THE GENERAL, HAYING NOTHING BETTER TO DO ONCE HE HAD
sunk back into his corner of the car, opened the exercise book. The first page was missing-the first pages of most of the diaries they had found were missing-but once he had started to read he realized that probably no more than the first two or three sentences had gone. Probably the writer had filled most of the first page with his particulars and then, changing his mind later on, had ripped the whole page out.
The general continued reading:
The important thing is that no one should find this diary. Here the risk is not great; firstly because no one in the miller's family knows how to read, and secondly because they don't know any language but their own.
Yesterday evening, when the miller saw me with my exercise book on my knee, he asked:
'What are you writing there, soldier?'
Everyone here calls me 'soldier'. No one has ever thought to ask my name. The miller's wife addresses me like that, and so does Christine, their only daughter. In fact I think she was the first to call me by that name. It happened the day our battalion was forced to retreat by the partisans. After throwing my rifle into a clump of bushes I ran off as fast as I could through the forest. I kept to a water channel, because I knew that such channels must always lead eventually to human habitations. I wasn't wrong. It turned out to be the mill-race for this mill. As I walked up to the door a young Albanian girl who was trying to calm down a big dog exclaimed with a surprised look: 'Papa! There's a soldier coming here!'
And that was how my life as a mill-hand began that day.
Sometimes I just can't understand myself, how a soldier like me, from the Iron Division, could be reduced to being a servant in an Albanian miller's house and wearing one of these white caps the peasants round here all wear.
'If you can help me in my work,' the miller told me, 'you shall have board and lodging here, and my protection as well. I am getting old and I'm no longer able to do a lot with my hands. My only son has gone into the mountains with the partisans. Only I warn you : no monkey tricks or he'll have the hide off you.'
He was no doubt alluding to his daughter, and I promised him, in all honesty, that if he agreed to it I was ready to work for him until the end of the war.
But then, fixing me suddenly with his stern and piercing gaze, he said :
'Listen, my lad, you wouldn't be a spy would you?' 'A spy? Me?' I gasped.
'If I find out anything like that, you're done for, mind. I shall hang you from one of the beams in my loft.'
And that was our contract.
It's more than a month since all that, and now I am responsible for a whole heap of jobs; I cut wood in the forest, I keep the mill-race clear, I carve millstones, I fix back tiles when they fall off the roof, I clean and grease the gears, I fill and empty the sacks.
My mates in the battalion and all my family must certainly think I'm dead. If they could see me as I am now, an ex 'Iron' soldier, covered all over in flour, with this cap on my head, they would be flabbergasted I should think and certainly end up bursting out laughing.
25 February 1943 It's very cold. The wind has blown so violently all day that I feel it's going to rip up the mill by its foundations. Not much work. The winter is such a hard one that there are very few villagers prepared to risk the journey to the mill to have a sack of maize or wheat milled. The fields are deserted this year. Many villages round about have been burnt down or abandoned. The few peasants who do come tell the most terrible stories.
Sometimes I stop and listen to the moaning of the wind as it drowns even the roar of the race, and then I have the feeling that the wind is howling over the whole world.
28 February 1943
It snowed last night. I've never seen snow more beautiful. The wind has stopped howling at last, and now everything is white and calm.
9 March 1943 The miller treats me quite well. Though it's also true that I on my side do all his labouring for him with good grace. Yesterday I repaired a section of the roof that had been dam aged by the wind. The miller was very pleased with my work. He said:
'Well, soldier, you're very good with your hands.'
Then after having looked me up and down for a moment he added in a bantering tone :
'It's only war you don't go for much, I take it.'
I blushed up to my ears. It was the first time anything had been said about my desertion.
'It's not true,' I answered, very much upset. 'If I don't
wish to fight, well it's just that I don't feel any sympathy for this war, that's all!'
He slapped me on the shoulder then.
'I wasn't trying to needle you,' he said with a smile. 'It just came out without my thinking. When all's said and done you did the right thing, showing your heels to those fascists.'
His words have haunted my mind all day. Why did he say that to me? I know he helps the partisans and hates the fascists.
Only I've noticed that the Albanians all have a profound
respect for bravery, even when it's the enemy's. They despise cowards, and apparently I have given him the impression that I am one. A hulking great fellow like me, six foot one in my socks, and a coward!
I would really be sorry to be thought of as a coward here. I'd be ashamed in front of Christine especially. She is so young and pretty. She's not yet seventeen, and every time I see her I feel my heart emptying suddenly, like a burst bicycle tyre. Just like that!
March, afternoon Today something extraordinary happened. I'd gone to cut wood in the forest and when I came back I saw a man sitting on the step, outside the mill. I paused and listened, abso lutely stunned: the man was whistling a tune from home. I went closer, and then I saw that the rags he was wearing were the remains of one of our uniforms. I shouted:
'Hey! Friend! Welcome!'
He stopped whistling and shot to his feet. We had never seen one another before, but we threw ourselves into one another's arms like the oldest of friends. Then we sat down together on the step. I asked him:
'What regiment are you from?' ' "Old Glory",' he said.
'I'm from "Iron Division".'
'That's what we were!' he said. 'But what we are now, that's a different matter altogether.'
We both burst out laughing.
'How are you making out?' I asked. 'Is it long since you left the army?'
'Four months. And you?' 'A little over two.'
'This where you're working?' 'Yes.'
'A nice spot! Almost like Switzerland.' 'Who are you here with?'
He gave a big laugh.
'With my "boss". We've brought you two sacks of maize to mill.'
'Is there any news?' I asked. 'I'm completely cut off up here. I have no idea of anything that's going on in the out side world. How is the war going? When will it be over?'
'From what people are saying, quite soon. Our lot certainly can't hold out much longer.'
'And us? What will happen to us?' 'When the war's over we'll go home.'
'Won't we have to answer to anyone for having run off like this?'
'Are you off your head? What a crazy notion! Who would we do the answering to? It's the ones who sent us here who'll be doing the answering-to us! '
His words reassured me slightly, and we lit cigarettes. 'There are quite a number of soldiers like us around this district,' he went on. 'Hundreds of them! The peasants around here need all the help they can get, because most of their sons have gone off to be partisans, so they're all de lighted to take chaps like us on. I've seen them doing all sorts of work, from ploughing and minding sheep to minding the children. Yes, they're even making nannies of them !'
'You're joking!' I said through my laughter.
'Why should it be a joke? Just think: isn't it a miracle just being offered the means of staying alive? If we hadn't, we'd be rotting in some ditch now, without anyone even knowing where to look for our bones!'
'It's true enough.'
'And how do you manage where women are concerned?' he asked.
'I don't.'
'Yes, as far as that goes you just have to tighten your belt. There just aren't any. One of us I knew was hanging around one of the local girls a bit too much and he got chucked out on his ear-after they'd given him a good thumping.'
I didn't answer.
'But with you it looks different,' he went on. 'I reckon you've fallen with your bum in the butter,' he said with a mocking look from his mischievous grey eyes. 'I caught a glimpse of your boss' daughter just now. Fantastic!'
'You're mad! I wouldn't even dare think about it. You just told me yourself what the risks are.'
'Yes, yes, I did, I agree. But I have the feeling that here it's different. It's a beautiful spot, so peaceful. Like I said, you'd think you were in Switzerland.'
'And the miller's fists, did you notice them?'
He made some silly joke and we both burst out laughing.
From inside the mill we could hear the monotonous rumble of the stones milling the maize.
He took out his tobacco tin and rolled himself a cigarette the way the peasants do round here. Then he rolled one for me, because I haven't learned how to do it yet.
'Listen,' he said, his eyes half-closed, very thoughtful. 'You
haven't heard anything about the "Blue Battalion"?' I shuddered.
'No,' I answered quietly. 'Why?'
'They say it's in action somewhere in central Albania.' 'Very far from here?'
'Yes, pretty far,' he answered, 'but devil knows what may
happen later on.' And he scratched his neck. 'You think they could end up round here?'
'How can one ever tell? You have to expect the worst.' He smoked at his cigarette in silence for a while.
'Perhaps they won't come this way,' I said eventually, 'or perhaps the partisans will manage to put them out of action.'
'It's possible. But despite all the engagements the "Blue Battalion" has had with the partisans, and all the heavy losses they've suffered, they keep getting more reinforcements all the time.'
'What's its strength?'
'Nine hundred. And all raving fascists. Wherever they set foot it's massacres and terror tactics right away. And as for the likes of us, deserters .. .'
'What?' I asked, feeling my heart slowing down. 'Shot on the spot, of course.'
'Oh Holy Mother,' I just managed to murmur.
We stayed there for quite a while longer, sitting outside the door, talking of this and that. My miller and the farmer were engaged in a long discussion inside. When the maize was finally milled the two visitors each threw a bag over one shoulder and set off home, the farmer in front, the soldier bringing up the rear. We wished them godspeed.
2 April 1943 It's spring now and there's a lot to be done. The peasants are coming from all around to have their grain milled, some on foot, others on horses or donkeys. Every time I hear the little bells tinkling on a bridle I am delighted at the thought of company, because the loneliness here is beginning to get me down.
The miller is a good, just man, but he has the drawback of being rather too silent. I have noticed that Albanians are generally far from talkative, and especially the men. All he does all day is suck at his pipe, and God alone knows what thoughts he is turning over behind those clouds of smoke. His wife, 'aunt Frosa' as I call her, is fonder of conversation. She asks me questions about any number of things, about my parents, my relatives, my home. When I confess to her how much I long to see them again she looks at me with a sympathetic air and shakes her head.
'Poor boy,' she says quietly, and then she goes off to knead her bread or wash up.
'And while you're away,' she asked me one day, 'who is looking after your animals?'
I laughed.
'We don't have any animals.' 'Not even any cows?'
'No, not even any cows. We live in the town.'
'And besides, even if you did have any, with you being away the wolves would have eaten them all by now. Ah, my boy, these days men themselves are tearing one another to pieces like wild beasts, we don't need to talk of wolves.'
I could think of nothing to say to that.
Another day she asked me about my medallion.
'What is that you wear round your neck, my boy? It looks like a big Turkish penny.'
I laughed.
'It's a sort of sign we wear, all us soldiers, so that we can be recognized if we're killed in battle. Look, just below the image of the Virgin there's a number. Do you see it?'
Aunt Frosa put on her spectacles. They are rather absurd- looking spectacles with one lens cracked.
'And who gave you this?' 'Our leaders.'
'May the lightning strike them for it!' she said, and walked away still muttering in outrage.
Those are the sort of things aunt Frosa and I talk about. As for Christine, I see her very rarely and actually speak to her even less often. She's the one I'd really like to talk to, of course. Especially since I can get along fairly well now in Albanian. But we never see her at the mill. She's busy all day with her housework, and the rest of the time she spends knitting. Even when she comes to tell us that our meal is ready she only stays at the door for an instant. She throws me an evasive glance from those dark, gentle eyes of hers, then she quickly turns her head away and I just glimpse her chestnut hair for another second or so before she is gone.
Sometimes she calls to us from a window without even bothering to come downstairs :
'Father! Dinner's ready!'
If I happen to be out in the yard, then she just calls across to me:
'Soldier, tell papa food is on the table!'
When we are all sitting round the big, low table she never even raises her eyes. And I sit with my nose stuck in my plate too.
Then I think about her all evening; sometimes I go and sit outside the door and play with Djouvi, the big dog. Some times I let my eyes wander across the sky as I listen to the brook splashing; then I go off into my daydreams again.
25 April 1943 The peasants are still coming in droves to have their grain milled. They say that amazing things are happening in the zones the partisans have liberated. People are setting up some sort of 'councils', which people have never known till now; they are distributing the rich landowners' corn; something new that I can't quite grasp is coming into being.
Today Christine smiled at me.
25 April 1943
Last night some bandits tried to break into the mill. They wounded Djouvi. He is badly hurt. The miller and his family are very upset.
25 May 1943
I dream about masses of things, but it's Christine above all that I have on my mind. All sorts of crazy thoughts go through my head. I know that they're crazy of course; but all the same I enjoy letting them run on and seeing where they lead.
Yesterday, round about noon, I was stretched out near the race and having nothing better to do I was throwing pebbles into the water. The plane trees were rustling all around me and I let myself be lulled into a doze.
Suddenly I heard a terrific noise: footsteps, voices, whistles, horses' hoofs. I jumped to my feet and what did I see? A long column of our soldiers had almost reached the mill. I wanted to run away, but my legs, I don't know why, wouldn't obey me. I stayed there as though I'd been nailed to the ground. They came towards me and made a circle round me.
'Is that the mill?' one of them asked, making a sign to me that the others couldn't see.
•yes,' I answered in terror.
'Right! Bum it down, men!' he cried, and led off at a run. The other soldiers followed him. I joined their ranks. I don't know how or why but my legs were suddenly free again, and I felt light and strong as though my body had been freed from a spell. I was suddenly filled with the same fever, the same ferocity I had felt -the year before, when we burned those six villages one after another during the winter campaign.
We all rushed forward bellowing like crazed, stampeding animals. Two men set fire to the mill. Another group had seized the miller and were dragging him outside. They took him out into the yard and shot him.
I thought of Christine. I leaped up the stairs of the house two by two. There were soldiers coming down dragging aunt Frosa with her feet and hand5 bound. When she saw me she spat in my face and cried :
'Filth! Spy!'
But I didn't care. All I could think of was Christine. I ran into her room and threw myself on her bed. She was trembling all over.
'No! Soldier! No!'
But the blood was pounding in my head. I had to be quick about it. There was so little time.
I pulled off the counterpane, frenziedly ripped off her thin nightdress in my impatience, and threw myself on top of her.
'Soldier! Soldier! '
I woke with a start. It was Christine's voice calling me. Beside me, as before, the quiet water lapped, and there was the smell of hay. I had fallen asleep briefly.
'Soldier! Soldier!'
I walked towards the house with heavy steps. Christine had appeared at the middle window.
'My mother wants you,' she said. I was still rubbing my eyes.
If she knew the dream I'd just had!
24June 1943 The inhabitants of Gjirokaster are evacuating the town and scattering into the surrounding countryside. They are passing all the time, exhausted, carrying their belongings bundled on their backs. The women carry their children in their arms and the old people drag themselves along behind as best they can. The place is in panic. They say that the town is going to be burned down. Some claim that it has been mined and is going to be blown up. In short, everyone is expecting terrible things to happen.
The fugitives are taking refuge wherever they can out in the country. Some are going as far as the liberated areas, others are staying in the areas not officially occupied by either side, like the village near our mill.
Gjirokaster itself is being bombed every day. I sometimes climb up into the big plane tree growing beside the brook and look across at the town. It's as though it has hauled itself up the mountainside, clinging with its nails and teeth, and is determined not to let go at any price. I was stationed there for over a year with my regiment so I know every street and alley, all the cafe-keepers and the gofte-sellers. I also know two tarts in Yarosh, one of the poorer districts.
The town is generally bombed in the morning at half-past nine and in the afternoon at four. When I have nothing else to do I climb up into the top of my plane tree half an hour before the planes are due and wait for them. I can keep watch on the whole horizon from up there; on my right I can see Grihoti, the village where our division was actually quartered in the big new barracks, then the tall hill standing over the village, with its solitary teqe right on top in its cypress grove. Below, on the slopes down to the pebbly river bed, I can see the church and the Christian cemetery, then the bridge where I was on guard duty for heaven knows how many nights, the military airfield, and then, between the river and Trinity hill, the various sections of the town rising in tiers up the mountainside, the streams that have dug their deep beds between them, and all the bridges that link the different parts of the town together.
The planes are punctual. They come from the north, so they usually appear through the Tepelene gorge. The anti aircraft battery at Grihoti is the first to open fire. The noise of the shells bursting doesn't reach as far as here though; we can only see the white puffs of smoke they make. Then the guns on the teqe hill go into action; but the planes seem just as unconcerned by those as by the first ones. They float on tranquilly towards the town, and then I begin to imagine the wailing of the sirens down there in Gjirokaster, and all the people rushing helter-skelter down into the cellars. It seems unbelievable that all the fear and horror battening on that town can be caused just by those three tiny objects flying overhead, glinting in the sun like silver coins tossed up in the sky.
The last anti-aircraft guns to open fire are the ones right
up on top of the citadel towers. From here it's very easy to follow the manceuvres of the planes as the pilots come in, gradually losing height, then suddenly push their noses down, flatten and skim across the military airfield, then soar up again, wheel, and start to repeat the process, each time releasing another of their heavy bombs.
All that is in the daytime. At night the town ceases to exist beneath its blackout. First the darkness swallows up the river, the horse bridge, the waterside alleys and houses, and then, welling up the mountainside, it blots out the various residential sections and the bridges over the streams, tier after tier, until at last it reaches the citadel, the steeples, and the minarets with their untidy stork's nest hats.
Yesterday evening, as I watched the town being enveloped in the darkness, vanishing as though it had never known the light of day, I thought what rotten luck we've all had to be living in such a sinister age, an age when you're forced to live in darkness, obliged to hide yourself all the time. And I remembered a similar night, almost three years ago now, when our company, on its way south, marched into Gjirokaster for the first time.
It was a warm night, I remember; there was rain in the air, and even though we were whacked, covered in mud and feeling depressed as hell, as soon as we arrived in the Grihoti barracks we asked to be taken to the licensed brothel. Our commanding officer gave permission for us to go, and immediately, as though by enchantment, all our vitality came flooding back, and just as we were, covered in mud, with several days' growth of beard, without even having un slung our rifles from our shoulders, we fell in again and marched back out through the main gate of the barracks. The brothel was in the very centre of the town and we had another kilometre to march in order to reach it. But now our legs were no longer heavy. We made silly jokes and teased one another as we marched along the dark road; and we were in our seventh heaven. It was forbidden to sing at night, otherwise God knows what a terrible din we should have made. It really is a happy moment in a soldier's life when he can march side by side with his mates, through a summer night, along a road safe from all danger, with the safety catch of his rifle on. I remember it as though it was only yesterday. One of us was whistling a folk song under his breath, and as we marched along I stared up at the gloomy silhouette of Lunxheria hill and felt it was so close that if I just stretched out my arm I could touch it. And on my right, black as night, there was the bulk of Mali Gjere, the mountain on whose lower slopes I now realized the town must be built.
We were stopped at our checkpoint on the bridge over the river, then when the sentries had passed us through we left the highroad and took a short cut.
II4
Once in Yarosh, one of the poorer quarters, we had to start climbing up the steep streets of the town proper. It seemed dead. Most of the shutters were tightly fastened and the few windows left uncovered made black rectangles cut deep into the walls. Our heavy army boots clattered on the cobbles, and the inhabitants behind their shutters and their heavy doors must surely have been trembling with fright at the thought that yet another massacre might be about to take place. If they had known where we were going!
At last we reached the 'house'. It was a very dark night and the muggy air made it almost impossible to breathe. We halted outside the front door. The officer acting as our guide pushed it open and vanished inside.
The house was dark and silent. There didn't seem to be any other clients in there.
'Perhaps they're asleep,' one of us said in a worried voice.
We were all of us worried, because our officer was taking so long to reappear.
'Even if they have got their pretty heads down, they'd better get them up again, and quick about it,' someone else said.
'Hear, hear!' another joined in. 'We're wearing the uniform and they've got to respect us. Especially sil).ce we're only just passing through.'
'Here today, but where will we be tomorrow, eh?' a small, raucous voice added.
But just then the door opened, the officer re-emerged, and we rushed over to cluster round him.
'Well, sir?' someone said in the blackness.
'Now listen,' the officer said. 'You can go in straight away, but no noise, you hear! Any rowdiness and it's back to bar racks right away! All right now, fall in again!'
We arranged ourselves as best we could in two ranks, though the result would probably have looked a shambles in the light. We were just raring to get in there.
'Now pay attention to me,' the officer said. 'It's very dark in there, but all the windows are open because it's so stifling hot, so we don't want any light. If any of you men takes it into his head to strike a match or use a lighter he'll live to regret it. There's a checkpoint not far from here with a machine-gun nest.'
'Yes, sir, that's all right, sir,' two or three voices murmured
in assent. 'We don't need light. We can do without that .. .' 'Yeah, we don't want to light our wicks, we want .. .' 'Quiet, you damned idiot!' the officer groaned. 'Now, silence ! The first five or six, forward !'
There was a scuffle, and they disappeared into the darkness of the courtyard beyond the door.
'Don't get your rifles mixed up!' the officer cried to them as they vanished. Then turning back to us : 'Six more follow me !'
I was one of those six. We went through the door and someone closed it behind us. We crossed the flagged court yard as though we were drunk, then groped our way up the stairs and ended up on a landing with a long passage leading off it. It was dark along the passage and so stuffy you could hardly breathe, even though the doors and windows of all the rooms were wide open.
'Quiet!' came a woman's voice, the madame's without a doubt.
Panting for breath, huddled together like sheep waiting for the shearer, we had no idea which way to move, and in the darkness we heard our officer murmuring something to the madame. She led him away, doubtless in order to guide him to the prettiest. Then there was the sound of steps coming back across the wooden floor. A pause, then I realized that all the others had melted away into the blackness and that I was all alone in the passage. I felt my way along it in the darkness, I heard a raucous gasp, then another, the blood rushed to my head, I dived through the first open door and heard a sound of violent panting. I rushed out again and found myself in front of another open door. In the shadowy darkness I could vaguely make out a white form in one corner of the room. I went in, took two more steps, then stopped.
'Come on,' a soft voice said.
Shyly, I moved forward a few more steps, then stretched out my arms and touched her. She was completely naked. Her body was so moist with sweat that my hands slid over it. I felt my eyelids drooping and couldn't find the bed.
'Take off your rifle,' she said gently.
I unslung my rifle and leaned it up against the wall. Then she lay down.
I couldn't make out her face in the dark, but to judge by her voice and her breasts she must have been very young.
'I'm sorry,' I said a few minutes later as I lay briefly re laxed in her arms, 'I'm sorry for being so dirty.'
'Oh that doesn't matter,' she said, and her listless tone made it clear that she had got used to soldiers' sweat a long long time ago.
'Where are you going?' she asked. 'South, to the front.'
She didn't comment. And those were the only words we exchanged. I tried to make out her features, but it was no good: they just merged into an indistinguishable blur, like the picture on a cinema screen when something goes wrong with the film. I got up slowly, picked up my rifle, slung it over my shoulder, then turned back once more toward the pale form stretched out in the corner.
'Good night,' I said.
'Good night,' she answered with total indifference.
I left the room, groped my way back to the top of the stairs and went down them. The others who had finished were already outside. They were sitting on the stone seats on either side of the door, their rifles between their knees, smoking. l
An hour later we were making our way back along the main road; but now we weren't talking or joking-just listening to the ragged clumping of our boots on the asphalt, once again in the dumps, weary to the bone, splattered from head to foot with every kind of muck.
'Damned darkness ! ' someone exclaimed as though in a dream; but no one answered and we continued on our silent way toward Grihoti.
A long time afterwards we happened to pass through Gjirokaster again, and naturally asked permission to visit the 'house'. We were told that it had been closed. I'm not quite sure why now-even if I ever was-but apparently there was some sort of rumpus. One of the girls in the place had been killed and they'd had to evacuate the rest. It made me think of that girl I'd spent those few moments with in the darkness, on that muggy, suffocating night, and I thought to myself that it might quite possibly have been her. But it could just as well have been one of the others. There were five or six I think. Seven at most.
29 June 1943 Christine's eyes-hieroglyphs. Like the eyes of all Albanian girls. Love? On my side, yes. On hers, nothing.
Djouvi isn't getting any better.
21 July 1943 Last night troops went by along the Gjirokaster road. They were moving north. We could see the beams of their head lights from up here. Presumably a regiment moving to a new posting.
23 July 1943 The village near us is crawling with ballistes. Some of the village people have been up to the mill with grain and they say the ballistes have been there for a week now, behaving as though the place belonged to them. All they do is gorge them selves all day and then spend the evening singing. They've bled the poor villagers dry. It's lucky our mill is a bit off the beaten track, otherwise we'd have them up here.
But the miller has told me, just in case, that if I see any men coming in white caps with big eagles on the front, then I'm to hide straight away. He's told Christine the same thing. Sometimes I daydream: what if the ballistes did come, and Christine and I were hiding somewhere, both in the same place? She'd be afraid, I'd squeeze her hands between mine to comfort her, I'd feel her near to me, and we'd be alone together, pressed against one another ...
But nothing like that does happen. In films you see things like that all the time, but let's face it, films and real life are just not the same thing.
I would love to go to a cinema though.
6 August 1943 Christine is getting married in a week's time. I found it out quite by chance. I didn't know it but she's been engaged for a long time now, and yesterday, as aunt Frosa was filling a pail with water at the race, 1 said to her, just for the sake of talking to someone :
'You've been stuck at that loom of yours weaving away for days and days now. Why don't you take a rest?'
'Because the day's nearly on us, my lad, the day's nearly on us.'
'What day?'
'What day? What day? We're marrying our daughter next week. Surely you know that?'
'No,' I said, 'I didn't know.'
But my voice came out so faint as I said it that aunt Frosa looked up and stared at me for a moment. My first thought was to try as hard as I could to control my feelings. But then I thought: The hell with it, why should I have to hide the pain I feel?
I honestly don't know whether she knew or not what a shock her words had given me, but she gave me another of her stares and said:
'Why yes, my son! Time passes, and girls grow up and have to be married. You too, boy, when you're home again, as soon as this war is over, your mother will marry you to some pretty young girl, yes, as pretty as the flowers in May!' When she said that I almost broke down altogether, be cause I felt she was trying to console me, and that just made the pain worse.
I went out and sat beside the brook. And I said out loud, just for myself: 'Christine, you're going to be married!' That was all.
20 August 1943
Monotony!
Christine is married. Last Sunday the bridegroom's relatives came to fetch her. Six men on horseback, all armed. The roads are very dangerous, and the Albanians-who always travel with their guns slung over their shoulders even in peacetime-refuse to be separated from their weapons even for an instant in times like these. There was no wedding feast. The men just sat down round the low table as a token, but they had a long journey back ahead of them and scarcely touched the raki. I was invited too, but I might as well not have been there for all the notice that was taken of me.
Two days ago I wanted to give Christine a little present. But what? I don't have anything! I did try to carve her a wooden knife, the way the country people all do round here, but I might as well have saved myself the trouble. Then I thought of giving her my medallion. I'd seen her glancing at it two or three times with an intrigued look in her eye.
'Here, take this to remind you of me.' She took it and gazed at it with delight. 'It's the Holy Virgin!'
'Yes.'
'Who gave it to you? Your mother?' 'No, the army.'
'Why?'
'So that I can be identified when I'm dead.' She burst out laughing.
'And how do you know you're going to be killed?'
'Well, if I ever am! '
'Christine!' aunt Frosa called from the yard. Christine thanked me and fled away.
That was how I gave her the only thing I still possessed.
And what good was it to me? Whatever happens I am lost. I am living, but lost, and what's the good of being found once you're dead!
At about noon the groom's men got up from the table, slung their guns over their shoulders and jumped up onto their horses. Christine's horse was white. She was crying. Aunt Frosa too. The miller kept his tears back. Then they kissed their daughter goodbye. I wanted to say goodbye to her as well, but I didn't have the courage to go over to the horses, because of the distant attitude of the men on their backs. I kept in the background. Djouvi, their big dog, staggered slowly about among them, a white bandage round his neck. I envied him. Christine bent down and kissed him. No one thought of me.
They set off. The horses disappeared from our view first, then the black caped coats, and lastly the long barrels of their guns.
24 August 1943 For several nights now there has been a continual coming and going of troops along the Gjirokaster road. I can only suppose that something important is going to happen quite soon. The peasants coming to the mill say that the country side is filling up again with people who have fled from the towns; there are refugees everywhere, and it's almost as though they've brought a smell of ashes with them. Every one is predicting horrible things.
They also say that the 'Blue Battalion' has moved into the district. Some claim that it is ravaging the country beyond Lunxheria, others that it is already making reprisal raids much closer than that. The nights have become gloomy again. I sleep badly and am constantly getting up to make sure everything is all right.
The longing to see Christine again obsesses me.
1 September 1943 An autumn wind is blowing. I am often overcome by a pro found feeling of sadness and I begin to be very afraid I shall never be able to leave here. I am only twenty-two, yet it seems to me that I am already lost for ever in a desert.
I sometimes sit on the bank of the canal, the canal feeding the race. It's my favourite spot.
I watch the water flowing past, so smooth and tranquil, sometimes carrying a leaf on its surface, sometimes a twig, sometimes nothing but reflections.
I think back to the time when I was still with my division, advancing across the Albanian countryside. I remember the canals we came across then. I don't know why they disturbed me so, those still canals in those Albanian villages, dug out by the peasants with just their hoes and their two hands. I know that nothing else ever evoked for me in quite such a clear and concentrated way what the flavour of peace time had been like. I walked along their banks, rifle slung on my back, with a feeling of wrongness and unease. Something was stirring deep inside me. I felt they were awakening some atavistic instinct in me, that they were urging me on to some thing. They were calling me. I felt their eternal murmuring was coming from inside me as well-and certainly it was while walking along a canal that I first began to have the idea, very vaguely at first then more and more clearly, of becoming a deserter.
Afternoon Djouvi is dead. We are all genuinely heart-broken. The miller's eyes are red. He must have been weeping in secret.
5 September 1943 Calm. The leaves have begun to turn yellow. This morning, very high in the sky, hundreds of planes flew over us towards the north-west.
Who knows what part of the world they've come from and what other part they're on their way to bomb? There are no barriers in the sky.