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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810121119 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/17/2007 |
| Series: | Writings From An Unbound Europe |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 128 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
THE LAST JOURNEY OF AGO YMERI
By BASHKIM SHEHU
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2007
Northwestern University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8101-2111-9
Chapter One As if I were dreaming of huge, black waves, the very same waves that had engulfed me and where I was dissolving while dying ...
WHEN SHE HAD NEARLY LOST ALL HOPE AND DECIDED SHE HAD BETTER go home, her eyes fell on a strange-looking man. Shivering in his bedraggled clothes, spotted most likely by the rain that had fallen throughout the previous night, with unkempt hair and a week's growth of beard on a ghastly pallid countenance, he stumbled forward, dragging his feet toward the village center at a sluggish, wobbly pace, occasionally raising his eyes toward the skies, scouring the rugged gray clouds in their mourning garb, as if in a vain search for the invisible sun. He must be a retard, thought the girl, but I'll talk to him anyway. After all I have nothing to lose. Wondering whether the stranger knew that she and her family were exiles, she approached him hesitantly, and her hesitation grew under the scrutiny of passersby and the vacant eyes of Mete the Blind, who as usual sat motionless at the foot of the huge oak tree right in the center of the square, listening as if in a trance to the rustling of the luxuriant foliage in the wind.
"Can you help me?" she asked the stranger, trying on her sweetest smile and, not pausing for a reply, adding: "Can you come with me as a witness ..."
"A witness?" Still shivering, he threw an inquisitive look at her, while his forehead furrowed and wrinkled and his eyes narrowed as though delving into the meaning of that word.
"Not a witness in court," said the girl, her smile broadening slightly, "A witness, a best man in a marriage ceremony."
"Yes," the man said. "Sure, I can."
"Then would you wait here for us a little bit? I'm going to let my family know and we'll be back here in no time. Over there, there is my house ..."
She pointed toward the village's only apartment house, which rose behind a handful of diminutive detached houses that girdled the square.
"All right, I'll wait here," he said.
"My sister is getting married," she added, for no apparent reason.
"My best wishes," he said, bestowing a smile upon her.
Mira ran off with a light gait and lighter spirits. At last, after wandering around the village for more than two hours with her friend Rita in search of a second witness for the ceremony, she had almost lost all hope, when lo and behold, she found him! There were four other banished families in the village but since one of them was the bridegroom's family, not one of its members could be used as a witness. All the other exiles, aside from Rita, were afraid of meddling in this affair, and so for days, conjuring up one excuse after the other, they all avoided them. Mira came out that morning hoping to find some other girl in the village, one of those girls who had shown some fondness toward her and who did not mind staying and talking with her, because you could find girls like that in this tiny isolated village. Most of the people she was looking for had already left for work, but even those few she met had either found a lame excuse, saying that they were busy, or they told her frankly that they could not come she must understand why and that she should not ask them such favors. Without a witness the ceremony would be postponed till next week, but even then finding a second witness would be most unlikely and the ceremony would again be put off for another week and then another and she thought this would go on forever. And the funniest thing was that the local authorities acted as if they had nothing to do with it, as if they behaved toward the exiled families exactly as they did toward everybody else, but it was the fear the authorities infused in one thousand and one ways that created the impenetrable void that surrounded the exiles and thwarted everything. At last Mira found this weirdo, a living scarecrow, who had emerged from God knows where, from a fairy tale or from the world of ghosts, solely to help them. The closer she came to her house the more anxious she became lest her father, morose and difficult as he was, would scold her for finding such a character and for making an immature and unacceptable decision.
Her father did reproach her but for quite another reason.
"How dare you leave him outside," he snapped. "Why didn't you invite him in?"
"I ... I forgot," she murmured. "I was in a hurry."
The idea of bringing him in had never crossed her mind. The stranger should never know they were banished, and the best thing to do was to keep him at arm's length and talk to him as little as possible. Otherwise, she told herself, if he learned about it, he would hardly deign to accept. Oh, somebody else, one of those who saw her at the square, could tell him about her family. She felt guilty for telling the stranger an innocent white lie. But it was too late for any remedies. Her sister was ready by now, as was the groom, who lived in the same apartment building since he too was an exile. Thus, the preparations for the ceremony had already started and could not be reversed.
In no time a bizarre group of people-the bridegroom, the bride, two girls, and the bedraggled stranger-walked through the village to the town hall. Mira walked beside the stranger. The sullen gazes of the townspeople made her seek some kind of solace in the stranger, and right away she felt a touch of closeness toward him, something like trust.
"I have to tell you something ... something I forgot to mention to you ... We are exiles," Mira blurted, not really knowing how she managed it.
Her sister threw her a bewildered and angry look, whereas the stranger only shook his head as if he already knew or at least had assumed, but perhaps he had not understood what she said at all.
In the town hall the service was conducted in haste. When the time came for the stranger to sign, he stood there transfixed, with his eyes glued upon the date on the paper, looking as if he didn't know what to do. Everybody assumed he was illiterate. Then he took the pen and scribbled what seemed to be a signature.
Soon after, they and the stranger were back home.
"Where are you from?" asked the master of the house.
"From Tirana," the stranger said.
"What good fortune brought you here?" asked another older man, the bride's uncle. "Are you, God forbid, in the same plight as we?"
"No, I'm not banished," the stranger said. "I was in one of those villages by the coast, beyond those hills." He waved vaguely. "I stayed with some relatives. I got lost on my way back."
"Go, fetch some clean clothes for him," the master of the house ordered.
"I set the copper on the fire early this morning," his wife added. "The water must be ready by now."
"The water is hot," said Mira, who had just stepped in from the adjacent room.
"You may take a bath," urged the mistress. "You are the guest of the house. Consider yourself at home." Then she turned to her daughter, "Bring him some of your brother's clothes."
He followed Mira's steps through the hallway onto the patio outside. He threw a quizzical look at her.
"You know what?" the girl said with a playful smile as if trying to hide her bashfulness. "The copper is upstairs on the terrace and I cannot carry it all by myself. Can you help me? It is not that heavy ..."
"Sure, let's go," he said.
"What's your name?" she asked as they climbed the stairs.
"Viktor," he said after a moment, and then he spoke again, "My name is Viktor Dragoti."
The girl thought he pronounced his name as if he were sure it would ring a bell. She was sure she had never heard his name before.
They came out onto the terrace. He raised his eyes and for a moment he stared at the bleak dome of the sky.
"Here it is," Mira said, pointing at the steaming black copper supported by half bricks placed around the fire. Just as the wind began to blow out the fire, it rekindled and started again.
His gaze had drifted off over the mist-covered plains and seemed somehow voracious.
"Are you coming from the penitentiary?" Mira asked.
"Well ... yes and no," the stranger said, and he pursed his lips into a smile at last.
"You are so strange," Mira said.
"You are a strange girl, too ..."
"Listen, I have a brother who is in the penitentiary," she said, and her smile faded. "These clothes are his. I think they'll fit you perfectly."
"May God help him come home soon ..."
Holding the copper by the handles, they brought it slowly down the stairs and into the house.
After he bathed and changed, Viktor came back to the room where the others had already gathered. Helped by her two daughters, the mistress of the house was serving raki and some entrées. Toasts were raised to the health of the bride and groom and in honor of the guest. Then in low, muffled tones the elderly guests began to sing a wedding song. It rose from abysmal depths, making for the skies, other depths but this time of light, in which joy and sorrow were intermingled. And there was something pitiful and contorted in this celebration, in which only the elderly sang as the young listened in silence. Mira was not paying much attention to the song. Her mind had drifted somewhere else, and time and again she cast fleeting glances at the guest. Now he was transformed and had become a different man. He looked younger, most likely in his thirties, and yet there was something in him that drew her attention. Perhaps it was his rather unusual appearance, or maybe his clothes. The clothes all the others were wearing, the best they had for this special occasion, were worn out by time, while those of the guest were fairly well preserved, still new and quite different from the clothes she had seen in this forlorn place during the long years of their banishment. The stranger's clothes reminded her of another world that once was hers too and which she longed for. Or perhaps the look of this man, his posture and his gaze, made the clothes look better. It dawned upon her that she yearned for this man. And because she yearned for him, there must be something about him. She would like to make love to him. She had never felt this urge for any other male, at least not like this. She had been young, under sixteen, when they banished and confined her family here, and now she was over twenty and had never experienced love. She felt intuitively that making love would be something terribly wondrous, sweet, and painful, and yet she had never allowed herself to venture it. As an exile, surrounded by scorn, she learned to look at the world with scorn, and the thought of giving herself like that to someone was too demeaning. The thought of it was almost a punishment she inflicted upon herself. Her skin had started to lose its luster. The sun, dust, and frost were taking their toll, and her body was suffering the untimely consequences of hard labor. Still she felt she had not completely lost her feminine attraction, and, if she chose, she could stop punishing herself. Aware of that, she felt more at ease. A nun. You are a nun, her close friend Rita teased. Some time ago Rita had found a soldier from Tirana whom she met in secret somewhere down by the brook. I allowed him to do everything with me, she once confided to Mira. It was the first time she had discovered the pleasures of indulging in men and she said it was the most wonderful thing in the world, the greatest pleasure ever to be offered to humans, and she prattled on and on. Then the young man was released from the army and she never saw him again. Rita was not sorry for what had happened. On the contrary, whenever she thought of it she was overwhelmed with happiness. Mira was different. She could never do what Rita had done. Even so she did not feel contempt for what her friend had done and could not reproach her. Deep down she knew her friend was right. At night she dreamed the same dream over and over again. In this dream, she saw herself going to work, all alone, and somewhere along a forgotten path a stranger came out of the bushes, or rather an unidentified male but always the same one nonetheless, and threw her to the ground, always with the same brutality, tore off her clothes and took from her forcibly what she did not want to give him willingly, and she liked it. And then quite unexpectedly she shivered from head to toe because at last she realized the man who raped her in her dream was the man she had met in the morning and who was now sitting opposite her. Remembering the presence of the others and the morose look of her father, she hurriedly suppressed her startling realization.
In the meantime the elderly guests had sung two or three more songs so similar they seemed to be the same song. Then they started to talk with one another. As a sign of respect they tried to engage the guest in conversation, but whenever they unintentionally mentioned the predicament that had befallen them, they carefully let the flow of the conversation drift in another direction. During the conversation, the guest occasionally threw a fleeting glance at the guitar hanging in a corner on the wall.
The master of the house followed his glance and said, "Would you like to play it? It belongs to my son. My son is locked up there, in that terrible place. I wouldn't wish that even on my enemy. It's been five years now and no one knows how many more."
"He'll be back. He'll be back sooner than you expect," the guest said.
"Bless you," the old man said. "His is a very complicated case. He committed a grave crime, he meddled with politics."
The other smiled a bitter smile.
"Nevertheless, he'll be back soon," he added.
Those present stood there in bewilderment, in a state between fear and hope, a vague frail hope, overwhelmed by fear.
"Would you like to play it?" the host asked, changing the subject.
"Yes," the guest said. Mira unhooked the guitar from the wall and handed it over to him.
"I'd like to sing a song in honor of the bride and the groom. It is a song dedicated to a loyalty that withstands the most ruthless twists and turns of fate. It is as old as the world itself and yet ever so young."
After striking two or three chords, he turned to the bride and groom. "May your destiny bear a lifetime of happiness and none of the evil you'll hear me sing about in this song."
He paused for a moment as the others looked at him in silence, holding their breath. Then he started to sing. The song was more of a melodious recitative, accompanied by the guitar in arpeggios. It was gentle and drawling whereas his voice resounded reverberatingly. The master of the house, apparently scared, signaled to him to keep it down. Viktor lowered his voice and the song poured more tranquilly, smoothly, and softly, and yet in its softness there was an erosive perseverance. A new song reverberated from within the old as if from within a swirling whirlpool. At first Mira could not concentrate and could not get into the meaning of its words, only sensing that sometime, somewhere she had heard this song before. Gradually she realized that this melodious recitative was a version of the old legend of Ago Ymeri, though the Ago Ymeri of this song was not a prisoner in a strange land, he was dead and in the underworld, where the shadows of the dead wander. The character Ago Ymeri addressed was neither a king nor a queen of distant foreign realms but the god of the underworld himself, and Ago Ymeri pleaded that he be permitted to return to the living and meet with his true love one last time. The heart of the god of the underworld mellowed in the face of Ago Ymeri's earnest pleading. Mira had heard somewhere, most likely in school, that the legend of Ago Ymeri originated from The Odyssey, which she still remembered vividly though she had read it ages ago. The music of the song sounded so outlandish, almost unknown to her, and yet she perceived a faint resemblance to the songs of those young singers she had heard back in Tirana, in the private quarters of some of her sister's friends. Back then it was whispered those songs were banned. This memory made her shiver with fear. Viktor's singing suddenly seemed dangerous to her, but despite this, or perhaps because of it, she decided to give herself to this man that very same day. No doubt he would accept the invitation to stay for the night, she thought, so that he could attend the modest wedding dinner the next day.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE LAST JOURNEY OF AGO YMERI by BASHKIM SHEHU
Copyright © 2007 by Northwestern University Press. Excerpted by permission.
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