Ismaíl Kadaré - Chronicle in Stone

“They’re not love stories, they’re about politics.”

“So much the worse. One of these days you’ll have the carabinieri over here.”

“That’s enough now,” said Babazoti.

It was a short truce.

“You’re a big girl now,” Grandma started up again. “You don’t see your girlfriends neglecting their embroidery. One of these days you’ll take a husband.”

My younger aunt stuck her tongue out, as she always did at the mention of marriage.

The next day I saw Suzana again. She seemed pensive.

“What did the Englishman’s ring look like?” she asked.

“Very pretty. It sparkled in the sun.”

“Who do you think gave it to him?”

I shrugged.

“How should I know?”

Suzana stared at me so hard that it seemed she was trying to find another pair of eyes behind mine.

“Maybe his fiancée,” she said.

“Maybe.”

Suzana took me by the arm.

“Listen,” she whispered into my ear. “Of all the things you told me, what sticks in my mind the most is what happened to Aqif Kashahu’s daughter. Will you tell it to me again?”

I nodded.

“Only this time, try to remember everything.”

I thought for a moment.

“Take your time,” she said. “Try to remember.”

I frowned to make her think I was trying hard to recall the slightest details, but in fact completely unrelated pieces of events had pushed their way into my mind.

“Now tell the story,” she said.

She was all ears. Her eyes, her hair, her thin arms, everything about her was frozen as she listened.

When I finished, she took a deep breath.

“What strange things happen in this world,” she said.

“One of my friends has a little world made of papier mâché,” I told her. “You can spin it with your finger.”

She wasn’t listening any more. Her mind was elsewhere.

“Do you want to go to the cave?” she asked.

I didn’t really feel like it. I was pretty sick of cellars and damp places, but I didn’t want to spoil her fun.

It was cool in the cave. We sat down on two big rocks and didn’t say a word.

Suddenly she said, “Let’s pretend the planes are coming and dropping their bombs. Can you hear? There’s a whole lot of them. The siren is wailing. Bombs are falling right next to us. When do the lights go out?”

“Now.”

She reached out and put her arms around my neck. Her soft cheek pressed against mine.

“Like this?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Her arms were as cold as aluminium. There was a good smell of soap from her neck.

“Someone has put the light back on,” she said in a little while. “They’ll see us.”

I held my neck very stiff. Suzana quickly let go of me.

“Now they’re dragging me by the hair. Can you see? What are you going to do?”

“I’ll go down to hell,” I said, putting on a booming voice.

She burst out laughing.

We played that same little game a few more times that day and the next. I got to like sitting motionless while she wrapped her long arms around my neck. Her neck always had that nice smell of soap. A sensation I’d never had before made me feel alternately unbearably heavy and intoxicated as if I was flying.

I was expecting her to ask me again if I knew any rude words. But she said nothing and kept her eyes half-shut. Apparently that was how she could best meditate on what had happened to Aqif Kashahu’s daughter.

I was tempted to say, don’t think any more about that girl, she’s probably dead, but I was afraid of scaring Suzana. One of the gypsies who lived in the shed told me that all girls have the black triangle I’d seen on Margarita. For me, that was an indisputable sign that they would end up in dishonour.

One day (here they had no Thursdays or Tuesdays like in our neighbourhood, just mornings, afternoons and nights) we were sitting and hugging, counting the bombs that were falling more and more furiously, when a shadow appeared at the entrance to the cave. I saw it first, but there was nothing I could do.

“Suzana!” her mother called.

Suzana jerked her arms off my neck and sat there petrified. The woman whose face we couldn’t see in the darkness with the sunlight behind her came closer.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding all day,” she said quietly but sternly. (Aqif Kashahu, I remembered very well, hadn’t said a word.) Now she would drag her by the hair. “Get up,” she almost shouted, grabbing Suzana by the arm. Suzana’s delicate arm looked as if it would break in that vice-like grip.

She pushed her roughly. Suzana’s body seemed all out of joint. Her torso was thrust forward before her head could catch up, and her legs worked desperately to balance her again.

“So you’ve started already,” the woman growled through clenched teeth. Then, just before leaving the cave, she turned to me.

“And you, you little wretch, you can’t even blow your own nose yet…”

She called me other equally spiky-sounding names of the same general kind, with endings so sharp they sounded to me like they were laden with thorns.

They left. What would happen now? Would I have to go down into the wells?

Outside it was calm and bright. A bird flew in the sky. The anger and the thorny words stayed behind in the gloom of the cave.

They’re dragging me by the hair! What are you going to do?… I walked slowly. My head felt numb. I couldn’t get that wet rope near the edge of our cistern out of my mind. The black ashes in the bottom of the bucket still smelled of kerosene. “That’s what comes from courting,” Grandmother had said. “Oh Selfixhe, this was all we needed in times like these. Better death than love like this, may God protect us.”

… dragging me by the hair, what are you…?

I climbed up on the roof. From there I could see Suzana’s house. The white sheets were hanging in the yard. The juk …

I lay down on the warm slates and looked up at the sky. A little cloud was drifting north. It kept changing its shape.

“We can endure a lot, Selfixhe, but may God stop the spread of affairs of this kind. Better the plague.”

Grandmother had gingerly picked up the bucket and emptied it. She stared for a long time at the wet black ashes, then shook her head. I was about to ask why she was shaking her head like that, but that handful of black ash robbed me of any inclination to speak.

The little cloud in the sky lurched ahead as if it was tipsy. It had turned long and skinny now. Life in the sky must be pretty boring in the summer. Not much happened then. The little cloud crossing the sky the way a man crosses an empty square in the noonday heat melted away before reaching the north. I had noticed that clouds died very fast. Then their remains drifted in the sky for a long time. It was easy to tell dead clouds from the living.

I was surprised to see Suzana the next day. She walked by our gate, accompanied by her father like a proper young lady. She didn’t even turn to look at me. I thought she seemed completely alien. That evening, they passed by again. This time, when she saw me at the gate, she raised her head high and squeezed close against her father. Her father looked at me askance. He was very handsome.

In the days that followed Suzana came out accompanied by her mother. Holding onto her arm like a proper young lady again. Her mother looked at me as you’d look at a mad dog. Who knows how many of those barbed-wire words were running through her mind, the old witch!

I spent the whole summer and the beginning of autumn at Grandfather’s. It was the longest summer of my life. I was sleepy all the time. The days went by without incident and often without their names. When you’d unpacked the hours from the day and then the night and piled them all up, you could toss out the boxes they came in, which is all that “Wednesday” or “Sunday” or “Friday” really are.