunacy even a short a time ago in Albania, but now, after the fall of communism, was perfectly realistic. As we parted, he looked me in the eye for a long time before saying, “I’m serious. Just don’t say no in a hurry.”
I said nothing. I lowered my eyes in shame, and the night and the whole world misted over.
Two weeks later, what had seemed the most impossible thing in the world became reality.
On that day heavy with mist and rain, the Tirana–Vienna flight seemed barely able to move forward. Rovena felt totally numb … The journey seemed endless … At one point she wanted to leave her seat and sit next to him, so that they would at least be together before they crashed …
That is how she told the story later. But in fact she had been alone on that aircraft – not with Besfort at all. The truth was that during the flight she had longed to be with him so much that her mind had gradually performed the necessary changes, to make credible to herself, and later to others, the altered account of the journey.
Its essence remained unchanged. She was going to meet Besfort Y. in Vienna, and during the flight, as the aircraft lurched, she often imagined herself with her head resting on his shoulder. Next to her sat not Besfort Y. but a woman, an activist in the same NGO where Rovena worked. The truth was that she had not hurried to the Café Europa to collect the ticket from him, and he had not suggested they travel together. On the contrary, she herself, after learning of his business in Brussels, had said that she too was going on a trip, to Vienna. “Really? Vienna?” He often passed through Vienna. They might meet. And so, casually, as if playing a game, they had exchanged phone numbers.
In Vienna, after they arrived at the hotel, her travelling companion’s eyes had widened when she announced quite calmly, “I have a lover here. He’s coming to fetch me in an hour.”
And in front of the woman’s very eyes, quite unconcernedly, she started to apply her make-up.
Chapter Three
The same morning. Rovena again.
She shivered, as if a stranger had entered the room. Then she calmed down. It was no one, and Besfort was still not back. The pressure on her temples told her how tired that pretence of sleep had made her.
He is mad, she thought.
Moving towards the bathroom, she did not know why she had thought this. It was something they said to each other so often that it had come to sound like affection.
Under the jet of the shower, the phrase “nothing is the same as before” glittered like a false diamond. It seemed to hang there, as if rinsed by the water.
She was losing the grip on her thoughts of a few minutes before. They were vague at the edges, and even pretending to be asleep had given everything a certain haziness.
The handle of the shower seemed stuck. She thought of what had happened after she came back from Vienna. She was sure that her body had changed, as if her pallor had been absorbed deep beneath her skin and her small breasts, smoothed by desire, no longer belonged to this world. She had felt sure that they had grown since she had first met him. Her feeling of a miracle having happened was mixed with the anxiety that he would not phone and they would part without him seeing them. She imagined him phoning on one of those March afternoons, and then her hurrying to meet him, quickly undressing. Then his admiration, his asking if she had been taking hormones, and her answer that it was nothing like that. “It is you and you alone.”
Under his incredulous gaze her words would cover every fault line of fear like mist. It is you and you alone. My fear of you. My crazy, inhuman desire to please you. A mute entreaty. A prayer, as if before an altar.
Perhaps he would remain unmoved, not be as thrilled as he should be, and for all his fine words about marble and the divine, he might still seem to be elsewhere.
She did not want to come down to earth, and so found excuses for him. You have set me free. Other thoughts swarmed or froze in her mind. Would anybody else notice the change? Of course, and very soon. Starting with her fiancé. She had not slept with him since she came back from abroad. She made every kind of excuse. Finally, she met him.
“Do you think I have changed?” she asked.
He looked at her in wonder, touching her fearfully.
She added carelessly, “You don’t think I’ve had plastic surgery!”
“Why not? It’s the fashion now. I don’t know what else to make of your trip abroad. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw your breasts.”
“How can you be so simple? Don’t you see there’s no scar! Couldn’t you think of any other reason? For instance that I
might have fallen in love?”
He stared at her in shock, as if hearing something very unusual.
It seemed that nobody believed in love any longer. There were three or four men who still drifted through her memory like shadows. The gypsy woman’s advice long ago had been, “Men are different from one another, and what one man’s tool won’t do, another man’s will!”, and so she had gone with these men once or twice. Now, as she brought them to mind, she wondered if she would want to show this change to any of them. The first, who had taken her virginity, had gone off on a boat to Italy. The next was apparently in prison, and the third had ended up a deputy minister. The last had been a foreign diplomat.
Besfort was still in Strasbourg. The afternoons were harder to endure than the evenings. Staring fixedly at the windowpanes, she would ask why. Why did she want to do this at any cost? Was she still spurred on by what Zara had said, “Be generous. We’ll all be in the grave one day,” or was there some other reason? Sometimes she seemed to be saying farewell to the world before shutting herself away in a convent.
The pitiless afternoons dragged on. On one of them, she went for a coffee in the Rogner Hotel with the foreign diplomat. His conversation, which she used to listen to with such interest, was boring. He mentioned the only time they had met in his apartment. “How wonderful that was,” he said. He said it again, but these words saddened rather than excited her. They brought no thrill. In the end, with a serious look, he admitted that he was “bi”. Fortunately Albania was changing and it was nothing awful now to be “bi”. At this point she thought she dimly understood something. When they parted, he said that he hoped they would meet again. He looked serious again and said something about “new experiences” and “wonderful”. She nodded in agreement, but thought to herself, no way.
Walking home, she remembered that the gypsy woman’s house must be nearby. There were all kinds of new buildings in the neighbourhood, but she recognised the dilapidated door from the persimmon in the yard.