Mimoza AHMETI
PROSE
THE SECRET OF MY YOUTH
She had a rather curious name. They
called her Eyes. I don’t know whether she was given the
name at birth, the time at which our parents give us names without
taking our wishes into consideration, or whether she acquired
it as a result of her big eyes. Whatever the case may be, it
is true that those eyes of hers had a sense of perception much
keener than what normal people could possibly imagine.
I had avoided those eyes for a long time.
I could not help feeling a shudder down my spine when I heard
someone whisper that her eyes sometimes underwent a perilous
disfigurement. Quite normal people, for instance, had complained
that they had seen themselves reflected in her eyes as a drop
of water. Other people - serious, respectable and admired individuals
- had found themselves not reflected, but grotesquely mutilated
in her eyes.
No, I certainly did not want to see myself
transformed into a monster in the eyes of a girl.
I had taken a decision. Whatever should
happen, I was resolved not to let myself be captured by her eyes.
But... I had taken this decision before ever being seen by them.
And indeed, I was seen by them. Every time I try to avoid
something, it homes in on me. Now there is nothing I desire more
than to be captured by those two eyes, and this time totally.
I am presently convinced that everything
beautiful on earth is an exception, an ‘anomaly’ of
sorts, towards which everything normal or average is attracted,
in contradiction to its nature. Yes, and those all-possessing
eyes could do nothing in the essence of their activity other
than to constitute an ‘anomaly.’ They offered a precise
reflection. Yes, I realize there is a dose of illusion in most
human reflections. It is perhaps for this reason that knowledge
as a process is so long and infinite whereas human existence
is so short and ephemeral. Because the reflection in her eyes
was so precise, many people were confused by them.
They were the most marvellous eyes I
have ever seen in my whole life, the meeting of physical beauty
and functional perfection. When I praised her eyes, that is,
when I told her I loved her, she replied simply, "My eyes
were not always like that. Experience has made them the way they
are." She had never spoken to me of the particular quality
of her glance. Perhaps she regarded it as a matter of course.
And for her, it was one. But not for me.
I did not understand that when she observed
something - a city, a flower or a face for example - a certain
space in her eyes remained empty. The objects she observed did
not always fill her gaze. It could very well happen that any
object, however big it might seem, would leave a void. This unoccupied
space in her eyes she often filled with blue sky or with dreams
of the future. Such was her life.
I did not realize either that I was one
of the rare human beings (though I doubt very much that I was
alone in this capacity) to fill almost all the space in her eyes
with my reflection. Almost. But almost is not the same as completely.
There was a bit of space left over, a tiny bit of space, indeed
so tiny that, had she wanted to, she could have filled that little
corner with the reflection of a tree or a bird in the spring.
But then, total bliss would have been beyond reach. It is only
when her eyes were filled to the full with the person reflected
in them, only when no space was left over in them that bliss
could be attained. It was a strange game played between her eyes
and her brain. Only now am I beginning to understand why she
gazed so long at the sky. It filled her eyes to the full. She
loved it.
I allowed my happiness to be jeopardized,
the happiness of the two of us. I was incomplete. There was something
missing in me, something that created a void, a tiny unfilled
hole in the corner of her eye, but it was room enough for a reflection,
and by no means the most unusual of reflections: the boon of
happiness.
I could not understand, and I thought
a lot about it later, why a girl with big, bright eyes should
have made such a sacrifice. Perhaps it came about since, though
I was incomplete, I was the most complete of all the incomplete
persons she had known up to then. I was almost ‘the one’
destined for her eyes. I was not completely ‘the one’,
but almost. Do you understand now? Is it not terrible? It was
simply a question of a little tiny something missing, but something
which jeopardized everything.
And so she sacrificed herself. I did
not realize that she was constantly reducing the size of her
eyes solely to rid herself of that little hole which was always
left over beside my refection. If only she had told me, if only
she had mentioned the problem, I would have done battle with
myself and, why not, done battle with the others to grow in her
eyes, or at least to become sufficient. What a shame! I was insufficient,
and I did not even know it!
I did not realize that she was reducing
the size of her eyes for my sake. I noticed nothing to begin
with. Perhaps she had not started reducing their size at the
start since she was waiting for me to grow, to become ‘big.’
It was later, when she had given up all hope of my growing, that
I spotted the wrinkle in the corner of her eye, a fold in the
muscle under the skin which disturbed me somehow.
The days passed. Her eyes became more
and more disturbing for me, not in their beauty, but in the way
she used them. They had withered, had decreased in size. And
all the time, my love had withered and decreased in size. They
were not the same two eyes I had caught a glance of at the start
- eyes which people, both young and old, would gossip about at
length. For me they had fallen into a morass of normality. Even
worse. They had become devoid of all beauty. Deceptive eyes.
That is the impression they made on me.
Anger began to take form within my breast.
It looked as if she were making fun of me. And anyway, what significance
could my love possibly have without her eyes? My words of reproach
turned into insult. I could not understand why she put up with
me. Her patience made me believe that I was right. I did not
realize, as I now do, how rare, how extremely rare people were
who could fill her eyes. I had attributed this rarity to my virtue.
How ridiculous! She seemed to realize this and therefore put
up with me. I was not ‘the one’, but I was ‘almost
the one’... So she put up with me.
The more I reproached her, the more patience
she showed, the more her eyes withered and wrinkled, and the
more their glance grew faint. Finally one evening I seized her
by the shoulders and shook her in rage:
"You’re lying, you’re
lying," I cried out. "You have ugly eyes, the ugliest
eyes I have ever seen. Leave me alone! I’ve had enough!"
She was stupefied. As I shouted, her
eyes slowly opened. To my surprise, they grew big and bright,
penetrating and pure, just as they had been when I saw them for
the first time, when... they were still free of me. I don’t
know why, but I was now speechless, with something stuck in my
throat like a bone.
She gave no reply. She departed with
eyes revived as I stood there benumbed from what I had done.
No, not from what I had done. In reality, I was overwhelmed by
the metamorphosis in her eyes. For one moment, a flash of lightning
had illuminated the dark clouds of my doubts, a flash which proved
lethal to my hardly profound conviction that I had been the cause
of the withering and shrinking of her eyes, the most beautiful
eyes on earth.
I called her name several times over.
You will never believe how hard it was for me to call her by
her name:
"Hey, Eyes! Come back, Eyes!"
But it was in vain. She did not return.
Having turned her eyes away from me, I regained the place that
I deserved in them. Soon thereafter my happiness dissipated.
I had been almost complete, but not complete. I was insufficient.
The game played between her eyes and her brain was now interrupted.
She had no intention of returning. There
was to be no more bliss. Perhaps there never had been. She had
created it with hard work by wearing out, indeed by damaging
her eyes. Bliss is the only thing that we have still not learned
to appreciate when it is bestowed upon us. A weakness? Perhaps.
But because of it, I still feel human in my suffering. I suffer
to become sufficient, to become perhaps something more.
Some people say that bliss is impossible,
unreal. But I got very close and I know what it is, even though
I did not succeed in mastering it. I believe that I can do it
though. I want to take possession of bliss! Let them laugh at
me all they want (laughing at someone else is often nothing more
than a painful reflection of our own impotence). I want to attain
the impossible. I want to be complete. I want to fill those eyes
to the full. To attain total bliss.
This is the secret of my youth. One more
reason for living.
[E fshehta e rinisë sime,
from the journal Nëntori, Tirana, 1990, 2, p. 86-89,
translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published
in English in Description of a struggle. The Picador book
of contemporary East European prose. Michael March, ed. London:
Picador 1994, p. 262-266.] |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Modern
Authors from Albania (late 20th - 21st centuries)
