city. The headlights of oncoming cars slid past, in turn lighting up his face and leaving it in darkness, as if it were a mask.
We did not speak. He put his arm round my shoulder. I limply waited for him to kiss me, but this did not happen. He seemed even more dazed and absent than I was.
For a moment, my gaze caught the eyes of the driver in the rear-view mirror. He seemed to be staring at me instead of the road. I knew that this was because I was tired, but I moved aside slightly to be out of his line of vision. Besfort felt my movement and drew me closer. But still we did not embrace. In the hotel room, as we opened our bags, we seemed not to look at each other.
In the late-night bar, we kissed for the first time. I was about to say something, but instead blurted out something else entirely: “My fiance and I haven’t taken precautions recently…”
There was no taking back what I’d said. It seemed to me later that it was these words that melted everything away.
His eyes were fixed on my knees, as if he was seeing them for the first time. I felt his stare penetrate the black fabric of my miniskirt to the point where my thighs met, where he was now invited to enter without protection…
“Shall we go upstairs?” he said after a short time.
Freed from shame, and with reddened cheeks, I did not hide my eagerness. Let’s go upstairs as fast as we can, to the seventh floor, seventh heaven…
When I came out of the bathroom and lay down beside him, before removing the towel from my chest, I whispered, “Am I too thin?”
He did not understand what I said, or pretended not to. We caressed each other and I thought of the words of Zara the gypsy woman, yet I could not say them for shame, however much I might have wanted to. But he looked at me for a moment in surprise, as if I had spoken them. A special light, of desire mixed with exultation, seemed to flash through his eyes, or perhaps I only took it as such, out of surprise or because of his words, “My little darling.” After our caresses, he was at first a little inhibited, but then everything went well.
It was only later, after I had returned to Albania, that fear gripped me. He had accompanied me to the airport before continuing his own journey to Brussels, where he was to stay two weeks for his work.
There was no word from him for a long time. I was obsessed with all the usual speculations of a woman who gives herself to a man for the first time and wants at all costs to be appreciated. Had it been wonderful for him, as they say, or did I disappoint him, even slightly? Were those sweet words of his sincere? Was his initial inhibition the usual kind of tension experienced by modern men, no longer the shame it once was, but even rather chic, or was it a sign of disenchantment?
The thought that the journey had been a mistake stabbed at me incessantly. I would have given anything not to have made that trip.
I felt a pain in my chest, slight at first, but later more noticeable, sometimes on the side of the heart and sometimes on the opposite side, and I liked to think of this as a sign from him. I was not naive enough to think that love could really cause pain in my breasts. But I preferred to believe that I was in love rather than pregnant, although this was also a thought that occurred to me, but without distress, as if it were happening to a different body.
The window frame was still empty, without his silhouette. She thought of getting up, taking a shower, putting on her makeup and, made beautiful for the new day, waiting for him on the settee. She rehearsed the procedures in her mind, but, still hungry for sleep, turned her body over to the other side. Instead of sleep there came to her a kind of by-product, a drowsy vision of the lane alongside her school, where, just past the slogan, “The People Do What the Party Says; The Party Does What the People Want”, clumsily written on a wall, stood the low house of Zara the gypsy woman, with a persimmon tree in the yard. During the long holiday afternoons, like many other girls, she had entered the gypsy woman’s dilapidated door without anybody much noticing. The whole atmosphere was different there: the smell of ashes in the hearth, the photos on the wall and especially the conversation, which was like nothing else. With faces crimson from shame, the girls asked all kinds of questions about love, or what the gypsy woman called “fun”. She would answer calmly, never showing annoyance, in terms that made your entire body tremble. “Breasts and buttocks? Of course we know what makes them swell – fun. And if you think you are skinny, listen to Zara. Men who appreciate these things go crazy for thighs like yours.” Rovena thought her knees would give way. “Don’t be stingy with it,” she heard the woman say, pointing below her stomach. “Be generous. We’ll all be in the grave one day.”
These words turned all the films she had ever seen and all the books they had studied at school on their head. A few weeks later, with a new confidence in her movements, she bent down to embrace her and whispered in her ear, “I’ve done it…” The woman closed her eyes in happiness. Then she motioned to her to come close again. She seemed to want Rovena to tell her what had happened but in different words. And Rovena did so. Bluntly, in words considered dirty, and which she had never used before, she said, “I’ve…”
“You’re a real star,” said the gypsy woman softly, and her tired eyes and wrinkled face glowed.
That was two months before the December day when the gypsy woman was interned. A purge was under way against vice. Women suspected of loose morals, homosexuals, gamblers and people who encouraged degeneracy were also carted off. Zara belonged to the last category. Criminal investigators in beige suits cropped up on school premises. In panic, Rovena accepted a proposal from a student she barely knew. She thought that this was the best form of safety. I’m not a virgin, she whispered in his ear on the first afternoon when they had gone to bed. He pretended not to hear her.
When the regime fell, she was engaged. Every day, long-forgotten things reappeared out of the mists. Words like “lady”, “miss”, “your grace”, forms of baptism and prayer.
But the word “engagement” was one of those that slipped out of use. “Engaged?” asked her girlfriends at the university, with undisguised amazement. To her, the word seemed like a worn-out garment. She used it less and less, and then not at all.
And now you say that nothing is like it was before, she said to herself. That was true then. Everything changed completely, but now… Oh God, what about now? Was everything now the same?
In fact, her meeting with Besfort at that reception turned her life upside-down even more than the fall of the regime. He was frank in his admiration for her, and invited her to one of those dinners that were so common in the frenetic Tirana of the time.
When they met face to face again, their conversation turned once more to beautiful women. He made it no secret that he was talking about her, and nor did she pretend not to notice it. She had known for a long time that she was beautiful.
Enthralled, I heard him say that beautiful women, as distinct from pretty ones, were very rare. According to him, they were different in every respect. They thought differently, loved differently and even suffered in a way that was absolutely different.
I could not take my eyes away from him, until, after a prolonged stare in my direction, which was not his usual style, he said to me, “You know how to suffer.”
Psychic, I thought. How did he know?
I must have frozen, because he hastened to add, “Does that offend you?”
In fact it had seemed to me a kind of insult, I replied. I was beautiful, and there did not appear to be any reason why I should know suffering. Suffering was for others.
Reading my mind, and doubly psychic, he said that nobody should be ashamed of suffering. Then in a voice that struck me as cold he added that what he had said was intended as flattery, because he was sure there were no beautiful women who did not know how to suffer.
I blushed for what I had said, which now seemed to me idiotic. Attempting to make amends, I added a further idiocy: I did not think that I was that sort of person.
He smiled to himself and shook his head several times, like someone faced with a misunderstanding too radical to be explained.
After a silence, as if suddenly remembering that I was still very young and entirely without experience compared to himself, he added, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.” Then, without the slightest sarcasm, he
