Besfort was still in Strasbourg. The afternoons were harder to endure than the evenings. Staring fixedly at the windowpanes, she would ask why. Why did she want to do this at any cost? Was she still spurred on by what Zara had said, “Be generous. We’ll all be in the grave one day,” or was there some other reason? Sometimes she seemed to be saying farewell to the world before shutting herself away in a convent.
The pitiless afternoons dragged on. On one of them, she went for a coffee in the Rogner Hotel with the foreign diplomat. His conversation, which she used to listen to with such interest, was boring. He mentioned the only time they had met in his apartment. “How wonderful that was,” he said. He said it again, but these words saddened rather than excited her. They brought no thrill. In the end, with a serious look, he admitted that he was “bi”. Fortunately Albania was changing and it was nothing awful now to be “bi”. At this point she thought she dimly understood something. When they parted, he said that he hoped they would meet again. He looked serious again and said something about “new experiences” and “wonderful”. She nodded in agreement, but thought to herself, no way.
Walking home, she remembered that the gypsy woman’s house must be nearby. There were all kinds of new buildings in the neighbourhood, but she recognised the dilapidated door from the persimmon in the yard.
With an anxious heart, she pushed open the gate. Had the gypsy returned from her internment? Did she bear a grudge? As she was about to push open the house door, she noticed the familiar smell of long ago, a kind of sourness of straw mixed with smoke.
The gypsy woman was there. The same close eyes among the wrinkles looked her up and down.
“Zara, it’s Rovena. Do you remember me?”
The wrinkles moved slowly. “Rovena… of course I remember you. I remember all of you little angels, my only joy.”
Rovena had expected her to say: “You little whores, who betrayed me.” But the woman had said nothing of the sort.
Rovena could not find the right words. Did you suffer a lot, where they sent you? Did you blame us? Perhaps nobody had betrayed her. Maybe the harm had been done in all innocence.
Zara’s eyes softened a little.
“You are the first one to visit…” That was all she said, but her words suggested she had been waiting. “I knew you would. I put my hopes in you. More than in the others.”
Rovena wanted to fall to her knees, to beg forgiveness.
The wrinkles slowly melted away, leaving the eyes clear, like long ago. Oh God, thought Rovena, she’s turning back into the woman she was…
“Where I went, they were all…” she said in a low voice. “But what about you, here? What have you been up to, girl… Have you had fun?”
Rovena nodded. “Yes, Zara, a lot… And now I have fallen in love.”
The woman stared at her for so long that Rovena thought she had not heard her.
“I’ve fallen in love,” she repeated.
“It’s the same thing,” the woman said, in the same soft voice.
Rovena felt that they were getting close to her secret. During one of their sleepless nights, Besfort had talked about the millions of years when love had only been lust.
Apparently this was why the way she talked was so mysteriously attractive. The gypsy was carrying her back to her own distant era.
Covered in confusion, and under the woman’s now haggard gaze, Rovena took off her pullover, stiffly, as if carrying out a ritual. Then she lowered her underwear, showing the woman her pubic hair. Poker-straight, as if waiting for a jury to pronounce her guilt or innocence, she stood there a long time.
Walking home as dusk fell, it seemed to her that she had undressed for reasons that were as inevitable as they were inexplicable. She had done it naturally, as if obeying a mystical instruction: show your allegiance!
Obscurely, she struggled to understand something that still eluded her grasp. It apparently had to do with the female’s different outlook, which had descended from the world of the gypsies, that epoch millions of years ago, as Besfort had put it, and which the gadji had forgotten. Indomitable, a superior power attached to a woman’s body by a secret pact, it stubbornly guarded its independence. Thousands of decrees had been issued against it. Cathedrals, internment camps, entire bodies of doctrine. In the last few days, Rovena had felt that this power could rise from its lair and overwhelm her.
Reaching home, her feet carried her to the sofa. She wearily calculated the days until Besfort’s return.
Meeting him was different from how she had imagined it. He seemed distracted, gloomy, as if he had brought with him the cloud cover of the continent.
A vague fear stalked her. This man who she liked to think had brought her freedom might unthinkingly take it from her again.
You’re dangerous, she thought, as she whispered into his ear tender words about missing him, about her visit to the gypsy woman’s house and of course her coffee with the man she now called the “bi-diplomat”. Some good had come out of that cup of coffee. She had heard about an Austrian scholarship to go to Graz, and the “bi” had said she could apply.
“It would be easier for us to meet in hotels in Europe, wouldn’t it, where you might have things to do, and I could come… aren’t you pleased?”
“Of course I’m pleased. Who said I wasn’t?”
“You don’t look pleased.”
“Perhaps because while you were talking I was thinking… sort of… about how girls today think nothing of going to bed with someone for a visa or a scholarship…”
She broke off, lost for words. He touched her cheeks, as if tears lay on them.
“How beautiful your eyes are when you have things on your mind.”
“Really?” she said, not thinking.
“I was asking you seriously,” he went on. “Shall we do it?”
Oh God, she thought. “I don’t think so,” she blurted out.
He did not take his eyes off her, and she added, “I don’t know…”
Tenderly, he kissed her hair.
“You were going to say something, Besfort, weren’t you?”
He nodded. “But I don’t know if we should always say everything we think of.”
“Why not?” said Rovena. “Perhaps it’s not a good idea generally, but we are, kind of… in love…”
He laughed out loud. “A moment ago, when you were so honest, I thought of how honesty makes a woman look beautiful. But sometimes, unfortunately, an unfaithful woman can look just as beautiful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t scowl. I wanted to say that treachery generally makes someone look ugly. That expression, the evil eye, has some truth behind it. But an unfaithful woman can look wonderfully attractive. We’re in love, aren’t we? You said yourself that everything is different… in love.”
His voice was carefree, unlike an hour before, but still dangerous, she said to herself. He behaves like someone not afraid of going to the edge. Why is it he feels safe and I don’t? The thought made her irritable. She wanted to ask, in annoyance: “What makes you feel so secure? Why do you think I belong to you?”
She knew that she didn’t dare ask. She lived in fear and he did not, that was the difference between them, and as long as this did not change she would feel defeated.
She murmured softly as he stroked her chest, and he asked her to tell him again what the gypsy had said.
“I can see you like to make fun of her.”
“Not at all,” he retorted. “If anybody treats the gypsies and the Roma with respect at last, it is us at the Council of Europe.”