Chronicle in Stone

“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 Kombetar, 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.”

That same night Javer, who was still a wanted man, went to his uncle Azem Kurti’s house, where he had not set foot in a long time.

“They’re looking for me, Uncle,” he had said, “but I have repented.”

“Repented? You have done the right thing, nephew. Come, let me kiss you. I knew this day would come. Did you see what we did to that friend of yours?”

“Yes, I saw,” Javer answered.

“Bring us some raki and a hot meal,” Azem said to the women. “Let us celebrate this reconciliation.”

When they had sat down at the table, Javer said:

“Now, Uncle, you’re going to tell me all about the business with Isa.”

And Azem laid out the facts. Sipping his raki, eating his roast, he described the killing. Javer listened.

“What’s wrong, nephew? You look pale,” the uncle said.

“Yes, Uncle, I feel pale.”

“Those books have thinned your blood. Your fingers are thinner too.”

Javer looked at his fingers and then coolly took a revolver out of his pocket. Azem’s eyes opened wide. Javer shoved the barrel of the gun into his uncle’s food-stuffed mouth. Azem’s teeth rattled on the metal. Then, one by one, the bullets smashed his jaw, his forehead and his skull to smithereens. Morsels of half-chewed meat mingled with blobs of Azem’s brain as they rained down together onto the low dining table.

Javer left amid the wailing of his cousins. The next day the Bulldog flew over the city dropping multi-coloured leaflets saying, “Yesterday the Communist Javer Kurti killed his own uncle at the family dinner table. Fathers and Mothers, judge for yourselves what the Communists are like.”

That evening the bodies of six people shot dead in the citadel prison were brought to the main square. They were left there in a pile so people could see. A white banner bore this inscription in capital letters: THIS IS HOW WE ANSWER RED TERROR.

The rain had stopped. It was very cold at night. By dawn the corpses were covered with frost. They lay there on the square all that day. On the second morning, another pile of corpses was found on the other side of the square. A bit of cloth bore the words: THIS IS HOW WE ANSWER WHITE TERROR.

The police rushed in to get rid of the bodies, but they weren’t given time to complete the job. They were ordered to go after the terrorists first. None of the guards on duty the previous night had suspected a thing. Around midnight, the municipal road-sweeper’s cart, drawn by Ballashi, an old nag well-known to everyone in the city, had pulled up in the square. As usual, the cart was covered with a black tarpaulin. Just before daybreak someone passing alongside the cart happened to give the tarpaulin an idle tug, and that’s when the bodies fell out in a heap.

People came back from the town centre in consternation.

“Go and see.”

“Go and look, on the square. A real slaughter.”

“Don’t let the children see. Keep the children back.”

Grandmother shook her head pensively and said: “What terrible times.”

The city was soaked in blood. The bodies of the executed prisoners were still in the square. Now both piles had been covered with tarpaulins. In the afternoon Hanko, a crone who had not crossed the threshold of her house in twenty-nine years, went out and headed for the centre of the city. People were dumbfounded, and stepped aside to let her pass. Her vacant eyes seemed to see everything without looking at anything.

“Who is that man standing on that rock?” she asked, pointing with her cane.

“It’s a statue, Mother Hanko. It’s made of iron.”

“I thought it was Omer’s son.”

“It is Omer’s son, Mother Hanko. He’s been dead for a long time.”

Then she asked to see the bodies. She went to each pile of corpses in turn, lifted the frozen tarpaulins, and stared at the dead for a long time.

“What country are they from?” she asked, pointing to the Italians.

“From Italy.”