Ismail Kadare: Spring Flowers, Spring Frost

He could imagine that his own eyes betrayed disappointment and frustration, just like the last time that something of this sort had happened between them. He presumed rather vaguely that such regret was like the loser’s last consolation, when a love affair begins to cool off. Maybe his only hope of recovering the attraction he felt he had ceased to hold for her was to sacrifice his painting (at least, provisionally) by invoking a spiritual crisis, or the feeling of being misunderstood as an artist.

“So what’s this business about sharing the state’s assets?” he asked without turning around. “That strikes me as pretty strange.”

She frowned before answering.

“To be honest, I didn’t really understand it myself…. I think they mean that, as the state was socialist… in other words, the property of everyone … now that the system has changed … a share of it can go back to each and every person…. But I’m not really sure.”

“I see …,” Mark mumbled.

The disturbing screech of a police siren could be heard outside, then a screaming motor. From behind the window, Mark watched the patrol cars rush past.

“That’s the second time the police have come tearing past”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you: on my way over I ran into a girlfriend who said there’d been a holdup at the National Bank.”

“A holdup at the National Bank?” Mark sounded as though he could not believe it. “Are you sure?” “Oh, yes, quite sure.”

“A heist, a bank robbery,” he muttered, as if talking to himself. “Strange-sounding words … Our ears aren’t used to them, are they?”

“Yes, that’s what I felt when I heard the story, too.”

She asked him for a cigarette, and as he brought his hand nearer to light it for her, he could see she was trying hard not to smile.

“Maybe it’s a terrible thing to say,” she said, “but when I heard that word, it seemed, like, how can I put it — it sounded really smart, like something from the West.”

Mark burst out laughing.

“That’s true enough! Our ears are accustomed to something quite different!”

He could have added, Such as “sheep rustling,” “stealing a rug,” or even “damage to the socialist heritage” but all of a sudden the notion that her leaving him would be a catastrophe cut his train of thought off sharp, as with a kitchen knife.

For a while now, ever since he had gotten it into his head once and for all that everything having to do with her was facing forward, toward the future, and everything relating to himself was turned backward, toward the past, conversations of this sort frightened him.

He went back to the bed where she was still lying naked, and whispered into her ear:

“And if I gave up painting, would you still…”

He said “love me” so quietly that she only heard the last syllable, and even that was almost completely muffled.

She almost bit her lower lip. When she had come into this studio for the first time, three years ago, a shy girl though not a virgin, she didn’t hide the fact that she had been attracted above all by Mark’s fame as a painter. She realized in due course that he wasn’t as well known as she had imagined, but she had remained no less attached to the man.

Mark did his best to mask his newfound fear of her leaving him, since he was convinced that if she noticed it, she really would dump him on the spot. For the time being, he felt she was the only gangplank he had toward the future, and that if the plank were to break, he too would collapse in a heap.

“I asked you a question,” he said with his mouth close to her ear, as if he were concerned to have his message travel the shortest distance possible. Now he felt surprised at having dared broach a subject that terrified him above all else.

She kept her eyes lowered, and as Mark looked at her eyelids it struck him that, of all the parts of the human body, the tips of the eyelashes gave by far the most reliable reading of guilt.

“Yes, of course,” she answered. “And even … maybe” (Good Lord! she too was skirting around the fatal word), “maybe even more than …”

In any other situation her answer would have troubled him. What was this “maybe” that referred to his art? Maybe it would be better if his art ceased to exist? Maybe it would be better if it were just a mistake, a source of misunderstanding, an obstacle between them?

At a different time, the same thought might perhaps have occurred to him, but he had in his mind’s eye the still-sharp image of the disappointment he’d felt just a moment ago when she’d said, “Don’t you want to do any work today?” So he persuaded himself that her vague answer to his question didn’t warrant his doubting her right now.

He kept on stroking her between the legs, and she did so too, with an uncharacteristic lack of inhibition. And it was she who took the initiative, pulling him on top of her, so that Mark didn’t have time to remind her once again that it was Sunday and that the offices downstairs were closed. She launched immediately into a deep-throated groan to which he was quite unaccustomed.

STRANGE TO SAY, no one could remember what offense the girl’s family or clan had committed. The terrible offense that could only be redeemed by her sacrifice.

When her father had summoned her to the guest room to speak of it, she bowed her head as she waited for the sentence. It is hard, he warned her a second time, but for the second time, she replied, “Whatever it is, I shall obey, Father.” She had resolved to submit, whether it meant being shut up in a nunnery, marrying a ninety-year-old, or, worst of all, being walled up in the foundations of a new bridge.

She had made her decision…. Even so, when she heard the actual sentence, she went as white as a sheet. What did you say, Father? I am to marry a snake? The hope of having misheard evaporated on the spot. Yes, she was indeed committed to becoming the spouse of a snake. Not of a man so named because of his treachery, his looks, or for some other reason. She would be the wife of a real, an actual snake.

In mid-October the news of this monstrous union shook people more than the north wind. They were stunned. It’s one thing to commit something so outlandish, they said, but why make it public? Others, who knew that publication of the strange marriage was a formal part of the agreement, kept their mouths shut.

The girl’s house echoed day and night with knocks on the door. People had all sorts of reasons for dropping in: to commiserate, to turn the knife, or just to find out more about the case…. Some came with questions: So why did you accept? So why didn’t you ask me about it first? And others with advice: Break your promise! … No, don’t break it, because there is worse…. There are even more fearsome things….

By stages, fewer and fewer people remained in a state of shock. When all is said and done, the whole business should be treated more calmly, people said. Of course, hearing about it was enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck, but when you thought about it more carefully, it wasn’t such a dramatic affair after all. What was called a marriage with a snake could be seen as something rather different. You could take it as a commitment to keep a snake in the house. An insane commitment, of course, but did that make it so special in this crazy world of ours? Keeping a snake in one’s home was not especially unusual, in any case. The very saying, “I’ve nourished a snake in my bosom,” proved that the custom had once been quite widespread in Albania. Not to mention countries like faraway China or India, where people bring up snakes in their homes like we raise chickens. No, no, the business should not be taken in such a tragic vein. A commitment of this kind was just a kind of punishment, or a mark similar to those that Jews and convicts used to be obliged to wear; in other words, a tax or tribute that had to be paid to redeem some serious offense. An offense that might otherwise have required the sacrifice of a human life…