The Accident

by Ismail Kadare

  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.”

  As if frightened of silence, she went on talking as she combed her hair at the mirror. He stood by the door, studying her now familiar movements.

  Putting on her lipstick, she turned her head to say something, her tone suddenly altered, about her fiancé. Her internship in Austria would inevitably take her away from him and they would separate.

  She looked at him closely to see what he was thinking. He was careful to say nothing, but took two steps towards her and kissed her on the neck. “We’ll be happy together,” she whispered. Later, she regretted saying this. He should have been the one to say it. As always, she rushed in too fast.

  What did she need all this for, she groaned to herself. She thought she had left qualms of this sort behind, but they were still there, especially during the last moments of every meeting: things that shouldn’t have happened so abruptly, things there was no time to put right. He put it down to anxiety before they parted. She could not work out whether it was better to say as little as possible to avoid misunderstanding, or the opposite, to gabble nervously to fill up the frightening void. She now knew that just before they said goodbye there would come a fatal moment that would decide what shape her suffering would take until they met again.

  All these misgivings belonged to the past, but they still insistently fired their darts from a distance. She wanted to say to them: “All right, I’ve remembered you now. Leave me in peace.”

  She arrived in Graz in midwinter, soaked by the rain that poured from the February clouds. The fog banks watched her like hyenas. The house where Lasgush Poradeci had lived was gone. She had thought that Graz would make an impression on her, at least as strong as that left by Besfort Y. But the opposite happened. Her breast
s grew smoother.

  His phone call rescued her from the barren winter. He was not far away. He would expect her at the hotel on Saturday. She should take a taxi from the station and not worry about the expense.

  They spent two nights together, and she repeated endlessly, “How happy I am with you.” Then she travelled back to winter and the tedium of her hall of residence.

  She stood motionless for a moment, holding the shower head above her hair. The water splashed either scalding or icy and gave her no pleasure. It was the first time a shower had failed to calm her. Then she understood why: the shower head reminded her of the telephone.

  That was where the friction usually started. The first and most serious incident had been in spring. Everything had changed in Graz. For the first time, she hankered after liberty. She grew irritated for no reason. She thought that Besfort stood in her way.

  These were her first cross words on the phone. “You’re preventing me from living.”

  “What?” he replied coolly. “I’m getting in your way?”

  “Precisely. You said that you tried to phone me twice yesterday evening.”

  “So what?” he said.

  She heard the unconcern in his voice, but instead of kicking herself for her blunder, she cried, “You’re holding me hostage.”

  “Aha,” he said.

  “What’s that ‘aha’? You think that I have to sit waiting in until it occurs to his lordship to phone?”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he butted in.

  Her ears rang with shock. “You think I’m your slave. You think you can do what you want with me.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he repeated, his voice growing colder.

  Sensing the approaching danger, she lost control completely. The words poured out of her until he cried, “That’s enough!”

  She didn’t know he could be so pitiless. He was totally cynical: “You took this yoke up yourself, and now you blame me.” To cap it all, the line went dead.

  Numbly, she waited for him to phone back. Then she gave up hope and called his number herself. His phone was off the hook. Now what have I done, she thought. And then, a moment later: this is horrible.

  She racked her brains all night, trying to work out why she was so angry with him. Because she had left her fiancé for him, although he was promising her nothing?

  Perhaps, she thought. But she was not sure. Nor was it fear of losing her freedom. Was it because she had fallen into this head first, and now could not get out? It was too early to say.

  She reassured herself, saying this could all be sorted out calmly if she tried to love him less. That was the solution.

  Three days later, she admitted defeat and phoned him. He answered her stumbling phrases sternly but quietly. Neither of them mentioned the quarrel. Several weeks passed like this, with infrequent phone calls and guarded conversations, until they met again.

  The train to Luxembourg crossed the cold European plains. The landscape, dusted with snow, matched her inner numbness perfectly. Was everything the same as before or not? He had given nothing away on the phone. She and her fiancé had behaved quite differently. After making up, they used to have heart-to-hearts, confessing how hurt they had felt and describing their ploys in battle, which reconciliation had made redundant.

  Darling, why do you make it so difficult? she thought, as she dozed in her seat.

  The further north the train sped, the more terror overcame her. But something within her also resisted this fear, a peculiar, unfamiliar taste, provoked by the thought that she was a young and beautiful woman travelling through a frost-covered Europe towards her lover.

  She was still half-dazed when the train arrived.

  He waited for her in the hotel room. They embraced as if nothing had happened. For a short while, she rushed round unpacking her things, making only a few comments about the room, then about the bathroom and the white dressing gowns that always struck her as the sign of a good hotel.

  When she ran out of words, she made no effort to find new ones. It was nearly four o’clock. The winter dusk was falling. She said, as usual, “Shall I get ready?” and went into the bathroom.

  She could not tell how long she should stay there. Usually she seemed either too quick or too slow.

  Finally, she wrapped the bath robe round her naked body and came out.

  He was waiting.

  With head bowed, she moved towards the bed. Her steps did not seem her own. She could not get rid of the strange sensation she had felt during the journey, which was mixed with the feeling that she was less like a girlfriend than a wife going to bed with her husband.

  For some reason she tried to contain her cries, and almost succeeded. But afterwards she whispered in his ear, “That was heavenly.” That was how it always seemed to him. But they did not open up to one another. When this didn’t happen at midnight, nor before they parted the next day, she gave up all hope. As her train travelled across those same plains which the torn mask of snow could not totally cover, her heart felt heavy with the same sadness as two days before. It was so hard to deal with that she did not know if sadness was the right name for it.

  Her misery was accompanied by a nagging thought that Besfort Y. was dangerous under any circumstances. Life with him was difficult, but without him it was impossible.

  With her former fiancé, restoring normality after a quarrel had been a matter of moments, but with Besfort it took months. She sometimes wondered whether this question of freedom had turned into an obsession. Since the fall of communism everything in Albania had gone to extremes: money, luxury, lesbian groups. Everybody was in a hurry to make up for lost time. One afternoon in a café, an actress’s sidelong glance had stirred her to the depths. From the way Besfort responded to this story, she thought she must have put her finger on something.

  Then, too, nothing had been the same as before, she thought. But she hadn’t said anything. She hadn’t shouted it to high heaven as he had.

  In fact, nothing had ever been the same as before, she thought.

  She recalled her first infidelity – only in Albanian did it deserve the name – as a hurried mess, vindictive and without regrets. Kisses amidst music and accented German. Shamelessly groping her partner before he lunged at her. Undressing in the bedroom, the condom, then his accented words: Ich hatte noch nie schöneren Sex. That was the best sex I’ve ever had.

  That’s all you’re getting, she said to herself.

  In fact, it was a year after Luxembourg that she told him what had happened in that spring of temptation. The little birthday party in her hall of residence, embracing a classmate on the dance floor, pressing first her lips and then her belly to his, then his whispered invitation, “Let’s go to my room.” She had followed him without a word. Besfort knew everything that happened between then and the next day, when half the student group gathered in a late-night bar and Rovena was astonished to find that a miniature love story had already been woven around her. They had found out that the pretty Albanian girl had finally slept with their Slovak friend. They gave them special attention, made sure they sat next to each other and treated them as a couple in every respect. She found it amusing and not in the least embarrassing that this engagement business followed her everywhere she went. Somebody said that on the news there had been disturbances in Albania, but she knew nothing about this.

  What happened later, you know as well as I do, Rovena had said. In fact, what Besfort knew was not quite the truth. The inaccuracies started in the late-night bar, where Rovena and the Slovak were being treated as a couple. She liked him, in fact she liked him a lot. He tasted different, and had a kind of sweetness that she missed. Somebody said again that there was unrest in Albania. But she still knew nothing.

  At two in the morning they noisily departed, arranging to meet the next day in the same bar. At ten in the morning the telephone tore into her sleep and ripped everything apart. It was Besfort. He had phoned her several times during t
he evening. She could not be irritated again, or use the stale words “You’re preventing me from living.” He was in Vienna, at an OSCE meeting. Things looked bad in Albania, as she may have heard. He was free that evening. For the first time she hesitated.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” The journey was hard for her … the seminar … the professor …

  “As you like.”

  The chill in his voice brought back her old fear. “Wait a moment, could you come here?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. He would see what he could do and phone back.

  He did not call back for a long time. There was no reply from his mobile. He must be punishing her for hesitating. Tyrant, she thought. Then she turned against herself. See what she’d done. She had risked everything for a night out. As if there hadn’t been enough boring evenings in Graz, she had chosen this one to trawl through the bars with their cheap jokes and laughter, just at a time when he needed her.

  Finally the phone rang – a double triumph. He was coming. The address of the hotel? What time?

  She strode briskly down the frozen street as if intoxicated. The pang of conscience over the date she had made at the bar increased her exhilaration. Even her hesitation towards Besfort seemed to her a good sign. For the first time in eighteen months she felt, if not the superior, at least the equal of Besfort Y. The issue about being his slave would resolve itself naturally.

  Her sense of security, flattered by the luxurious carpet in the long corridor leading to his room, was dashed by the expression on his face.

  His frown did not emphasise his tiredness but had the opposite effect, perhaps because of the vacancy in his eyes, that aspect of him that was so impersonal.

  They lay on the sofa clasped in a half-embrace. He still suspects nothing. Why not? she thought. Why does he still think he owns me?

  That vacancy in his eyes still troubled her.

  In the bathroom, as she was getting ready, she noticed a dark bruise at the top of her thigh, a mark left by the Slovak’s teeth.