‘I wanted to be with you.’
‘I wanted to be with you too,’ she lets slip.
If he were less good-looking it would make things easier for her. And as for his voice …
Forget it, no way. Nothing.
‘So stay,’ Ben says. ‘Stay until tomorrow.’
‘I can’t.’
She gets up and he follows her, after throwing the coins on the table to pay for their order. She doesn’t even try to go through the useless routine of offering to pay. She knows he wouldn’t allow it. She may as well save them both the whole song and dance.
Outside the café, the door closes behind them; the sun hanging like a sword over their heads, Hana holds out her hand and he takes it, tightening his grasp.
‘My world is collapsing,’ she says calmly, almost detached. ‘And I don’t know if I can hold it together. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. I need to go …’
Ben wants to walk her as far as the station, and does not take no for an answer.
They walk fast, heads down, in the vain attempt to shield themselves from the sun. She counts one and a half steps to every step of his. Hardly anyone else is walking outside. There are more bicycles made in China than anything else on Viale Stalin. Ben’s legs are hidden in jeans; anyone who owns a pair of jeans in Tirana is rich and powerful. In front of the Variety Theater he asks her why her pants are white with salt. Hana tells him about her beach trip and how she didn’t have a bathing costume.
‘So you went swimming in your clothes?’
‘I couldn’t go in naked.’
‘I did it once last year, it was cool.’
Hana laughs.
‘When you don’t have a change of clothes it’s not so cool. My skin is stretched tight; there’s no water at the dorm.’
‘There isn’t any at my place either. My mother’s mad because she hasn’t been able to use the washing machine for three days.’
She’s heard from some of her classmates that he lives in Tirana’s Eighth Quarter, a high-end residential area right next to where the Politburo members live.
They’ve reached the Science Faculty. Ben stops. People hauling suitcases and carry-on bags are rushing towards the entrance of the railway station.
‘Can’t you just stay today?’ he begs her. ‘We’ll spend the day together. We’ve never had a chance to spend any time together alone, and we hardly know one another.’
Hana turns to him.
‘I do know you. It’s weird — and funny — but you seem familiar. There’s something about you that somehow, somewhere, maybe in a dream, I’ve already come to know.’
Ben stuffs his hands in his pockets, takes them out, puts them back in again.
‘You’re an emotional roller coaster, you know? It’s really hard to follow you. You confuse me, and make me feel insecure.’
‘I know you,’ she insists, taking no notice.
‘I feel the same, but I can’t just come out with things like that or I’d look like a liar or a jerk. Then you come out with them, you get there first, and you sound so convincing and natural that …’
They look away, trapped by their awkwardness, by the fact that they’re young and have never been free.
‘So stay, Hana. Before it’s too late. Don’t leave. I can’t just lose you like this, for the whole summer.’
‘I can’t. Not today.’
‘Can I come to your village then, maybe next week? Or when you say I can?’
‘Are you crazy? Do you want to ruin me?’
‘Why would it ruin you?’
‘Because I’m from the mountains, Ben.’ Hana has raised her voice. ‘In the mountains men don’t come and visit girls they’re not engaged to. It’s just not done.’
Ben thinks for a minute, visibly disconcerted.
‘We could meet in secret then.’
Hana shakes her head.
‘Things are different up there, the world doesn’t work like you people in Tirana think it should.’
‘I’m not “people in Tirana,”’ he says, growing irritated. ‘I’m Arben Leska, and that’s all.’
‘Don’t get angry.’
‘I’m not angry.’
‘Yes you are, and so am I.’
‘Where have you been hiding?’ he challenges her, knowing it is useless. ‘You vanished without trace when we’d just met.’
‘What was I supposed to say?’ Hana says, without any reproach. ‘Was I supposed to ask a complete stranger for permission to go to my aunt’s funeral? Was I supposed to say, “Wait for me until August, I might come back to school if Uncle Gjergj doesn’t get worse. It’s only a month and a half, can you wait that long?”’
She starts walking again, but he doesn’t follow her. This is terrible, she thinks. You walk, then you stop, then you shout and then you’d like to hug him, and then you play hard to get, and then you lose him. You’ll lose him. There won’t be anything left in your life. He comes up to her. Hana waits.
‘What I meant was that you vanished just when I decided I wanted to get to know you better. It’s not easy to approach you, you know.’
‘Well, now you’ve approached me and I’m not eating you alive.’ Hana tries for a smile. ‘We’ll see each other at the end of August. You can wait until then, right?’
He takes a deep breath before spitting out that maybe at the end of August he’ll be going to Paris. Her smile gets bigger. She hasn’t understood.
‘Maybe I’m going to Paris,’ Ben repeats. ‘I’ve won a scholarship. You heard the dean was compiling a list, right? There were four scholarships for French and I won one of them. They only told us a few days ago.’
She decides to cross the street. Easy does it. Easy. Don’t be a fool. She shifts her bag to the other shoulder. Ben stands in front of her. She looks up.
‘Good for you! I’m happy for you,’ she mutters.
She’s desperate for a way out that’s quick and painless. For example, Ben turning around and leaving without a word. There’s nothing to say. Everything in her life is going away, she says to herself. Everything is running away. Don’t play the victim. Stop complaining. Stop.
‘Have a good time, then.’ She tries to soften the unpleasant tone of her voice. ‘And good luck in Paris … Paris!’
‘That’s why I was in a hurry — and I didn’t know how to find you.’
‘I get it. Now I see.’
‘How can I keep in touch, Hana? Is there anywhere I can call you in Rrnajë?’
‘Sure! I have a phone in every room of my mansion.’
‘Please, I don’t want to lose you. We can keep in touch. I’ll be coming to Albania in the summer, and even in the winter, maybe. We still have this month and a half to be together.’
‘The train won’t wait for me. I can’t miss it.’
She runs. In seven or eight hours she’ll be home, safe and sound. It’s good to leave. There’s something heroic about running away: you lose yourself, you fade away, you turn into a cloud, or maybe a man. You need courage to run away.
On the train she finds a seat with no upholstery and takes her place.
By the time she gets to Rrnajë she’s exhausted. People in the village have brought food to Uncle Gjergj. Enver is bleating for his mistress and won’t let Hana touch him. The sheep is as indifferent to her as ever.
One of these days Hana is going to have to go to the cooperative livestock pens and see how their cow is doing. Her name is Cow; they never gave her a proper name. When she lived at the Dodas’, she was in great shape. Recently, she’s looked terrible.
In their first decades in power, the communists had allowed families to keep one or two animals of their own. Then, with the new agricultural policies, the state had taken them away and things went from bad to worse. Now property is shared, and it is all managed by the agricultural cooperative, which means that, instead of working, the former owners sabotage state property. As soon as Cow started living in the state-owned stalls she stopped recognizing the Dodas, but they used to visit her anyway.