Ylljet ALIÇKA
Ylljet Aliçka (b. 1951) was born in Tirana, where he studied science. Since 1997, he has been working for the Delegation of the European Community in Albania. Aliçka is the author of three volumes of short stories: Tregime, Tirana & Elbasan 1997 (Short stories); Kompromisi, Tirana & Elbasan 2000 (The Compromise); and Parullat me gurë, Tirana 2003 (The Slogans in stone). Collections of his tales have also appeared in French as Les slogans de pierres, Castelnau-Le-Lez 1999 (The Slogans in stone) and in Polish as Kompromis, Sejny 2002 (The Compromise). His short story The Slogans in stone, was filmed and awarded the Youth Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.
Ylljet ALIÇKA
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]
Ylljet ALIÇKA
THE SLOGANS IN STONE
It was immediately after Andrea finished his studies that he received an appointment as a school teacher in an isolated mountain village in the North.
His father accompanied him in silence to the train station. At the moment they were to part, hardly holding back his tears, he said to him: “Work hard, take good care of yourself, and pay attention, because life’s not easy.”
He arrived at the mountain village that evening. The school was small, a mere ten teachers, six of whom were from the nearby town. One of them was from the capital.
The next day, the oldest of the school teachers, Pashk, willingly accepted the task of explaining to him “how to work and live so as not to get into conflict with anyone else.”
Pashk began by depicting the hierarchy of the village authorities. First of all, there was the Party Secretary, the teacher Sabaf, and then the chairman of the agricultural cooperative. When he finally got around to mentioning the school principal, he characterized him as follows: “He’s not a bad guy. He doesn’t beat the pupils very often, but when he does, he beats them until he’s out of breath. Try to keep on good terms with him because everything is in his hands… everything from your teaching schedule to the slogans.”
“What slogans?” interrupted Andrea.
“What do you mean, what slogans?” uttered Pashk, astonished. “Every teacher and his class are assigned a slogan in stone for which he is responsible all the time.”
“I see,” said Andrea.
“You think it’s no great matter at all, do you?” he asked.
“No, no, not in the least,” responded Andrea, attentively.
The surprised expression on Andrea’s face forced Pashk to explain a few things which he would never have imagined that people did not know.
“Well, since you’re new here as a teacher and have your career ahead of you, let me be frank with you. If you want to be respected by the Party and the authorities, roll up your sleeves and take good care of your slogan.”
“To take care of your slogan, you have to be systematic,” he continued. “and never neglect it. What I mean is, you have to go out and check on it at least once a week. If it rains, the slogan’s appearance will suffer. The rain cuts furrows into the soil and can cover the letters over with mud. It dilutes the whitewash and the stones look blotched. You know what happened here recently?”
“No,” replied Andrea.
“Well, how could you?” Pashk recalled. “It took a full six months to find out beyond any doubt how Baft’s slogan became damaged. To tell you the truth, the teacher Baft had been reputed for his excellent slogans. But a few months ago, all of a sudden, his slogan began to deteriorate. If you were looking for Baft, you knew where to find him. He was always out at his slogan fixing the letters. He spent more and more time there, even in the evenings.
The truth is that when a shepherd from the cooperative, one stemming from one of the most bourgeois déclassé families in the village, took his sheep out to pasture early in the morning, he cast a spell on that teacher’s slogan (Pashk’s eyes took on the air of an investigator). Poor Baft was exhausted, going out every day to fix his slogan. He was constantly moaning and groaning: ‘Why am I having all this bad luck? Why do the sheep keep grazing on my slogan?’ He could not imagine that it was the neglect of the words of his slogan THE MOST DANGEROUS FOE IS A FOE FORGOTTEN which attracted the sheep in the first place and caused them to destroy it.
Baft asked the principal several times to change his slogan, ‘just because I’m superstitious,’ but the principal was in no mood to do so.
In fact, Baft himself was the first person to cast doubts on the ‘guilt’ of the sheep. After having studied the terrain, he expressed his doubts to the Party Secretary. ‘It’s odd,’ he had explained, ‘there are lots of other sheep paths in the whereabouts of my slogan, much easier ones and, after all, sheep are not particularly well known for their bravery, as goats are, for example, who will scamper up any steep hillside, like the one where my slogan is located, despite the danger.’
Then another clue assisted them in their investigation of the case, when it became known that the village shepherd had recently been buying particularly large amounts of salt at the shop.
The shepherd was obviously up to something. With handfuls of salt he got the sheep to lick off the word ENEMY. You know, of course, that sheep go mad for salt. So his suspicions turned out to be true. The local secret police officer was informed immediately. A whole group of volunteers was then called up to guard Baft’s slogan day and night. Just imagine, the villagers hid among the bushes and waited for hours for the shepherd’s sheep to pass by. In the end, the whole affair was uncovered. It was early in the morning when the guards, or rather the villagers, observed the sheep of the cooperative destroying the very letters which Baft and his pupils had arranged with such great effort. Having ascertained themselves of the facts, the villagers pounced, probably upon a signal given by the secret police officer.
When he was detained, the shepherd of course denied everything. It was only two or three days later that he revealed his true colours and was arrested for hostile activities. He tried to defend himself up to the very last moment, claiming that he was innocent because there were only hoof prints there and because sheep were not responsible before the law or any other such nonsense.
The principal later changed Baft’s slogan and gave him another hill. He assigned him one of those slogans with a GLORY TO or a PRAISE BE which require less maintenance and are always in fashion.
In the final analysis, what matters to a teacher is not what the slogan says, but the number of letters. From the moment he gets it, he instinctively starts counting the letters…”
It was with the history of Baft that Pashk terminated his account of Andrea’s coming teaching career.
Two days later, Andrea was called to the principal’s office to be given his class, his teaching schedule and other matters. When it came to the slogan, the principle pondered: “Because you are new here, I’ll give you a site not too far from the school building and for your slogan, well…” The director opened his red notebook, hesitated and then added: “Actually, you can have your choice. There are two left over at the moment. One is THE PARTY IS THE TIP OF THE SWORD OF THE WORKING CLASS and the other one is… is CHROMIUM BREAKS THROUGH THE BLOCKADE. Andrea, who now knew all about the slogans, replied with a note of hesitation in his voice: “I’ll take the one about chromium.”
“Alright,” said the absent-minded principal. “It won’t be too difficult for you. Frrok had that site before, so the ground will already have been levelled. But Frrok, who was getting close to retirement, used to tend to his slogan less and less. You know, old age… Anyway, take that one, I hope you won’t have any trouble,” he added in closing.
The next day, after class, Andrea took his pupils out. They walked for about half an hour up to the site of his slogan. The site had indeed been levelled, but the existing slogan was in a sorry state. There was, at any rate, enough room for the new one.
There was great commotion among the pupils when the time came to hand out the individual letters. Having calculated the number of stones needed for each letter, they all tried to get the letters which caused the least work. There was great shouting at the start to get an “l,” of which there happened to be only one, then an “o” and then a “u,” etc.
Confused by all the hubbub and wanting to be as exact as possible in his distribution of the letters, Andrea remembered to ask: “How did your teacher Frrok used to divide them?”
“Oh, he changed the system quite often. At the start he did it by alphabetical order, then the girls got to choose first, and then the sick children were only given the dots on the “i” or a comma.”
“But Frrok took sides and had his favourite pupils,” another pupil was heard to say.
“Alright then, we’ll continue this time the way we started out… and I am going to take a letter, too.” uttered Andrea enthusiastically.
“No, no, teacher!” shouted the pupils in protest. “You just supervise.”
Everything went smoothly after this. For about three hours they rummaged around like squirrels, collecting stones from the bushes. When they were finished, the pupils themselves thought that their slogan had turned out quite well.
All tired by now, they set off, one by one in various directions with their backpacks and tools over their shoulders, and shouted to him: “Have a good lunch, teacher!”
He felt sorry for them as he watched them leave. They had little to eat, were poorly dressed, and but nonetheless they were happy kids. None of them understood or even attempted to understand what the slogan meant.
Slowly he returned to his room. He was weary, but with the knowledge and tranquillity that he had fulfilled his duties well. He lay down and right away fell into a profound sleep.
He met the other teachers when he woke up. None of them talked about the slogans.
He observed them, all of them with their jackets draped over their arms, cigarettes in the corners of their mouths, with their quiet, almost shepherd-like manner, as they set off, saying: “I’m just going out to have a look at my slogan.”
It had become a real pastime for them.
“What else is there to do here in the middle of nowhere?” Andrea often thought to himself.
Later, he, also got used to going out to have a look at his slogan, at least once a week. He would clean it up, remove all the leaves, dirt and mud, adjust one or two of the letters, sit and rest among them, and greet the farmers who were returning from their labours.
But when five months had passed, Andrea’s slogan was changed. In fact, most of the slogans were changed.
Pashk had explained to him that changes in the slogans only occurred rarely, and it was at any rate the Central Committee of the Party which authorized such changes on the basis of several exceptionally strict criteria. A number of factors were taken into account for the distribution of new slogans: the political spectrum of the district, zone or countryside in question, the percentage of kulaks, deportees, political prisoners and common prisoners, the number of Communist Party members, the economic development of the zone, harvest yields, the rate of success against adverse weather conditions, local cultural and historical traditions and the specific situation of the zone in question. For example, it was said that once, when a school principal was caught in flagrante delicto with a female teacher of questionable political origins, they immediately changed all the slogans in the zone. LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM, for instance, was replaced by VIGILANCE, VIGILANCE AND YET MORE VIGILANCE and by LET US RAISE THE STANDARDS OF PROLETARIAN MORALS.
The distribution of slogans was usually the last point on the agenda of the teachers’ council meeting, but the teachers normally knew in advance whether or not to expect a new distribution. The day before the meeting, Sabaf, the Party Secretary would be called to the Central Committee and when he got back, he would behave very solemnly, acutely aware of the gravity of the political situation. He seemed to know just how curious the teachers were to find out as quickly as possible what their new slogans would be. He would nod left and right, giving an indifferent greeting. It was during those days that the teachers would often treat Sabaf to food and drinks.
Many of them envied Sabaf on such occasions.
The principal argued that the slogans had to be changed because of the coming visit by a Politburo member to a northern town, noting that the latter might use the road which passed by their village.
Emotion and impatience prevailed at the moment the slogans were to be distributed. Their contents and lengths were interpreted in many ways. They were seen as a sign of sympathy or antipathy by the ruling Party organs.
The principal quietly began reading out the names of the teachers and then the slogans. Discreet moans of anguish or sighs of relief could be heard from time to time in the classroom.
A stir was caused by the slogan given to Diana, a teacher from the capital whom Andrea did not know well. They had talked a couple of times while hitchhiking, but since the drivers always preferred to take girls with them, it often happened that Andrea got left behind and had to wait quite some time to get a lift, or didn’t get a lift at all. On such occasions, he would return to his room and would spend all of the following day at his slogan.
For reasons which were not entirely clear, the principal seemed to dislike Diana. This became apparent when he assigned her the mile-long slogan: WE SHALL TAKE TO THE HILLS AND TO THE MOUNTAINS AND MAKE THEM AS FERTILE AS THE PLAINS. This time, he gave her a slogan with no less than forty-seven letters: LET US THINK, LET US WORK, LET US LIVE LIKE REVOLUTIONARIES. The corner of Diana’s lower lip began to quiver with anger. She tried to preserve her composure, but was unable to do so, and finally burst into tears with: “I knew it, I knew it from the very start!”
“What did you know from the very start?” asked the principal frigidly.
“Please, Comrade Principal, how long are you going to continue doing this to me? It is not fair of you to take your personal likes and dislikes out on people by means of the slogans.”
The anger in her voice was more than apparent. The teachers’ council froze on the spot. No one dared to speak.
The principal continued to speak as if nothing had happened. “I don’t understand. I really don’t understand. What do you mean by dislikes? Or have you perhaps got something against the slogan? This is the slogan which Comrade Enver Hoxha used himself during the 7th Party Congress,” he added, with a sly gleam in his eye.
His words dropped like a bomb. Though she was unable to conceal her anger, Diana did not have the courage to say another word. Discreet glances of sympathy were cast in her direction. Gjin, one of the more affable teachers in the group, broke the silence. Though his hands and his voice were trembling, Gjin made the principal a proposal to calm the situation down.
“Comrade Principal,” he suggested, “may I swap my slogan FULL SPEED AHEAD with Diana’s?”
But the principal would have none of it. “No, of course not! We are not going to spend all day here redistributing slogans to make everyone happy. They are our political duty and if anyone is opposed to that, well, that’s a different matter,” he concluded.
While leaving the meeting, Andrea heard Gjin whisper to Diana: “Don’t worry, Diana. Don’t get so upset about it. I’ll do your slogan for you. What will it cost me after all? Only a couple of days of leave. Or we’ll go out one day and do it together. Alright?”
But Diana was in such a state that she could hear nothing.
“She is really quite attractive,” Andrea said to himself as he watched her as she frowned.
This time, Andrea received the slogan: THE STRONGER THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT, THE STRONGER OUR SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY. He was not upset by its length, and indeed, when he was finished, the principal later commended him on its orderly layout: “Andrea, I have a very good impression of your slogan. Congratulations!”
“Thank you,” replied Andrea in satisfaction.
Two years passed with the same slogan. He would go out to have a look at his slogan as usual. Whenever he was not able to return home for the weekend or when he was lonely, it seemed to be his salvation. AThank God I’ve got the slogan. What else would I do here in the middle of nowhere if I didn’t have it?” he often pondered as he cleaned it, stroking the stones fondly.
One autumn afternoon, while he was smoking a cigarette all by himself, he met Diana in the empty schoolyard.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Nothing special.” she replied.
“Nice weather,” he noted.
“Yes.”
“Shall we go for a walk out to the slogans?”
“Why bother?” she said. “There hasn’t been any rain for quite a while.”
“What about the leaves…? The autumn leaves might have covered them over. But whatever you want.”
“Alright,” said Diana, showing no particular interest.
Slowly they set off through the woods.
When they got to the brook where the path divides, Diana filled her hands with water, washed her face and moistened her hair. Then, taking another scoop of water, she sprinkled Andrea with it. He was confused and Diana laughed loudly. He soon recovered though and gave her the same back. She splashed him this time and ran off. There was no sense in Andrea standing there like a wet fool. He took courage, filled his hands with water and ran after her. He overtook her beside a tree and, while catching his breath, threw the water over her shoulder. The water flowed down her dress, making parts of it stick to her body. Andrea could hold back no longer. He threw his arms around her and hugged her like a child.
But Diana withdrew from his embrace, saying: “No!”
“Why not?” asked Andrea, still breathing heavily.
“Because I don’t want to,” declared Diana and walked slowly towards the hill where her slogan was located.
“But why did you spray me with water if you didn*t want to?” wondered Andrea, setting off for his own slogan. When he got there, he found it in good order. The stones were still covered by the fresh coat of whitewash. Here and there, a few leaves had fallen on them. He cleaned them up and, not knowing what else to do, headed up the hill to see what Diana was doing.
He was surprised to find her sitting on the grass beside her slogan: “LET US THINK, LET US WORK, LET US LIVE LIKE REVOLUTIONARIES,” covered in leaves from the surrounding trees.
She looked completely lost. Her dress was still wet.
He sat down beside her and stammered in a somewhat sheepish fashion: “Sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” she asked.
“For a while ago.”
“No problem. I had almost forgotten.”
Silence once again.
“Why don’t you clean up the leaves?” Andrea inquired.
“I like it better the way it is, draped in autumn leaves, better than all that white like a hospital. It’s more romantic this way, don’t you think?” said Diana, who seemed to be talking to herself. “It seems to carry a different message this way somehow, more of a romantic revolutionary slogan.”
“Revolutionary romanticism…” added Andrea with a smile.
“You should still clean it up,” added Andrea, who stood up and began to brush all the leaves off her long slogan.
Diana studied him. She then got up herself, approached, picked up a leaf and, as she was about to throw it away, gently took hold of his hand. He said nothing and continued working with his head bowed.
She squeezed his hand and looked him in the eyes. She then took his head in her hands and, pulling him towards her, gave him a sudden kiss.
In no time at all, they were lying on the soft earth between the words LIKE and REVOLUTIONARIES. Neither of them noticed that the careless movement of their legs had toppled one of the letters in REVOLUTIONARIES.
They returned to the village late that evening.
The next morning, they greeted one another calmly as if nothing had happened at all. From that day on, they went out to the slogans more often.
The monotony of village life was interrupted by something that happened to one of the elder teachers, Llesh. He taught at a little one-room school which served as an annex to the main school, but was a member of the teaching staff like Andrea. Llesh’s school was two hours away from the centre of the cooperative. According to regulations, the principal had to inspect it two times a year but, because it was quite a distance to walk, he rarely went.
The misfortune occurred when, on his last inspection, the principal was surprised to discover the slogan “VIETNAM WILL BE VICTORIOUS” discreetly located in a ravine right near Llesh’s school.
The principal was flabbergasted. The Vietnam war had been over for fifteen years. In addition, the slogan was in an excellent state, having been daubed with a fresh coat of whitewash. The principal did not know what to do. He liked Llesh, in particular because they played chess together. Llesh was known among the staff members as a devoted teacher and not the sort of person who would indulge in such jokes. But the principal wanted to be on the safe side. He might have been accused subsequently of not having taken action. As such, at the next staff meeting he brought up the issue of Llesh’s slogan as the last point on the agenda.
Llesh had arrived two hours before the meeting started. He was as pale as wax, a sorry state indeed, as he put out one cigarette after the other, endeavouring to act as quiet and friendly as possible with the other teachers.
He addressed them out in the schoolyard: “Hey, guys, we haven’t played for quite a while. What about a game of chess, a teachers’ championship?”
Pashk took pity on him and said “Look, Llesh, this is not the right moment for chess.”
“You know what? I’ll beat the pants off you, Pashk, if we play against one another,” Llesh said, giving a laugh.
None of the other teachers smiled.
During the meeting, before they got to the issue of the Vietnam slogan, one could hear Llesh’s knee thumping nervously under the desk where he was sitting. It was a difficult moment for him. He was used to hearing praise for his good work. This time, things were different.
The principal, however, treated the problem very briefly. He seemed to want to skim over it in a formal manner. He stated the facts of the case and turned to Llesh, inquiring: “Tell us, Llesh, how did all this come about?”
Llesh was unnerved and confused by the question.
“How did what come about?”
There was a long silence. Llesh then rose to his feet and, with a few awkward movements, began searching through his pockets. All the others watched him attentively. Finally, he extracted a crumpled piece of paper. It was clear to everyone that he had prepared a written statement.
He looked at the piece of paper but, for a while, did not manage to say a word. Confused as he was, he did not realise that he was holding the paper upside down. Gjin, who was sitting beside him, whispered: “Look, Llesh, you’ve got it upside down.”
“Oh,” stammered Llesh with a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Gjin,” he continued with evident gratitude and, glancing around at the staff, began:
“Comrades…”
Before he could say another word, the principal interrupted him: “Don’t bother, Llesh, there is no need for a long discussion of the matter. Just tell us about the slogan…”
Poor Llesh was really mixed up now. You could see from the dark circles under his eyes that he had spent a lot of time preparing his paper. But his colleagues were of the opinion that the matter should be dealt with as briefly as possible. Mixing up his words from the very start, Llesh thus endeavoured to explain concisely what had “come about.”
Some seventeen years earlier, a particularly zealous Party Secretary called Nik had insisted that slogans be built everywhere, even in the most remote villages. “Wherever we are able,” he had stated, “on sites which can be well seen and even on sites which cannot be seen at all.” Llesh had received the slogan about Vietnam and had completed it according to the technical specifications he had received. Of course, later on, everyone else had forgotten Llesh’s slogan. No one ever told him not to keep the slogan in good condition, so he continued to go out every week after class, sometimes with the pupils and sometimes on his own, to see that everything was in order.
“OK, but why Vietnam? Vietnam was liberated fifteen years ago!” asked Sabaf.
“But that’s the slogan they gave me,” Llesh replied innocently. “And let me say it again, no one told me not to keep it up.”
There was no point in going on any further. The only thing Llesh could be accused of was an eminent lack of knowledge of current events.
“After all, what else can you expect from the place he lives in?” Pashk whispered in Andrea’s ear.
But when the principal, concluding the matter, referred in passing to Llesh’s failings, in particular for not having taken “appropriate measures to keep up with the international situation,” Llesh reacted immediately, saying:
“As far as I am aware, Vietnam was and still is subject to the aggressive designs of the capitalist countries.”
“Yes, of course,” replied the principal, obviously regretting that he had broached the subject in the first place. “Llesh, go and dismantle the slogan and let’s put an end to the matter.”
The teachers all nodded in approval and were beginning to collect their briefcases to depart. But Llesh, certain now that the initial danger had passed, would not give up that easily. “If you would allow me to continue, Comrade Principal?” Without waiting for a reply, he rose to his feet, full of self-confidence, and continued, “Comrades, I have endeavoured to carry out my duties to the best of my abilities, to construct a proper slogan and…”
“Yes, of course, Llesh,” noted with principal, showing signs of losing his patience. “No one here has questioned your sense of responsibility and no one will condemn you for dismantling the slogan. The only problem was that it is fifteen years old and is now out of date.”
“Alright,” noted Llesh, not to be outdone, “then give me one of the modern slogans.”
“What do you want me to give you?” asked the principal nervously. “What do you want out there in the middle of nowhere?”
Llesh, believing that the principal had asked him seriously about what slogan he wanted, stated in a faint voice: “I’d like the one about: “YANKEES, HANDS OFF VIETNAM.”
There was a long “ooo” of amazement and impatience among the other teachers.
Sensing that the official character of the meeting was being lost, the principal concluded sharply with the words: “Comrades, having dealt with all the issues at hand, we shall now adjourn the meeting. I wish you all a pleasant evening.”
The teachers all rose to make a speedy exit. Llesh was the last to leave. In silence, he lit a cigarette and, taking a deep puff, said to himself: “I lost out.”
The news that Llesh had been deprived of his slogan spread quickly in the village.
His wife, Maria, kept to herself in the brigade. When a number of days had passed, one of her colleagues inquired sympathetically: “Maria, is it true what people are saying in the village?”
“What do you mean?” replied Maria coolly.
Well, we heard that your husband, Llesh… I mean… I hope you don’t mind… that they took away his slogan. What I mean is, he doesn’t have a slogan anymore.”
Maria bowed her head in shame and gave a nod. “Yes, it’s true,” she replied. “To tell you the truth, I’m not worried about the slogan but about Llesh. We are going through a difficult phase. My husband has lost his appetite and can’t sleep well anymore. You know, he really cared more for that slogan than he did for his own children.”
The other women in the brigade tried to comfort her.
“Don’t worry. It’s no great disaster. Let him dismantle the slogan about that country. What was the name again? He’ll be alright for a while without a slogan until the people in the village have forgotten the matter. Then he can always make an application for a new one.”
“Thanks for your kind words,” said Maria, “but the problem is that Llesh is lost without it. He is really on edge. He’s not used to criticism at work. The affair with the slogan about Vietnam has really affected him deeply.”
The woman then gave Maria an idea which surprised not only her, but the whole brigade. “If the situation is really that bad, why don’t you get him to build a slogan on your fence at home? You don’t need permission. You could even use the one about Vietnam, or something else, and then everything would be alright. Your children are already old enough and could help you keep it in order.”
Maria was speechless at the thought.
“My Llesh doesn’t need anyone’s help. He can do it himself, but I don”t really know if he will agree to do it without permission.”
“Why shouldn’t he?” insisted the others.
No one ever found out whether he had accepted the suggestion of his wife’s brigade, but one thing was for sure: he never again applied for another slogan.
Less than two weeks had passed since the meeting, when the principal and Sabaf summoned Andrea to the office. Placing his arm over Andrea’s shoulder, he said: “Andrea, I would like to give you something special this time. When you drive up to the top of the hill, you know the ugly wall of the warehouse you can see from there? It looks so empty. That’s why Sabaf and I thought it would be a good idea to cover it with a long slogan in red paint. Sabaf nodded in approval. The school children can’t manage, so you’ll have to do it yourself. We’ll get you a ladder, a brush and some paint. The slogan is: LONG LIVE THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT.
Andrea accepted willingly. Before he left the office, he turned to the principal and asked: “Excuse me, but what colour did you want for the slogan?”
The principal gave a chuckle and, looking at Sabaf, replied: “But that’s obvious, isn’t it, Andrea? It has to be red.”
The warehouse was an old building in a terrible state of disrepair. It was grey, dusty, and had been built of large, heavy and irregular blocks of stone in uneven rows. Andrea did not go back home that weekend. Instead, he began Saturday afternoon by taking measurements for the slogan, and worked all day Sunday on it. He couldn’t find any paint in the warehouse itself, so he began with an anti-corrosive agent. The work was exhausting. He had not anticipated the difficulties involved. The paint seeped into the cracks in the wall, the letters ruptured all over the stone facade, and the remaining plaster crumbled into bits every time the paint brush passed over it. It took two whole days of work.
“How are you getting along, teacher?” asked the villagers from time to time. “It looks really nice!”
“Thanks,” he replied politely from the top of the ladder, and continued putting great effort into the work, covered as he was in the anti-corrosive paint and dust.
Marta, the head of the corn harvest brigade, who was quite a ripe beauty of her own, teased him: “Careful with your hands, Andrea. The paint will eat at your skin and stain them. What are all the girls in the big city going to think about that?”
Andrea gave a hearty laugh.
When he finally finished the job late in the evening, he wasn’t happy with the slogan at all. He knew how to build one on the hillside, knew how to even out the terrain, but he was no good at a wall slogan.
He returned home late that night, completely dissatisfied with his work. And rightly so.
Two days later, the principal and Sabaf summoned him urgently to the office. He sensed that something unpleasant was about to happen.
“What the hell have you been doing up there, Andrea? You have no idea how many people are upset!” exclaimed the director, who was known to be extremely vicious when he was in trouble.
“Why? What’s wrong?” Andrea managed to stammer in a faint voice.
“What do you mean, why?” The principal, being studied by Sabaf, did not know what to do to appear really upset. “What did you write the slogan with? Your hands or your feet?” The principal glanced at Sabaf from the corner of his eye, as if to say: “Should we keep our mouths shut this time, too?”
But the expression on Sabaf’s face betrayed nothing. The matter was obviously to be taken seriously.
Andrea endeavoured to find out what was going on. They informed him later. The District Party Secretary for Propaganda had arrived for an inspection. After having briefly checked all the slogans in stone, his glance fell upon the slogan on the warehouse. He approached it and spent a full five minutes staring at it in silence. He then turned to Sabaf, asking “Who wrote that?”
“Andrea. He teaches science and comes from the capital, Comrade Secretary,” Sabaf replied promptly.
The Secretary then set off for the offices of the cooperative without saying another word. Everyone in his retinue thought he had forgotten the matter, but the moment he was about to enter the Party office, he turned to the group and, after a ponderous moment of silence, stated briefly: “The slogan has been written without requisite devotion to duty.”
The message of the Party Secretary was eminently clear.
Two days later, Andrea was summoned to a meeting of the Party.
It had been two days of great solitude for him. The other teachers were reserved and Sabaf had not spoken to him at all.
The main accusation made of him at the meeting was that of Sabaf who, endeavouring to find an expression which was both one of principle and one which would hit hard, opened the session as follows:
“Comrade Andrea, The Party organization would like to know the reasons, or rather, the real motives which caused you, or should I say, instigated you to write, or more precisely, to botch up the slogan with LONG LIVE THE DICTATORSHIP OF DE PLORETARIAT? To put it more bluntly, I would like you to explain frankly to the meeting exactly who put you up to this.”
The atmosphere was tense indeed.
Among the arguments which Andrea presented in his explanation were: the bad quality of the stone, the filthiness of the warehouse wall, the old plaster…
“Come on, come on now,” interrupted Sabaf abruptly, “if you keep on talking about the stones and the plaster, we will get nowhere.”
“But what else could it be, Comrade Sabaf?” asked Andrea confusedly.
“I can tell you,” he replied, Abut it would be in your best interests to tell us yourself. Listen, my good man, the Party has no time to deal with matters of such insignificance. I was hoping you would open your heart to the organization and justify your actions, presenting due self-criticism, but as far as I can see here, this does not seem to be the case. As such, comrades,” continued Sabaf, clearing his throat and enunciating more distinctly, “it would be insufficient to state simply that Andrea wrote the slogan without requisite devotion to duty, making it evident that he is not a great proponent of the dictatorship of the proletariat. No, comrades, the problem goes deeper than that.” After a lengthy analysis of the principle of class struggle, he noted, “the principal reason is to be found in his family background, his relations. His paternal uncle committed suicide during the war, and his maternal uncle was sent into internal exile, so now he… Can’t you see, my communist comrades, what sly means the enemy has been using here? Yes, yes, the enemy of the working class. Can’t you see how he has distanced himself from the Party which made every attempt to extend a helping hand and get him out to the mire he has been wallowing in? But he refused to take it.”
Andrea could not make any sense of what was going on. He did, however, realize that his life and his fate were at stake.
“Wait a moment, Comrade Sabaf,” interrupted one of the elder communists at the meeting, who was respected for his balanced opinions. “Let us not let things get out of hand here. I am not denying that this teacher has made a mistake, but not to the extent that one could call him an enemy of the working class. I would therefore ask you to reconsider the matter more calmly.”
Andrea had lost the thread of their conversation. He was then asked to leave the meeting room so that they could consider the matter and come to a decision. About an hour later, Sabaf came out and announced to him coolly and definitively: “The Party has decided this time to extend its hand to you. You will only be given six months of disciplinary work with the brigade.”
“Thank you,” replied Andrea blankly.
He was assigned to Marta’s brigade. The villagers were reserved in their welcome. He worked hard and, when he returned home to his room late at night, he slept like a log.
From time to time, the villagers would ask him to read the newspaper to them.
Marta treated him well. She would often tease him about his delicate hands, “like those of a little baby.”
One day, she approached while he was having lunch all alone during the break, and said, “You’ll be working this afternoon on the other plot, the one down at the bottom of the hill, and will be harvesting corn. If you want, I can help you.”
“Thanks,” said Andrea, touched by the gesture, “but there’s no need. I can manage by myself.”
“Oh…,” replied Marta with a laugh, “you don’t want to work with me?”
Her imposing breasts heaved as she laughed. He watched her with a twinkle in his eyes.
Later that afternoon, she found him harvesting among the tall sheaves of corn. She, too, began to strip the cobs of their foliage. Suddenly, without speaking a single word, they united, and were rolling on the ground. It started to rain and they found themselves covered in mud.
Night was quickly falling when they parted, each of them stealing home along different paths through the cornfield. The hounds could be heard barking in the distance.
Drenche, he returned to his room.
When the six months with the brigade were over, Andrea resumed his activities at the school where he had been teaching. The principal welcomed him back as if nothing had happened. He gave him a new slogan and, upon leaving the room, noted: “Oh, I almost forgot. Listen, Andrea, some of the overzealous teachers have recently begun using white silicate blocks for their slogans instead of natural stone. They are obviously more attractive, but the practice has been condemned by the District Party Committee. It has also had a negative effect on the pupils. They have been caught stealing bricks from construction sites and coming to school with their backpacks over one shoulder and a bag of bricks over the other. And actually, when you compare them to those made of natural materials, these slogans do lose something of the spontaneous character with which the masses express their own free views.”
They looked one another in the eyes for a brief moment.
“I agree, Comrade Principal,” replied Andrea politely, “I’ll bear it in mind.” As he left the office, he began counting the number of letters in his new slogan.
[Parullat me gurë, from the volume Tregime, Tirana: Onufri 1997, p. 11-29, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]