Elvira Dones - Sworn Virgin

‘I can add up,’ O’Connor interrupts. ‘I’ve lived in the US all my life. So, what do you suggest?’

‘I don’t want to come over to your place either.’

She moves out of the corridor to avoid the reflection of the mirror, which is making her nervous.

‘It looks like there’s nowhere in the world where we can meet and have a chat,’ he jokes.

‘If it’s no big deal for you, why don’t you come over to my place?’ Hana says, surprising herself and immediately regretting her words.

O’Connor says he doesn’t want to make things difficult for her. He’d like to see her but if every time it turns into a drama …

‘So, would you come round here tonight?’ She feels protected in her little apartment. ‘I’ve made enough food for an army. I don’t know why, I got the amounts wrong. Are you used to weird food?’

Whatever questions O’Connor decides to ask her, in her home she feels she can answer them.

Hana takes a shower and tries not to wet her hair. The day before, she went to the hairdresser and had her hair shaped around her small, well-formed ears. She puts on a push-up bra. She dresses in white, pants and a linen shirt. She looks good and she knows it.

Whatever happens that evening, as long as it doesn’t turn into a vale of tears, she’ll be ok, she thinks, as she prepares herself.

O’Connor is wearing a musky, powerful aftershave that lowers her defenses right away. He hands her a beautiful bunch of flowers and kisses her lightly on the cheeks. Hana has the impression that something is moving too fast, but he’s just friendly, thoughtful, and a little cautious. He takes a seat, smiling at her. There’s a long embarrassing pause. Then he confesses that he has read a lot about Albania in the past few weeks. He has read everything he could get his hands on. He even found the Kanun.

Hana doesn’t know what to do about the dinner that is ready. Patrick shrugs his shoulders.

‘I won’t ask any questions if you don’t want me to.’

Why is he sitting there? Why him?

‘Why are you here, Patrick?’ she asks suddenly, looking at the floor. ‘It’s all so unbalanced, the way I met you, my constant state of tension … ’ She stops as suddenly as she started and doesn’t know how to continue.

For a while now she’s been unable to balance her thoughts out, and that makes her angry. It’s weird but when she was Mark she was better with words. Mark weighed them out inside himself, observed and honed them, stroked them, at times erased them from his mind. As a man, silence was his ally. In silence there was hope; in conversations there often wasn’t. Sound played for the enemy side. Once feelings were expressed, they lost their beauty, lost their color, and became diaphanous. The idea of beauty seems beyond her grasp now. Mark, Hana thinks, is the one who’s kept his hold on beauty. In her haste to become the woman ‘Hana,’ she is losing something she can’t quite put her finger on. Patrick’s patience is also running out, she realizes.

‘So, Hana?’ he urges her on. ‘Explain yourself better: what do you mean by what you were saying?’

She takes courage and looks up. She asks him brusquely why he wants to get to know her better.

‘That sounds like an accusation,’ he observes.

‘Yes, I’m a bit defensive.’

‘You’re not very trusting.’

‘Sorry.’

Patrick changes tack.

‘I’m hungry, Hana. Did you forget you’d invited me to dinner? I didn’t ask you to. Maybe if you give me some dinner, I’ll feel better and then you can mistreat me as much as you like.’

She laughs. First point to him. She explains what she’s about to bring to the table and Patrick says he’d eat a piece of rock served on a salad leaf. He has had a bad day and skipped lunch. The tension eases slowly. Hana serves her dishes on cream-colored plates. The tablecloth is green linen and looks good with the crockery.

She asked the guy in the liquor store to advise her about wines. He suggested a Californian Cabernet. She knows nothing about wine.

After a toast they eat in silence. Her guest wolfs down the qofte and vegetables, while Hana sips her wine. It’s just so nice to have him there, sitting opposite her. She now feels strangely calm, and her movements become more harmonious and less spasmodic.

‘I hardly dare say it’s delicious because you’ll surely say I’m only being polite,’ Patrick teases. ‘Can I have some more?’

He knows what he’s doing, she thinks, serving him seconds. She feels her head spin. She closes her eyes. She’s trying her utmost to keep her self-control, but she’s not doing very well, so she may as well let go altogether. She drinks her wine in great gulps. She pushes her plate away and listens to O’Connor talk about his last two weeks, and the tragedy of his friend who was just diagnosed with cancer. She runs her hands through her hair, and goes on drinking. Patrick notices. He looks at the bottle and then at Hana’s glass. He has drunk very little.

‘I want you to stay,’ she begs him. ‘Just for tonight. For now,’ she corrects herself. ‘If you don’t have the guts to deal with your shyness, you make a fool of yourself by drinking. And I’ve drunk quite a lot.’

He’s about to say she’s not making a fool of herself, but stops.

‘Looking you up was a mistake, Patrick. I have no right to drag you into my mess, and now I’m panicking.’

He doesn’t say a word.

Hana gets up and sways towards the bureau. She notices he’s not looking at her, so as not to embarrass her. She lights a cigarette and takes a long drag. She turns around and offers her guest the pack. If she takes no notice of his disappointed expression, there may be some hope of recovering at least some of her dignity.

‘I shouldn’t have drunk anything,’ she murmurs, sitting back down. ‘I used to drink a lot. It was part of being a man, but you wouldn’t understand that.’

‘Yeah, right. I wouldn’t understand because I’m American? Because I’m a man? Explain yourself. I might understand if you tried a bit harder.’

‘It’s too much for me. It would be too much for you.’

‘Stop it. I’m fifty years old and I’ve been around a good while. You’re not dragging me anywhere, I already told you.’

‘Is it curiosity then? Is it that you feel you found a rare insect for your collection?’ Hana stops, but it’s too late.

She hears the sound of the train as it passes her house, metal screeching on metal, carriage after carriage. I’ve ruined everything, she thinks. Good thing too.

‘I’m sorry, Patrick. I really am.’

‘God, you really like saying sorry, don’t you?’

‘Are we having a fight?’

Hana feels shame riding up her throat. She bursts into tears and drops her head on the table. O’Connor doesn’t move from his seat. It’s like he isn’t even there.

When she manages to calm down, she can hardly get up. She goes into the bathroom and rinses her face, then buries her face in the towel and rubs until it hurts. She drags herself into the bedroom and picks up a big folder full of papers.

She goes back into the sitting room and gives the whole wad to O’Connor.

‘I owe you this at least,’ she says, without looking at him. ‘This is my story. When you’ve read it, you don’t need to give it back to me in person. You can mail it. That way I can make up for putting you in this embarrassing situation.’

In the weeks that follow Hana throws herself into her work at the bookstore with fierce determination. Lila gets the message that it’s best to give her space. Jonida is coming up to the end of her junior year at high school and has so many tests she has no time to come over.

Hana spends her evenings zapping aimlessly from one TV channel to another. She can’t read, and she doesn’t feel like her usual evening walks. In her overriding concern not to think about anything, one wish drills through her consciousness and hammers at her brain: that O’Connor mustn’t get in touch. If he vanishes off the face of this earth, she’ll be safe.