Elvira Dones - Sworn Virgin

The hurricane lamp casts Uncle Gjergj’s shadow onto the stone wall of the kulla .

‘Welcome home, dear daughter,’ Aunt Katrina says. She is tall and wizened with age, her hair hidden behind a white headscarf. She looks like Lawrence of Arabia, without the desert, Hana thinks. She saw the film back in Tirana. Aunt Katrina looks like a female version of Peter O’Toole.

‘Are you hungry, my love?’ Katrina asks.

‘No, thank you.’

‘We’ll be eating soon anyway.’

‘That’s fine. Can I give you a hand?’

‘No, sweetie. Your uncle needs to talk to you. I’ll get dinner ready.’

Katrina disappears into the darkness of the kulla . Uncle Gjergj is lying down, which is not like him. If it weren’t dark she would see his pallid complexion. But she doesn’t see it. He is strong and handsome. The wrinkles on his face are a carefully drawn map.

‘Did you bump into anyone in the village on your way here?’

Hana shakes her head.

She had seen the sea before coming to the village. Blerta, her college roommate, had come north with her. She’s from a little village by the sea, near Scutari. Hana slept at her house the night before catching the bus that would take her home. The sea had been rough. Giant waves had vented their multi-hued rage.

Hana slept really well at Blerta’s house. Wild horses wandered along the deserted beach; the sheets smelled of sea salt.

‘Stay one more day,’ Blerta had pleaded. ‘You love being by the sea.’

She couldn’t. Something serious had happened at home. Her uncle had never called her in Tirana before. He wouldn’t have called without good reason.

Hana left clutching a bag of sand.

‘I’ll wait for you,’ Blerta told her. ‘We’ll go back to Tirana together in a week. Remember, we’ve got a seminar on Renaissance literature.’

‘Sure, Blerta. Tungjatë .’

‘So you’re already talking like the mountain people?’ Blerta teased.

Hana liked using the tungjatjeta goodbye. Hand on heart, solemn gaze, the fleeting touch of foreheads to seal the sacred nature of the farewell. May your life grow longer!

She glances at her almost-decent city clothes. In the shadow of the kulla they look all right.

‘I’m sick,’ Uncle Gjergj says. ‘There’s this thing in my throat. They say it’s big. Sometimes it chokes me and I can’t speak.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘Two months.’

‘The other day I dreamed you had a mountain on your back and you were stooped over with the weight. The mountain was made of dry earth and when you moved it crumbled around you so you were walking in the middle of a cloud of yellow dust.’

Gjergj laughs, the hurricane lamp making his mouth look bigger.

‘Sit down,’ he says.

Hana obeys. Between her and her uncle there is an ancient wooden table. He struggles to sit up in bed. Now Hana can see his terrifyingly swollen neck and the effort he makes to move his jaws normally while he’s talking. He wants to know how college is going and she tells him that in a few days she has an important seminar on Albanian Renaissance literature. Gjergj says he doesn’t know what a seminar is and she explains.

‘And what is the Renaissance?’

‘It’s the cultural rebirth of a nation after a long period of darkness. Here in Albania the Renaissance was later than in the rest of Europe, not until the end of the Ottoman occupation.’

‘It sounds like a complicated story, dear daughter.’

Hana doesn’t say anything. Gjergj is an intelligent man but he often pretends he’s not. She had no problem convincing him to let her go away to college. There are no books in the kulla , except a well-hidden Bible and a history of Skanderbeg, the national hero. That’s the sum total. But she has always thought he knows much more than he lets on.

‘Are you happy down in the capital?’

‘Yes, very.’

‘Even with all that communist garbage they thrust down your throats?’

The word ‘thrust’ is not a common word in these parts. Not for a shepherd. Not for a man who can only write his own name. Hana is pleased with this confirmation of her suspicions.

‘I like it anyway, even with the garbage. More than up here.’

‘Well … ’ Pause. ‘I’m sorry I called you.’

‘What do the doctors say exactly?’

‘The bread’s ready,’ Aunt Katrina announces softly.

Neither Hana nor Gjergj heard her come in. Hana doesn’t move. The old lady sits down next to her. Katrina has a bad heart and is only alive by a miracle. She is the love of Gjergj’s life. The way they treat each other is not typical around here. Their dialect gives them away as mountain folk, not their gestures.

‘I’ve made the beans. If you don’t eat now they’ll get cold, my love.’

Hana takes her hand.

‘Can you tell me what’s really going on, Uncle Gjergj?’

‘They say I don’t have long to live. Even if I have surgery, they don’t think they can save me. I had to tell you in person.’

‘It can’t be true.’

‘They say I’ve been sick for a while, I just didn’t know it. Now it’s too late.’

‘You can come with me to Tirana. The doctors down there will say something different. They’re the best in the country.’

Her uncle shakes his head. Hana feels a quiver in her stomach but she can’t cry. She has never cried in front of him; it would disappoint him. The mountain peals with thunder. The snow is tired of falling. The roof of the hut is weighed down by two centuries of life.

‘Everything’s getting cold,’ Katrina complains.

‘You’re coming to Tirana, Uncle Gjergj.’

Dinner is delicious. The potatoes melt in her mouth, the beans taste smoky and the bread is heavy and irregular. In the city the bread is white; nothing like this. Nobody says a word. Katrina envelops Hana in her gaze and they exchange glances only women can share. Life had deprived Katrina of children but given her a man who loved and treated her well. She suffocates Hana with her attentions: offers her a piece of roast onion, fills her bowl with beans again.

‘You’re still not full,’ she says at the end of the meal.

‘Oh yes I am. I’ve eaten a lot.’

‘You’ve turned into a city girl, Hana,’ Katrina says, smiling at her. ‘You use different sounds, you speak like a schoolteacher. And your hair? What have you done to your hair? It’s so beautiful.’

Gjergj looks at his wife surreptitiously.

‘Tell me about the language of the English, dear daughter,’ he commands.

‘What can I say? It’s a language that talks about beautiful places.’

Uncle Gjergj lights his pipe. He looks at the black patch on the wall to his left. He suddenly seems nervous.

‘You think they’re beautiful just because they’re far away,’ he says dryly. Then he shuts up.

In the days that follow, Hana’s books are spread all over her room. There’s a bed and an old wardrobe that hardly opens. Her clothes smell of wood and mold. No soap can wash away the smell.

One morning, Gjergj gets up and leaves the kulla . Neither Hana nor Katrina dares to stop him. He goes and smokes outside, in the snow. Sitting on a rough slab of wood in the middle of the courtyard, seen from behind, he looks like a sculpture. Then a cough assaults him and he defends himself as well as he can. His shoulders shudder until fatigue forces him to come back inside. He is deathly pale. Hana stares at him, her eyes wide.

Every six hours Katrina gives Gjergj the pills Hana doesn’t even want to see. Her books are still open in her room. And she thinks that with this pain inside she’s not going to go far. If you don’t look pain straight in the face, it will take you over. It will inhabit you, a grubby black mass, a messy bundle. If you deal with it full on, on the other hand, there’s a chance that it will leave you alone. She tries to take it on.