‘But it works, right? You were thinking about O’Connor, weren’t you? Come on, tell me the truth.’ Jonida takes a bottle of mineral water from the fridge.
‘No, I wasn’t. I was thinking about your mom being scared to go to nursing school, and about Jack. I swear. I wasn’t thinking about Patrick.’
‘Why? What’s the big deal if you were thinking about him?’
‘There’s no big deal, but there’s not much to think about either. He’s just a journalist who’s interested in the Balkans and who wanted to understand things, that’s all.’
Jonida looks at her. She pauses to think, and a shadow of sadness crosses her face.
‘A friend of mine’s mom died yesterday,’ she says, changing the subject. ‘A heart attack. She’d never had any problems. She was, like, forty. She was really nice. I met her a few times at basketball games. She was a bit like Mom, you know. They’re Italians, from Catania? Giovanni, my friend, he’s going over there now to bury his mom.’
Hana mumbles something like ‘I’m sorry,’ which Jonida doesn’t even hear.
‘Well, I said to Mom and Dad, if there’s one thing you must never do to me, it’s die. Never never never.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘And you too,’ Jonida says, interrupting her. ‘It’s the same for you. Don’t try playing some kind of fucked-up joke on me for at least a hundred years, do you hear me? I want you all here with me.’
‘Jonida, love …’
‘You’re just not allowed, ok?’
She gets up, turns her back to Hana and starts washing the dishes.
Patrick O’Connor gets in touch in the first week of June. He gets right to the point and asks whether she’d like to meet him somewhere.
‘I waited for you to call, as we agreed, but since you didn’t, I decided to go against my word,’ he says.
Hana is frying qofte and the pan is sizzling happily. The call makes her so nervous she turns the hot plate off and starts striding back and forth. She yearns for a cigarette; there’s a pack she has kept hidden away — who knows why — in the bureau drawer. She lights one and takes a deep drag, feeling immediately giddy.
‘Hana, are you still there?’ Patrick says.
‘You decided to waste your time on me?’ Hana asks ironically, looking at herself in the mirror.
‘So, when shall we meet?’
Hana opens her mouth wide in mute celebration, then she clears her voice.
‘I’d prefer not to go to a restaurant this time,’ she says, choosing her words carefully. ‘You end up paying the bill and I can’t even play the role of saying we can split it. It wouldn’t be honest, because my finances are very—’
‘I can add up,’ O’Connor interrupts. ‘I’ve lived in the US all my life. So, what do you suggest?’
‘I don’t want to come over to your place either.’
She moves out of the corridor to avoid the reflection of the mirror, which is making her nervous.
‘It looks like there’s nowhere in the world where we can meet and have a chat,’ he jokes.
‘If it’s no big deal for you, why don’t you come over to my place?’ Hana says, surprising herself and immediately regretting her words.
O’Connor says he doesn’t want to make things difficult for her. He’d like to see her but if every time it turns into a drama …
‘So, would you come round here tonight?’ She feels protected in her little apartment. ‘I’ve made enough food for an army. I don’t know why, I got the amounts wrong. Are you used to weird food?’
Whatever questions O’Connor decides to ask her, in her home she feels she can answer them.
Hana takes a shower and tries not to wet her hair. The day before, she went to the hairdresser and had her hair shaped around her small, well-formed ears. She puts on a push-up bra. She dresses in white, pants and a linen shirt. She looks good and she knows it.
Whatever happens that evening, as long as it doesn’t turn into a vale of tears, she’ll be ok, she thinks, as she prepares herself.
O’Connor is wearing a musky, powerful aftershave that lowers her defenses right away. He hands her a beautiful bunch of flowers and kisses her lightly on the cheeks. Hana has the impression that something is moving too fast, but he’s just friendly, thoughtful, and a little cautious. He takes a seat, smiling at her. There’s a long embarrassing pause. Then he confesses that he has read a lot about Albania in the past few weeks. He has read everything he could get his hands on. He even found the Kanun.
Hana doesn’t know what to do about the dinner that is ready. Patrick shrugs his shoulders.
‘I won’t ask any questions if you don’t want me to.’
Why is he sitting there? Why him?
‘Why are you here, Patrick?’ she asks suddenly, looking at the floor. ‘It’s all so unbalanced, the way I met you, my constant state of tension … ’ She stops as suddenly as she started and doesn’t know how to continue.
For a while now she’s been unable to balance her thoughts out, and that makes her angry. It’s weird but when she was Mark she was better with words. Mark weighed them out inside himself, observed and honed them, stroked them, at times erased them from his mind. As a man, silence was his ally. In silence there was hope; in conversations there often wasn’t. Sound played for the enemy side. Once feelings were expressed, they lost their beauty, lost their color, and became diaphanous. The idea of beauty seems beyond her grasp now. Mark, Hana thinks, is the one who’s kept his hold on beauty. In her haste to become the woman ‘Hana,’ she is losing something she can’t quite put her finger on. Patrick’s patience is also running out, she realizes.
‘So, Hana?’ he urges her on. ‘Explain yourself better: what do you mean by what you were saying?’
She takes courage and looks up. She asks him brusquely why he wants to get to know her better.
‘That sounds like an accusation,’ he observes.
‘Yes, I’m a bit defensive.’
‘You’re not very trusting.’
‘Sorry.’
Patrick changes tack.
‘I’m hungry, Hana. Did you forget you’d invited me to dinner? I didn’t ask you to. Maybe if you give me some dinner, I’ll feel better and then you can mistreat me as much as you like.’
She laughs. First point to him. She explains what she’s about to bring to the table and Patrick says he’d eat a piece of rock served on a salad leaf. He has had a bad day and skipped lunch. The tension eases slowly. Hana serves her dishes on cream-colored plates. The tablecloth is green linen and looks good with the crockery.
She asked the guy in the liquor store to advise her about wines. He suggested a Californian Cabernet. She knows nothing about wine.
After a toast they eat in silence. Her guest wolfs down the qofte and vegetables, while Hana sips her wine. It’s just so nice to have him there, sitting opposite her. She now feels strangely calm, and her movements become more harmonious and less spasmodic.
‘I hardly dare say it’s delicious because you’ll surely say I’m only being polite,’ Patrick teases. ‘Can I have some more?’
He knows what he’s doing, she thinks, serving him seconds. She feels her head spin. She closes her eyes. She’s trying her utmost to keep her self-control, but she’s not doing very well, so she may as well let go altogether. She drinks her wine in great gulps. She pushes her plate away and listens to O’Connor talk about his last two weeks, and the tragedy of his friend who was just diagnosed with cancer. She runs her hands through her hair, and goes on drinking. Patrick notices. He looks at the bottle and then at Hana’s glass. He has drunk very little.
‘I want you to stay,’ she begs him. ‘Just for tonight. For now,’ she corrects herself. ‘If you don’t have the guts to deal with your shyness, you make a fool of yourself by drinking. And I’ve drunk quite a lot.’