Our house had become a public place, and not a day passed without some incident. Someone sprained an ankle running down the narrow steps too fast, others argued over room, someone else swore at all the others when they wouldn’t let him smoke because it might bother the people who were sick. But most of all they bickered over the best spots. Almost everyone brought along blankets, bedding, and even mattresses, and things got more and more crowded.
“What an age we live in,” Bido Sherifi grumbled. “Having to burrow underground like this!”
“These Italian swine will put us through a lot more before they’re through,” Mane Voco said.
“Not so loud! There may be spies here.”
“And the English! Why do they bomb the city instead of dropping their shells on the Italian barracks or the aerodrome?”
“I told you that damned aerodrome would bring the bombs.”
“Look, would you lower your voice?”
“Leave me alone,” Bido Sherifi replied. “All my life I’ve lowered my voice.”
Besides the usual neighbours, all kinds of other people came. Some I had never seen before, or at least not so close up. Qani Kekezi, squat and ruddy, cast his murky eyes here and there, as if looking for a cat. The women were afraid of him, especially Kako Pino. Lady Majnur, from the rich Kavo family, would go down the cellar stairs holding her nose. Two months earlier I had seen a peasant unloading a mule near the gate of her house. He was so filthy (he and the mule had probably both fallen in the mud) that his face and hands looked as if they were made of earth. From her window Lady Majnur was complaining to a neighbour: “He’s the only one who brings the grain he owes me. The other Christian yokels, pardon my language, have started cheating me.”
As for Xhexho, there was scarcely any sign of her. That happened from time to time. She would suddenly vanish. But no one worried much about these disappearances, any more than anyone was surprised when she reappeared.
Sometimes our cellar received chance visitors, passersby caught by the bombing or people visiting the neighbourhood. That was how the old artilleryman, Avdo Babaramo, arrived one day with his wife. He sat down near some old men who spent hours airing their views on world affairs in endless conversations in which all kinds of names of states, kings and governments came up. They also talked about Albania a lot. I listened curiously, racking my brain trying to understand exactly what was this Albania they were so worried about. Was it everything I saw around me: courtyards, streets, clouds, words, Xhexho’s voice, people’s eyes, boredom, or only a part of all that?
“In Smyrna one time,” the old artilleryman said, “a dervish asked me, ‘Which do you love more, your family or Albania?’ Albania, of course, I told him. A family you can make overnight. You walk out of a coffee house, run into a woman on the corner, take her to a hotel, and boom – wife and children. But you can’t make Albania overnight after a quick drink in a coffee house, can you? No, not in one night and not in a thousand and one nights either.”
“What a way to talk!” his wife said. “You’re getting senile. The older you get, the more you blabber on.”
“Oh shut up! As if you women knew anything about politics.”
“Yes, sir,” another old man added. “Albania is a complicated business all right.”
“Ex-treme-ly complicated. It sure is.”
Usually these conversations were interrupted by the siren, and people rushed downstairs. Grandmother always went down last. The stairs creaked in protest at her footsteps. Hurry, Grandmother, hurry! But she never hurried. She always had some reason for being late. Sometimes she was still on the stairs when the first bombs exploded. When she heard the sound, she would make an impatient gesture as if shooing away a fly, and putting her hands over her ears, she would say, “Go on! Burst away.”
I would watch people heading for the stairs, anxious to see Çeço Kaili and his daughter. But the red-headed Çeço never came. He obviously preferred to brave the bombs at home rather than have people see his daughter’s beard. Old Xivo Gavo, who spent his days and nights writing his chronicle, didn’t come either. The old crones also stayed away. Aqif Kashahu, on the other hand, came with his two sons and his wife and daughter. He was as tall and stout as his daughter was small and frail. She never spoke, just cowered in a corner with a pensive, absent-minded air. Bido Macbeth Sherifi stared at Aqif Kashahu as if he were a ghost. Every time his wife came down into the cellar, she was shaking flour from her hands. And the flour was always red with blood. Aqif Kashahu’s ghost looked at everyone in turn. The cellar was full.
“Another air raid!”
The siren was always soft at first, as if awakening from a dream, but then its wailing got more and more raucous. Between two blasts was a valley of silence. A deep valley. Then the peaks of wailing again. Loud and undulating. Pit of silence. Another bout of wailing. Wailing and more wailing. Like trying to use a blanket to smother a piercing shriek that sought only to tear through it. A wild, savage shriek. The whole world is shrieking. Then the bombs. Very near. Then a sudden thunderbolt, an invisible hand turns the world upside down and blows out the two kerosene lamps. Black darkness. A scream rips the darkness. No one moves. We must be dead.
Silence. Then something moves. A noise. Like a match being struck. We are not dead. The match. The pale flame cuts streaks of light in the dark room. Everyone starts moving. All are alive. They light another lamp. But no. Someone is dead. Aqif Kashahu’s daughter’s thin arms droop lifelessly. Her head too. Her chestnut hair hangs motionless.
At last Aqif Kashahu lets out the scream I had long been expecting. But it’s not a cry of pain. A ferocious shriek. The girl’s head quivers. She turns round slowly, looking dazed. Her dangling arms contract. The boy in whose arms she was entwined during the bombing also stirs.
“Whore!” Aqif Kashahu screams.
His huge hand grabs her by the hair and he drags her towards the stairs. She tries to get up but falls down again. He hauls her to the middle of the cellar, and only at the foot of the stairs does she somehow manage to get up, scrambling on all fours. He still has hold of her hair.
We could hear the whistling of a dive-bomber outside, but Aqif Kashahu did not turn back. Dragging his daughter by the hair, he went out into the street at the height of the thunderous roar. And so they left under the falling bombs.
The boy had moved back into a corner and was looking at everyone like a trapped animal. I didn’t know him. He had light eyes and fair hair. His jaw trembled nervously. Suspiciously, as though expecting someone to jump him any minute, he crossed the cellar through a silence that wasn’t silent and went out.
An uproar broke out as soon as he had gone.
“Who in the world was that boy? Where did he come from? Woe betide us!”
“I’ve never seen him before.”
“God, that’s all we needed!”
“How shameful!”
“So Kashahu’s daughter wasn’t as pure as she made out!”
“Deplorable behaviour!”
“She was all over him, like a tart!”
“Like an Italian slut!”
The women pinched their cheeks in despair, adjusted the scarves on their heads, and clucked in indignation. The men stayed stock still.
“Love,” Javer muttered through clenched teeth.
Isa watched sadly.
The whole cellar seethed.
The incident was the talk of the town for a long time. People were obsessed by those two arms hanging lifelessly around the neck of a boy whom no one seemed to know. The two thin arms of the girl gradually turned into vicious talons that seized people by the throat, choking off their breath, suffocating them.