Ordinary speech, once serene and reassuring, had been shaken as by an earthquake. Everything was upside down, falling apart, breaking up.
I had entered the kingdom of words, where a merciless tyranny reigned. The world was suddenly filled with people who had pumpkins for heads. Others had heads that spun and eyes that threw knives. Some had blood that froze like ice, others wandered about with forked tongues, gold fingers or iron fists. A slab of flesh pierced by two eyes would pop up here or there. The city itself was feverish (I had seen the window panes shiver, and had even seen their greyish sweat). Someone was walking around on his unearthed roots. Others, like madmen, asked idiotic questions: “Where are your ears? Where are your eyes?” Someone was trying to devour someone else not with his teeth but with his eyes. Unknown painters were blackening the door of a house or the fate of some young girl (where did these painters come from, I wondered, and why were they doing this, and anyway why did people care so much whether their destiny was painted black or white?). And, one fine day, a young man was smitten by love’s arrow. The world was falling apart before my very eyes. Surely that was what Kako Pino meant when she said, as she never stopped saying, “It’s the end of the world.”
It was one of those days when the power of words was at its peak. I was scouring the sloped roofs to see if I could find out where love had hidden before smiting a young man with its arrow. But unlike even small stones thrown down from that height, love didn’t make you bleed or leave a bump on your head. Why, then, in spite of that, did people complain about it so much, especially when it landed on a girl?
I was rescued from these thoughts by a knocking at the door that echoed through the whole house. We all recognised Xhexho’s knock. But the way she knocked this time, and the short spaces between blows, told us that something unusual had happened. With a worried look on her face, Mamma went down to open the door, while Grandmother stood waiting at the top of the stairs.
Then she too went down. The upper floors fell silent. The door opened. Someone came in. Someone else went out. Then someone came in again. The muffled sounds of women’s voices reached my ears. I tiptoed down the steps, trying not to attract attention. There was definitely something serious going on downstairs. The door creaked again. A hum of words I could not clearly distinguish filled the air like a haze. No one noticed me. They were standing by the railing next to the cistern, at the foot of the stairs. Besides Xhexho there was Nazo and her daughter-in-law, as well as Kako Pino, Bido Sherifi’s wife, and another neighbour. The frantic look in their eyes, the way Xhexho’s scarf had slid back to reveal a tuft of greyish hair, and the marks on their cheeks from recent gestures of indignation all told me that something irreparable had occurred. They were all talking at once. Something monstrous had indeed happened, but I couldn’t figure out what was. It wasn’t death or madness. Something worse. Xhexho stood in the centre of them all, and her grating wheeze, like a black-smith’s bellows, fanned their fear.
I listened for a long time, but I still couldn’t understand what it was all about. They were talking about some kind of house. The Italians had opened a business of some kind. It was called something that sounded quite easy. It was a word that had the sound “board” in it, like “boarding house”. Yet they were terrified. They cursed it. I had heard about a sugar house where beautiful young girls lived. This one must have been made of poison to throw the whole city into such turmoil.
“One man from every house,” Xhexho said, her voice low and strange. “That’s what they said. And if they don’t go of their own accord, they’ll be dragged there by brute force. One male from every family.”
The women pinched their cheeks again. Only Nazo’s daughter-in-law seemed unmoved. Xhexho cast her eyes about. They fell on me.
“Don’t you get any ideas about going there!” she exclaimed.
“Idiot,” said Grandmother. “Leave the boy alone.”
“The end of the world,” said Kako Pino, for at least the hundredth time
“Will our folk ever come to their senses?” Xhexho cried, addressing Grandmother as if she were the representative of the city.
Just then there was another knock at the door. It was Aunt Xhemo.
“What’s the matter, poor things? Why are you so upset?” she asked, the moment she set foot in the hallway.
Aunt Xhemo didn’t come to visit us very often, maybe two or three times a year. She was tall and straight and seemed to be all skin and bone. In the family she was known for her mania for cleanliness. She would never eat anything that had been touched by someone else. Bread, all her meals, coffee, tea — she prepared everything with her own hands. At home, she kept her own spoon, plate, cup and coffee pot separate. If she went visiting, she would bring along her own bread wrapped in a clean cloth, and her coffee pot, cup, spoon and glass wrapped in another. Everyone understood her mania, and no one was offended when she sat down at the table and unwrapped her simple fare.
Aunt Xhemo listened in silence as the other women discussed the strange new establishment.
“You’re crazy to go on like this,” she finally said. “I was wondering what was happening. I thought they were opening this . . . this what do you call it, this communal canteen.”
Aunt Xhemo had always been worried about the existence of canteens. In her mind it was the worst possible calamity.
“Why are you fretting over a bordello?” she cried. “I could understand someone with a young husband being concerned,” she said, glancing at Nazo’s daughter-in-law. “But why should you care? Don’t be so silly!”
Nazo’s daughter-in-law smiled and, to everyone’s astonishment, put her hand to her mouth, and burst out laughing. Nazo nudged her in the ribs with her elbow.
The gathering adjourned. Grandmother and Aunt Xhemo slowly climbed back up the two flights of wooden stairs.
“Whatever will we hear about next, Selfixhe?” Aunt Xhemo sighed.
“When foreigners set foot in the country, you have to be ready for anything,” Grandmother answered. “A young girl can’t sit in the window any more without the Italians taking out pocket mirrors and flashing signals at her.”
“It was obvious from the day they arrived that they were fops,” said Aunt Xhemo. “God knows I’ve seen my share of armies, but I never thought I’d come across soldiers wearing perfume.”
“If that were all, I wouldn’t mind. But what I don’t like is what they’re doing down there,” said Grandmother, nodding towards the airfield.
Aunt Xhemo sighed. “War is at our doorstep, Selfixhe.”
Meanwhile, the women at their windows kept talking about the new business in the house they called a “board”. All the lightning in the heavens was called down upon it. A hundred times a day it was consumed by flames, reduced to ashes, but it must have arisen from those ashes every time, for the curses continued to rain down.
A new wave of katenxhikas flooded the streets and alleys. The cold wind still blew from the northern mountain passes, fluttering the black scarves of the katenxhikas and making their eyes water with teardrops that filled out like glass beads. They walked up and down, never stopping.
The city was truly sick. Now it was easy to see it sweating. Windows often shivered convulsively. Chimneys groaned. Every night the searchlight’s one eye lit up. Polyphemus. I dreamed of creeping up on it with a red-hot poker to put out that horrible eye. And I imagined the blinded searchlight would scream with pain all night long.
They were troubled times, and everything was uncertain. I thought of the shifting landscape around Grandfather’s house. It looked as if the ground around our house would soon start moving too. Everyone thought so.
Ilir raced down Fools’ Alley.
“Guess what?” he said, as he came through the door. “The world is round like a melon. I saw it at home. Isa brought it. It’s round, perfectly round, and it spins without stopping.”
He took a long time to tell me just what he had seen.
“But how come they don’t fall
off?” I asked when he told me there were other cities under us, full of people and houses.
“I don’t know,” Ilir said. “I forgot to ask Isa. He and Javer were home looking at the globe. Then Javer tapped it with his finger and said, ‘Soon it’ll be a slaughterhouse.’”
“A slaughterhouse?”
“Yes. That’s what he said. The world will drown in blood. That’s what he said.”
“Where will all the blood come from?” I asked. “Fields and mountains don’t have blood.”
“Maybe they do,” said Ilir. “They must know something, the way they talk. When Javer said the world would be a slaughterhouse, I told him we’d been there and had seen how they slaughter sheep. He started laughing and said, ‘Now you’ll see what happens when they slaughter nations.’”
“Nations? Like on the postage stamps, you mean?”
“Right. Like that. Nations.”
“Who’s going to slaughter them?”
Ilir shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”
I thought about the slaughterhouse again. One day when she was talking about the aerodrome Xhexho said that the fields and grasses would be covered with cement. With wet slippery cement. A rubber hose sluicing cities and nations. To wash away the blood . . . Maybe we were only at the beginning of the slaughter. But I found it hard to imagine nations being led to the slaughter, bleating as they went. Peasants in their black woollen cloaks. Butchers in white coats. Rams, ewes, lambs. People standing around to watch. Other people just waiting. Then it was time. France. Norway. The square awash with blood. Holland bleating. Luxembourg like a newborn lamb. Russia with a big bell around its neck. Italy a goat (I don’t know why). Something mooing all on its own. Who could that be?
“Well, what do you hear about this house they’re all talking about?” Ilir asked.
“I heard it’s bad. Very bad.”
“You know what? They say it’s full of beautiful young girls.”
“Really? Xhexho says they’re bad women.”
“But beautiful.”
“Beautiful? You’re crazy.”
“You’re the one who’s crazy!”
Both of us shut up for a while.
Meanwhile the bordello had set the whole town abuzz. Xhexho swept in and out of our house several times a day, bringing the most incredible news. The wind blew constantly. There had not been such powerful gusts of wind for decades. They said that old Xivo Gavo had decided to mention the windstorm in his chronicle.
Around that time they had the first air-raid siren tests. At noon there came a wail that froze the marrow of our bones.
“That must be Bido Sherifi’s mother-in-law,” Grandmother said. “Nobody else can shriek like that.”
Papa and Mamma leaned on the windowsill. The wailing continued, but it was no human cry. It came in waves, seemed to fade away and then suddenly rose again, rending the heavens with yet more power. Not even a hundred of Bido Sherifi’s mothers-in-law could have made such a sound.
“It’s a siren,” my father said bleakly. “I heard one once in Egypt.”
Grandmother was dumbfounded.
So it was that the city came to have a siren.
“Now we have a mourner who will wail for us all,” said Xhexho, who had come to visit that afternoon. “That’s all we needed, Selfixhe. All we have to do now is wait for the archangel to gather up our souls.”
As if all this were not enough, something else happened that shook even those who had kept calm until then. Argjir Argjiri got married.
I had noticed that announcements of engagements or weddings sometimes surprised people, making some happy and bringing smiles to others. But I never thought the news of a wedding could be seen by everyone, without exception, as a major catastrophe. Have you heard? Argjir Argjiri is getting married. You’re kidding! No, really, it’s true. Don’t talk nonsense. Argjir Argjiri getting married? How? Well, he is. Come on! It’s impossible. No it isn’t. Kako Pino has even been summoned to paint the bride. No, it’s unbelievable. It can’t be. But I heard the same thing. It’s true then? Yes, it’s true. God, what an abomination. How shameful!
Argjir Argjiri was a short dark man with a voice so high-pitched he sounded like a woman. Everyone knew him, he roamed around in all the neighbourhoods. People said he was half-woman and half-man, and he was the only male, or supposed male, who came and went freely in every house even when the men weren’t home. Argjir helped the women with various household chores, looked after the children when the women were at the wash-house, went to fetch water with them and retailed gossip. He had a house of his own, and people said that he helped women not because he had to but because he liked their company and women’s work. This was after all not so strange, given that Argjir Argjiri was half-man and half-woman. Although for years he had been the butt of jokes and the object of jeers, by way of compensation he had won a right enjoyed by no other man: he could mingle freely with our city’s women and girls.
And now suddenly Argjir Argjiri announced that he was getting married. It was a terrible act of defiance.
The creature with the effeminate voice suddenly declared his manhood. For years he had borne the most biting taunts, awaiting his hour of revenge. The city scowled at such an intolerable outrage. There wasn’t a single home Argjir Argjiri had not entered, not a single woman he didn’t know. Dark suspicion stalked the town.
Hopes that the reports were false soon evaporated. Kako Pino was summoned. An orchestra was hired, the wedding date was set. Hopes that Argjir Argjiri would change his mind likewise dwindled. Even repeated threats, so rumours said, had no effect. He remained adamant. More pressure was put on him, but he stood his ground. It was all done very discreetly, through clenched teeth and in anonymous letters. No one wanted to lead the campaign against Argjir Argjiri openly, for fear of seeming to have a personal axe to grind.
No one ever found out why the man with the treble voice suddenly rebelled. What had happened to him? Why was he doing it? That’s right, why? At last the wedding night arrived. The city was under curfew. The wind that had been blowing for two weeks suddenly stopped. The silence seemed deeper after its incessant whistling. The eye of the searchlight blinked, then went out. The wedding drums rolled as if tolling the death of the city’s honour.
“The cup runneth over,” Xhexho commented bitterly. Now, she said, we could expect the springs to gush black water.
“That’s all we needed,” Isa said to Javer as he smoked in the dark. “The marriage of that hermaphrodite.”
“Things are all adrift,” Javer answered. “This town is going to wind up like Sodom and Gomorrah.”
The attack was swift and merciless. The siren failed to give a warning in time. The city was gripped by convulsions, like an epileptic. It pitched over, nearly fell. It was a Sunday, nine in the morning. On that October day near mid-century, the ancient city, pounded countless times through the ages by catapult and cannon, shell and battering ram, was attacked from the sky for the first time. Broken foundations groaned with pain like blinded men. Thousands of terrified windows spewed their shattered panes.
After the infernal thundering, the world went deaf and dumb. The distraught city gazed up at a clear sky, which seemed to beg forgiveness for having stood by and watched. The three tiny silver crosses that had shaken that immense mass of stone to its foundations were now moving off into the distance.
The bombing left sixty-two dead. Granny Neslihan was found in the rubble, buried up to her waist. She didn’t understand what had happened to her. Waving her long arms in the air, she cried, “Who killed me?” She was 142 years old. And blind.
FRAGMENT OF A CHRONICLE
Prepare for an air raid. Build yourself a shelter to protect you and yours from the British bombs. Have sandbags ready and store water in the house. Get a hatchet, a shovel and a pickaxe to fight fire. City hall. Trial. Executive measures. Property. Trials are suspended until further notice. Our fellow townsman Argjir Argjiri was found dead in the bridal chamber the morning
after his ill-fated marriage. The city could not forgive the man who had so disgraced it. Dr S. Çuberi. Venereal diseases. Daily from four to eight p.m. List of casualties of the latest
SEVEN
The city was bombed every day that week. Everything else was forgotten. No one talked of anything but bombs and planes. Hardly a word was even said about the death of Argjir Argjiri, who was found murdered at dawn, just a few hours after his wedding. His killers, like the authors of the threatening letters, were never identified.
On the seventh day of bombing something happened that was not without importance. A tin plaque was put up in our street. Some strangers came by early in the morning and nailed it to the wall of our house, to the right of the front door. In big black letters it read: “Air-raid shelter for 90 persons”.
There were no other signs in our street. We had never seen anything but a few posters giving city ordinances, and they peeled off in two or three days, soaked by the rain and torn by the wind. Obscene graffiti were occasionally scrawled on the walls of houses in chalk or charcoal. But not often. The first real placard was the one nailed to the right of our door.
That day passers-by stopped in front of it and those who could read explained it to the others.
“Is this house for sale?”
“No, Grandpa. It’s about something else.”
“What?”
“It says we should come and hide in this cellar when the planes drop their bombs.”
“Really?”
I stood at the door smiling at passers-by as if to say, “See, that’s what you call a house.” I was very proud. There were many large and beautiful houses in our neighbourhood, but none of them, not Çeço Kaili’s or Bido Sherifi’s or even Mak Karllashi’s mansion had a plaque like this one. It meant that ours was the strongest of all.
I kept smiling, but to my disappointment no one seemed to pay any attention to me. Except for Harilla Lluka, who when he caught sight of me took off his hat with the greatest respect and nodded in my direction. They said Harilla Lluka was the biggest coward in the neighbourhood.