“Yiorgos Poulos.”
“The scoundrel.”
Gjergj Pula lived in a neighbourhood near ours. The first time the Italians came he had changed his name to Giorgio Pulo.
There was a knock at the door. Bido Sherifi’s wife came in, followed by Nazo’s daughter-in-law.
“We saw Xhexho coming in. Is there any news?”
“Better to be dead and buried than to hear the news there is,” said Xhexho. “Have you heard what they’re saying about Bufe Hasani?”
Grandmother nodded in my direction. I pretended not to be listening. Whenever Bufe Hasani’s name came up, Grandmother was careful not to let me hear.
“He has taken up… with a Greek soldier.”
“What a disgrace!”
“His wife is beside herself. ‘I thought it was all over when the Italians left,’ she wept, ‘when that damned Pepe took off, stinking of hair-cream from twenty paces. But now that filthy husband of mine has got his hooks into one of those spiropoules. A Greek, sisters, a Greek!’”
Nazo’s daughter-in-law’s almond eyes sharpened. Bido Sherifi’s wife pinched her cheeks, leaving traces of flour.
“That Bufe Hasani has his mind made up, and he has the cheek to say so. He says he’s going to pick a lover from every occupying army. A German if the Germans come, a Japanese if the Japanese come.”
“What about Vasiliqia?”
Xhexho snorted.
“They’re keeping her locked up. Who knows what they’re waiting for.”
In the afternoon Ilir came over.
“Isa and Javer have got revolvers,” he told me. “I saw them with my own eyes.”
“Revolvers?”
“Yeah. But don’t tell anyone.”
“What are they going to do with them?”
“They’re going to kill people. I was looking through the keyhole and heard them arguing about who they were going to kill first. They’re making a list. They’re still there in Isa’s room, arguing.”
“Who are they going to bump off?”
“Vasiliqia first, if she comes out. Javer wanted to put Gjergj Pula second, but Isa was against it.”
“That’s odd.”
“Let’s go listen through the keyhole.”
“OK.”
“Where are you going?” my mother asked. “Don’t go too far. You never know, Vasiliqia might come out!”
Isa and Javer had left the door ajar. We went in. They had stopped arguing. Javer was even humming a tune. Apparently they had reached agreement. Isa’s glasses looked bigger than usual. The lenses gleamed. They turned to look at us. They had the death list on them. You could tell from the way they looked.
“Can we go out and play,” Ilir asked, “or will Vasiliqia come out?”
Isa stared at us, not moving. Javer frowned.
“I don’t think they’re letting her out,” he said. “Her time has passed.”
There was a long silence. From the window you could see the road and part of the airfield beyond. The cows were still grazing on it. A vague memory of the big plane came back to me in flashes, as it had already several times. Far above the boring talk of Vasiliqia and the shameful behaviour of Bufe Hasani, its gleaming metal sparkled, so distant that it strained my eyes. That’s a point: where was it now? The image of the dead bird with its wings folded under it now mingled in my mind with Suzana’s frail, almost transparent limbs, and the three of them together – plane, bird and Suzana – mixing a young girl’s flesh, alloy and feathers, swapping life and death, had forged a single and extraordinary being.
“Her time has passed,” Javer repeated. “You can walk the streets without fear.”
We left. The streets were not as empty as Xhexho had said. Çeço Kaili and Aqif Kashahu were tramping over the cobblestones. Çeço Kaili’s red hair looked like a flame fanned by the wind. They were often together these days. Perhaps grief at their daughters’ disgrace had united them. One day Ilir had heard some women say that for a father, having a daughter who had been kissed by a boy was practically the same thing as having a daughter with a beard.
Both men looked glum. Lady Majnur had come to her window with a twig of marjoram in her hand. The houses of the other ladies which stood beside hers had their windows tightly shut. The Karllashi house, with its massive iron door (the hand-shaped iron knocker reminded me of the English pilot’s severed arm), was silent.
“Should we go to the square and see the hole in the statue?” asked Ilir.
“OK.”
“Look, Greeks!”
Soldiers were standing around in front of the boards where cinema posters were usually put up. They all had very dark complexions.
“Do the Greeks belong to the gypsies?” Ilir whispered.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. None of them has a violin or clarinet.”
“Look, that’s where Vasiliqia’s locked up,” Ilir said, pointing at Pasha Kauri’s brown-painted house, where some gendarmes were standing guard.
“Don’t point,” I warned.
“Don’t worry,” Ilir said. “Her time has passed.”
The Addis Ababa Café was closed. The barbershops too. A few more steps and we would cross the square. From afar we could see that the posters at the base of the statue had been torn by the wind. Sss-zzz. I stopped.
“Listen,” I said.
Ilir froze, open-mouthed.
A muffled rumble came from the distance. Someone on the square looked up at the sky. A Greek soldier shaded his eyes with his hand.
“Planes,” Ilir said.
We were in the middle of the square. The rumble grew louder. Suddenly the square seemed to have become much larger. The Greek soldier shouted out loud, then bolted. The sky trembled so much that I thought it would crumble.
Yes, it was him! His noise. His roar.
“Quick!” screamed Ilir, pulling at my sleeve. “Hurry!”
But I was frozen stiff.
“The big plane,” I mumbled in a daze.
“Down!” someone yelled sternly.
The howl was deafening now. It engulfed the sky and smothered the blast of the old anti-aircraft gun, whose shells disappeared into the void.
“Get dow-w-w-n!”
A fragment of a shout reached me from afar, and suddenly I saw, directly overhead, three bombers that had surged up from behind the roofs at dizzying speed. He was one of them. Yes, I would know him anywhere. He was huge, he had his great grey wings all stretched out, he was cruel and blinded by war, and he dropped his bombs: one, two, three… Heaven and earth crashed against each other. A blind force hurled me to the ground. Why was he doing it? What for? My ears ached. Enough! I couldn’t see anything. No ears, no eyes. I must be dead.
When everything was still again I heard a hoarse sob. It was me, crying… I got up. Miraculously, the square was still flat, though just a few moments before it had seemed hopelessly upside down, forever twisted. Ilir was lying face down a few steps away. I went to him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and shook him. He’d grazed the skin on his forehead and hands. I was bleeding too. Wordless, crying our hearts out, we set out quickly but sadly for home. On Market Street we ran into Isa and Javer who were running towards us, very pale. When they saw us, they gave a shout and grabbed us in their arms, then ran home with us at the same frenzied pace.
The Italians came back to the city. In the morning the road was filled with mules, guns and endless columns of soldiers. The Greek flag with its white cross was taken down from the prison tower, giving way to the Italian tricolour with its fascist insignia.
It was soon obvious that this was not just another passing occupation. The siren, the searchlight, the anti-aircraft battery, the nuns and the prostitutes all followed the soldiers in. Only the aerodrome stayed empty. Instead of military aircraft just one strange orange plane came to land there. It was ugly, with a flat nose and short wings, and people called it “Bulldog”. It looked like an orphan all alone there on the tarmac.