Elvira Dones - Sworn Virgin

‘Is that what people said?’

‘Well, you didn’t tell us what was going on. You didn’t send a card or anything, an invitation to come see you. So we left you in peace. That’s why we didn’t get in touch.’

Hana comes back and sits down with her legs crossed. She tries to see herself through Blerta’s eyes. I must look like a tiny version of Gjergj Doda, she thinks. But that’s not what Blerta sees. She has never seen Hana’s uncle, except in the photo on the wall.

‘It can’t have been easy,’ her friend muses, her voice thick with drink, ‘to live this way.’

Hana licks her finger and uses it to gather up the breadcrumbs on the table and stick them in her mouth. She looks up.

‘It has been hard,’ she answers, smiling. ‘No, I correct myself, it’s been hell.’

She had never thought about it in these terms before. She stiffens, now, in sudden anticipation of the inevitable question: ‘Why did you do it?’ Sooner or later that question always comes up and she doesn’t want to hear it. Blerta surprises her by not saying anything. She’s so quiet that Hana is almost angry with her. Her friend tells her she doesn’t want any explanations about her choices because there wouldn’t be any point. What’s done is done.

Blerta is still the best. Hana laughs, conscious of her yellow teeth, dry skin and matted hair. Tears start to fall down her face and she does nothing to stop them. Blerta is crying too. Maybe it’s the raki she can’t take, or she’s missing her American friend. Hana doesn’t look at her. She listens to her sobs and feels almost relieved. She dries her cheeks and waits for Blerta’s sadness to lose its edge.

Her friend sniffs loudly. In a few days she’ll leave Rrnajë just as she came, and they may never see each other again. The idea of never seeing Blerta again gives Hana a spike of pain.

‘Tell me about those years, Hana, if you feel like it? Tell me what it has been like, what it is like now.’

‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘Ten years of your life and there’s nothing to tell?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I don’t give a damn.’

‘About what?’

‘About you not believing me.’

‘Come on, I beg you.’

Hana laughs, her tears gushing again while she desperately tries to shame her heart into indifference.

‘You can’t talk about your own death. Find me a dead body that has succeeded and I’ll take my hat off to it.’

Blerta thinks about this for a while and then tries to get her friend laughing again. ‘You’re the same old drama queen, I see.’

‘I wish! I’m just pathetic, that’s all.’

They both laugh.

They stretch out on the shilte , each absorbed in their own thoughts.

There’s nothing to tell. Blerta will go off, and Hana will go back to being Mark again. There are some advantages to being a man. You do very little. The women do all the real work. Especially when there’s snow, men lie around doing sweet nothing. They give orders, they drink, they clean their rifles. Or they use them. There have been a lot of shooting deaths since freedom came to Albania.

The law in the north dictates that men have to take care of the family land, money, rifles, and honor. Now people want their land back, but when the communists expropriated it they did away with all the land deeds. The result is that nobody knows who legitimately owns what. In order to make things clearer, men in these parts often use their rifles. Hundreds of deaths and hundreds of women dressed in mourning. So many children left fatherless.

‘So what are your plans?’ Blerta asks, stretching out her legs. ‘Are you planning to go on being a man?’

I forgot to smoke, Hana thinks to herself. That’s incredible. The tobacco isn’t even on the table.

She gets up, finds the tin box with the two-headed eagle on it, sits down, and takes out the tobacco.

‘I don’t know,’ she answers, without looking up. ‘It’s not like one day you become a man, then another you decide to become a tiger or a giraffe.’

‘I know the rules. I studied the Kanun too — I know you’re stuck. That’s why I’m asking you.’

‘What’s done is done,’ Hana says. She smiles as she rolls her cigarette. ‘What’s done can’t be undone.’

‘You should get away from here.’

‘Don’t start that. You sound like my cousin Lila. Do you remember her? She’s living in the US now.’

‘Really?’ Blerta exclaims, sadness creeping into her expression. As soon as anyone mentions America she falls into a deep well of unhappiness: her American boyfriend, the unfulfilled dream of a baby.

Hana tells Blerta about Lila and the atmosphere eases again. Blerta laughs and so does Hana. In an alcohol-induced state of grace, they tell each other jokes and trade gossip about their old college acquaintances. Blerta talks about where so-and-so ended up, who married whom, which foreign city — Berlin, Perth, Delhi, Quito, Amsterdam, Alaska — they had emigrated to. Albanians left their country to conquer the world without warships, with no colonial language to force onto distant populations, no credit cards, no return fare.

‘It’s just the two of us,’ Blerta concludes. ‘And sooner or later we’ll leave too. Maybe.’

They fall asleep on the floor.

They don’t see each other for another four days. This time Hana wrings the neck of one of her hens for dinner in Blerta’s honor, and grills it out in the open, in her courtyard. She boils some potatoes too.

Her friend arrives looking exhausted but happy. She has brought a bottle of Merlot from Scutari. Hana tells her there are no good knives in her kulla so she’s not sure how to deal with the chicken. Blerta pulls at it with her hands, the meat coming off the bone easily. It is perfectly cooked.

‘Is it because of the American that today you’re in a good mood?’ Hana asks her.

‘He called last night. He’s coming to Tirana. Can you believe it? Next week. How did you guess?’

Hana laughs. She takes the potatoes out of the clean cloth she wrapped them in to keep warm. They put all the food on the table and Blerta uncorks the bottle of Merlot.

‘I can’t believe he’s really coming. I hardly dare believe anything.’

‘Nobody comes to this shit-hole of a country for some stupid love affair. This time he must have thought about things a little more deeply.’

‘Don’t say anything. Once bitten, twice shy!’

They sit with their glasses filled.

‘So here’s to your health … to the man of the house!’ Blerta toasts.

Hana pokes her nose into the glass and sniffs the scent of the wine. She looks at her friend.

‘What’s sex like?’ she asks, point blank.

Blerta, who has her glass held up at eye level, lowers it so that she can look at Hana.

‘You’ve lived with a man. Tell me, what’s it like?’

Blerta tries to focus on the question, but she can’t find a good answer and tells Hana the question is too big.

‘Just tell me what it’s like,’ Hana insists. ‘I mean, on a range from nothing special to the traditional disappointment of Albanian women, and then to the newfound sexual freedom in the cities, how important is sex in everyday life? For someone like you, Blerta, for example. How important is it?’

Blerta takes a sip of her wine.

‘Sex is great. In my experience it’s great,’ she says, perfectly naturally.

‘So it’s worth trying, huh?’

‘Yes, Hana, it’s worth trying.’

‘Great!’ Hana sighs.

On the pinboard hanging in the kitchen, muddled in with shopping lists and to-do lists, there is a small piece of paper with a reminder written on it: ‘Call Patrick O’Connor!’ It has been there for months, the color fading over time.