Elvira Dones - Sworn Virgin

So we go as we came,

goodbye, my brother sea.

There is no going back. She’s been saying it for a year. If she leaves, there is no going back. At times, it sounds like a threat. At others, like a joke.

‘Show them who you are, Mark Doda,’ she had said out loud, on her own in the kulla that ‌was slowly going to ruin. 5‘Show them you have the balls.’ The metaphor had made her laugh. But since then she had repeated it over and over. Show them who you are.

She is trying with all her strength. All she has to do now is work out how to go on.

One step at a time. First talk to Jonida, and see how it goes. Then talk to Lila, and see how it goes. She listens to the night; it’s past three. There’s no cock crowing. There are no mountains. Just night.

Back at Rrnajë, the Rrokajs’ mad calf had started imitating the cock’s crow every morning, at three on the dot, driving everyone crazy. Its translucent hide was dazzlingly white and it had two red patches on its face and one on its belly; it was the kind of animal that justified the expression ‘good looking and stupid.’ Soon after it was born, it had tried to suck milk from a goat. The village children laughed their hearts out. The goat kicked the calf away.

‘What now?’ Hana asks the night. She can see dawn coming reticently, hesitant on the horizon. She stubs out her second cigarette, decides she’s had enough of these foolish thoughts and that now she can go to bed. She hears the balcony door open suddenly.

‘You’re not tired?’ Shtjefën asks her. ‘I’m off to work soon. So if you go to bed now, I’ll be disturbing you for the next half hour before I leave.’

‘No problem,’ Hana whispers. ‘I can sleep through anything.’

Shtjefën makes room on the balcony for Hana to go back in. He goes towards the bathroom. Hana closes the kitchen door, takes her pants and shirt off quickly and puts her light flannel pajamas on. She doesn’t have time to fold her clothes; she thinks Shtjefën might come out of the bathroom before she’s done. But he takes his time. She hears the shower running. She pulls the comforter up around her shoulders. Then she decides that tomorrow she’ll talk straight to Lila about the division of labor in the house, and falls asleep.

The next day it’s raining gently. This doesn’t seem to pacify the hysterical traffic and the regular wail of fire sirens. The water lands on the sidewalk and trickles away in dirty brown rivulets. The flirtation between the trees and the fall goes on. The green leaves are compromised by touches of seasonal sunset red. Only the heat never lets up. It’s relentless, obstinate, hard to bear.

Near the Dibras’ apartment there’s a supermarket, and there’s a post office on the other side of the road. Downtown is a few minutes away by car.

‘This location is great,’ Lila tells Hana. ‘When you need to go shopping or mail a letter, you can walk. For everything else in this country, you spend your life in the car.’

Lila blends in perfectly with all this, Hana thinks. She is clean and carefully groomed, and she’s used eyeliner.

There are pancakes for breakfast. Lila announces that they’re going to the mall to do some shopping, then starts firing questions at her incoherently. Hana listens.

She listens until Lila bursts out, ‘What’s got into you? Cat got your tongue?’

She shrugs. Her cousin points at the plate of pancakes, which has a transparent plastic lid on it.

‘Try some. They’re good,’ Lila says. ‘They’re like our petulla .’

Hana tries them with maple syrup and melted cheese. They each drink two big cups of coffee.

‘It’s so nice to have you here,’ Lila says with feeling. ‘I have girlfriends here but there are some things about us I can’t share with them. Now you’re here I feel less alone.’

‘But you have your family,’ Hana objects. ‘How can you feel alone?’

Lila empties her coffee cup.

‘Your daughter is your daughter,’ she answers. ‘I’m the one should be listening to her problems, not the other way round … but maybe from your point of view that’s hard to understand.’

On the wall there are photos: Jonida when she was little, Shtjefën and Lila on their wedding day with the whole clan proudly dressed for the occasion, a recent picture of Jonida during a volleyball game, Lila with a group of women. Hana wants to know where they were taken. Her cousin tells her about her nursing course and her graduation.

‘That’s as far as I got,’ she says with a sigh. ‘And I don’t think I’ll be able to go any further.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’d have to go back to school for years and I have a home to run and a daughter to take care of. I can’t afford to pay for another course. It’s too late now.’

Hana starts clearing the table and Lila lets her do it. They don’t say another word until they leave the house and get into the car, a rusty old Toyota Corolla.

‘I’m taking you to a great place now,’ Lila announces.

They get onto a road that’s called the 355 South, three lanes in both directions, more cars than she can imagine. Hana is overwhelmed with painful nostalgia for her old truck, which she sold to Farì, a mechanic she knew in Scutari. An old contraption from the days when Chinese cars were all there was, it wasn’t even worth the 500 euros she got for it. She was amazed she had made any money at all.

‘Tomorrow we’ll go and register for your driver’s license. You have to go through the whole works, eye screening, a knowledge test, and then your learner’s permit. I’ll take you out in Shtjefën’s car, which is in good shape, unlike this old clunker. Remind me later on, I’ll make a call.’

‘There’s no hurry.’

‘Yes there is. Next week I’m going back to work and I won’t be able to drive you.’

‘There’s no hurry.’

‘Stop saying there’s no hurry, will you?’

The mall is gigantic and sleek.

‘You can even go to the movies here,’ Lila explains. ‘You can come in the morning, buy anything in the world, eat, catch a movie, and go home after a good day.’

‘Is there a Barnes and Noble bookstore?’ Hana asks, before they go inside.

‘No, they don’t have one here.’

‘So it’s not true you can buy anything here.’

Lila pushes her through the door.

‘And how do you know about Barnes and Noble?’

Hana doesn’t answer. She repositions her man’s sports jacket over her shoulders. She likes wearing it without putting her arms in the sleeves. She looks broader in the chest that way, especially when her hands are in her pockets. She looks at the tips of her shoes. She’s a 5½, and it was hard back in Albania to find men’s shoes in her size. She always had to buy her underwear in the kids’ department.

‘We haven’t come here just to stand around all day, eh!’ Lila says, grabbing Hana by the arm. ‘Come on, I need some caffeine.’

Hana turns around and holds her gaze.

‘What the hell’s got into you ?’ she asks. ‘Of all the cousins in your family you could invite over here, you had to choose the weird one?’

‘Is this something we have to solve here at the mall?’ Lila quips.

‘Why did you do this whole thing?’

‘We’ve been talking about it for a year on the phone.’

‘Answer me, now.’

Lila’s profile is suspended between weariness and exaltation.

She doesn’t want to talk, Hana realizes. All Lila wants to do is drag her into the depths of the mall and take her around the wonderland she thinks will help her to help Hana. Indeed, Lila doesn’t open her mouth. She pulls her towards a café with little tables, where they take a seat. Lila goes and orders two espressos and comes back with a tray.