The Fall of the Stone City (9 page)

Retribution came swiftly at an emergency meeting of the Party Committee before the week was out. The meeting denounced decadent trends in the city, nostalgia for the overthrown feudal-bourgeois
order and the cult of declassed ladies, whose degraded songs were cunningly described simply as “women’s songs” instead of “songs of the elite”, as our literary
critics have classified them.

Angry voices were raised. “Who’s at the bottom of this?” The head of culture fainted twice. Towards midnight the Party chairman made a start on his closing speech with a
quotation from Lenin. “Your most dangerous enemy is the one you forget.” He spared no one, not even himself. “Our enemies have caught us napping. Decadence, thrown out the front
door, has returned through the back window.” Before properly settling accounts with the notions of Nietzsche, perpetual motion and other perversities, the city was confronted with this
virulent plague: its ladies. It was no coincidence that this was happening at a time of renewed tension with Greece and that the US Sixth Fleet had been patrolling the Mediterranean for days.
“We will punish the culprits without mercy. Brace yourself for the worst.”

Shortly after the meeting ended, towards two in the morning, the head of culture shot himself.

THE CITY CONFRONTS ITS LADIES

The bullet that claimed the life of the head of culture was also in a way the first shot in a war between the city’s new authorities and its ladies. For those in the know
it was obvious that the head of culture had died a victim of his own nostalgia for the ladies but, for reasons that remained unknown, this detail was quickly concealed and he was portrayed as their
opponent, indeed a sort of first martyr in this new battle.

The meetings to denounce the ladies, unlike the usual ones, were conducted not only without cheering or music but with a sombre, even academic tinge that seemed appropriate to their subject.
This was especially true of the opening presentation entrusted to the elderly antiquarian Xixo Gavo, which, despite its imposing title “A Thousand Years of Ladies”, was merely a
recitation of an interminable list of the city’s ladies from 1361 until the previous week. Nobody in the audience understood what it was for but this did not prevent them from applauding the
old historian when the list, and with it his speech, came to an end.

The other contributions more or less compensated for the shortcomings of the opening speech. One of them, “Ladies Under Communism”, not only surveyed, as the title suggested, the
fate of ladies everywhere in the communist camp, from Budapest to the former St Petersburg, Bratislava and even Shanghai, but explained why the ladies of Gjirokastër occupied a special
position in this vast field.

This was also the most obscure part of the talk, which each listener interpreted in his or her own way. According to the speaker, being a lady in this city, or occupying “lady
status” did not depend so much on the title and property of a husband. Rather, it was something to do with large houses. It was no coincidence that a foreign architect had called these houses
“ladies in stone”. According to him, inside these great houses no doubt constructed by deranged craftsmen, under their gingerbread ceilings and behind the pitiless glare of their
windowpanes, there took place a mysterious and sophisticated process, like a retreat into a moonlit distance, which was the first symptom of the formation of a lady. These ladies were imagined as
impossibly pale, their breasts and waists dazzlingly white, with a dark enigma hidden under silk that made the senses reel.

A sigh of relief followed the conclusion of the talk.

The next paper was easier to comprehend because it dealt with the events that had led to the death of the poor cultural official and also took a clear political position. From the very start the
speaker did not hide his hostility to the ladies. He considered their songs, which many people recalled with tenderness, to be indubitably decadent. As for their coffee ritual, evoked in the words,
“The coffee service arrives/Like a decree from the sultan”, this might be thought to describe a custom of aristocratic dignity, and even inspire admiration. But it struck this expert,
who had been nurtured at the bosom of the people, merely as evidence that the ladies of the city were not just discriminating aristocrats, but women of power. Intoxicated by his own eloquence, the
speaker lifted his head high to announce that these women had tyrannised the city for years.

An intervention by the chairman asking for this contribution to be cut short only spurred on the speaker. He did not stop but screeched that these ladies not only wielded power but were the
city’s hidden face, its soul, its exact reflection. This, he claimed, was the explanation of the insane fantasies that flourished in this city, fictions about dinners for the dead and the
like.

LADIES IN MOURNING

There was no doubt that the ladies were being targeted and it was obvious too how entirely irrational this was.

Paralysis gripped the city. Some of the punishments ordered by the capital city, astonishingly, were interpreted as acts of revenge on behalf of the ladies themselves. The speaker who had so
taken them to task was a case in point. “I would arrest the dog,” said the Party chairman, “but those hags would be over the moon with delight. ‘Look,’ they would say,
‘he insulted us, and see how he suffered!’”

There were more meetings on the subject. Meanwhile most people privately thought that this campaign should never have been started. Gentlemen were easy to deal with. You summoned them to court,
found them guilty and chained them up. But you couldn’t do anything to ladies. They rarely left their houses, only once, at most twice in as many months. They were as elusive as mirages.

When summer came to an end the Party chairman did not commit suicide as had been long expected but was dismissed, and this seemed an admission that the cause was lost.

But this conclusion was premature. The very moment of the ladies’ apparent triumph proved the truth of the expression, “win a battle, but lose the war”.

It was just after midday on 17 December when Madam Ganimet of the House of the Hankonats, dressed in her winter fur coat, tottered in her high heels across the intersection of Varosh Street and
the road to the
lycée
, when a woman greeted her from her right-hand side. “Good morning, Comrade Ganimet!”

The lady so addressed stopped in her tracks, as if struck by a blow. There for a moment she remained, in the middle of the crossroads and then slowly, as if trying to identify her assailant,
attempted to turn her head. But her neck would not obey her.

“It’s me, Comrade Ganimet. I’m Rosie, from the neighbourhood Committee. Are you coming along to the meeting tomorrow?”

Rosie’s quarry remained rooted to the spot. Then she raised her hand as if in search of support and lifted it to her chest. Her knees trembled and she collapsed on the cobblestones.

Some passers-by contacted the hospital, which sent its only ambulance at once.

This was merely the start. Now that a hitherto unsuspected method of bringing down the indomitable ladies had been found, it was open season everywhere. Like seagulls at the end of their life
span the ladies of the city fell one after another, wherever they were caught by the fatal cry of “Comrade!” The same scene was repeated: first they froze on the spot and reached out a
despairing arm as if for support from some kind gentleman. Sir, your arm, please. Then there was an attempt to see where the blow had come from, a catch of the breath, a trembling at the knees,
followed by collapse.

Mrs Nermin Fico and Mrs Sabeko of the House of Zekat both fell on the same day, the first as she was setting out from home and the second when returning from a social call. That same week it was
the turn of Mrs Turtulli as she crossed Chain Square. A lady of the Kokalari House, emerging out of doors for the first time in two years, on hearing the cry of “Comrade!” tried to
flee, but her knees gave way and she crumpled on the spot. Mrs Mukades Janina, rumoured at one time to have been the king’s secret fiancée, slumped halfway across the Old Bridge, while
her assailant, suddenly taking fright, ran away. A lady of the Çoçoli House managed to protest, “I’m not a comrade!” before she fainted, but others fell without a
word. The two Maries, Marie Laboviti and Marie Kroi, could only manage an astonished cry of “Oaaah!”, covering their mouths with their hands as they did when teased by street urchins;
but this time they did not laugh.

And so it continued, on Castle Street, by the Powder Magazine, in front of Xuano’s shop, by the State Bank and at Çerçiz Topulli Square, where in 1908 our hero
Çerçiz shot the Turkish major, after challenging him, “Hey Turkish scum, here comes death from Çerçiz!” All over the town the ladies fell one by one.

Everyone noticed how few of them there were now.

Strangely, now that they were so much less visible, people thought about them more often, recalling places “where the incident happened”, and other details, such as the case of Mrs
Meriban Hashorva, carried home on an army stretcher, or Mrs Shtino, who after a gypsy girl shouted “Comrade!” expressed her dying wishes on the way to the hospital. At these
“sites of incidents” a stonemason whose name was never mentioned was said to be putting up plaques with the names of the ladies and the day and exact time of their fall.

It was now universally understood that after all that had happened, the ladies had shut themselves up indoors, never to emerge again. Among them were Mrs Pekmezi and Mrs Karllashi, two ladies of
the House of Shamet who used an old family alphabet for their correspondence, and also a lady of the Çabejs, another of the Fico family and finally an elderly Kadare lady with her sister,
Nesibe Karagjozi.

Clearly the ladies were beaten.

DAY
2,000

The setting of their star brought no joy. Secretly, people felt remorse at this disruption of the natural order. There was a feeling that the ladies would be gone for a long
time. It would take decades, if not centuries, for the great Houses to produce new ladies, for only these cultivated families possessed the expertise. Without them it was predicted that the city
would turn savage, but nobody knew in what way. The code of the ladies’ secrets had never been broken. Now their culture had been extinguished and it was impossible to say what might grow in
the ashes they left behind.

Superficially the city remained the same. But to the much-abused surrounding villages and small towns, it seemed that the hour to settle scores had struck. Yet they did not dare. The city stood
firm. With its ladies it had possibly held its head higher, but without them it seemed the more dangerous.

It now became clear that the city was unsuited not just to the new era but to any era. The news that it would be declared a “museum city” was welcomed as an honour by some, but the
majority took it as a mark of shame. A third group tried to encourage hopes of the city’s regeneration. Words beginning with ‘re-’ appeared again, in feverish campaigns.

“Lunatics’ Lane” was at the top of the list for renaming. Some people thought this must mean demolishing the street, but this would not be easy. The principal obstacle was the
house of the Leader of the new Albania, or rather its ruins, very close by. Families such as the Skëndulajs or the Shamets sometimes favoured and sometimes discouraged the demolition, while
the Kadares’ house, which was also nearby but at the opposite end of the street, only suggested sinister ideas. It was in fact the other Kadare house in the Hazmurat neighbourhood whose bad
reputation had clung to it ever since its owner, to the family’s shame, had gambled it away, but many people thought that it was this Kadare house in Palorto that would stain the city’s
name for ever and ever. Nobody knew the reasons for this prophecy, but precisely because they were unknown, the curse seemed the more credible. People said a fire or a heavy British bomber might be
able to dispel its evil aura.

LATER
.
DAY
3,000

However far-fetched they might seem, all these rumours about “Lunatics’ Lane”, whether its renaming or its demolition or the demolition of the entire city,
were no more than a pale reflection of the conspiracies, cabals and other horrors that were hatched that winter among the highest echelons of power. The Leader’s drawn expression betrayed his
fear of being overthrown but still he emerged the winner.

The decision to reconstruct his house to three times its original size was only one of the hopeful signs. The entire city’s spirits lifted. It had deluded itself with its fears of
reprisals and humiliation. The order of the day was now not to humiliate the city, but to praise it to the skies.

A piece of good news arrived to increase the general joy. Rumours were generally ominous but this was something genuinely different. The city expected some rare treat; of what kind, nobody knew,
not even the municipal leaders. But still the news spread. Probably there would be a big celebration with an important guest from the highest possible level. The city was no backwater to be awed by
a visit. Besides the Leader, whose birthplace it was, the city had received King Zog and the princesses, his sisters, as well as Benito Mussolini of Italy and Victor Emmanuel, who was not only King
of Italy and Albania but also Emperor of Ethiopia.

There had also been non-visits that did not take place such as, at the beginning of the century, that of the Ottoman sultan with his mother, the valide sultan, whose marshal of the levée
was also a native of the city. The most recent unrealised visit was that of Adolf Hitler, who was supposed to have come to inspect a plane that the city claimed to have invented, which worked on
the principle of perpetual motion. But the outbreak of war had prevented this.

None of these visits or non-visits could compare with the one that was now expected. Stalin was coming.

This great news ushered in the new year of 1953. The cold was no less biting but the icicles hanging from the eaves of the houses glistened as if for Easter.