Ex-convicts, suspicious-looking men from the Highlands of Labëri, and other strangers wandered through the town. Everything was fleeting, unstable. The squares, streets and telegraph poles hoarded their secrets. Doors were manifestly mistrustful. The days were cold and without substance. Only the chimney stacks were fully alive.
It was then that Xhexho reappeared. The knock at the door fell on my head like a hammer blow. I wanted to hide, disappear, but it was impossible. Up the stairs she came, wheezing as always. Fear, gossip and news scurried before her like little black cats. There was no stopping them.
“Well, it’s Xhexho!” Grandmother said.
“Xhexho!” my mother said.
“How are you, Xhexho?” my father asked. “Where have you been all this time?”
Xhexho didn’t answer. As always, it was Grandmother she talked to.
“You see, Selfixhe? You see what God has sent us? I told you, Selfixhe, that black water would spurt from the springs. And sure enough, it did. Black. Have you seen the bomb-craters at Hazmurat? And Meçite? And Upper Palorto? Black water everywhere.”
“What is this black water?” I whispered to my mother.
“Bombs make craters in the ground, and they fill up with dirty water,” she said.
“But these people never learn,” Xhexho went on in her rasping, doom-laden voice. “Did you hear what they did? They stole that Englishman’s arm from that mu . . . mu-. . . how do you say it?”
“Museum,” my father said.
“Stole it, Selfixhe. No more, no less.”
“But who? What for?” my mother asked.
“A good question,” Xhexho whined. “Because they’re possessed, my girl. Because this is the age of the Evil One. Everything is upside down. Heaven dropped that Englishman’s arm down on us. Now you’ll see German hair and Chinese beards raining down on us, and then nails of Jews and Arabs’ noses . . .”
Xhexho went on and on. I stood aside, listening hard and trying to imagine a snowfall of nails, hair, beards and noses. I would ask Grandmother as soon as Xhexho left.
Maksut came by in the street, carrying a head I thought I recognised under his arm. It had been a long time since I’d seen his pretty wife. I would have to wait for spring to see her sitting out on her doorstep again. By this time they must have had a pyramid of severed heads at their house like the ones piled up by Genghis Khan. What was . . . garita doing now, I wondered. (The way she looked, her face, even her name now came to my mind only in part, like a hunk of bread gnawed by rats.)
Xhexho left. At first Qani Kekezi was suspected of stealing the Englishman’s arm, but then suspicion fell on Xivo Gavo the chronicler. Others thought it had been a smuggler from Varosh. The rumour was that he had sold the arm to a monastery on the other side of the mountain.
The city busied itself with petty affairs. That good-for-nothing Lame Kereco Spiri wandered the streets drunk, lamenting the passing of the brothel.
“They closed it, they closed it,” he kept saying, almost sobbing. “My warm little hearth, my feathered nest. They closed it on me! Woe is me! Where will I lay my head these winter nights?”
From time to time Llukan the Jailbird joined in the lament.
“My warm little hearth, my feathered nest,” Llukan would repeat mechanically.
“Get out of here! Have you no shame?” the old ladies shouted at them. “Get out of here!”
“Oh my lost little nest, where have you gone? O sole mio,” Lame Kareco Spiri mumbled in bewilderment as he blew kisses to the old ladies.
“Get out of here, good for nothing! May lightning strike you, may the earth swallow you up!”
“Doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move . . .”
“Doubt that the sun doth move?” repeated Llukan.
“Go to hell, both of you.”
Things had really ground to a halt. People and things seemed to crawl along. Cattle grazed in the aerodrome field. Dino Çiço had suspended his research. His imagination was running dry.
In this somnolent state the city sought to re-establish contact with the outside world once more. To do so it used the old anti-aircraft gun in the citadel.
This old gun, kept in the citadel’s western tower since the days of the monarchy, could be seen from every corner of the city. Its long barrel, seeming slightly tired, pointed permanently at the sky. It was a familiar object as dear to everyone as its neighbour, the old clock, set into the other tower next to it. But with the passing years people had almost forgotten how to make use of that long tube and the handles, gears and winches built into the emplacement. From the time of its dedication (old men could still remember the ceremony organised by the city government, with patriotic speeches, music, bottles of beer and Lamçe the Gypsy who got thoroughly drunk and leapt from the fortress wall to his death in the street) the anti-aircraft gun had never once been fired.
After the bombing started, once people recovered from the initial shock and took cover in the shelters, the memory of the weapon flashed through the back of their minds. They recalled that the long metal tube, the levers and mechanism called “anti-aircraft gun”, were meant for just such occasions. It was a kind of revelation and everyone started asking:
“What about our anti-aircraft gun? Why doesn’t it come on?”
“You’re right, we do have an anti-aircraft gun. Why don’t we ever hear it?”
The initial disillusionment with our anti-aircraft defence was bitter indeed. When people came out of the cellars, they looked towards the western tower, where the silhouette of the weary, unmoved barrel stood out against the sky.
“It’s an outrage.” The expression, which as far as I knew was usually applied to women, and definitely not to weapons, was first uttered in the Addis Ababa Café, and was soon on everybody’s lips.
It was outrageous the old gun hadn’t been heard . . . If it had been a miserable little fire-cracker or some handgun of the kind infantrymen get as basic equipment, then it might be excused for being scared and upset at the sight of enemy aviation, but that long-limbed monster of a gun had been designed for just such eventualities and could not be forgiven for having let us down.
What people obviously held against it more than anything else was the length of its barrel. When I studied the gun with the help of Grandmother’s opera glasses I sometimes imagined I could read its thoughts. You often say of someone accused of a misdeed that he’s retreated into his shell, or that he’s shrunk away. But that poor gun could not hide or cringe, and had to stay sticking out in full sight of all.
Apparently some people took pity on it just as I did, and tried to invent excuses for it. It was rumoured that it was all the fault of the former mayor, the one who’d been in office at the time of the gun’s inauguration. People said he’d sold a key part of the mechanism — the range finder — and spent the proceeds on a wild orgy with a Macedonian whore in the fleshpots of Skopje. So he’d left the unfortunate weapon to cope with hostile skies without a range finder, which was like robbing it of its eyes.
Outrage steadily infiltrated the city. Meanwhile, other folk, of the kind who were utterly intransigent when the city’s honour was at stake (as they had been in the case of Argjir Argjiri) had a change of heart. True, there was something wrong with the gun, they said, but the defect had nothing to do with those stories about thieving and Macedonian whores. It was suffering a routine mechanical malfunction of the sort that could afflict materiel in any army in the world. Anyway, hadn’t officers of both opposing forces been to examine it, and taken a sceptical attitude towards its potential performance (not to mention the more offensive remarks they had made)? They can keep their opinions to themselves! others retorted. Don’t soldiers always bad-mouth their opponents’ equipment to make their own seem superior? Sure, armies have problems, but so do cities. Let others tear themselves to pieces with whatever weapons they want. But the city had to defend itself, by its own means. If all it had to fight with were lances — even if all it had wer
e medieval pikestaffs! — then so be it! Because when all’s said and done, this was a matter of honour . . .
By the end of a day during which the arguments had gone back and forth, the view that the gun should be repaired finally prevailed. A procession consisting of a municipal mechanic, two of the town’s best clockmakers, Xivo Gavo the chronicler, the former artillery man Avdo Babaramo, a priest who had been unfrocked barely two weeks before and who claimed to have been a number in a gun crew in the First World War and to have even shot down a Turkish plane, and Qani Kekezi, whose presence had led Dino Çiço to change his mind and stay at home at the last minute, wound its way up to the citadel and its tower.
The whole city waited, holding its breath. Women were asking from the windows:
“Is it fixed?”
“Not yet.”
“Lord help us.”
Everyone was asking that question, morning, noon and especially towards evening. The defect was apparently serious. That was when the anti-aircraft battery that later shot down the first English plane arrived. Two days later, the old antiaircraft gun was fired for the first time. The joy felt by everyone, especially the children, was indescribable. Unlike the salvos of the battery, the boom of the old anti-aircraft gun was lonely and powerful. There was really something regal about it. But that day it didn’t manage to hit anything. Nor did it make a hit on any subsequent day.
As we sat in the shelter Ilir would say to me, “It’s formidable. Today it will get one for sure.” But it never did. Every day we would come up out of the shelter gripped by sadness. We would stand close to the grown-ups to hear what they were saying. And what we heard was disheartening. They had no faith in it. After every bombing they would repeat resentfully:
“It’s too old to shoot down today’s planes.”
Over the preceding weeks, when the city had repeatedly changed hands, our anti-aircraft gun had missed every shot. During the Italian occupation it had fired at English planes. When the Greeks came its targets were the Italian planes that bombed us four times in succession. Neither of the retreating armies had touched the gun. The evacuations were quick and chaotic, and it was too much trouble for either army to dismantle the gun at the top of the fortress. Or perhaps, in their disarray, they forgot it or pretended to forget it, confident that when they had retaken the city they would find the veteran weapon just as they had left it.
On one of those days when the city had no government an unknown plane was spotted in the sky, coming from a direction from which none had ever come before. Perhaps it was the same bewildered pilot who had flown over last week and dropped leaflets in German that began: “Citizens of Hamburg!”
In recent days the appearance of stray aircraft in the skies over our city had become commonplace. They must have wandered off course after some battle, or were pretending to be off course while flying towards the enemy. Turning from their set itinerary at the earliest opportunity, especially when the weather was bad, they would leave their companions and loop idly in the sky until their flying time was up. They acted pretty much the way we did some mornings when, instead of going to school, we played truant until it was time to go home for lunch.
The unknown aircraft flew slowly, looking weary and bored. It must have been coming out of some battle, even though the direction it came from seemed suspect. Later on, trying to figure out why the bemused pilot had suddenly dropped a bomb on us, people guessed that he must have noticed that he had one left (usually these stray pilots dropped their bombs deep in the woods or up in the mountains) and must have said to himself, as he flew over, “Well, why not just drop it on this city whose name I don’t even know?” And he dropped it.
But this time the city couldn’t stand the blow. During the long days of apathy, the long barrel of the old anti-aircraft gun had let its imagination run wild. Its repressed desire to get mixed up in the affairs of the sky was slumbering within it, ready to awaken. And when unknown planes flew over the city, the temptation to open fire at the intruders was particularly strong.
It was one of those rare days when we had gone out to play. We had gone pretty far, to the foot of the citadel, near the isolated house of Avdo Babaramo, the old gunner. Often, in the shelter or the coffeehouse, old Avdo would tell war stories, and though we had never seen anything but pumpkins and cucumbers in his hands, and certainly never cannon shells, he nevertheless enjoyed the respect of all.
We were playing right in front of Avdo’s house when we heard the noise of an engine. Some passers-by stopped and, shading their eyes, searched the sky for the plane.
“There it is!” someone said.
“Looks like an Italian plane.”
Uncle Avdo and his wife came to the window. Other passers-by had stopped in the street to look.
The plane flew slowly. The lone, loud hum of its engines came in waves. Silence fell over the onlookers. Then suddenly someone turned towards Avdo Babaramo’s window and called, “Uncle Avdo, why don’t you take a shot with our anti-aircraft gun for once? Shoot that pig looping about up there.”
The crowd murmured. As for us kids, our hearts pounded with excitement.
“Yeah, shoot it down, Uncle Avdo!” two or three voices shouted.
“Why provoke the devil?” Uncle Avdo answered from the window. “Leave him alone.”
“Come on, Uncle Avdo!” we all cried, “shoot it down!”
“Shut up, you little devils!” someone said. “Quiet!”
“Why should they be quiet? They’re right.”
“Shoot it down, Avdo. There’s the anti-aircraft gun, sitting right up there. Doing nothing.”
“Why look for trouble?” asked Harilla Lluka from the middle of the crowd. “Better leave him alone. We’ll only make him angry and he’ll bomb us to bits.”
“We’ve had enough of that already, son.”
At first Avdo Babaramo’s face grew dark, but then he brightened up. A thin blue vein stood out on his forehead. He lit a cigarette.
“Shoot it down, Uncle Avdo!” Ilir shouted, almost sobbing.
Suddenly a black object fell away from the belly of the plane, and a few seconds later we heard an explosion.
Then something so wonderful happened that we would have thought it impossible. The angry crowd started shouting, “Shoot the lousy dog down, Avdo!”
Uncle Avdo had walked out to the gate. His eyes flashed. He swallowed repeatedly. His wife followed in alarm. The plane was flying slowly over the city. Somehow Avdo found himself in the midst of the crowd, which pulled him along the steep road leading up to the citadel.
From every side came the cry: “Shoot! Shoot the pig down!”
The path led directly to the tower where the anti-aircraft gun sat. Uncle Avdo, now at the head of the crowd, entered the citadel gates.
“Hurry, Uncle Avdo! Hurry, before it goes!” we kids were shouting.
They didn’t let us into the citadel. We stayed outside, clapping our hands impatiently, for the plane was heading off towards the mountains.
“It’s going, it’s going!” everyone shouted.
But suddenly the plane turned and started coming close again. It really seemed to be flying at random.
Sudden voices rang out from afar: “His glasses! His glasses!”
“Quick, his glasses!”
“Uncle Avdo’s glasses!”
Someone tore down the hill and, a moment later, came charging back up just as fast, carrying Uncle Avdo’s antique spectacles.
“He’s about to shoot!” someone shouted.
“The plane’s coming back!”
“Like a lamb to the slaughter.”
“Shoot, Uncle Avdo. Blow him away!”
The antique anti-aircraft gun fired. Its sound was no more powerful than our screams. Our hearts were bursting with joy. Everyone was shouting now, even the old ladies.
It fired again. We had expected the plane to come crashing down after the first shot, but no. It continued to fly slowly over the city. It was as if the pilot had
dozed off. He was in no hurry.
At the third shot the plane was right over the main square.
“Now he’ll get him!” a raucous voice shouted. “There he is, right under our noses!”
“Shoot the lousy dog down!”
“Get the son of a bitch!”
But the plane wasn’t hit. It flew off north. The gunner fired a few more rounds before the plane was completely out of range.
“Uncle Avdo hasn’t got the hang of it yet,” someone said.
“It’s not his fault. He’s used to the old ones.”
“What, the Turkish guns?” asked Ilir.
“Maybe.”
We sighed. Our throats were parched.
The anti-aircraft gun fired again, but the plane was too far away now. There was a hateful indifference in its flight path.
“The pig’s getting away,” someone burst out.
Tears welled up in Ilir’s eyes. In mine too. When the final shell was fired and the crowd began to disperse, a little girl started sobbing.
The people who had gone up to the tower were coming down now, with Avdo Babaramo in the lead. He was pale. His hands trembled as he mopped his brow with a handkerchief. His haggard gaze wandered, not focusing on anything. Avdo’s old wife made her way through the crowd and came up to him.
“Come, my darling,” she called. “Come and lie down. You must be exhausted. This is not for you. Not with your heart trouble. Come on.”
He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t. His mouth was dry. Only when he had crossed the threshold of his gate did he turn to look back. Setting his jaw in a half-smile, half-grimace, he muttered with great effort:
Chronicle in Stone Page 12
