When read to the accompaniment of the rousing strains of the hurriedly assembled municipal band, which played every day, the news seemed easy to believe. But when dusk fell and the communists scattered their leaflets, it all became more questionable. The leaflets urged the people not to trust the occupiers, who were merely throwing dust in the Albanians’ eyes with their talk of Kosovo and Çamëria and their flattery of the Albanian race. The communists claimed that the nationalists and royalists were preparing to do a deal with the Germans. The leaflets ended with the words “Now or never!” Both the communists and the nationalists made use of this phrase. In fact it had been current for more than a century, which made it hard to work out when “now” and especially “never” might be.
A fraction of this would have given anyone sleepless nights but it was particularly those citizens who hated anarchy and yearned for law and order who made their way to the city square each morning with bloodshot eyes, to sit in the cafés and read the newspapers as the music played.
Besides the news, the government announcements and the music, there was something else that made everyone think back to peacetime with a pang of nostalgia. Each morning the two famous surgeons, Big Dr Gurameto and Little Dr Gurameto, walked to the city hospital, just as in the time of the Albanian monarchy and in the time of the triple Italian-Albanian-African empire. Now, under what some people were calling Teutonic Albania, there was a new hospital set up in the house of Remzi Kadare, the same house that its owner had lost at cards three months before.
The general conviction was that as long as these two doctors remained (with all their ups and downs, gramophones and dinners and non-dinners), the city was still intact.
In fact, many people were doing their best to push the city over the edge. On some days it seemed to come close to the brink, only to be saved at the last moment.
With the arrival of winter it became clear that there was no brink. The communists’ calls for war and the nationalists’ for peace mingled like two opposing winds to create a kind of in-between state that was neither one nor the other.
Trouble, when it appeared, took the form of a moral scandal of an unprecedented nature. The newspaper Demokratia said that it was the only case of its kind involving two men on the entire war-torn continent of Europe. A municipal employee Bufe Hasani was caught in flagrante in the city hall basement, to his shame, with a German!
No earthquake could have shaken the city more. After their initial blush of shame, people’s first thought was again of being blown up. This would no doubt be the inevitable reprisal, but this time, a merited one. Things had gone too far! Everybody said so. All the city’s inhabitants knew how cautiously, almost bashfully, the German soldiers behaved towards the local women: they were believed to be under orders not to trifle with the Albanians’ lofty sense of propriety. But the city, not satisfied with this courtesy, and as if on purpose to hold it up to ridicule, had now provoked a different lust and violated the honour of a blond-haired German lad, barely eighteen, as pale as a young girl. Gjirokastër could no longer protest at being blown up. It was the very least it deserved.
As can be imagined many people turned to Big Dr Gurameto for assistance, but he raised his hands helplessly. “This time I’m not interfering!”
He added that if it had been a matter of a woman, he would have spoken to Fritz von Schwabe, but this sort of business was not something he dealt with.
Some people saw no reason to tear their hair and cry “Shame!”, arguing that the occurrence was the logical consequence of a policy that was neither war nor peace. If you wanted this kind of thing, that is, war and peace at the same time and a city confused, there it was in the city hall basement. They said this wasn’t the first time Albanians had got up to such tricks. Whenever an Albanian sees that one sword is no good, he’ll sheathe it and draw another one.
In fact, from a more balanced point of view, the case of Bufe Hasani was merely a symptom. Like Big Dr Gurameto’s dinner, the incident in the cellar could be looked at in two ways. Indeed it was not just an Albanian phenomenon but had global implications. It recalled Hitler’s humiliation of the British in the Munich agreement. Mentioning Bufe Hasani and Neville Chamberlain in the same breath prompted grimaces, but the matter was essentially the same.
Feelings of fear and shame floated in the air; whenever fear rose, shame sank and vice versa.
Meanwhile there were other developments, some visible and others secret. Bufe Hasani’s two sons put together a bomb designed to kill their degenerate father but then set it aside, expecting a proper solution to their problem when the city was blown up. At this moment the prime minister of the newly formed government, Mehdi Frashëri, arrived in the city to deal with the issue. What a pity that the first duty of this scion of the most famous of all Albanian families, whose arrival was so eagerly awaited, was to tackle such a nasty business.
He arrived and left again at night, without ceremony, with no dinner or gramophone, as was to be expected with this kind of case in hand. But his visit still brought reassurance.
Comforting news for the nationalists also came from the Albanians’ two capital cities, Tirana and Prishtina. There was a rumour that the Albanian communist leader had been captured and punished: after his eyes were gouged out, he had been forced to practise his family’s traditional profession of washing corpses in the Et’hem Bey Mosque in Tirana.
Bufe Hasani’s exploit was gradually forgotten, except when little children unexpectedly asked, “Mummy, what did Bufe Hasani do with that German uncle in the cellar of the city hall?”
The surest sign of restored order was of course the renewed attention paid to the two doctors, or rather the rise and fall of their relative reputations. The doctors had become as used to this as to sunrise and sunset and it seemed too late to tempt them to a new challenge. As ever, their relative positions were measured with reference to the international situation, and the prospects were not looking good for the Germans. At first sight this suggested that Big Dr Gurameto would fall behind. However, his standing was calculated only relative to Little Dr Gurameto’s, and Italy was the last country likely to benefit from Germany’s weakness, so it seemed that Little Dr Gurameto would be the loser again.
The two now worked together in the new surgical ward that was housed on the first floor of the great mansion of the Kadare family. Surely peace would prevail here at least, where patients spent their last days, facing the prospect of death. But the opposite was the case. For anybody hankering to see pure civil war, the ward of the two Gurametos was the place to go, or so the correspondent of the local paper reported. Bloody bandages, screams, vituperation, horror. The sick seemed afraid only of dying before they had vented their political hatreds. This was the sole explanation for the continual uproar, the insults and the moans and shouts of “traitor to your country!” They would come to blows with medicine bottles, there were assaults with syringes and even an amputated arm that one patient had asked to be left beside him, protesting he would miss it, but really to keep it within reach if things came to a fight.
According to the journalist the two Gurametos could hardly keep this bedlam under control, although many also formed the impression that the two doctors were merely waiting for the ward to calm down before attacking each other with scalpels and bloody forceps.
As evening fell, another man was listening carefully to the tumult from the upper floor. The unhinged Remzi Kadare, the former owner of the house, huddled in army blankets, added his own expletives to the bedlam above. “You tart! You whore!” he shouted, addressing the house that had been his own home before he lost it at poker. “That’s what the place deserves,” he roared. “Drip blood and gall! I knew you weren’t to be trusted. I was right to take a chance with you! I risked you and lost you, you bitch!”
The night gradually grew colder and he wrapped himself more tightly in the blankets. Burying his head in them, he sang to himself.
I saw a nightmare, mother, the worst of all my dreams
Our big house was a hospital, full of groans and screams.
I woke from sleep, dear mother, and wept at dawn of day
I thought I’ll burn it down, or gamble it away.
And so I did, dear mother, and I’m a wretched knave
My wife has gone to Janina, and you are in your grave.
Remzi was my first name, my surname Kadare
You should have fed me poison when at your breast I lay.
The weeks passed quickly. Winter held the city under its stern rule. But this meant little to the mind of Vehip Qorri. “Blind Vehip” had been a rhymester since the previous century, before there were newspapers. As his nickname indicated, he had been blind since birth but even though he had never seen the world, he described it accurately in verses that were full of dates and the names of people and streets. He composed some of his rhymes to order and for a small fee, to mark occasions of every kind such as birthdays or the award of decorations, to advertise barber shops, or announce changes of address and opening hours. He produced others to publicise court verdicts, quarrels, scandals, municipal notices, riding accidents, the imposition of fines, cases of intoxication, the downfall of governments, currency devaluations and the like. People who enjoyed rhymes would stop at the street corner where he had his pitch, ask for verses about X or Y and pay him or not, according to how they liked the result.
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.
Gurameto, the mortal sinner
Met the devil one day on the street,
Who told him to host a great dinner
With champagne and good things to eat.
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.
What was the doctor’s design,
Asking the corse to dine?
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!”
PART TWO
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.