“They’re always so cheerful and yet they’ve spent the whole day working in that trench,” she thought.
At first, Her Confused Heart listened with equal interest to all the men (masculine plural). But as soon as she was able to distinguish the different voices, her interest in their plurality abruptly disappeared. She wasn’t interested in the ten or twelve laborers gathered around the bar, nor even in half of them, nor even in half of that half. She was only interested in one. She saw him every morning, working near the washhouse; he was a dark man with curly hair and a tattoo on his right arm. Some nights, those nights when she slept in the nude, that tattoo — in the form of a ship — even penetrated her dreams.
Sometimes she felt like inventing an excuse to go into the bar, for example, going in and asking for a volunteer to help move the blackboard, or for a glass of water, or for advice on the leaking roof. But instead she always walked on toward her house on the outskirts of Albania. And it wasn’t just a matter of shyness, it was also because the tattoo reminded her of a real ship: the blue and red ship Her Best Friend worked on.
The night before her twenty-third birthday — it was the second of December, a Friday — she remained standing on the stairs for longer than usual. The place seemed to be packed and, above the customers’ chattering and whistling, she could hear the strains of a harmonica playing.
“I expect they’re dancing,” she thought, recalling a scene she had witnessed shortly after her arrival in Albania, where it was not unusual for the men to dance together.
Then she heard someone say: “Right, I’m going to do it!” The doorway lit up and the man with the tattoo came out, followed by two friends. They were all laughing and his friends kept tugging at his shirt.
The schoolmistress swallowed hard when the man began to unbutton his fly. It occurred to her that she might be discovered there.
“Come on, mate, cut it out, we believe you!” pleaded his two friends. She couldn’t take her eyes off the opening in his trousers. She saw a lump of swollen flesh and the liquid that flowed from it formed small black streams among the flagstones.
“God, you’re a pig!” his friends said, laughing, and she had to hold tight to the banister rail to keep her balance.
Plunged into darkness again, the schoolmistress continued slowly on down the final eight steps to the main door. Once there, her foot sought out one of the streams still wet on the flagstones, and then, very deliberately, she stepped in it. She reached her gray and white house feeling light and strong and, as she changed her clothes, she almost danced, swaying her body and her arms. An intense joy flooded her heart.
Had the schoolmistress been a mature, experienced woman, the scene she’d witnessed from the landing would have passed into her life as a trivial anecdote one only recalls later at some get together, to amuse one’s friends. But she’d only just left her city on the coast and — as far as that aspect of life was concerned and apart from her nighttime fantasies — she had only the brief experience of that one night in June, the night Her Best Friend had invited her to walk with him in the dunes. She thought, therefore, that she’d done something of great significance. The wet sole of her shoe symbolized, beyond all doubt, that she had passed the Great Test set for her in Albania.
After supper, galvanized by that new state of mind, the desire to write to Her Best Friend was reborn in her. She looked for her writing pad, pale blue in color, and opened it resolutely. A cup of coffee steamed on the table.
Have you all forgotten about me? — she began with a steady hand — Well, frankly, I think it’s pretty bad. Awful, in fact. It doesn’t surprise me in the others, but in you it does. Surely it wouldn’t be such an effort to write me a few lines. But perhaps I’d better change the subject, I’ll only get angry otherwise. Of course, knowing nothing of your life, what you do, how you’re finding things on the ship, or indeed anything at all, it’s a little difficult to know what to write about. In fact, I have no option but to write to you about the winter, which in these godforsaken regions is extremely cold, hard, and persistent. If it’s foggy one day, then it stays foggy for the whole week. The same with the rain. So there’s no chance of going for a walk or going out to find Clysandra or Falena caterpillars. So you can imagine what fun life is here. Sunday’s the only day when there’s something to do, that’s when the young people in the village hire a blind accordionist to play for them. But I never go to the dance. And you know perfectly well why not. Although, on reflection, I’m almost sure you don’t, because you seem to be as blind as that accordionist. But now I’ve started saying things I shouldn’t again and so I’ll end the letter here.
“And here it will stay if I get no word from you tomorrow,” she thought, mentally addressing Her Best Friend.
“I do hope you haven’t forgotten my birthday!” She sighed.
That night she slept more peacefully than she had for some time.
The following day — it was Saturday and her work at the school finished at midday — she didn’t feel like going straight home to have lunch and decided to take a long detour before returning to her gray and white house, taking seven hundred steps to the cemetery, then three hundred to the hermitage, and finally five hundred to the door of her house; and once that distance was traveled, one thousand five hundred steps in all, she looked up and saw the letter the postman had left stuck in a crack in the door.
It was a postcard covered with signatures. Her parents and brothers and sisters wished her a happy birthday and sent their love.
She decided then that she still didn’t feel like eating and continued walking, as far as the mountain this time, and took seven thousand steps all in one go to the source of the river, then another five thousand to the hill from where one could look down onto the church and the streets of Obaba and, later, back in her own part of the village, the same number of steps again plus two thousand more. At last when — if my sums are correct — she had taken twenty-six thousand steps, she went into her kitchen, exhausted and hungry, and began preparing a special meal.
Making the cream sponge cake took her the longest, but once she’d put it in the oven, she picked up her notebook and sat down to write.
Third of December. Twenty-three years old. My family sent me a birthday card. It’s been a very noisy day here in Albania. In the morning skeins of geese flew over, tracing numbers in the sky, and because the strong winds force them to fly very low, there are hunters everywhere. There’s been the sound of rifle shots all day. And, excited by all the fuss around them, the dogs haven’t stopped barking either. I’m writing these lines keeping one eye on tonight’s cake. Judging by the smell coming from the oven, it should be a good one.
She went across to the window and wondered if she should add something more to that paragraph. But she didn’t feel like going over the feelings provoked by Her Best Friend’s neglect. She didn’t want to wallow in despair.
At last she wrote: “The moon is playing hide-and-seek in the sky.”
She was just about to take the cake out of the oven when she heard someone knocking at the door.
“Manuel, what are you doing here?” she exclaimed, surprised to find the little servant boy there.
“I’m very worried about something, Miss,” replied the boy, keeping his eyes on the ground.
Once in the kitchen, the schoolmistress noticed his bruised, swollen lip and thought she understood the meaning of what he’d just said.