Ismaíl Kadaré - Chronicle in Stone

“Who did they take away?” Grandmother asked as she opened the street-side shutters.

“We don’t know yet,” someone whispered. “But I think it was one of Mezini’s sons.”

The next day we found out that there had been arrests all over the city. A big notice was posted in the town square offering a reward of forty thousand leks for information leading to the identification of the arsonist.

On the third night the police arrested a stranger. They had followed him for a while before making the arrest. The stranger walked as if dazed, clutching a bottle of kerosene (you could smell it from far off) and carrying a rope coiled over his shoulder. It was midnight. There was no doubt he was the arsonist. A box of matches and a little pouch of ashes were found in his pockets.

The next day people said that the boy who had kissed Aqif Kashahu’s daughter had been caught. Despite the calamities that had befallen it all last winter (“May we never live to see another winter like that,” the old women said), the city had not forgotten the fair-haired boy. Despite themselves, Grandma and Aunt Xhemo were finally obliged to allude to the event during their conversation, though they only touched on it briefly. Every one else was clucking and chortling with indignation.

“Did you hear what the boy who kissed Aqif Kashahu’s daughter told the magistrate?”

“What? He burned down the town hall?”

“No, he did not. The kerosene and ashes he was carrying when he was arrested were for something completely different.”

“Really?”

“He was going down into wells at night looking for the girl.”

“Down into wells at night? What people will do for love!”

“According to the boy, her own family killed her.”

“Today around noon the magistrate went to the Kashahus’ and asked to talk to the girl. She wasn’t in. The boy maintains she’s been murdered.”

“Now that you mention it, I confess I’ve not seen her either, since the kiss .”

“Like I said. You’re not the only one. Nobody’s set eyes on her.”

“You’re right! Go on!”

“Now, where was I? Oh yes. Aqif Kashahu said that he’d sent his daughter off to visit some distant cousins.”

“Oh, distant cousins…”

“You don’t look well,” Grandmother said to me. “Go spend a few days at Babazoti’s.”

I had been waiting for that.

now clear that a group of terrorists is currently operating in the city. When the police arrested the young man with the kerosene and the rope in the middle of the night, everyone thought that the Nero of our city had been caught at last. But it turned out he was not Nero but Orpheus, seeking his Eurydice in the wells of our courtyards. Trial. Executive measures. Property. All suits relating to property are suspended because of the burning of the land registry. Today Jur Qosja published an announcement in the newspaper denying the rumour that he had been to Salonica to see doctors about his lack of facial hair. “I went to buy raisins, as I do every year,” he told the newspaper. Cinema. Tomorrow: Grand Hotel , starring the famous actress Greta Garbo. I hereby prohibit all traffic between nine at night and four in the morning, except for midwives. City Commandant Bruno Arcivocale. Price of bread.

As in other years, I found that the landscape around Grandfather’s house had changed. At first glance things looked the same, but closer inspection revealed that certain paths were gone and others were slowly dying, while still others, new and frail but determined, were springing up amid the dust and grass.

As always, Babazoti was lying on his chaise longue, reading. Grandma was hanging the laundry out to dry. White sheets billowed in the fresh breeze. Bushes had sprouted everywhere. Taking advantage of the neglect caused by the spring bombing, they had launched a furious attack on the house.

The flapping and flailing of the sheets on the clothesline as they resisted the wind’s onslaught made a most peaceful sight. It has to be said that the wind was far from vicious that day, and was only attacking the sheets in a playful way.

The wind blew steadily from the same direction. Maybe it would bring Suzana.

Grandma finished hanging out the sheets.

“So, how are your mother and father? And Selfixhe?” she asked, clipping on the last peg.

“Everyone’s fine.”

Alongside the flapping of sheets I could make out the sound of something else.

“You look a little distracted,” Grandma said. “No wonder too, with all those bombs and planes.”

The alert came from a young and pretty siren… There she was, flying through the air. Her white wings sparkled in the sunlight. She appeared for a moment in the sky between the clouds, then was gone again.

I went outside the yard. And there she was, with her head leaning slightly to one side, dressed in a light grey skirt the colour of aluminium.

“Suzana!”

She turned round.

“Oh, you’re back.”

“Yes.”

She had grown.

“Since when?”

“Today.”

Her legs were even longer and shapelier.

“Where did you go during the bombing?” I asked her.

“There, in that cave over there.”

“We went to the citadel. I even went looking for you once.”

“Really? I thought you wouldn’t even remember me.”

“No, I haven’t forgotten you.”

She turned her head and adjusted a hairpin.

“Big deal! You didn’t forget me!” she said sharply and then ran off.

I saw the aluminium-grey dress flash once among the trees along the road to her house. Then when she got near the cliff edge, she branched off. By the badshade tree she slackened her pace, before turning round and coming back to me.

“Well, will you tell me things?” she asked, almost sternly.

“Sure, I’ll tell you things.”

Her eyes shone with pleasure.

“Many things?”

“A lot, yes.”

“Well, go ahead. Come on, start,” she said.

We sat down on the grass by the side of the road and I started telling her things. It wasn’t easy. I had so much to say that it got all jumbled up in my head. She was listening very attentively, her eyes open wide, frowning as though in pain every time I got in a muddle or put things in the wrong order or didn’t give them the importance she thought they deserved. Sometimes I got carried away by my story and boldly altered the facts. When I told her about the Englishman’s arm, for example, I said that Aqif Kashahu kept biting it in rage and that the crowd cheered every time he did. She listened carefully to everything, but when I started telling her how a man called Macbeth had invited someone to dinner whose name I couldn’t remember any more and how he had cut his guest’s head off, but then it turned out he didn’t know the rules about sprinkling salt on a severed head, she put her hand over my mouth and pleaded: “Tell me about something less gruesome, OK?”

So I told her about Lady Majnur screaming in the streets the day the town hall burned down, and about Vasiliqia, and about how when Grandmother heard that Vasiliqia had come she said she wished she had died the winter before. I was telling her about Aunt Xhemo’s last visit and the defeat of the Greeks when I heard my elder aunt calling me for lunch.

They were all at table already. The signs of a quarrel were obvious. My younger aunt was pouting.

“I don’t want to see that good for nothing around here any more, you hear?” Grandma said, throwing some food on a plate.

“He’s a friend, he lends me books,” my younger aunt answered stubbornly.

“Books! You should be ashamed. Love stories to corrupt your mind.”