Standing in front of the big mirror in her room, the schoolmistress unzipped her skirt and let it fall to the floor. She liked her thighs. They were twenty-three years old today as well. They were strong and smooth, not flabby like her girlfriends’ thighs. When she walked along the beach lots of people turned to look at them.
Slowly, every part of her body was paraded before the mirror. Then, wearing only a summer nightdress, she tiptoed into the kitchen.
“Manuel, you’ve gone to sleep with your clothes on,” she said half-sitting, half-lying down by his side.
The day after her birthday, the fourth of December, the schoolmistress’s feelings had changed. The confusion that had filled her since her arrival in Albania had disappeared completely to be replaced by fear. She was no longer the woman of the Confused Heart; she was the woman of the Frightened Heart.
More than anything else that change affected the way she moved about Albania, because she no longer dared take her usual route home from school, instead — in order to avoid people’s eyes — she took the long way around: one hundred and twenty steps, then eighty, then seventy-five, and finally twenty-two, making — if my sums are correct — a total of two hundred and fifty-seven steps.
Once inside the house, she turned again and again to her diary and gave expression there to the thoughts Her Frightened Heart needed to think if she were not to become even more frightened and thus lose control of her life. They were long passages, filling whole pages:
I read once that one needed only two things in order to be happy: the first was self-respect and the second was to give no importance whatsoever to what other people might think of you. I used to believe that I fulfilled both those conditions, that I was different from my family and my friends. But it isn’t true, I fulfill neither of them. Especially not the second one. I live in fear, I’m frightened of the local people and the gossip that might be circulating about me, and I’m obsessed with what they might and might not know. Sometimes I get the feeling that they know what happened; well, what happened and what didn’t happen but that they imagine happened; and I see malicious smiles in the street, in the shop, in the boarding house, everywhere. The day before yesterday, for example, when I was just about to go into the shop, I distinctly heard someone say “it looks like even she needs someone to cuddle up to” and I turned around and came home. Anyway, I’m trying to dismiss all these conjectures; and I want to believe that they are only imaginings on my part, that the whole quarter cannot possibly be concerned with what I might or might not have done. But I feel uneasy. Time will tell.
But Time seemed disinclined to clarify matters, at least not immediately, choosing instead to remain silent for several days, limiting itself to bringing the first snows, just as the boy had predicted. Nevertheless, the third Sunday in December arrived and when night had fallen, shortly after the blind accordionist had stopped playing, the schoolmistress did feel that Time was speaking directly to her, that, in response to her invocation, Time had chosen to speak to her through the mouths of two young men it had previously plied with alcohol. “Miss!” they called, having planted themselves outside her house.
She didn’t dare open the door to them, but she watched the two boys from the window. They were standing beneath the lamppost by the roadside, their arms around each other’s shoulders. All about them was utter whiteness.
“Open up, Miss!” they called.
Then gathering snow from the ground, they began throwing snowballs at her door.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you like little boys anymore? We are only little, honest!”
“It’s true. At any rate his is!”
Convulsed with laughter, the two boys lurched off.
They were the first messengers, but not the only ones, for throughout that night, as if wanting to make its reply absolutely clear, Time kept sending her drunken young men: eight of them around eleven o’clock; three more at midnight; one a half an hour later; making — including the first two — a total of fourteen messengers.
It was the last messenger, at half past midnight, who troubled Her Frightened Heart most though. Unlike the others, he didn’t shout or make a racket, he came in silence; and then he called very gently at the window, whispering: “Open up, it’s me, the one with the ship tattooed on his arm.”
The man with the tattoo repeated his plea every ten minutes. He seemed prepared to spend the whole night there in that vigil, in the midst of the darkness and the snow that the frost was gradually hardening.
I’ve been very stupid. I’ve done everything wrong — the schoolmistress wrote that night, when it was already two in the morning. At that moment she needed her notebook more than ever. These reflections were her only way out. — The attitude I adopted from the moment I arrived in Albania, that of not talking to anyone, of keeping my distance and trusting no one, has worked against me. Because my arrival, naturally enough, provoked a mood of expectation among the local people. They wanted to know about this girl coming from outside, what her story was, and my attitude only increased their curiosity. But now, at last, they have something to get their teeth into; I myself provided them with the long-awaited story; and there they all are licking and biting their way through it and who knows how long it will take before they’ve had enough. Of course, it can’t be said that my situation has improved much. Before I couldn’t leave Albania. Now I can’t leave my house. And who knows what the future will bring. There’s still time for things to get even worse than they are already.
But there’s one person who would like to get his teeth into me, not just into the story — she wrote, after going to the window and coming back. — The man with the tattoo on his arm is outside my house right now, watching me. But he’ll wait in vain, because I’ve no intention of opening the door to him. I’m not stupid enough to do that. The worst thing would be if he were to stay there until morning. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did, because these people seem completely impervious to the cold; maybe it’s all the alcohol they drink or something.
But it was freezing cold now and even that final messenger gave up in the end. By three in the morning he had gone, had disappeared into the shadows of Albania.
The schoolmistress assumed that her conversation with Time was now at an end and decided her only option was to be patient and to hold out against the siege. Sooner or later they would tire of licking and biting at her story. Besides, the Christmas holidays were nearly upon her. Just a little longer and she would be back in her city by the sea, in her true home.
But Time was still there and had not yet done with her. It wanted to press home its answer, to continue the conversation. And so it was that on that same Monday, it sent two more messengers to the schoolmistress: the first of them at half past eight in the morning and the second at one o’clock in the afternoon.
The first announced himself with loud bangs on the door. And when the schoolmistress opened up, startled by such insistence, the messenger hurried into the house and went to sit down in the kitchen, with no show of good manners, neglecting even to say good morning.
“I’ve come for the key,” he said, lighting a cigarette.
“What do you mean by this, Manuel? Is that any way to come into someone’s house?” She was still half-asleep and found it hard to find the right words.
“I wouldn’t say it was the right way, but you kept me out there knocking on the door for a quarter of an hour and that’s not right either.”
“I had a bad night and I’ve got a headache. And that’s quite enough of your cheek!” the schoolmistress said angrily.