THE WEDDING, in spite of every prediction, was held on 23rd October.
I already knew that at the heart of every wedding lay anger, which would inevitably burst out before, during or after the ceremony.
At our wedding, the hour of anger struck in the third act, immediately after the end of the ritual. It took the shape of an almighty quarrel between the two clans.
The vexation and resentment came from the most unexpected directions, and was expressed in the strangest ways, from quotations of Engels to Icelandic proverbs. ‘We thought that the Kadares, once they got out of Lunatics’ Lane, would recover their senses, but the opposite has happened, they’re totally out of their minds.’ ‘Leave the Kadares alone, what about the doctor, why is he looking so woebegone? It’s true what they say …’ (and here followed some Latin or Mongolian proverb).
I felt that this malice had also infected myself, a sort of revenge for our disdain for tradition. ‘That mother of yours shouldn’t be seen crying in public on the train, heartbroken because her son-in-law won’t call her “Mama” …’
This barb left Helena open-mouthed.
They were the first harsh words we exchanged after the wedding …
‘My mother, crying on the train …’ she repeated in a low voice, not taking her eyes off me.
It felt like an epilogue, like the end of a war, when each side tries to take stock of its losses. There was a sense that 23rd October would enter the annals of weddingology, as a ‘failed attempt to achieve epic status’. I seriously missed Bardhyl B., the only person who would have been able to compose a commemorative text in its honour.
Most of the Kadares were dead, and thus cruelly indifferent. They used this ascendency as they had done thirty years before when they conquered the appalling Dobis. They made light work of crushing the Gushi clan. Nor did the latter’s attempts at talks, or the diplomas of the city’s most famous doctor and pharmacist, help in the least; it was as if Germany, having defeated Poland and France, were to hurl itself blindly against Switzerland.
Shortly after this we exchanged the large flat for two small ones opposite each other in the centre of Tirana. For the Doll, this cushioned the shock of the division of the household. But her relief was really due to something else: there had finally been a swap, but of apartments rather than mothers.
There was a vivacious atmosphere in both apartments. Friends, mainly writers and artists, came to help put everything in order, and brought with them their own friends, who brought others in their wake.
Most were students who had returned from abroad after the big break-up had interrupted their studies. They were attractive characters in every way, with their energy, humour, and even their anxieties over foreign fiancées who had either remained behind in Albania and could not return to their own countries, or wanted to come to Albania and were not allowed to.
Artists tried out their colours on the kitchen shelves, using particular shades which, although never explicitly banned, were semi-forbidden. Others sorted out the library and the bedroom, teasing Helena by the by.
We were so absorbed in all this that we rarely gave a thought to what was happening outside. An extraordinary tension could be felt everywhere. If you turned on the radio, you quickly turned it off. The yellow bulletin, the family’s secret watchdog, was turning increasingly fierce.
My father was conspicuously absent from the upheaval. It was a real mystery how he managed to go out, come home and shut himself up in his own room without anyone noticing. Meanwhile I had never seen the Doll so animated. She drank coffee incessantly, darted from one apartment to the other, and was obviously happy to be at the centre of attention. (‘Hey, Ism’s mother, do you like this colour? Does the washing machine go here? Am I being a nuisance? Sorry, what did you say, Mrs Kadare?’)
One day I saw her in the distance, her hand held by someone whose face was familiar. Soon I heard the girl’s voice: ‘Smajl, I’m so pleased to meet Mrs Kadare again.’
She drew her by the hand towards me, while the Doll kept her eyes lowered, as always when she felt guilty.
‘Mrs Kadare is so delightful. We do enjoy chatting.’
‘I know,’ I said. The Doll lifted her eyes, perhaps to see if I was still angry.
I was no longer angry in the least, but I felt a sudden, familiar qualm at having spoken ill of the girl. Apparently she had come with one of the artists in the role of his assistant, either as a model or a lover, as happened with these girls who were cruelly called ‘handy’ (probably because they were passed from hand to hand), but who might be thought of as more fortunate than others, because after all they were in the hands of artists and poets, who put them on canvas or into poems before touching their bodies.
I had neither the time nor the opportunity to express my feelings, except by doing something that I did not do often: I stretched out my hand to touch the Doll’s hair with the tenderness that a woman and her hair arouse at such sweet moments.
The Doll became even more enterprising. One day I found her listening with great attention to Pirro Mani. I was very curious to know what the Doll could find to talk about with the most fashionable theatre director in Tirana. He was showing her a sheet of paper, while intoning in his booming voice: ‘Ism’s mother, this show will shake the whole of Tirana! Look, here are the two levels of the stage, one inside the belly of the monster, that is the wooden horse, and the other, at its feet, where Laocoön is arguing with the crowd.’
I realised that he was explaining his plans to stage my novel The Monster, whose still-unpublished manuscript I had given to him.
‘Do you see now, Ism’s mother. It will be a superb confrontation … Ah, here is Ism … I was explaining our next production to your mother. She has a special feeling for the theatre, have you noticed?’
‘Yes, you might say so,’ I said, and then turned to the Doll, to ask if she had understood.
At first she avoided replying, but when I pressed her, she muttered, ‘Yes, that argument … that’s what people are like these days, always quarrelling …’
I described this incident a little later to a small circle of friends. The Doll pretended not to hear, as if we weren’t talking about her. Somebody said that the conversation would have gone better in the hands of Dritëro Agolli, who was well known for being able to talk to old people. My brother objected. According to him, the harder the conversation was to understand, the more it appealed to her. The Doll still pretended not to hear.
Some time later, another director, this time of films, told me one day, ‘I know your mother,’ and my brother who happened to be there burst out: ‘What did you make of each other!’
Kujtim Çashku was famous for overusing foreign words. He had met the Doll on the benches of the Park of Youth, alongside the main boulevard, where she used to sit, sometimes with her sisters, sometimes by herself, ‘to watch the world go by’.
As Çashku told me, the Doll was attracted not just by the theatre but by the view of the Hotel Dajti opposite, especially on the days when there were official receptions, stylish cars, foreign ladies getting out of them … what you might call all that glamour …
The Doll’s taste for elegance and for drawing attention, such as I dimly remembered from the time when our little cortège, escorted by Vito the Roma, passed through Gjirokastra on the way to my grandfather’s house, was apparently returning.
Her theatrical side probably responded to the appeal of the chic, a taste so long suppressed in her, probably since the German’s theft of the perfume. She no doubt liked the dimension of secrecy (Mrs Kadare’s mysterious Thursdays) that her plaster-like carapace encouraged.
On fine days, telling nobody, she would put on her best clothes and set off with her light-footed gait towards the main boulevard.
On rainy days, she had another destination, which we would perhaps never have discovered if a woman friend had not told us that she had come across the Doll quite by chance sitting in an armchair in the great lobby of the Dajti, watching people go up and down the stairs to the library and the big café on the first floor.
Asked if she were expecting anyone, she had said no, she was just ‘giving her eyes a treat’, an expression that our friend had never heard and couldn’t understand.
I didn’t find out anything else. In particular, I never discovered whether or not she went secretly to the theatre, although I suspected it.
Her panoramic view would include the arcade of Luigj Gurakuqi Street, the Palace of Culture, the Clock Tower Café where my father drank his morning coffee and from where the Doll surely wouldn’t want to be seen, and then the National Theatre and Writers’ Club, from where she would also not want me to see her, and then the Art Gallery and finally the Hotel Dajti itself. This was the map of her beau monde through which she moved, as if escorted by an unidentified companion, whether my father, me, all of us, or perhaps her alter ego.