house to see the young bride. She came out and sat with her mother-in-law on a stone bench near the door. Her fingers toyed with her long braids and a strange, fascinating light flashed in her eyes now and then. Our neighbourhood had never seen such a splendid bride. Among ourselves we called her “the beautiful bride”, and we liked it when she looked at us as we ran past Nazo’s front door chasing fireflies in the twilight. She would sit there watching us with her big grey eyes, but her mind seemed elsewhere. Then Maksut would come home from the market or the coffee house carrying a big loaf of bread under his arm. The bride and her mother-in-law would get up silently from the stone bench and he would follow them inside, closing the heavy door, which creaked plaintively, behind him.
Behind that stone threshold, the spell must have been working. We felt sorry for the beautiful bride who disappeared every night behind that grim door. The street seemed empty, and we didn’t feel like playing any more. Through the window we watched Nazo light the kerosene lamp, whose dim yellow light would have depressed anyone.
“Yes, Selfixhe,” said Xhexho, “it’s all our own fault. People have just gone too far. They say that in a few days all the men and women of the city are going to parade through the streets with flags and music, shouting ‘Long live shit!’ Has anyone ever seen such an abomination?”
Mother pinched her cheeks, which was a way of saying how upset she was.
“It’s the end of the world!”
“How disgraceful! How disgraceful!” Grand mother said.
“Who knows what’s next?” said Xhexho. “But He on high,” she went on, pointing up as she always did, “He may take His time, but He never forgets. Yesterday He made Ceco Kaili’s daughter grow a beard, tomorrow He will make all our bodies sprout thorns.”
“God save us!” my mother cried.
Before she left, Xhexho gave us some advice. Whenever she gave advice, her voice got even more nasal. “When you cut your nails, don’t leave the clippings around. Burn them, so nobody can find them.”
“Why?”
“Because they use nail clippings for witchcraft, boy. And you, my girl, I beg you, when you comb your hair, be careful not to leave any tufts around, because the devil lies in wait for just such things.”
“God save us!” my mother said once again.
“And bury the ashes from the fireplace too!”
Xhexho left as she had come, wrapped in black, and still wheezing. She left fear and unease in her wake, as she always did. That’s how I remember her, always agitated and consumed with worry, never talking about anything pleasant, only about dark things, seemingly invigorated by them. Ilir suspected her of practising magic and casting spells herself.
Magic was now the constant topic of conversation in every home. In the beginning, after the first events, there was a kind of perplexity. Then, as is usual in such cases, once the uncertainty had passed, people started looking for the root of the evil, for the cause. The “old crones” were consulted. These were aged women who could never be surprised or frightened by anything any more. They had long since stopped going out of their houses, for they found the world boring. To them even major events like epidemics, floods and wars were only repetitions of what they had seen before. They had already been old ladies in the thirties, under the monarchy, and even before, under the republic in the mid-twenties. In fact, they were old during the First World War and even before, at the turn of the century. Granny Hadje had not been out of her house in twenty-two years. One old woman of the Zeka family had been inside for twenty-three years. Granny Neslihan had last gone out thirteen years before, to bury her last grandson. Granny Shano spent thirty-one years inside until one day she went out into the street a few yards in front of her house to assault an Italian officer who was making eyes at her great-granddaughter. These crones were very robust, all nerve and bone, even though they ate very little and smoked and drank coffee all day long. When Granny Shano grabbed the Italian officer by the ear, he let out a great yelp, drew his pistol, and rapped the old woman’s hand with the butt. Not only did she refuse to let go, she punched him with her bony hands. The crones had very little flesh on their bones, and few vulnerable spots. Their bodies were like corpses ready for embalming, from which all innards likely to rot had already been removed. Superfluous emotions like curiosity, fear and lust for gossip or excitement had been shed along with the useless flesh and excess fat. Javer once said that Granny Shano could as easily have grabbed the ear of Benito Mussolini himself as the Italian officer’s.
The old crones gave very sober advice about the practice of witchcraft. They suggested that outbreaks of magic usually occurred on the eve of great events, when people’s spirits flutter like leaves before a storm.
Many questions remained, including the most important: who were the practitioners of witchcraft? But people didn’t simply ask questions, they also took steps. Aqif Kashahu’s boys stood guard day and night, in shifts, hiding in a dormer window. Kako Pino, who in her capacity as make-up woman for the city’s brides was one of the most vulnerable targets of magic, bought a huge wolf-like dog and let it run loose in her yard.
Mane Voco brought his ancient rifle, a relic from the days of Turkish rule, up from the cellar and he kept it to hand, hanging on a nail behind the door. The mayor’s office posted an extra guard in the city cemetery.
People took certain other precautionary measures too. Housewives kept the ash from the fireplace in the cupboard, under lock and key, as if it was flour. Men leaving the barbershop carried their clipped hair and shavings wrapped up in a rag or a piece of newspaper. These precautions seemed to stem the flow of sorcery. The ordinary concerns of daily life, which had disappeared from conversation because of the magic, began to crop up again. Some sense of security and tranquillity returned. But it didn’t last. Just when it seemed that the evil spells had gone for good, they attacked again with unexpected fury. Their return was signalled by the explosion of a sealed barrel of cheese, which made a terrific noise when it blew up in the middle of the night at the house of Avdo Babaramo, the former gunner. In response to this new outbreak of witchcraft, the mayor’s office posted notices around the city urging people to help apprehend those responsible. But this didn’t work. Murky misdeeds went on being done. One night someone smiled at Aqif Kashahu’s wife from a dormer window, making a come-hither gesture. After the explosion of the cheese barrel, Avdo Babaramo’s elder son, so it was said, became estranged from his wife. But it was the third incident, directed against Kako Pino, that caused the greatest uproar. The evil omen itself was nothing very unusual – on the contrary, ashes again, but this time sprinkled with vinegar. The trouble was that the clamour we kids made when we saw how shaken Kako Pino was on discovering the magic attracted the attention of an Italian patrol that happened to be passing by at the time. The patrol must have reported the unusual agitation to the garrison, because a quarter of an hour later four Italian sappers trooped into Kako Pino’s yard with mine detectors. They looked at our frightened eyes, saw Kako Pino scratching her own face from fear, and, without asking for any explanation, began searching the spot all of us were staring at.
“Hell,” one of them kept saying over and over, “the detector says there’s nothing here.”
A few minutes later they stalked off angrily, and as they moved down the street one of them shouted back at Kako Pino, “
Every evening now, as night drew near, our heads were filled with thoughts of magic. This was understandable, for when the night enveloped everything, from the citadel and its prison at the top of the hill right down to the stony river bed at the bottom, somewhere in the deserted alleyways unseen hands were collecting hair and nail clippings, chimney soot and other dark matter, wrapping them in scraps of cloth, and whispering spells to make your blood run cold.
The proud and sullen city, having defied rain, hail, thunder and rainbows, now gnawed at itself. The stretching of the eaves, the warped twisting of the streets, the strange position of the chimneys all testified to its torment.
“The city is sick.” It was the second time I had heard those words. I couldn’t understand how a city could be ill. In Mane Voco’s yard, Ilir and I listened to Javer and Isa talking about witchcraft. As usual when they talked among themselves, they used difficult and unknown words, the sound of which seemed ill suited to a discussion of matters that were already mysterious enough. Several times we heard them use the words “mysticism” and “collective psychosis”. Then Isa asked Javer, “Have you read Jung?”
“No,” said Javer. “And I have no intention of doing so either.”
“I came across one of his books by accident. He discusses this very question.”
“What do I care about Jung?” said Javer. “All this is clear enough. This psychosis serves the interests of the reactionaries by diverting public attention from the real problems. Here, look at the newspaper: ‘Magic is in some sense part of a nation’s traditional folklore.’”
“A fascist theory,” Isa said.
