Chronicle in Stone

by Ismail Kadare

“Will we see the plane?” I asked.

  “We’ll see it,” she said. “It’s right in the middle of the living room.”

  “But can I see it close up?”

  “Close up, yes, but behave yourself. Don’t touch anything.”

  I looked at my hands. They were more nervous than I was. I put them in my pockets.

  We got there. Grandmother banged the front door with the iron knocker. The knocking reverberated through the whole house. It was a somewhat unusual-looking house, with many gable-ends and overhanging eaves. It seemed to me to be dripping with sleep.

  Grandmother knocked again. We heard no footsteps inside. But the door opened by itself. Someone, perhaps Dino Çiço himself, had lifted the latch with a string from upstairs. Our house also had a cord like that to open the door without going down. We went up the wooden spiral staircase. The scrubbed boards creaked, but the sound was different from the creaking of our own stairs. They spoke a language I didn’t know.

  When we first went into the living room I didn’t see anything, because I was hiding behind Grandmother’s skirt. Then I peeked out and saw with one eye some old women dressed in black like Grandmother sitting on the cushions of the wooden ledges that ran around the room. The plane was in the middle. About the size of a person, all white, its wings spread. White. The wings, tail and body were wooden. Screw heads shone on the finely sanded carpentry.

  I stared at it for a long time. The voices of the women came from afar, as if through a whistling wind. Then I looked up and saw the pallid man with his red and dreamy eyes turned to the floor.

  “Is that him?” I whispered to Grandmother. She nodded.

  The old women were chatting in pairs, sipping coffee. Their conversations sometimes got tangled with each other. They kept shaking their heads, expressing their amazement, gesturing in the direction of the plane, then going back to their talk of the war and the bombing. The pallid man did not speak. He never took his eyes off the wooden plane.

  “Study hard, little lad, so that one day you’ll be as wise as Dino and bring honour to us all,” one of the old women said.

  I moved further behind Grandmother. I don’t know why, but I felt no joy. It had oozed out of me as if through hundreds of little holes. But that didn’t last long. The empty space left in my body by departing joy was suddenly filled with something that flooded in through those same invisible holes. It was sadness. All at once the white plane in the middle of the room seemed to me the frailest, most pitiful thing in the world. How could it dare challenge the huge metal planes that flew overhead every day, those terrifying grey planes loaded with bombs and shaking with deafening noise? It would take them no more than a second to shatter this little white thing, like wild beasts tearing a lamb to pieces.

  The old women went on chatting about all sorts of things. The lady of the house offered them more coffee. The pallid man hadn’t moved. I stood there too, still dazed. Very slowly, my sorrow gave way to complete indifference. I started looking at the old women’s wrinkles and was soon thoroughly absorbed by this new game. I had never examined old people’s wrinkles so carefully. How strange they were. They went on and on along an endless winding path from under the chin, down the neck, back up the nape and all over the face. They looked like the threads of wool that Grandmother spun from her distaff at the beginning of winter. Maybe you could knit socks with them, or even pullovers. I was getting very sleepy.

  When we left Dino Çiço’s house, the rain had stopped. The wet cobblestones gleamed sardonically. They knew something. Two women leaning on their window-ledges chatted across the street. Further on three others were doing the same. They were shouting because their windows were far apart, so I heard the news too: an anti-aircraft battery had arrived.

  That Sunday afternoon the bells of the two churches rang longer than usual. There were more people in the streets. Harilla Lluka went from door to door shouting: “It’s come, it’s come!”

  “Will you shut up?” an old woman yelled. “We heard already!”

  “Those planes are done for now,” Bido Sherifi said at the café, where he was having a drink with Avdo Babaramo, who was talking about gunnery. Half the men in the café were listening in awe.

  “Gunnery,” sighed Avdo. “You don’t have the head for it, Bido. But where can I find anyone smart enough to understand?”

  All afternoon people came to their windows or onto balconies hoping to get a look at the anti-aircraft battery. Most people looked towards the citadel, certain that the new cannon would be installed up there, as the old anti-aircraft gun had been. But evening fell and there was no sign of any gun barrels. Some said that the battery had been hidden on the outskirts of the city. People were disappointed. They had expected to see gigantic guns with long barrels set up right in the middle of the city, as befitted weapons on which the city relied for its defence. But all they had, it seemed, was a battery hidden far away behind hills and bushes.

  “Now in my day we had real artillery,” Avdo Babaramo said, raising his last glass in the café.

  After this initial disappointment, however, the very secrecy surrounding the anti-aircraft battery seemed to inspire confidence among some people.

  Everyone was eager to see its first battle with the bombers. People anxiously awaited the next day, when the bombing would start.

  Monday dawned. But strangely enough, the British didn’t come that day.

  “The swine must have heard about our battery,” Harilla Lluka shouted round town. “Those cowards, they must have heard . . .”

  “Stop braying like an ass, you idiot.”

  “. . . the louts.”

  But on Tuesday they came. The siren, as usual, wailed at the sky. Forgetting their earlier impatience, people now rushed downstairs into our cellar. Harilla Lluka was as pale as a sheet.

  We heard the menacing, monotonous drone of the engines. Harilla felt that the planes were looking for him personally because he had insulted them so viciously the day before. The noise came closer. Everyone listened open-mouthed.

  “It’s started, do you hear?” someone said.

  “Quiet!”

  “Listen! It’s firing!”

  “Yes, it’s definitely firing.”

  A continuous rumble came from the distance.

  “The battery!”

  “Why isn’t it louder?”

  “It’s stopped.”

  “No, there it goes again.”

  “Why can’t we hear it properly?”

  “Who knows? Modern weaponry!”

  “When the old anti-aircraft gun fired, the whole earth trembled.”

  “When was that?”

  “In the old days.”

  “Quiet!”

  The rumble of the cannon drowned out the drone of the engines for a moment, but then the roar of the planes came through again, louder, more threatening. They sounded angry. A hush fell over the shelter. The sound of the gun couldn’t be made out any more. The planes howled savagely. Their shrieks shot into the ground like huge, pitiless stakes. The earth shook. Once. Twice. Three times. As usual.

  “They’re leaving.”

  Our battery, which had in fact never stopped firing, could now be heard again. Then suddenly, in the midst of the sadness caused by the defeat of the battery in its first duel and the thought that nothing had changed, came a wild cry from the street outside:

  “It’s on fire, it’s on fire!”

  For the first time people ran out into the street before the all-clear had sounded. The streets, windows and courtyards were crammed with heads bobbing madly up and down to see, see, see.

  “Look!”

  It was white and in its wake a long and fatal plume spread majestically in the wind. It was falling across the sky, and the plane, with its pilot who would be dead in a few seconds, drifted steadily down and disappeared over the horizon. An explosion ripped the air.

  The sinister grey plume still hung over the city. As people shouted, howled and cursed, the north breeze, now
gathering strength, twisted the smoke in two or three places and finally broke the plume into little pieces. The fragments billowed over the city for a long time.

  The crowds of people filling the streets and squares began to move. A throng raced towards the northern edge of the city, where the plane must have crashed. Those who stayed behind came to their windows or climbed up courtyard walls and onto rooftops to watch the crowd, which had passed Varosh Street and was now streaming into Zalli Street. Moments later, the head of the cortège was lost in the distance. Its tail stretched out endlessly.

  It was dinner time, but no one budged from the windows and walls until shouts were heard, “They’re coming back, they’re coming back!” And so they were. First they were seen at the end of Zalli Street, then they spread out over waste ground, and finally reappeared in Varosh Street. The crowd had become a horde lurching forward drunkenly. Kids ran alongside and up ahead of it bearing the latest news.

  “They’re bringing it, they’re bringing it,” they shrieked.

  “Bringing what?” idlers inquired.

  “The arm. The arm.”

  “What did you say? Speak up.”

  “They’re bringing the arm.”

  “What arm?”

  “Did you hear? They’re bringing something. But what? I didn’t understand.”

  “An arm.”

  “An arm of the plane? Planes have wings, not arms.”

  The windows, balconies, walls, chimneys and roofs swarmed with people leaning out to get a better view. You could already hear the hum of the advancing crowd. It was getting closer. The din blanketed everything.

  At last the horde arrived. It was a truly unbelievable sight. Aqif Kashahu, drenched in sweat, with his eyes bulging and hair over his eyes, was in the lead. He held aloft a cold, wax-like, off-white object.

  In the streets there was pandemonium.

  “It’s a man’s arm!”

  “The pilot’s arm.”

  “The arm of an Englishman. The arm was all that was left.”

  “The hand that dropped the bombs.”

  “The swine.”

  “The poor Englishman.”

  “How horrible! Close your eyes!”

  Aqif Kashahu kept waving the severed arm for all to see.

  The hand stayed open.

  “Look, he has a ring.”

  “Look, he has a ring on his finger.”

  “A ring. You’re right. A ring on his finger.”

  Now and then Aqif Kashahu let out frightful cries. People around him tried to take the arm away from him, but he wouldn’t let go for anything in the world.

  His wife, watching from a window, began wailing and tearing at her hair.

  “Aqif, please, I beg you, throw it away, drop it, it’s the devil’s claw, drop it!”

  Someone fainted.

  “Take the children away!” someone shouted.

  “God save us!”

  “The poor Englishman.”

  The crowd was moving away towards the centre of the city. The pilot’s severed arm, the arm that had struck the city, swayed ghoulishly over people’s heads.

  FRAGMENT OF A CHRONICLE

  ive office. Property. The endless Angoni vs Karllashi case, suspended because of the bombing, resumed yesterday. The first aircraft was shot down over our city. The English pilot’s arm was recovered. Never had the city seen such a macabre sight. The crowd held the severed arm aloft. They had seized the ungraspable, the incarnation of evil, the very hand of the cruel fate that had pounded us mercilessly for days. Detailed reports in the next issue. Linguistic column. The gentlemen destroying our language have gone too far in their audacity this time, replacing the beautiful Albanian words for various devices with foreign terms, such as “submarine” and “aircraft”. Shameful. Those killed in the latest bombing include: L. Tashi, L. Kadare,

  EIGHT

  The siren didn’t go off. The guns of the battery didn’t fire as usual, nor did the old anti-aircraft unit. But the rumbling of engines thundered so loud that it seemed the sky would collapse. People ran for the shelters and waited to find out what was happening. The noise of the planes got louder and louder.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Why aren’t they dropping their bombs?”

  It went on for some time. Who knows how long we would have stayed down there if we hadn’t heard that almost joyful voice at the top of the stairs.

  “Come out, come out and look.”

  We went out. We could hardly believe our eyes. The sky teemed with planes. They looped over the city like storks, then, one after another, peeled away and came in to land at the airfield.

  Taking the stairs four at a time, I ran up the two flights to get a better look. I put the lens over one eye and sat by the window. The view was magnificent. The field below was filling with planes. Their gleaming white wings flashed as they slowly lined up in rows. I had never seen anything so captivating in my whole life. More beautiful than a dream.

  I spent the whole morning watching everything that was happening at the aerodrome: the planes landing, the way they formed up, the patterns they made on the field.

  That afternoon Ilir came over.

  “Isn’t it terrific?” he said. “Now we have our own planes.”

  “It’ll be great!” I said.

  “We’re formidable now, we really are. We’ll bomb other cities just like they’ve been bombing us.”

  “They’d better watch out!”

  “We’re formidable now,” Ilir said again. He had learned the word two days before and liked it a lot.

  “You bet!”

  “And you said we’d be better off with no sky at all,” said Ilir. “Now do you see what we would have lost?”

  “You’re right.”

  We chatted for a long time about the aerodrome and the planes. But our enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by other people’s sullenness. To our surprise most people not only failed to rejoice at the arrival of all the planes, but actually seemed irritated by it. Some of them got even angrier about Italy and the Italians.

  The nights were black. After dinner we would all sit by the windows in the main room staring into the darkness. Sometimes the searchlight from the bank of the Zalli groped towards the city through the shadows, extending its beam like a snail putting out its horns. Then we would crouch down below the windowsills and wait silently for the light to reach and then move beyond the front of our house. But most nights were pitch black and we could see nothing, not even one another.

  On other nights army convoys passed along the north–south road, apparently headed for the front. My father would count the pairs of lights, and I would drift off to sleep as I listened to his tally: 122, 123, 124 . . .

  For the past few days I had been in a mood because they wouldn’t let us play in the street on account of the threat of bombs. Every morning I would sit at the big windows and carefully observe everything happening on the rooftops. But of course not much ever goes on there. The flocks of crows in the sky only made the tedium of the view worse. The variations in the colour of smoke from the chimneys was just about the only thing worth watching, especially on windy days. A real chimney fire was an almost impossible dream in that season, when people were just starting to use their fireplaces again, and few chimneys had built up enough soot to catch fire properly.

  During the day there was very little traffic on the road along the river. Yet the roadway attracted me. I created the missing traffic myself, since if there’s one thing a road needs, it’s coming and going.

  I had heard that the First Crusade had passed this way a thousand years before. Old Xivo Gavo, they said, had related this in his chronicle. The crusaders had marched down the road in an endless stream, brandishing their arms and crosses and ceaselessly asking, “Where is the Holy Sepulchre?” They had pressed on south in search of that tomb without stopping in the city, fading away in the same direction the military convoys were now taking.

  A very long time later a l
one traveller passed along that same road. He was an Englishman, like the pilot whose severed arm had been placed in the city museum a week before. He composed verses and walked with a limp. He had left his country to wander forever without respite. Hobbling along, he ate up roads and highways. He turned to look at our city as he passed, but didn’t stop. He went off in the same direction as the crusaders. They say he was seeking not Christ’s tomb but his own.

  I peopled the road with crusaders and the lone lame traveller, and enlivened it with a lot of events. I had the crusaders turn back and had them cross swords, sent them a messenger announcing that the Holy Sepulchre had been found, and saw them dash off like one man to go and re-open the tomb. The moment they disappeared the lone lame man came by. He hobbled on, ever on, and never stopped.

  I had spent hours tormenting the road, the crusaders and the crippled Englishman.

  But now that was all over. Now I had the airfield, alive and bustling, reaching into the sky and bearing death. I loved it from the very beginning, and felt ashamed that I had ever been sorry the cows were gone.

  Dawn. And there it was, shining like nothing else in the world. It looked as if a thousand Kako Pinos had polished to a sheen. It breathed heavily, like a hundred lions, and the sound of its panting rose to the sky. A patch of fog hung over it as if it were paralysed.

  “Italy is showing its claws,” my younger aunt was telling my father. She glanced at the field with a serious look in her beautiful eyes.

  I could not understand how people could not like something as beautiful as the aerodrome. But I had lately become convinced that in general people were pretty boring. They liked to moan for hours on end about how hard it was to make ends meet, about the money they owed, the price of food, and other similar worries, but the minute some more brilliant or attractive subject came up, they were struck deaf.

  I left to avoid hearing any more abuse of the aerodrome. I was bewitched. By now I knew everything that went on there. I could tell the difference between the heavy bombers and the light, and between the bombers and the fighters. Every morning I counted the planes, and watched the take-offs, flights and landings. I soon figured out that the bombers never went up by themselves, but were always escorted by fighters. I had given names to some planes that stood out from the rest, and I had some favourites. Whenever I saw some bomber take off with its fighter escort and disappear into the depths of the valley to the south, where they said the war was going on, I kept careful track and waited for it to come back. I worried when one of my favourites was late, and was filled with joy when I heard the humming of engines in the valley announcing its return. Some never came back. I would be sorry for a while, but eventually forgot about it.