Ylljet ALIÇKA
PROSE
ADONIS
My father passed away in July, of
perfectly natural causes. At his age - he was over eighty - any
little thing is enough to kill you. In my father's case it was
the heat wave that year, which did away with quite a number of
people younger than he was.
Because it was so hot, the people who
had come around to pay their respects advised me not with good
reason not to leave my dead father in the house overnight up
until the funeral the next day. "Put him somewhere freezing
cold because otherwise..." my distant cousin left the rest
of her suggestion open. In fact, this very logical advice came
as a surprise to me.
"Where am I supposed to put him?"
I asked.
"What do you mean, where?"
she replied."You put him where the dead are supposed to
be put - in the morgue."
"But," interrupted my stepmother,
who had lived with my father for the last thirty years of his
life, "how is the boy going to get into the... what do you
call it... the morgue? I mean, how is he going to take the body?
We have no idea about the regulations and don't know anyone there
at all!"
The discussion did not last long because
a doctor, who had arrived to pay his respects, recommended that
I contact Adonis, the keeper at the morgue.
"It is only a question of one night,"
advised the doctor, "and it might be a good idea to give
him a little something."
"Sure," I replied, relieved.
That evening, we lifted the coffin into
a car which my employer had put at our disposal, and I drove
off alone.
The morgue was a one-storey building
separated from the hospital. It had cream-coloured walls and
was patchy-looking from the fallen plaster. It was surrounded
on all sides by weeds, most of which had withered in the heat.
The windows were fortified with rusty iron bars. The only thing
which added a hint of life to this dreary picture was Adonis.
Adonis was slouching around the grounds,
smoking a cigarette. His stubby fingers were stained from tobacco
or from the solution used to disinfect the corpses. I was surprised
at the extent to which he resembled the rigours of his profession.
His unkempt hair rose vertically and
his eyes were deeply entrenched in their sockets. He was thickset,
had bushy eyebrows, and his white shirt was covered in yellowish
stains. His jacket hung loosely from his shoulders and his trousers
were mis-buttoned.
I introduced myself and explained my
problem to him. He sighed and replied:
"I have great respect for the doctor,
but it is rather difficult to find room at the moment. Who is
the deceased?" he continued, in a low, respectful voice.
"My father."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that,"
he went on in an official tone, "but, as I said, it is a
real problem. We have been getting a lot of bodies over the last
few days, not only from the hospital, but also from poor people
like yourself."
I remembered what the doctor had told
me and took out a five-thousand-lek banknote. The gesture did
not go unnoticed, and Adonis hastened to add:
"But we can give it a try. We'll
find some solution."
"Thanks," I replied.
Adonis was right. It was very difficult
to find a free space. He opened the freezer and began shuffling
the bodies around. This he did in a quiet, reverent, almost ritual
manner and noted earnestly:
"I am not the type of person who
likes to take money for nothing. I don't just pretend to freeze
the bodies and then have them melt on you like ice before you
get home. I am accustomed to doing my work properly. What I mean
is, I freeze the bodies to perfection."
To prove his point, he again opened the
freezer door and pulled out a wooden tray on which was lying
the corpse of a young girl whose face was pale either from death
or from being frozen.
Adonis grabbed the body by the shoulder
and, suddenly, as if he were checking the ripeness of a watermelon,
gave it a whack on the forehead with his hammer. There was a
strange metallic vibration.
I was stunned. Adonis invited me to give
her a whack, too.
"Go ahead, she won't bite you."
No thanks, it's alright. It's obvious
she's frozen. But, tell me, how did she die?"
"The girl? I'm not too sure. She
probably committed suicide."
"Why?"
"How should I know?" he answered
coolly and switched to his favourite subject:
"The best thing is to clarify things
from the beginning so that there are no problems. Your father
is going to be as well frozen as this girl by tomorrow morning."
"I am quite convinced of that,"
I stated, hoping that the discussion could be brought to a swift
conclusion.
"Bring your father on in,"
said Adonis in a resolute manner, once he had made room.
"Here's a spot for him," he
added, pointing to a rusty freezer. It was not clear whether
it had been cream-coloured from the start or had paled with age.
It contained three shelves.
"There's an old-age pensioner here
that they brought in a week ago, who they still haven't picked
up, and there's woman they brought in this morning."
"That's alright," I said, and
we loaded my father into the freezer. As I was closing the door,
my eyes fell upon my father's hand. As a child, I used to stare
at his hands when I was trying to get money out of him. He never
refused me. He suffered his whole life long for having left me
without a mother.
Touched by Adonis's kindness, I took
another five-thousand-lek note out of my pocket and passed it
to him without saying a word.
Lurching towards me with the expression
of someone about to make an historic decision, he grinned and
said: "You know what, lad? I'm really touched. Look, we
are going to store your father in a special freezer. It's actually
full, but we'll find a solution. What do you say?"
"I'm not sure. You know better than
I do."
"One thing is certain," he
added, "you freeze to the bone once you're in there. Your
relatives wouldn't even recognize you."
I thanked him, although I was not too
happy about his detailed explanation.
He shuffled over and opened the special
freezer. It had four shelves, all of which were occupied.
"I'll remove the one on the bottom.
He's frozen solid. Not even a furnace could melt him," muttered
Adonis, speaking more to himself than to me. I'll then stick
this other fellow on the bottom tray and..." He stored the
second one on the bottom shelf and, having taken a deep breath,
looked at me and said, "Or do you think I should move the
agronomist they brought in yesterday and put him on the upper
shelf so that it'll be easier to get him out tomorrow? Let's
see. Alright. Give me a hand, will you, and we'll shift the old-age
pensioner. He's been here for a whole week and no one's given
a thought to picking him up."
Within five minutes there were four bodies
on the floor, spread out stiffly in different directions. Adonis
lost his train of thought for a moment and turned to me:
"Where'll we put this one?"
He was referring to the old-age pensioner.
"I really don't know," I hesitated,
with a hint of guilt in my voice.
"Alright, alright" he said.
"I'll put him in with someone else. It's better to get 'em
into the other fridge rather than leave 'em out here."
And so it was done. We snagged the pensioner
and heaved him onto another body in another freezer which, it
seemed, was not functioning particularly well.
"Listen," he then suggested
resolutely, "I think it'd be a good idea to put your father
on the bottom shelf because you are going to be back tomorrow
morning, whereas they're going to come and pick up the agronomist
in the afternoon."
"Fine," I agreed.
Thus, we were forced to lug the agronomist
around again, me grasping his head and Adonis his feet. But the
head was frozen so firmly that the moment we had raised him above
us to slide him onto the upper shelf, he slipped out of my hands
and, as a result, out of Adonis's, too, despite the latter's
skilful attempts to hold onto him. The body of the agronomist
crashed to the cement floor, causing a terrible thudding din.
He was now lying face down, and one of his arms was out of joint.
"Sorry," I gasped ruefully.
"Why've you gone so pale?"
he inquired calmly. "It's nothing serious. Don't worry about
it. If you knew how many times this has happened to me! And you
know why? It's because I really freeze them properly."
"What about the arm?" I ventured.
"Which arm do you mean? I'll get
it back into place in a minute. No one'll know about the fracture."
Adonis set to work. It was not an easy task. At one point, he
had to stand with one foot on the fellow's chest in order to
wrench the arm back into place. I could hear the agronomist's
bones creaking and cracking as Adonis huffed and puffed.
"Can I help?" I asked.
"No, no, just stomp on it for a
moment, will you, so that it doesn't slide away. It's no problem.
Such things happen," he continued. "And do you know
why?"
"Because they are frozen solid,"
I replied.
"Bravo, that's it," he affirmed,
breathing heavily.
"I think we're finished," he
added.
To raise the agronomist this time, he
seized the head himself.
I was shaken to see that the corpse's
nose was misshapen. Adonis noticed my shock and asked impatiently:
"What's wrong now?"
"Look at the nose," I stammered.
"So what's wrong with the nose?
Maybe it was like that from the start. There are lots of people
with crooked noses," he declared, "but, I must admit
I don't remember the agronomist's being quite that out of keel."
We finally hefted the agronomist carefully
onto the right tray.
I felt completely empty.
I went over to my father's body. Out
of the corner of my eye, I saw Adonis fiddling with the agronomist's
face. As soon as he noticed that I was watching him, he smiled
reassuringly at the corpse as if to say "Everything will
be alright now," and then leaned towards me, saying:
"I think we're done."
I had the vague impression that in his
mind he was straightening out my nose, too.
After much struggle, we hoisted my father
onto the second shelf of the 'special freezer.' As the door was
closing, I had a final look at his face. I was leaving him all
alone in that cold, dark chamber, in the company of persons unknown.
While I was pondering on the eternity
of our separation, Adonis, holding the door ajar, gave me an
inquiring look and asked an unusual question:
"Who did your father?"
"Who what? I don't understand the
question."
"Your father, who did him?"
he repeated, trying to make himself clear.
I was confused, and replied:
"My grandmother. She gave birth
to him."
"I don't mean who gave birth to
him. I mean, who made up the body?"
I finally grasped what he was getting
at and recalled how young girls were made up with cosmetics as
brides when they got married.
"Oh," I replied tentatively,
" probably the women... I don't know."
He stared at me gloomily for a moment
and added in a brusque tone:
"Because they didn't do a very good
job. In fact, I don't think he's even been made up. Of course,
it's your decision. I'm not forcing you. It's your father after
all, but to show him proper respect and not to do him up... but
it's your choice..."
I now realized what he was driving at
and handed him another five thousand leks.
"It would be kind of you if you
could do it."
"As you wish," he said, pacified.
"You go and get yourself a cup of coffee and I'll finish
the job. Come around afterwards and give me a drive home, will
you?"
I returned an hour later. He had finished
with my father and had put him back into the freezer.
Adonis lived on the outskirts of town
in an apartment on the second floor of a grimy, dust-covered
tenement building. He insisted that I drive him right up to the
entrance and he did not get out right away. Having made certain
that the whole neighbourhood had noticed his arrival, he emerged
from the car with great commotion and shouted, "Come around
and pick me up at tomorrow at seven. Right here!" Then he
lumbered up the stairs under the respectful and no doubt jealous
eyes of the neighbours.
I drove back home utterly exhausted and
did not sleep well either. Every time I woke up, I thought about
my father lying in that freezer, slowly turning to ice.
The next morning I went to pick up Adonis.
I had to honk several times before he appeared at the window
in his underwear. After surveying the entire street, he hollered:
"Oh, you're already here! I'll be down in five minutes,
as soon as I've finished breakfast."
He slumped into the car with a "how
are you doing?" and spoke not a word all the way to the
morgue. When we arrived, Adonis glanced around the yard, and
I had the impression that he was on the lookout for bodies.
Of a passerby he inquired:
"Have you come to see me?"
"You? Who are you?" asked the
man.
"I work here at the morgue,"
replied Adonis.
"No. I have nothing to do with you.
I am here to repair the walls."
"Oh, sorry," retorted Adonis,
turning to me. "Let's go and get your father."
He yanked open the freezer door in a
casual manner. My father was inside, completely frozen.
Adonis broke my silence, saying matter-of-factly:
"Well, what do you think?"
"What can I say?" I asked,
dazed.
"Go ahead, touch him."
I did so. The body was terribly cold.
It had lost all its human warmth once and forever. Adonis waited
for my reaction.
"It is very well frozen, I must
say," I mumbled and requested that he help me carry the
body out to the car. At that moment, however, another corpse
arrived, so I had to ask the mason to assist me. I thanked Adonis
once again as we were departing, with my father's coffin on our
shoulders.
He gave me a cursory wave, as if to say,
"come around anytime!" and went on explaining the merits
of his character to the relatives of the newly-arrived deceased,
stressing that he never took money without doing a proper job,
and would never cheat anyone. As he spoke, Adonis led them over
to the freezer which contained the body of the young girl, ready
to confer the same demonstrative whack he had given her frozen
face the previous day.
[Adonis, from the volume Tregime,
Tirana 1997, p. 99-106. Translated from the Albanian by Robert
Elsie]
THE COUPLE
Whenever an old couple from the countryside,
dressed in their finest clothes and smelling of mothballs, is
invited to attend a wedding in the capital city, it is because
the organizers of the wedding are obliged to do so for custom's
sake. In this particular case, the old couple in question fully
merited the invitation because they were the only surviving paternal
relatives of the bride.
The wife was delighted at the invitation
and said so openly, although it was not her direct relatives
who were getting married. Her husband, the head of the household,
reacted solemnly:
"Get my good clothes out, will you?"
It was more than evident from his reply that he wanted to attend
alone. His wife contradicted his plan immediately:
"If you are worried about the costs,
I have enough money for the journey into town. And what would
you do in the big city all by yourself anyway?"
"What concern is that of yours?"
he retorted. "The wedding is going to take place in a restaurant
and there will be no need for your help. In fact, it is not really
customary..."
"What do you mean by 'not customary'?"
she countered angrily. "They don't invite women there just
to help in the kitchen, as they do in the countryside. In fact,
it is not customary for a man to attend without his wife. In
the city, they all go as couples. Didn't you know that?"
He was a taciturn and rather stoic individual.
"No, I didn't." he muttered,
and asked for the key to the chest where they kept their money.
Knowing him well, she began sobbing and
wiping her tears with a white kerchief conveniently at hand.
They had both been born in the same village
and had got married there. Their only son had since departed
and they had been living by themselves for some time. The couple
were liked by the rest of the village. They were a hard-working
pair and got along with one another, most of the time without
saying a word. In fact, they rarely spoke - only the essentials.
The wife satisfied her female passion
for gossip with the other women of the village, with whom she
worked in a brigade.
The husband was wont to return home after
work, light himself a cigarette, have a glass of wine with some
cheese, and ponder on the order of things in this world.
"I am going to pass away and will
never have been to the capital," she lamented. This charged
statement caused him to stare at her for a moment. Then he said:
"Alright, come along, if you must." She jumped for
joy and hastened to get her finest dress out of the closet.
At the village store they asked for the
"best and most expensive present for a wedding in the city,"
which turned out to be a vase of artificial flowers that looked
almost real. The present was duly enveloped in transparent wrapping
paper with little blossoms on it, which rustled as they carefully
carried it home.
With all the preparations and excitement,
it was late before they got to sleep on the night preceding their
departure.
The next day, a Saturday morning, they
set off before dawn, and had hardly slept a wink.
They journeyed into town on the back
of a pick-up truck. The wind had dishevelled their hair and they
were soon covered in a thin layer of dust. From time to time,
they endeavoured to shake it off, but the journey was long and
the road was extremely dusty from start to finish. The old fellow
stood in front of his wife, protecting her, his face turned to
the wind, as if he were looking out at the distance. Once and
a while, he wiped the dust out of his eyes. She huddled against
him, screened from the wind.
When they got into town, their faces
were pale and their fine garments were filthy. The wrapping paper
had been torn to shreds.
The first thing they did when they got
off the truck was to clean themselves up. She took out a kerchief
and spit into it to wipe off her husband's suit. This she did
with swift and dexterous movements, as he stood there, looking
away from her.
He had turned his eyes to the distant
mountains.
"Aren't you finished yet? That's
enough, woman," he muttered.
"Wait a moment. No one is watching,
and we've got the whole day on our hands." she replied,
continuing her work with devotion. "Just look at your shoes.
Go and get them brushed off at the shoe shiner's over there."
He agreed and sat down at the stall of a nearby shoe shiner,
while she wiped her face in the window of a kiosk.
The couple arrived at the bride's home
four hours early, and were received courteously. Rather embarrassed,
he plunked the vase with the shredded wrapping paper onto the
table and took his place ceremoniously in the armchair assigned
to him.
"Oh, you shouldn't have bought a
present," stammered the bride's father in routine fashion.
The couple murmured an appropriate response,
not without pride in their voices.
A young girl then entered the room. She
picked up the present with due care, in order not to soil her
clothes, and held it in her outstretched fingers where the wrapping
paper was not too shredded and dusty, pacing towards the other
end of the parlour, where she placed it on a cupboard. The rustling
of the paper could be heard all the way into the other room.
"So when did you get into town?"
someone asked.
"Just today," they replied
in unison. After a further half hour of silence, the old lady
gave her husband an awkward glance and turned to the other women:
"Is there anything I can do to give
you a hand?"
"No, nothing at all," replied
a young girl. "The banquet is going to be held at a restaurant."
There was silence once again in their corner of the room. Other
guests arrived and were made welcome. Two hours before dinner,
the couple decided to stretch their legs and go out for a walk.
They arrived at the restaurant one hour
before the appointed time and got in everyone's way.
Someone showed them to two seats in a
corner. Thereafter, everyone forgot about them.
The old lady tried to spark a conversation
with her neighbour, a rather portly woman. The latter was, however,
more interested in joking around and dancing than in conversing
with two old people from the countryside.
He ate a little and drank a bit of raki,
retaining an air of distinction. From time to time, he listened
to the imprecations of a good-looking and elegantly dressed young
man who, in choice vocabulary, was expounding on the necessity
of psychological and social analysis to reach an understanding
of the phenomenon of crime in Albanian society.
As he expounded on his theory, the young
man dexterously waved his impeccably white hands and pink nails,
which made it more than apparent that he spent much of his time
caring for his outward appearance.
The young man with the fine hands continued,
"It is senseless to try to condemn and castigate social
evils nowadays. I think, and I am quite convinced of this, that
crime in our society derives from the lack of a social contract.
Only this would provide us with a definitive solution to the
ills of our society and nation."
The people listened to his ideas respectfully
and nodded. A young girl, sitting a short distance away, stared
at the handsome gentleman with sorrow in her eyes. It was unclear
whether the sorrow derived from the 'said' ills of our society
and nation or was the result of some fleeting emotion she felt
as she listened to his impassioned words.
After a while, the old man lost interest.
There was no more hint of feeling to be seen in his face.
The old couple said nothing throughout
most of the dinner.
They ate as much as they could, and,
when they had had their fill, the old woman took out a plastic
bag to stuff it with leftover meat.
"What do you think you are doing?"
he admonished angrily. "What are you doing? You are going
to put us to shame in front of all the people. We are here in
the city."
"I thought we could take a little
something with us for lunch tomorrow. Look, everyone is doing
it," she pleaded. It must be said that all the other guests,
even those from the city, were indeed filling their bags with
food and drink.
"You see," she said as the
other guests were leaving, "we are the only ones who got
nothing."
"They can take whatever they want,
but we are not taking anything," he interrupted. They stayed
until the early hours of the morning because they did not want
to spend money on a hotel room. At dawn, they finally departed
at the same time as the rock-and-roll group.
The bus back to the village was due to
leave at four in the afternoon. For fear of thieves, they went
into a cafe on the outskirts of town. There, they had coffee
and sat around to pass the time.
At eight o'clock, they got up and left
or, more precisely, were complimented out. The waiter pretended
to have to sweep the floors around their feet and in doing so,
raised an inordinate amount of dust with his broom.
The old lady was about to protest to
the barman, but her husband rose to his feet.
"Don't bother," he said, "it
is probably custom here."
"What sort of custom is that? They
are just trying to get rid of us because we are from the countryside.
I am going to give him a piece of my mind and, on top of that,
he did not hand us our change. There are ten leks missing. You
can see it in his face, he's a heartless thief." They set
off, not knowing quite where to go.
The old couple meandered through the
streets, looking at store windows until the afternoon. When the
heat was at its zenith, they resolved to take a city bus to the
overland bus station.
They waited and waited. The city bus
was late and the heat had become unbearable.
"Come along, we'll walk it,"
he rasped, setting off.
"Where? It's too far!" she
protested and followed behind him, taking little steps. In no
time, they were drenched in perspiration. He wiped his brow with
a folded handkerchief and continued down the road in a noble
manner. She panted and shouted at him, having difficulty making
herself understood.
"Slow down. Do you want to kill
me? I'm exhausted." He continued in large paces.
"Hold on for a moment, will you?
You're not listening. Stop!" she shouted.
"What's wrong?" he eventually
asked.
"What do you mean, what is wrong?
Can't you see I am exhausted. You are acting as if someone is
chasing us. We still have three hours until the bus leaves."
He slowed down, and stopped at a crossroads,
not knowing which direction to take. Gasping, she eventually
caught up with him and uttered:
"It must be that way, to the left."
He set off to the right with his mouth
wide open because of the dryness of the air. She plodded on,
several paces behind him.
"Hold on, I can't go any further,"
she protested. "If I at least had a glass of water. There
is not even a public fountain here. Get me a bottle of water,
will you, or I am going to collapse here on the spot. Go, leave
me. I am not taking another step!" The old fellow stopped
at a store and bought his wife a bottle of water, handing it
to her without saying a word. She gulped it down as he waited,
looking into the distance.
She left the bottle half full for him.
He took one sip. "Have it all, I don't want any more,"
she insisted, but he refused. She put the cap on the bottle and
stuffed into her purse.
Once again, the couple set off slowly.
The heat was oppressive. They had not even got halfway down the
road when she began complaining. The old fellow refused to listen
this time and continued his march.
She gave him an ultimatum.
"I am not going another step. You
go wherever you want. I can't walk anymore. Do you understand?
I cannot go any further. Are you listening? I think I am going
to faint." She would not give in, and went and sat down
on the curb near an iron fence.
He continued walking, but then looked
back. Seeing that she would not budge, he returned to her.
The old fellow stood there for a while
and looked around hesitantly before sitting down on the curb
himself, two or three metres away from her.
She approached him. He said nothing and
continued staring into the distance.
There were few people out on the road.
Rare pedestrians passed by indifferently.
The old woman initially leaned against
his shoulder, seemingly exhausted.
He murmured something or other.
"What?" she asked in a daze.
"Nothing," he replied. She
snoozed. He murmured something once more.
"What did you say?" she inquired
again.
"What are you doing, woman? Can't
you see that people are staring? You should be ashamed of yourself,"
he blustered.
"Ashamed of what? What am I doing?
I'm exhausted. We didn't sleep a wink all night." Saying
this, she did something that shocked her husband deeply. She
rested her head on his knee.
He blushed and griped: "What are
you doing, woman?"
The old lady had fallen asleep and was
breathing deeply. He gave her a glance and then continued staring
into the distance. He took another look at her and pondered on
the order of things in this world.
She snored lightly and snuggled against
him. Her head was about to fall off his knee.
Embarrassed, the old fellow then did
something he had never done before. He showed affection to a
woman in public. Placing his rough hand on her head, he stroked
her grey hair ever so gently. She seemed to sense the gesture
and gave a sigh of satisfaction. She was now sound asleep.
The sun shone mercilessly, melting the
pavement in front of them.
[Çifti, from the volume
Parrullat me gurë, Tirana 2003, p. 17-23. Translated
from the Albanian by Robert Elsie] |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Modern
Authors from Albania (late 20th - 21st centuries)
