Chronicle in Stone by Ismaíl Kadaré Read Free Book Online Page B

Voco’s wife, pinching her cheeks and lurching after us. “Ilir, my son, for the love of God throw it away! Throw it away!”
    But Ilir paid no attention. His eyes bulging, he ran on, as we followed behind.
    “The magic! The magic!”
    Our mothers shouted to us from windows and doors and over garden walls. They clawed their cheeks in horror, threatened and wept, but still we ran on, refusing to abandon the magic object. We believed we held the city’s anguish in that filthy ball of rags.
    In the end we got tired and came to a stop at Zamani Square, bathed in sweat and covered with dust, barely able to catch our breath, but radiant with joy.
    “What do we do now?” someone asked.
    “Anyone have a match?”
    Someone did.
    Ilir lit the magic ball and threw it down. As it burned, we began to shout again, then unbuttoned our flies and pissed on it, cheering wildly and sprinkling each other for fun.

Water from the cistern wouldn’t lather. “It’s bewitched,” said Xhexho. “Change it at once or you’re done for.”
    Changing the water was a tough job. My father was reluctant. Grandmother insisted on it, and the other neighbourhood women who drew water from our cistern took her side. They collected some money and offered to work all day alongside the cleaning workers.
    At last the decision was made. The chore began. The workers went up and down by rope, lamps in hand. Bucket after bucket was emptied. The old water came out to make way for the new.
    Javer and Isa sat staring and smoking at the foot of the stairs, and burst out laughing from time to time.
    “What’s so funny?” asked Xhexho. “Why don’t you get a bucket and give us a hand?”
    “This great labour reminds us of the pyramids of Egypt,” said Javer.
    Nazo’s daughter-in-law smiled.
    The buckets were deafening as they clattered off the walls of the cistern.
    “What we need is new people, not new water,” Javer said. Isa burst out laughing.
    Mane Voco, Isa’s father, looked disapprovingly at the two boys.
    Grandmother was coming down the stairs carrying a tray with cups of coffee for the workers.
    Breathing hard, they sipped their coffee standing up. The lack of air deep in the cistern had made them pale. One of them was called Omer. When he went down, I leaned over the opening of the cistern and said his name.
    “Omer,” echoed the cistern. When it was empty, its voice was loud, but curiously hoarse, as though it had a cold.
    “Do you know who Omer was — Homer, that is?” Isa asked me.
    “No, tell me.”
    “He was a blind poet of ancient Greece.”
    “Who put out his eyes? The Italians?”
    They laughed.
    “He wrote wonderful books about one-eyed monsters and about a city called Troy and also about a wooden horse.”
    I leaned into the opening again. “Homer,” I shouted. Patches of light and shadow mingled in the cistern.
    “Hoooomer,” it answered.
    I thought I could hear the tapping of a blind man’s cane.

FOUR
    “You look a little sickly,” Grandmother said. “You’d better go stay at your grandfather’s for a few days.”
    I liked to visit our maternal grandfather, whom we called Babazoti . His was a more cheerful place, not so harsh, and most of all there was no hunger there as there was in our house. In our big house, maybe because of the hallways, cupboards and cellars, you could really feel the hunger. Besides, our neighbourhood was grey, and thick with houses stuck almost on top of each other. Everything was hard and fixed, set down once and for all centuries ago. The streets, curves, corners, doorsteps, telephone poles and everything else seemed cut in stone and measured out to the last centimetre. But Grandfather’s place was different. There was nothing rigid about it. Everything seemed soft and mobile. The ground was free to do as it pleased — to stay level, for example, or to hump its back and throw streams into the river like a donkey shaking off its load. The scenery had something human about it: as the