FIFTEEN
A notice was posted on what remained of a wall of the ruined house. We came to play in those ruins every day. Wallowing in their own misfortune, they were nonetheless kind to us. We took whatever we wanted from them, demolished small pieces of wall, shifted stones about, without much changing the look of the ruins. After enduring the flames, which had turned it into a ruin in a matter of hours, the house was now completely indifferent, and tolerated any fresh attack. Some iron bars protruding from the remnants of the walls looked like the fingers of a frozen hand. The notice had been hung right on those bars. Two old men had stopped to read it. It was typewritten, and in two languages, Albanian and Italian:
Wanted: the dangerous Communist Enver Hoxha. Aged about 30. Tall. Wears sunglasses. Reward for any information leading to his capture: 15,000 leks; for his capture: 30,000 leks. Garrison commander Bruno Arcivocale.
Ilir tugged on the sleeve of my jacket.
“That was his house,” he whispered to me.
“Enver Hoxha’s?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard Papa telling Isa one day.”
“So where is he now, this Enver Hoxha?”
“Far away. Somewhere near Tirana.”
I whistled in amazement.
“He went all the way to Tirana?”
“Sure.”
“Is Tirana very far?” I asked.
“Yes, very. Maybe we’ll go there too when we grow up.”
Someone else stopped to read the notice. We left.
Xhexho and Kako Pino were at our house drinking coffee with Grandmother. Xhexho carefully turned her cup upside down.
“It seems that a new kind of war has broken out,” she said. “I forget exactly what they call it, war with classes or class war, or something like that. Well, Selfixhe, it’s a war all right, but not like the others. In this war brothers kill each other. The son slays the father. At home, at the dinner table, wherever. The son looks his father in the eye, then he tells him he doesn’t recognise him as his father any more and bang, he shoots him, right between the eyes.”
“The end of the world,” said Kako Pino.
“Apparently,” Xhexho went on, “someone called Gole Balloma from the Gjobek neighbourhood is wandering the streets screaming that he’s going to skin Mak Karllashi alive, cure and dry his hide in his own tannery, make shoes out of it and dance around in them.”
“I’ve never heard anything so monstrous,” my mother burst out in indignation.
“There you are, Selfixhe,” said Xhexho. “We had thought all our troubles were over, but now it looks as if the worst is yet to come. Do you remember Enver, the Hoxha boy?”
“The one who went to study in the land of the Franks? Of course I remember him?”
“And so do I,” Kako Pino chimed in.
“Well, they say he’s the one leading the war now. He’s also the one who invented this new war I was telling you about.”
“That’s hard to believe,” said Grandmother. “He was such a well-behaved lad.”
“Yes, Selfixhe, very well behaved. But they say he wears dark glasses now so he won’t be recognised and that he’s the one running the war.”
“War, always war,” Kako Pino sighed.
“What can you do?” said Grandmother. “It looks to me as if this world can’t manage without war. As old as I am, I’ve never seen a day of real peace.”
My mother sighed.
“I heard that Karllashi’s daughter is back from Italy,” Xhexho said, breaking the silence. “God, what a scandal! She wears her skirt above the knee and has dresses of such thin fabric you would think she was in a snakeskin. You can see everything. She spends all day preening, paints her lips red, bleaches her hair, smokes, and speaks Italian. ‘Oh, Mother, what a filthy country,’ she complains. ‘Father, how could you bring me back to this hole.’ Oh this, oh that, all day long. That’s what the world’s coming to, Selfixhe.”
“What can you expect?” Grandmother asked once again. “That’s what happens to girls when they leave home.”
“Yes, exactly,” Kako Pino agreed. “Everything’s upside down.”
The next day, as if he had been listening to Xhexho, Ilir said to me, “Let’s go and have a look at Karllashi’s daughter, the one who’s just back from Italy.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Very. Her hair is gold like the sun. She sits at the window daydreaming, and her hair blows in the wind.”
We ran out, crossed Fools’ Alley, and stopped in front of the Karllashis’ house. And there she was, elbows resting on the windowsill, and it really did look as if she had sun in her hair. No other woman in the city ever had hair like that, except for one of the prostitutes, the one Ramiz Kurti had killed the year before, after which the brothel was closed for six months.
We stood in front of the Karllashis’ house for a long time. Two katenxhikas went by. One was all hunched up. Then Gjergj Pula passed by. He was so pale he looked as though he had come straight out of hospital. We stared at each other. Then Maksut went by with a severed head under his arm. Karllashi’s daughter left the window. We waited for her to reappear, but she didn’t. Now we didn’t know where to go. The street was deserted. Bido Sherifi’s wife appeared at her window, shook flour from her hands, and disappeared. Nazo’s door closed without a sound after Maksut went inside.
Suddenly shots rang out. A short burst. Then another burst. Then separate shots. Some people came running from Market Street, Harilla Lluka among them.
“Run!” he shouted. “Take cover! Someone’s been killed.”
Ilir’s mother came to the doorstep.
“Ilir, get inside!” she yelled.
I heard them calling me too. Doors were noisily slammed shut. More shots rang out.
The news spread like wildfire: Bruno Arcivocale, the garrison commander, had been assassinated.
Late that night the silence was broken by a knock at a door.
“It’s at Mane Voco’s,” said Grandmother, going to open the window to look out.
Outside we heard heavy footsteps, then some words in Italian and shouts of “My son, my son!”
Then silence again. Someone had been arrested.
Grandmother closed the window.
“They just took Isa away,” she said.
Arcivocale’s funeral was magnificent. There were speeches in the centre of town. Then the long procession marched to the cemetery while a military band played. Shiny musical instruments wailed mournfully through their lily-shaped mouths. Fascist officers, dressed in black from head to toe, walked slowly alongside, looking impressive and serious. Followed by the priests. Then came the nuns. The casket containing Arcivocale swung gently from side to side. Old ladies, women and children rushed to a thousand windows. The city watched the departure of its late commander. On the walls tatters of notices and ordinances torn by the wind would bear fragments of his name for some time: RCIV, ARC, OC, L. Then the rain would finally wipe them out and new notices and ordinances with the name of the new commander would go up.
It rained steadily for four days in a row. It was an ancient, monotonous rain. (“Once a rain fell upon the earth lasting thirty thousand years,” Xivo Gavo said in the introduction to his chronicle.) It was under this rain that Isa was hanged. The execution took place at dawn in the town centre. Groups of people came to watch. Two girls were also hanged along with Isa. Their hair dripped with rain. Isa was missing one leg. It made him look horrible, like an upside down cone. His glasses were the only thing that seemed alive on his battered face. The victims had pieces of white cloth attached to their chests bearing their names. Azem Kurti, Javer’s uncle and commander of the Balli Kombëtar, who along with Mak Karllashi’s son had taken part in the killing of Isa, raised the skirts of the hanged girls with his cane. Their thin white legs swung back and forth for a moment before coming to rest. Mane Voco’s wife broke away from the people trying to hold her back and ran through the streets screaming hysterically, “My son! My son!” She rushed all the way to the gallows and embraced Isa’s single leg, pressing it to her face and hair. “My son, my son, what have they done to you?” The conical form gave a jerk. His glasses fell off. The woman gathered up the shattered lenses and pressed them to her breast. “My little boy, my little boy.”