Sworn Virgin (8 page)

‘Hana, focus now,' the doctor says. ‘There's no more time. I have to
go.'

‘Thanks for everything.'

‘Thank
you
, for the books, and for existing.'

Hana smiles shyly.

‘Sometimes I feel really lonely up there. My friends are here in Tirana, and so … see you around. Will I see you in two weeks when I come back?'

Hana turns around and goes into the hospital. She's not ready for questions like
that.

While they're waiting for Gjergj to recover from the surgery, Hana decides to surprise Aunt Katrina.

‘I want to show you where I live,' she says, one
day.

Gjergj is still wired up to the machines, but he smiles anyway.

‘I'm borrowing her for a while, Uncle Gjergj.'

His woman-wife-friend-lover bends over and kisses him on the forehead. He can't stop her. He's immobilized. She kisses him again on the eyelids, right in front of Hana and a nurse. And then again. And again. Then Katrina and her niece leave the room arm in arm. Hana loves the way her aunt walks. When she was younger she used to try and walk like her but could never get it right. Her stride is vigorous and fast, despite her weak heart.

Hana guides Katrina onto a bus and sits her down. Her colorful outfit rings out like music among the dowdy passengers.

‘How much is the bus ticket here?' her aunt asks her, intimidated and curious at the same time. ‘What language is this?' she asks again, looking at the writing on the walls of the
bus.

‘It's French.'

‘Why do they write on our buses in French?'

‘The government bought them second-hand from France.'

‘They had to go that far to find a
bus?'

Hana sits next to her aunt and leans her head on her shoulder. Katrina kisses her hair. She is quiet for a while and then
asks:

‘Are the French communists?'

‘No, what are you talking about? The French aren't communists.'

‘Not even a little
bit?'

‘Maybe some people are, but the government is
not.'

‘So why did they sell buses to
us?'

Katrina can't get enough of the city. She chats with the girls in the dorm, asking them where in Albania they are from. She looks out over the campus from the fourth-floor window. She pats Hana's bed and looks at herself in the mirror. ‘Your aunt is so beautiful,' a girl from Durrës tells Hana. Katrina is embarrassed. Hana's roommates smile. One of them has brought a big onion
byrek
from home, and they share it out and wash it down with tap water. Katrina thanks everybody profusely and eats with gusto.

When Hana takes Katrina back to the hospital, visiting hours are over, but one of the nurses says she won't look if they slip into Gjergj's ward quietly.

He is sedated and fast asleep. Katrina gives him an adoring look, caresses the back of his dry hand, red and blue from the nurses' attempts to find a vein for the
drip.

‘One day, when you want to get married,' Katrina says to her niece, ‘you'll find a good man like
him.'

‘If this man is so good, he won't want
me.'

‘Of course he will. With your schooling and your intelligence, and your foreign-looking face. It'll be love at first sight.'

‘What do you mean by a foreign-looking face?'

‘One that's beautiful and smooth like yours.'

‘But I'm so short.'

‘You're petite and beautifully built. Your breasts are perfect.'

‘My breasts are tiny, Auntie. You can hardly see them.'

‘You certainly can see them, if you don't walk all hunched up as if you're scared a man's going to look at
you.'

Hana has never heard her talk like
this.

‘Well,' Katrina shrugs. ‘We've never talked about these things, but we're in the city now so it's allowed, isn't it? I look at you, my love, I look at you a lot, but you never liked talking
…'

Katrina strokes Hana's hair. Then she turns around and looks at her husband.

Hana's uncle and aunt leave Tirana on a beautiful spring morning. Gjergj is wearing his usual blue suit and manages to walk without any help. Next to him is the rolling drip stand.

Hana hugs both of them, hiding her eyes. She's already thinking about the distance that is about to separate them. She's happy they're going home. But she's sad too. She can't control her sobs. She's going to have to run back to the Faculty as soon as they're
gone.

The village doctor promises her he'll get them to Rrnajë safe and sound, that he'll keep an eye on them even in his free time. ‘There's not much to do up there, after all.' Hana thanks
him.

‘I'll call you when we get to the village, if you give me your number. You have a telephone in your dorm, right?'

She scribbles the number down for him, but she knows he'll never manage to catch her. Their supervisor is not the kind of guy who goes and looks for a student when there's a call. They say he works for the secret services, and nobody would dream of protesting or making an official complaint against him. Some even say he sends a report to the government every month about what the girls are doing and saying.

‘I'll call you,' the doctor assures
her.

An old, mud-encrusted bus drives past him, as slow and unsteady as a drunk camel.

‘Do you have a boyfriend, Hana? Someone you like?'

From the back window of the bus, a boy sticks his tongue out at Hana and she smiles
back.

‘I have to go,' she
says.

‘Listen
…'

‘I'm not thinking about guys at the moment. I'm in the city. I have my books. That's already a lot for a girl from Rrnajë. You, of all people, should understand that.'

She turns around and leaves. Katrina's gaze brushes the back of her head. Hana can feel it. Gjergj, lying on the stretcher, stares at the roof of the ambulance. The nurse sitting beside him is thinking about the hellish journey she's about to make all the way to Scutari for some old man who's practically dead anyway.

Hana starts running; she doesn't want to take the bus. She's running as fast as she can to keep up with the ambulance, but then it turns down Kinostudio-Kombinat Road. Aunt Katrina is at the window, her fingers splayed, her eyes
wide.

Hana blows her a kiss. The ambulance shifts up a gear and bumps along the road full of potholes.

This is the last time Hana sees Katrina, but she doesn't know that
yet.

Katrina dies in the third week of June. Hana is ironing her blouse when a senior from her dorm comes into her room and hands her a piece of folded paper.

‘It's a telegram. The dorm supervisor gave it to me … You're Hana Doda, right?'

Hana puts the iron down on the floor, takes the plug out, and hangs the blouse on the back of a chair. She'd like to drink something but the faucet is dry. She goes to the open window where the sun is beating down onto the half-drawn curtain. A couple of students are necking. The girl is quite ugly and not very bright, but her father is powerful. He works in the Central Committee of the Party, secretary or head of personnel or something. The girl is wearing foreign clothes, she can cut class whenever she wants, and she can neck in public without being considered loose. The guy is from the boondocks, in the south somewhere. He's really good-looking. Lots of girls are pining after him but he's ambitious and wants to stay in the city when he graduates, so he has chosen the right girl. She's really kissing him now. Hana looks at their hair: hers is shiny and soft because she has foreign shampoo; his is like felt because he uses laundry detergent.

She turns away from the window, sits down, unfolds the telegram.

AUNTIE DEAD STOP HEART ATTACK STOP FUNERAL DAY AFTER TOMORROW STOP

Her last exam is in three days. If she doesn't take it she won't be admitted into her sophomore
year.

She throws a few things into a bag, runs out of the room and down the stairs to the ground floor where there is running water. She puts her mouth under the faucet and drinks at length. She wets her arms and pats water behind her neck. It's three in the afternoon, and no way is there a bus for the north at this time. No train either. She'll have to wait until tomorrow.

She is unable to leave even the next day. The train is broken and can't be fixed, they say. The passengers in the station are furious.

If they want, they can come back the next day, but ‘there are no guarantees,' a fat railroad clerk announces, scratching his belly. His uniform is buttoned wrong, covered in stains, the collar worn thin. A herd of sheep makes its way through the crowd, indifferent to the human suffering around it. The sheep make do with the last of the grass between the railroad sleepers.

Hana is immobile. The crowd slowly disperses. A few older passengers just sit there with pages torn from the official Party newspaper,
The Voice of the People
, folded into hats on their heads.

After an hour or more she decides to walk to the central post office, where there are some public telephones. When she gets there she counts her change. She'll only be able to talk for a minute, or she won't have enough money for the train ticket the next
day.

The secretary of the agricultural cooperative in Rrnajë says that nobody is in the health center. The doctor has gone to the Dodas' because Katrina has
died.

‘This is Hana. Hana Doda.'

‘Ah, sorry. I didn't recognize your voice. I can hardly hear you. I'm sorry.' There are the sounds of others on the
line.

Outside the phone box, there's a man with three children waiting his turn. He must be a baker; he's covered in flour. Two of the kids are gripping his legs, the other is perched on his shoulders.

Hana asks the secretary if she can go and call the doctor. She'll wait at the post office.

‘Ok … They say your aunt didn't suffer, Hana. She was crocheting you a vest and that's how she died. Smiling. She seemed at peace, if that makes sense.'

Hana waits an hour and seven minutes before she is able to talk to the doctor. The heat is stifling. The hall of the post office reeks of feet and armpits.

‘Hana. The doctor here.'

‘I can't get there. It was her heart, wasn't
it?'

‘Her heart, yes. It's already a miracle that she lived so long. The funeral is tomorrow at noon.'

‘I can't get there by then.'

‘We can't do anything about it. It's hot here. The body … I'm sorry, Hana.'

‘You're a doctor. Can't you invent something to keep her body cool?'

‘Doctors don't work miracles, and there are no morgue facilities here. I'm sorry.'

For once her cursed mountains could have stayed
cold.

‘If the train leaves I'll get there tomorrow evening late. If it doesn't, then I don't know.'

Somebody at the other end of the line is grumbling and the doctor shouts, ‘Just a minute, please. It's the Dodas' daughter.'

‘I'll tell Gjergj you called,' he goes on, resuming his normal tone. ‘He's doing well. He's getting his strength back. Now I have to leave the phone free. There's the Comrade Secretary of the Party here and he needs
it.'

The doctor hangs up before she can say ok or thanks or anything. Hana rests her forehead on the graffiti scratched in the wood of the phone box. Somebody has written:
I'VE NEVER MISSED YOU
.

She arrives in Rrnajë when it is almost evening. The house is empty; everybody has already left. The
shilte
are in
‌
a mess on the floor.
⁹
Her uncle is sitting up. Hana bends down and gives him a
hug.

‘It took so long, Uncle Gjergj. Forgive me. Nobody was coming up today. I had to wait two hours in Scutari before a truck going to Bogë came
by.'

‘The doctor sent you the telegram. He's been a great help. You must be hungry.'

‘A little.'

‘The village women have brought food for a week. Go eat something.'

‘Ok.'

But Hana doesn't move. She stays where she is, staring at the
kilim
. They don't say a word. Gjergj starts rolling a cigarette, but then changes his mind and fills his
pipe.

Hana jumps up and starts plumping up the cushions. She opens the narrow window. There's still a trace of sun in the color of the sky, a hint of yellow drowned in
blue.

‘Up here it's too hot for June. What about down in Tirana?'

‘Even the dogs are sweating.'

Hana picks up her bag and drags it upstairs. Her room is in perfect order. Nobody has been in to take a nap during Katrina's vigil. Somebody, though, has laid an unfinished white cotton crocheted vest on the pillow. The crochet hook was threading a red border round the waist when it came to a stop. All that's missing are the buttons and a pocket. It would have been a beautiful vest with a red border. Almost city wear. Her girlfriends in Tirana would have envied
it.

She sits on her bed without touching the vest. Uncle Gjergj is coughing downstairs. She lets him. When the silence wraps itself around the walls she decides to go
down.

They sit curled up on the cushions. Hana has forgotten her hunger. He goes on smoking. She falls asleep.

Gjergj starts wheezing around dawn. He groans and rattles, and asks her to pass him a spray for his throat. The spray smells really strong; it's terrible. He is sweating and trembling. He finds it hard to breathe but doesn't want any
help.