Sworn Virgin (14 page)

Lila can't understand why she is going to such trouble.

‘There's no point,' she says. ‘You don't need perfect English to be a parking attendant or a cleaning lady. All you're trying to do is to become a woman, not a PhD or whatever it's called.'

‘Without language you can't do anything,' Hana answers.

‘Ok, keep on dreaming, just like when you were nineteen. You're wasting time on books, instead of worrying about your appearance.'

They argue, then they make up, then they argue again and sometimes don't call a truce for two days. To the point that, every day, when she gets in from school, Jonida asks them how their daily fight has
gone.

‘It's too late for your dreams, Hana,' Lila sighs with exhaustion. ‘Why don't you listen to me? Years back you should've done what we all did: get married, have children. You would have had a hard time, of course. Every woman has her share of suffering. But you thought you were better than us, and you rebelled and now here you are. It's too late for impossible dreams.'

Hana smiles bitterly, saying so helpful, Lila, really encouraging.

‘I just tell you things as they
are.'

‘But it is not the way things
are.'

‘Ok, you tell me then, come on. You tell me how and what you're going to do in this country, because I've been living here for ten years and yet somehow you seem to know it better than me even though you just got off the boat.'

‘Fine Lila, you're right.'

‘Don't be so condescending!'

‘Ok.'

‘Even though I don't read stacks of paper, I'm not stupid.'

‘It's not paper, Lila, it's my soul. Books are my soul.'

‘Stop talking fancy. I'm beat.'

Hana's arms are crossed over her breasts. She's wearing a pretty white lace bra. Lila shouts and shouts.

‘Be patient,' Hana says to her, later on. ‘As soon as I get a job, I will leave you in peace.'

‘That is such a bitchy thing to say, I can't believe it. It just goes to show you really want to hurt me. That's not what I wanted to say. I don't want to force you to leave.'

‘I know.'

‘So don't say it again.'

‘I am the one that wants to leave,' Hana says, gently. ‘You're nothing to do with it, none of you have anything to do with it. You have been wonderful to me, but I want my independence. If I manage to start living again it will only be from that starting point.'

‘I'm not even listening to
you.'

‘Do as you like.'

‘You are so self-obsessed, it's unbelievable. There, that's what I think of
you.'

‘Fine.'

‘Stop saying “fine,” ok? You are no better than
me!'

Lila gets up, tears her apron off and thrusts her copy of the
Washington Post
, which Hana had been reading before they started arguing, onto the floor.

‘You are totally and utterly self-obsessed, I'll say it again, and I don't care one bit if it hurts you! All of us women back there in the mountains were basically workers and available bodies for our husbands; no one ever asked us our opinion, and we always obeyed. You hid yourself away instead of fighting for your cause. You became a man. Surprise, surprise, you took the easy choice! It's easy to be a man! The real problem out there was being a woman, not being the usual jackass who kills himself with alcohol and tobacco.'

Shtjefën puts his head round the door. Lila's words are lying there, dead, on the floor. Hana feels tears rise up in her throat. Shtjefën covers his eyes with his hands.

‘Lila, baby, you'll wake the neighbors.'

Hana goes to drink a glass of water. Then she turns towards her cousin and stares at her, trying to catch her
eye.

‘And what do you know, Lila?' she retorts quietly. ‘What do you know about what it means to be a man up there in the mountains? So only you women suffered? Is that what you really think? You think you women know everything about everything?'

She is unable to keep back her tears. Big tears.

‘I'm sorry, Lila, I didn't want to ruin your life,' she
adds.

‘You haven't ruined it, how many times do I have to tell you?' Lila protests in vain. ‘I want to see you happy. I want to see you settled. I care about you as much as if you were my Jonida. But you are so strange, you're not one thing or another, and when I see you wasting time with your books my blood pressure shoots
up.'

Shtjefën sighs deeply.

‘Of all places, I had to end up in this hen-house, for Christ's sake?' He laughs, his voice thick with sleep.

Hana is thankful he has woken up, otherwise who knows how things would have ended up with Lila this
time.

Her cousin is full of resentment. It's a sentiment without ill will, but it is tiring her out. Lila wanted to become a nurse but she is a cleaning lady. She wanted to be well off but she is forced to hunt for bargains and work all hours just to break even, and so that Shtjefën doesn't have to work overtime when his seventy-hour week is already weighing on him. Lila pretends to be happy, but she is not a very good actress. The fact that she is now an American is no longer enough for her. The sacrifices she has made are sapping her energy, but she can't bear anyone to point it
out.

‘If you really want to help me,' Hana says finally, ‘let me
go.'

After that day there are no more arguments.

Jonida is already excited about the idea that maybe one day Hana will have a place of her
own.

‘It's so cool! I'll have two homes!' she brags at every opportunity. ‘I'll come over to your place on the weekend, Hana. We'll be crazy together.'

Christmas is coming and Lila wants it to be memorable. The whole clan is going to be getting together.

‘I want it to be a perfect day for all of us,' she keeps saying. ‘You're going to get a facial,' she says to Hana, one day. ‘And that's an order.'

One morning, Lila drags her to the beauty parlor. Hana lets her do it because she can't stand the idea of any more arguments. After her facial her skin is soft and smooth.

‘You're so beautiful,' Lila exclaims as she emerges. ‘All we need to do now is wait for your hair to grow out a little, give it a nice shape, and then we're done.'

They are in front of the beauty parlor.

‘You do know all about sex and stuff, don't you?' Lila asks her out of the
blue.

‘What are you asking me? I think I know.'

‘Back then, when you were in Tirana, did you ever do
it?'

‘No.'

‘You mean you're totally a virgin?'

‘No, just half!' Hana laughs out loud. ‘I know what you have to do in theory, if that's what you mean.'

Lila breathes a sigh of relief.

‘Good,' she says, and then adds, in the tone of a naval officer, ‘but we need to talk about it. I bet there are many things you don't know.'

Hana objects that usually she's pretty good at theory, but Lila silences her by saying that only practice can give you the full picture.

‘In books they write about sex all the time,' Hana says. ‘And I have to say I like the sex scenes quite a
lot.'

Lila thinks about this for a while.

‘Did you know there's such a thing as do-it-yourself sex?' she asks, all in one breath.

Hana knows.

‘You've never tried
it?'

‘No, never,' she lies, a patch of red creeping up her neck, but Lila is turning the ignition and doesn't look at
her.

Her evening walk is longer than usual; she knows she won't be able to get to sleep tonight. The darkness is mild, languid and loaded with exhaust fumes. The traffic is intense, though it is
late.

If she gets the job, she'll soon have a bit of privacy. In her new apartment she'll try again to make love on her own. Not now, not in Lila's house. There's something that holds her back there.

The one and only time she had tried she was still in the mountains, and it hadn't gone too well. She had cried for days afterwards.

After this thought she finds it hard to continue her stroll calmly. At College Plaza, rather than turning left down College Parkway, she turns around and goes back
home.

The man who interviews her for the job is a fifty-year-old from Nicaragua who speaks faltering English, which makes Hana a little more relaxed. He explains that she will have to check the cars as they come into the parking lot and give them a ticket to put on their windscreens. Then, when they go out, she'll have to take the ticket back and get the money. She'll have to keep the cash register in order, and keep track of the daily cash flow. And she'll also have to make sure cars don't park in the spaces reserved for monthly season-pass holders. If they do, she'll have to call the towing company and have them removed.

Hana is sitting rigidly on the edge of her chair and can't seem to find a position in which she would look more natural. The guy from Nicaragua runs three parking lots like this
one.

‘During your working hours, you are in charge of the lot,' the man tells her. ‘The first funny business you try, you're out. Is that clear? It's the first time I've hired a woman as an attendant
–
for obvious reasons I'd prefer a man. But Steven is my cousin's boss at the street maintenance company, and my cousin says he's a great guy, so that's why I'm giving you the job. It's up to you now: if you work as hard as he does, we'll both be happy. That's it, Hana. Call me Paco. My name is Francisco, but everyone calls me Paco.'

Shtjefën is waiting outside. Paco asks her if she speaks any Spanish. Hana shrugs:
no.

‘Pity. If you have problems with English, a bit of Spanish will always save you around here. But your English is more than enough for what you need to do. Today you'll be on trial, and for the first four hours there'll be one of my guys here to teach you everything you need to know. His name is Jack.'

Hana thanks him and goes outside, followed by her new boss. She feels drained. Shtjefën exchanges a few words with Paco, then tells Hana he has to leave her now to go to work. He'll be back to pick her up at around seven, but she shouldn't worry if he's late, it'll just depend on the traffic.

He leaves.

Hana has a kind of good-luck charm in her pocket. It's a stone from Rrnajë with a hole in the middle. She strokes it without taking it out of her pocket.

‘Hana,' Paco calls out to her, ‘Jack's here.'

Jack is black and rough looking, and very kind. Unfortunately he expresses himself in incomprehensible slang. She asks him shyly to speak more slowly because she's new to the country, but he says sadly he can't speak any other way. He asks her what her name is. She says Hana, but when he repeats it the ‘a' turns into an open, nasal ‘e.' Hana explains that she really cares about the way her name is pronounced; she wants him to get it right. He stops chewing his gum for a moment, looks at her with a curious expression, and smiles.

As the day goes by, she begins to appreciate Jack. He tells her a lot about himself, though she only understands half of it. At the end of the four hours he holds out his hand, shakes hers hard, says they will see each other that evening, and leaves.

Hana breathes in the unhealthy air of the parking lot. It has three floors, two of which are underground. She has the sensation of a breeze blowing through her brain. One by one, in her mind she goes over the things Jack has shown
her.

‘I'm sorry for your sake,' Jack had said twice during the final half hour of her training. ‘You'll be on your own here. It's the only thing about this job I don't like. If I can't talk to someone, I go crazy.'

Hana told him that for her it wasn't a problem.

‘You're only saying that because you have no idea what it means not to talk for hours at a time.'

The day of the shooting competition at Rrnajë, Mark Doda had been caressing the stone with the hole in the middle intensely. It was always in the same right-hand pocket. The men had been noisy. Senseless, Mark had thought, all this was senseless, over the top; their senseless words the result of senseless excitement. Lul, the owner of the scruffy café in the village, had suggested starting with the easiest targets, middle-sized stones perched on bigger rocks. The shooting was to be only with Kalashnikovs; every
kulla
had more than one in the house. In Tirana they had broken into the military arsenals. The whole of Albania had gone crazy, shooting wildly in the streets. In two months it would be 1998. Weapons traveled through Montenegro and Kosovo all the way to Serbia, and the ‘cursed mountains' happened to be in their
path.

The café owner had suggested a shooting competition rather than firing like crazy at nothing in particular like those idiots in Tirana. They had chosen a clearing near the village, in a narrow gorge. After each round they had drunk a shot of raki. The first round had been on Lul, but then they all had to pay their way. The targets had grown smaller and smaller.

Mark had been sweating, but had continued to caress his secret amulet. It had gone surprisingly well, considering. He had been eliminated more than halfway through the competition and was amazed he had made it that far. Shkurtàn, from the Gjetaj clan, had won. When it was all over, and silence had enveloped the mountains once more, the air had reeked of gunpowder and
raki.

The men had collapsed on the ground or slumped in broken chairs, soaked in their melancholy, until deep into the night. The day after, the village kids had gathered up the cartridge cases; and the boys in the Gjetaj clan had enjoyed a few weeks of glory thanks to Shkurtàn's skill with an automatic. Then, yet again, there had been the usual emptiness.