Teodor LAÇO
PROSE
THE PAIN OF A DISTANT WINTER
Each autumn, as soon as the days began
to shorten and the forests were covered with a blanket of golden
leaves, the man began the long journey to his native village.
It was a tiring journey at his age and in his precarious state
of health. Neither his wife nor his daughters could understand
what attracted, indeed compelled him to undertake the trip. He
had begun making these visits at a time when, though still full
of strength and vitality, he looked back with pain and regret
at the long-gone days of his youth. Eleven years had passed since
that day in March. It had been a muddy spring, the time of year
before the leaves begin to bud under a clear sky, though one
not without a hint of grey from the cold weather which still
held sway. He had sold his mother’s house for a ridiculous
sum of money. It was an old cottage, so dilapidated that had
it been left unoccupied for a year it would have collapsed. Up
to that day, the spirit of his mother had kept it standing.
He left part of the money from the sale
of the house with close relatives to pay for the upkeep of the
grave and placed the rest in a savings account. When he married,
he used it to buy some bedroom furniture and a refrigerator.
The sale had been a perfectly normal
transaction, the kind made by dozens of people, so there was
no reason for him to feel guilty. And yet, the muddy spring and
the spending of the money had cast a shadow of culpability upon
his soul. This feeling seemed to him to be due less to the sale
of the house than to the death of his mother in his absence,
for he had been unable to persuade the old woman to leave her
village. He was still a bachelor at the time, living in cramped
rented quarters which he shared with another man, and thus was
unable to invite his mother to live with him. But he could have
organized his life differently. He could have married earlier,
as his mother had wished, found an apartment and invited the
old woman to come and stay. Although she was strongly attached
to her village, she was even more attached to the prospect of
grandchildren. But no one can change the past, and so he had
no choice but to come to terms with reality, which he did, though
not without a certain regret for that which might have been.
He imagined the long lonely nights his mother must have spent
in her room all alone, the unbroken silence that must have weighed
more heavily upon her than the layer of snow upon the rooftops.
The day he received the money - proof that the old house no longer
belonged to his mother - he was filled with a sense of shame....
Over and over again he had plunged into a whirlpool of memories
and endeavoured to recall the events that first caused him such
anguish. Strangely enough, though, his memory had never taken
him back to that incident in his childhood of which he had only
become aware during his trip the previous autumn.
It had been a long autumn with an ever
so gradual transformation from green to gold. There were still
warm days like those at the beginning of summer. Indeed the illusion
of summer was disturbed only by the autumnal colours and by the
rarity of birds. He persuaded himself that, with such weather,
it would be a sin to go by vehicle and decided to set out on
foot. He had been walking for two hours and still felt full of
energy. Like a child he delighted in taking shortcuts down untrodden
paths through the long grass and bushes, not knowing if they
would lead him back to the road. Resting on one of these paths
in the shade of a lonesome fir tree which had not grown quite
as high as the others, his childhood seemed to surface out of
the past and sit down beside him. There it squatted, insolent
and stubborn, and began telling him a story, like a long forgotten
folk tale...
Once upon a time there was a little boy
who was so in love with books that he quite forgot his childhood
friends and their games. At night, when the light from his petroleum
lamp began to waver and shadows appeared in the dark recesses
of the room; as the fire in the hearth, singing an interminable
song, crackled and hissed, characters would arise from the yellowing
pages of his book and climb into his bed as if to warm themselves
under the woollen covers. There was room for everyone under those
covers and he could make them do whatever he wished. Robinson
Crusoe could climb into a boat with Long John Silver and play
hide-and-seek and other games. Slowly his eyelids would close
and he would tremble, in anticipation of the dreams that would
make everything easy and possible. At dawn, he would abandon
his night of wonder with a sigh of relief that he was now awake,
and at the same time with a sigh of regret at the knowledge that
daytime would be so much more mundane than the adventures of
the night.
Gradually, the boy began to read hunched
over his books as if to devour every one of the letters that
opened to him that wide world full of mystery. His mother scolded
him, though only half-heartedly, for her son was the at top of
his class in school and no good student could do without books.
To please his mother, the boy would raise his head and hold the
book at arm’s length, but then the letters would begin to
move like a trail of sluggish ants, causing the magic to vanish.
He was ashamed that he was unable to keep his promise to his
mother and, in order not to appear disobedient, stopped reading
while lying on his stomach. His mother would perhaps notice that
he no longer drew his eyes to the book but the book to his eyes.
The mother mentioned the problem to his
teacher who told her that he thought the boy was a little short-sighted.
This disability could be remedied with a pair of eyeglasses,
but to get them, she would have to take him into town to see
a doctor. She had decided to wait until the snow melted, but
by the middle of February, the boy had begun to suffer from severe
headaches. She became frightened. It was clear to her that she
could no longer wait until winter was over. She had made the
trip from the village into town several times since becoming
a widow and was not at all bothered by the cold weather or the
solitude of the journey. The only obstacle was the snow, for
every afternoon from sunset until late at night there would be
a heavy snowfall that covered all traces of the paths. Every
morning she rose early and heard herself say, "More snow
again". She waited a whole week for the snow to stop until
she heard from other travellers that the road was clear.
...The boy felt a chill run down his
spine the moment the path led them into the semi-darkness of
the grove of fir trees. He shuddered and felt a knot in his stomach.
The forest was large and little light penetrated this far. They
were surrounded by silence, like that which reigned in the middle
of the night when he waited for his dreams. But the silence was
full of sounds, the incomprehensible language of nature which
not even the snow could muffle. It startled him, like a covey
of partridges beating their wings in preparation for flight.
He gasped for air, realizing that the panting that followed him
like that of an invisible dog was his own. He glanced at his
mother. Her cheeks were red with cold but her face showed no
trace of anxiety. He thought to himself that she probably could
not hear the noises in the forest. Maybe there weren’t any
after all. But perhaps she was growing deaf in her old age or
perhaps the sounds were muffled by the black shawl that covered
her ears.
Suddenly, he held his breath and bent
forward. He thought he could hear a voice, different from the
noises he had been hearing, a voice that sounded like a long
howl of anxiety - a lament and a threat at the same time. The
savage howl resounded down the bare face of the mountain but
the raging storm prevented him from determining quite what it
was. Did she hear it or not? he wondered. His mother had stopped
a bit farther on and had her back turned to him. He was not sure
whether she was waiting or listening. He trudged on through the
snow to reach her.
"Did you hear that?" he asked
in a strangled voice. His mother took off her woollen gloves
and stroked his hair, which was covered in melting ice.
"It was nothing," she replied.
"Take off your shawl and listen,"
he stammered.
The snow, melting under the warmth of
her hand, trickled down his forehead.
"Perhaps it was a dog," she
said.
"Or a wolf!" replied the boy.
"Wolves are afraid of people."
"But not in the winter. They are
hungry now, roam in packs, and..."
He was about to add that in February
the pack follows the she-wolf and that he had heard that a pack
of wolves had once torn a hunter to pieces somewhere, but he
thought better of it and bit his tongue. His mother must know
as well as he that a pack of wolves might be coming their way.
She seemed about to say or do something unpredictable. But she
said nothing and did not move from the spot. Her face grew pale.
There was not a shadow of doubt in his mind that the danger he
had conjured up was now a reality and that the evil was approaching
with awesome rapidity. Tales about wolves flashed through his
mind and, horror-stricken, he rushed towards a fir tree standing
alone in the middle of a clearing. Its trunk was thick and the
first, half-withered branches were high up, but in his desperation
he managed to heave himself up onto a solid branch. From here,
he could see his tracks in the snow below, like those of some
slithering reptile. His mother followed him, taking short steps.
She leaned against the trunk of the fir tree, resting just long
enough to get a grip on herself. He climbed up onto a higher
branch, shaking snow down upon her. She brushed the snow from
her shoulders without looking up. He felt that she was unwilling
to look at him. He climbed still higher. From here, he could
see the wintry white expanses of the bare forest with a few dark
spots here and there. He could not make out whether they were
moving or not. If they were not moving, they were probably juniper
bushes which had managed to shake off their covering of snow.
Otherwise...
He listened again, and again heard the
muffled howl borne by the wind through the dense fir tree. His
mother heard nothing and remained silent. She looked so small
and defenceless below him. He was ashamed of himself for having
gone so far up and climbed back down to the withered branches
below.
"Can you hear anything?" he
asked again.
His mother gave no reply. She seemed
to shrug.
"Come up here into the tree. It’s
safe here," he said.
"No, I can’t," she replied.
The boy could hear the howling again,
this time closer than ever. It was not echoing off the face of
the mountain but coming straight out of the dark forest towards
him.
"Try anyway," he insisted.
"Here, can you reach my hand?"
"No, I’ll never make it,"
said his mother. "Don’t come down any farther. Stay
where you are, son."
On hearing this, the boy realized that
his mother had no intention of moving from the tree trunk she
was leaning against. Even if one of those miracles from fairy
tales occurred and the cottage of a woodcutter with a solid door
appeared before them, she would not budge from the tree. His
hands and then his whole body began to freeze. His lips grew
numb and his teeth started to chatter.
"Mother, my hands are freezing.
Where are my gloves?" he asked.
"You dropped them when you ran off,"
she replied.
She rolled her gloves into a ball and
threw them up to him. For a moment, neither of them spoke a word.
Absolute silence reigned in the forest. The boy looked up and
spotted a squirrel on a branch. It sat there proudly like a host
receiving guests. It stretched and shook its bushy tail, sending
a shower of snow onto the boy’s face. He wiped it off. The
squirrel scurried farther up the tree and a whole branchful of
snow tumbled down onto his face. It scampered about, quite at
home, with little concern for the huge uninvited guest freezing
in the cold down below who could not punish the little animal
for the chilly dusting of snow on his hair and shoulders.
The wind came up again and he had the
impression that it had taken the eerie howling off with it in
the direction of the stream. The squirrel launched a pine cone
it had been holding in its front paws. He climbed down slowly,
with his cheeks aflame as if they had been slapped, and with
the tips of his fingers freezing and aching terribly. The stiffness
in his limbs caused him such pain that tears welled up in his
eyes. He could feel them turn to ice on his cheeks. He wanted
to say something but was incapable of uttering a word. His mother
took his hands and rubbed them in the snow until he could feel
them again. Neither of them spoke a word.
They continued on towards town.
The boy never did learn whether they
had been in great danger that day. He remained quieter than ever
long afterwards, roaming about the house as if searching for
something he had lost, but his mother never brought the matter
up again.
Many years passed before the anguish
of the incident surfaced from the recesses of his mind where
it had slumbered so long finally to burgeon forth into conscious
pain.
Every autumn when the leaves began to
turn, he visited the grave of his mother in a distant village.
[Dhembja e një dimrit të
largët, from the volume Një dimër tjetër,
Tirana: Naim Frashëri 1986, translated from the Albanian
by Robert Elsie and first published in English in in Description
of a struggle. The Picador book of contemporary East European
prose. Michael March, ed. London: Picador 1994, p.
267- 273]
ANOTHER WINTER
Another long winter arrived, with
heavy snow which refused to melt away. At night, in the moonlight,
the ice covering the swing out on the veranda sparkled like a
scratched mirror and the smooth frame cracked. It reminded him
of that winter day he had been frightened of the wolves, a day
that had vanished like a forgotten dream of which there remained
only a lingering sense of uneasiness.
In fact only a single spring, summer,
autumn and winter had passed since then.
That winter, something happened to his
mother that was a source of wonder and mystery to him for years
to come. People said that his mother was struck by a serious
illness that winter, an illness from which she never completely
recovered, but he thought otherwise. He was certain at the time
that a miracle had taken place, one of those inexplicable events
that seem impossible to us and make us laugh when we grow older.
That day was the longest and most difficult day of his life.
He knew that from then on nothing would ever again cause him
such anguish, because his experiences as a doctor in the long
years that followed had served to inure him to suffering and
death.
He spoke to no one of what had transpired.
Back then, he knew that if he told any of the adults what he
had seen, they would simply smile condescendingly at him, as
if to forgive him for talking such nonsense. After all, they
themselves had fabricated many a fairy tale. So he preferred
to keep quiet. For many years he firmly believed that he had
witnessed a miracle, and had he not become a doctor he probably
would have believed it his whole life.
On that distant winter afternoon, he
was sitting in a corner of the living room, leaning on the window
sill. The sill was so broad that he used it as a table on which
to do his homework. Snowflakes struck the window like sleepy
butterflies. The logs on the fire hissed and crackled and the
cat snored in its winter quarters above the stone hearth. His
mother slept in another corner of the room. She had fallen asleep
right after lunch and she was so still that he hardly dared turn
the pages of his book. He watched as the path leading to the
barn was slowly covered by snow and thought about his mother.
His thoughts were sad ones, since his mother had taken ill last
autumn. Since then, she had shrunk so much that when she lay
in bed with her legs drawn up, she looked like a little child.
She staggered sometimes, and when this happened she would lean
against the wall or against the door frame, as if nothing had
happened, and give a little laugh, to reassure him that she was
all right. She didn’t seem to realize that he was no longer
so innocent that he would believe everything he was told. He
already knew that adults were capable of dissimulation. His mother
pretended she was well, and this charade saddened him more than
her state of health. He never heard his mother complain. From
time to time she told her friends that she saw stars before her
eyes, but they simply replied that this was nothing unusual and
that the same thing happened to them, too. His mother said this
so nonchalantly that he assumed it was some sort of game for
adults only in which children for some reason were not allowed
to take part. He thought it gave them pleasure to close their
eyes, shake their heads back and forth and see stars, twinkling
as they do in the month of May.
He turned from time to time to watch
his mother sleeping in the corner. She lay with her back to the
fire, and a tuft of grey hair stuck out between the brown cap
and the scarf she was wearing. He watched the fringe of the woollen
blanket rise and fall with her breathing and was surprised at
how tranquilly she slept. She never used to take a nap in the
afternoon. He had heard that sleep was one of the best remedies
for her condition.
A robin was pecking at the window. It
beat its wings and rubbed its scarlet breast against the window
pane. He wanted to open the window and throw a few crumbs of
bread out to the little bird but was afraid that the sash would
creak and wake his mother from her sweet dreams, from the sleep
that would help to cure her...
He closed his reader carefully. Outside,
the snow was still blowing and it was gradually getting dark.
His mother would soon awaken and light the overhead lamp. She
used to save fuel by lighting only the lamps with small wicks,
but since her son had begun wearing glasses she lit the main
lamp.
It was dark now and she would have to
get up to feed the goats, he thought as he opened the window.
The frightened robin flew off and disappeared into the falling
snow. A gust of cold wind entered the room. His mother did not
wake up. He glanced at her apprehensively and closed the window.
The heavy snow continued to fall, blanketing the yard, the plum
trees in the garden, the roofs of neighbouring houses and everything
beyond them in a heavy mantle of silence. This great silence
also seemed to harbour something unknown, something unfathomable
and evil which might strike without warning. It seemed to him
that this evil force had entered the room with the wind. He realized
he was perspiring, and assumed it must be because of the fire.
Taking off his sweater, he went over to his mother’s corner
of the room. It must have been warm in the room because the cat
had abandoned the heat of the hearth and had curled up on his
mother’s woollen blanket instead. His mother did not stir.
Looking at her, the boy felt a twinge of pain in his chest. The
cat and the fringes of the blanket seemed to be frozen, immobile,
as if no one were breathing under them, though just a few minutes
ago... He patted his mother on the shoulder. She did not move.
The greyness of dusk reflected in the window, and the faint light
which did penetrate the room veiled his mother’s face in
shadow. He placed his hand on her forehead. It was like touching
an arabesque windowpane. His blood froze, but he told himself
that perhaps she felt so cold because his hands were so hot.
He shook her more forcefully. She had slept much longer than
she usually did. She must wake up. It was time. The goats were
bleating hungrily. It was time to light the lamp. In response
to his shaking, she turned over on her side and remained there.
The twilight fell on her gaunt face. The dark shadows withdrew
and were replaced by reflections from the snow outside, pale
and ghostly. His mother would not open her eyes. He didn’t
know what to do. He felt weak and helpless, as if he were once
again a tiny infant.
"Wake up, mother", he begged,
numb with fear.
She gave no answer.
"You’ve slept long enough,"
he cried and shook her again.
The cat was startled and scurried off,
stepping on her lined forehead with its paws as it did so, but
even this did not wake her. The incomprehensible evil that had
remained suspended all this time within the silence of the twilight
now became tangible; the window blew open by itself and in rushed
the cold winter wind. His heart contracted and the anguish pent
up inside him for so long was released and there was nothing
to do but weep. But even his weeping was muffled. He had lost
control of all his senses. Only his hands continued to move mechanically
back and forth over his mother’s face, over her grey hair,
her cold forehead, her stiff eyelids which refused to open. He
entreated her with cries, prayers, threats and meaningless words.
All he could remember later was the feeling of shrinking, of
returning to his infancy. How long did it last? A moment or an
hour? He would never know. His strength and reason had given
way to a wave of anger at himself. His mother could not be dead.
Death could not be so deaf, so mute. He recovered his faculties
for a moment, bent down over his mother and put his head to her
breast. He thought he could hear, very faintly, the beating of
her heart. Perhaps she had just fainted after all. He took a
jug of water and sprinkled some over her face, but it remained
motionless. He was overcome once more by a feeling of rage at
his own helplessness; but in the midst of this rage a new thought
occurred to him, like a lamp suddenly shining out of the darkness
for those who have lost their way and abandoned all hope. He
recalled his mother telling him about the time she was in the
hospital in town, about the doctors and the miracles they performed.
In our room, she had told him, there was an old woman at death’s
door. She was nearly gone when a doctor arrived, forced her mouth
open and gave her a glass of some syrup. The old woman came to,
and was able to leave the hospital on her own long before his
mother was discharged.
In the darkness, the boy groped towards
the cupboard where the sugar was kept. He filled a glass with
water and quickly stirred in some sugar to make a sweet syrup.
Then he sat his mother up, supporting
her with the pillows against the wall, and pried open her lips.
They opened with surprising ease, as if his mother was acquiescing
to his actions. He poured some syrup carefully into her mouth,
taking care not to spill a drop. He saw a muscle jump in her
neck - the first sign of recovery, he thought. Tears welled in
his eyes as he whispered her name. It was a call from the heart,
a call of pain and sorrow, a call of jubilation. Her mouth moved,
and with her eyes still closed, she murmured, "Where am
I?"
"You’re here in your bed and
I’m right here with you," he replied.
She opened her eyes, looking very weak
and frightened. Only then did he realize that he should have
acted sooner. He ran out to call the neighbours. Two women, friends
of his mother, came in. One of them went to fetch Uncle Miti,
a tall, thin bespectacled man who was reputed to be the wisest
elder in the village. Uncle Miti questioned him at length about
what had happened but he could find no explanation either.
"Make some coffee with lots of sugar!"
the old man ordered. He caught sight of the glass on the window
sill, with some undissolved sugar still in the bottom. "Did
you do this?" he asked, as his glasses slipped down his
nose.
The boy nodded.
"Your mother’s guardian angel
must have whispered in your ear," said Uncle Miti.
Uncle Miti was a religious man, and when
the boy grew up he often recalled the old fellow’s superstitious
ways with a smile. He himself believed that it was only the miracle
of his own will that had kept his mother alive. Throughout the
spring and well into the summer, he would sit beside her in the
afternoons and watch to make sure that the fringe on the blanket
was rising and falling with her breaths. But the crisis did not
reoccur. She seemed to adapt to her illness. She ate little and
grew gradually thinner, and yet she could not keep still for
a minute. People said she was like the branch of a cherry tree,
constantly bending in the wind and yet never breaking.
When he became a doctor, he learned the
explanation for this "miracle." His mother had fallen
into a diabetic coma, in which one loses consciousness and for
which doctors recommend sugar as a cure. Perhaps his mother’s
guardian angel really had whispered in his ear that winter’s
day so many years ago, and perhaps, despite all the scientific
explanations, he really had witnessed a miracle.
[Një dimër tjetër,
from the volume Një dimër tjetër, Tirana:
Naim Frashëri 1986, translated from the Albanian by Robert
Elsie] |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Modern
Authors from Albania (late 20th - 21st centuries)
