Chronicle in Stone

EIGHT

The siren didn’t go off. The guns of the battery didn’t fire as usual, nor did the old anti-aircraft unit. But the rumbling of engines thundered so loud that it seemed the sky would collapse. People ran for the shelters and waited to find out what was happening. The noise of the planes got louder and louder.

“What’s going on?”

“Why aren’t they dropping their bombs?”

It went on for some time. Who knows how long we would have stayed down there if we hadn’t heard that almost joyful voice at the top of the stairs.

“Come out, come out and look.”

We went out. We could hardly believe our eyes. The sky teemed with planes. They looped over the city like storks, then, one after another, peeled away and came in to land at the airfield.

Taking the stairs four at a time, I ran up the two flights to get a better look. I put the lens over one eye and sat by the window. The view was magnificent. The field below was filling with planes. Their gleaming white wings flashed as they slowly lined up in rows. I had never seen anything so captivating in my whole life. More beautiful than a dream.

I spent the whole morning watching everything that was happening at the aerodrome: the planes landing, the way they formed up, the patterns they made on the field.

That afternoon Ilir came over.

“Isn’t it terrific?” he said. “Now we have our own planes.”

“It’ll be great!” I said.

“We’re formidable now, we really are. We’ll bomb other cities just like they’ve been bombing us.”

“They’d better watch out!”

“We’re formidable now,” Ilir said again. He had learned the word two days before and liked it a lot.

“You bet!”

“And you said we’d be better off with no sky at all,” said Ilir. “Now do you see what we would have lost?”

“You’re right.”

We chatted for a long time about the aerodrome and the planes. But our enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by other people’s sullenness. To our surprise most people not only failed to rejoice at the arrival of all the planes, but actually seemed irritated by it. Some of them got even angrier about Italy and the Italians.

The nights were black. After dinner we would all sit by the windows in the main room staring into the darkness. Sometimes the searchlight from the bank of the Zalli groped towards the city through the shadows, extending its beam like a snail putting out its horns. Then we would crouch down below the windowsills and wait silently for the light to reach and then move beyond the front of our house. But most nights were pitch black and we could see nothing, not even one another.

On other nights army convoys passed along the north-south road, apparently headed for the front. My father would count the pairs of lights, and I would drift off to sleep as I listened to his tally: 122, 123, 124…

For the past few days I had been in a mood because they wouldn’t let us play in the street on account of the threat of bombs. Every morning I would sit at the big windows and carefully observe everything happening on the rooftops. But of course not much ever goes on there. The flocks of crows in the sky only made the tedium of the view worse. The variations in the colour of smoke from the chimneys was just about the only thing worth watching, especially on windy days. A real chimney fire was an almost impossible dream in that season, when people were just starting to use their fireplaces again, and few chimneys had built up enough soot to catch fire properly.

During the day there was very little traffic on the road along the river. Yet the roadway attracted me. I created the missing traffic myself, since if there’s one thing a road needs, it’s coming and going.

I had heard that the First Crusade had passed this way a thousand years before. Old Xivo Gavo, they said, had related this in his chronicle. The crusaders had marched down the road in an endless stream, brandishing their arms and crosses and ceaselessly asking, “Where is the Holy Sepulchre?” They had pressed on south in search of that tomb without stopping in the city, fading away in the same direction the military convoys were now taking.

A very long time later a lone traveller passed along that same road. He was an Englishman, like the pilot whose severed arm had been placed in the city museum a week before. He composed verses and walked with a limp. He had left his country to wander forever without respite. Hobbling along, he ate up roads and highways. He turned to look at our city as he passed, but didn’t stop. He went off in the same direction as the crusaders. They say he was seeking not Christ’s tomb but his own.

I peopled the road with crusaders and the lone lame traveller, and enlivened it with a lot of events. I had the crusaders turn back and had them cross swords, sent them a messenger announcing that the Holy Sepulchre had been found, and saw them dash off like one man to go and re-open the tomb. The moment they disappeared the lone lame man came by. He hobbled on, ever on, and never stopped.

I had spent hours tormenting the road, the crusaders and the crippled Englishman.

But now that was all over. Now I had the airfield, alive and bustling, reaching into the sky and bearing death. I loved it from the very beginning, and felt ashamed that I had ever been sorry the cows were gone.

Dawn. And there it was, shining like nothing else in the world. It looked as if a thousand Kako Pinos had polished to a sheen. It breathed heavily, like a hundred lions, and the sound of its panting rose to the sky. A patch of fog hung over it as if it were paralysed.

“Italy is showing its claws,” my younger aunt was telling my father. She glanced at the field with a serious look in her beautiful eyes.

I could not understand how people could not like something as beautiful as the aerodrome. But I had lately become convinced that in general people were pretty boring. They liked to moan for hours on end about how hard it was to make ends meet, about the money they owed, the price of food, and other similar worries, but the minute some more brilliant or attractive subject came up, they were struck deaf.

I left to avoid hearing any more abuse of the aerodrome. I was bewitched. By now I knew everything that went on there. I could tell the difference between the heavy bombers and the light, and between the bombers and the fighters. Every morning I counted the planes, and watched the take-offs, flights and landings. I soon figured out that the bombers never went up by themselves, but were always escorted by fighters. I had given names to some planes that stood out from the rest, and I had some favourites. Whenever I saw some bomber take off with its fighter escort and disappear into the depths of the valley to the south, where they said the war was going on, I kept careful track and waited for it to come back. I worried when one of my favourites was late, and was filled with joy when I heard the humming of engines in the valley announcing its return. Some never came back. I would be sorry for a while, but eventually forgot about it.

So it was that the days went by. I was absorbed by the aerodrome and I thought of nothing else.

One morning I was struck by something unusual the moment I had taken my seat by the window. There on the field, sitting among the planes I knew so well, was a new arrival. I had never seen one so large. The visitor, which had apparently come in during the night, stood there majestically, its light grey wings outstretched. I fell under its spell at once. I forgot all about its colleagues, which looked dwarfed beside it, and welcomed it warmly. Earth and sky together could not have sent me a more beautiful gift than this gigantic plane. It became my best friend. It was my very own flying and roaring machine that put death at my command.

I thought about it all the time. I felt proud to see it take off with a rumble that shook the world and that it alone could make, and to watch it turn slowly south. I never worried so much when any other plane was late coming back in. It always seemed to me that it stayed too long down there in the south. I thought I could hear it breathe heavily on its return. It seemed exhausted. At times like that I would wish it would never fly south again where they were fighting. The others are younger, let them go, I thought. The big one needed some rest.

But it couldn’t rest. Heavy and majestic, it took off almost every day and headed for the front. I was sorry not to be down south too, so I could see its huge wings above me.

“Those accursed planes are off again,” Grand-mother said one day, standing at the window and pointing at three of them, my great friend among them.

“What have you got against them?” I asked.

“They bring fire and blood wherever they go.”

“But the ones here never bomb us.”

“They bomb other cities. It’s the same thing.”

“Which ones?” I asked. “Where?”

“Far away, beyond the clouds,” said Grandmother.

I looked in the direction Grandmother had pointed to and said nothing. There beyond the clouds, I thought, far off, there are other cities where they’re fighting. What were they like, those other cities? And what was the war like there?

A north wind blew. The big window panes rattled. The sky was overcast. A low and even hum rose up from the aerodrome. Zzz! It filled the valley, coming in waves, never stopping. Zzz-sss. The sound spread and spread. Suzana! What was the secret of your lightness? Butterfly, stork-butterfly. You don’t know anything about the aerodrome. At your place now it’s like a desert. Blow wind, blow, on and on. Plane-stork-butterfly. Where are you flying off to? Planes hover in the sky…

I was awakened by Grandmother’s hand on my shoulder.

“You’ll catch cold,” she said.

I had fallen asleep with my head on the windowsill.

“They’ve addled your mind,” said Grandmother.

It was true. I was bewitched. And cold too.

“The cursed things are off again.”

I didn’t answer back. I knew she hated them, but that afflicted me now only in respect of the big plane. Maybe Grandmother was right about the others. Who could tell what the planes were doing way down there beyond the clouds, hidden from view? We too stole corn when we went to the fields outside the city, and got up to all kinds of mischief we would never have dared to do in town.

But there was one thing I just couldn’t work out – why the opening of the aerodrome had done nothing to stop the bombing. On the contrary, it got worse. When the English planes came, the small fighters took off right away, but the big plane sat on its belly on the field. Why didn’t it take off? The idea would torment me. I did all I could to think of excuses, refusing to believe that it could be afraid. No, this plane could never feel fear. During the bombings, as we burrowed in the cellar and it stood out in the middle of the open field, I dreamed for it to take off, just once. The English bombers would run for it then!

But the big plane was never in the air when the English came; it never took off then. It seemed it would never fly over our city. It knew only one direction, south, where they said the war was raging.

One day I was over at Ilir’s. We were playing with the globe, turning it this way and that, when Javer and Isa came in. They were furious, railing at everything, cursing the Italians and the aerodrome and denouncing Mussolini, who was supposed to be coming to visit the city soon. There was nothing unusual about that. Everyone cursed the Italians. We had long known that they were evil, despite their beautiful clothes, their plumes and their shiny buttons. But we didn’t know what to think of their planes yet.

“But what are their planes like?” I asked.

“Bastards, just like they are,” said Javer.

“You don’t understand such things,” said Isa. “You’re still too young. You’d do better not to ask.”

They exchanged a few words in a foreign language, the way they always did when they didn’t want us to understand them.

Javer looked at me for a minute, half smiling.

“Your grandmother tells me you really like the aerodrome,” he said.

I blushed.

“You like planes, do you?” he asked a moment later.

“Yes, I like them,” I said almost spitefully.

“Me too,” said Ilir.

They said something else in their unknown language. They didn’t seem angry any more. Javer took a deep breath.

“Poor kids,” he muttered. “Fallen in love with war, they have. Terrible.”

“Sign of the times,” Isa said. “This is the age of the plane.”

“Did you hear?” asked Ilir. “We’re terrible.”

“Extraordinarily terrible,” I said. I took the lens out of my pocket and put it over one eye.

“Could you get me a lens like that too?” asked Ilir.

Javer’s words stuck in my mind all afternoon. Although when Ilir and I were alone again we decided that what they had said about the planes was a “hateful slander”, they had nevertheless cast a shadow of doubt over the aerodrome. Only the big plane was free of all suspicion. Even if all the other planes were evil, my plane couldn’t be. I still loved it just as much. My heart swelled with pride when I saw it lift off the runway, filling the valley with its impressive din. I especially loved it when it came back exhausted from the south, where there was fighting.

The nights were terribly dark again. We stayed in the main room two flights up, and my father’s monotonous voice once again tallied the lights of the military convoy, now going the opposite way, from south to north. I gazed off into the distance as before, but now I knew that down at the foot of the city, somewhere on the night-drowned field, the big plane was sleeping, its wings outstretched. I tried to figure out the approximate direction of the aerodrome, but it was so dark that I was disoriented. You couldn’t see anything at all.

The convoys kept rolling north. The booming of artillery seemed to come closer every night. The streets and windows were bursting with news.

One morning we saw long columns of Italian soldiers retreating along the road. They trudged slowly northward, in a direction neither the crusaders nor the lame wanderer had ever taken. Their weapons were slung on their shoulders, and they carried packs on their backs. Here and there among the soldiers were long mule trains loaded with supplies and ammunition.

North… Everything was now heading north. It was as if the world had changed direction. (Whenever I turned the globe in one direction, Isa, just to annoy me, would spin it the opposite way. What was happening now was more or less the same.) The defeated Italians were retreating. We expected the Greeks to follow on their tail.

I pressed my nose on the windowpane and concentrated hard on watching the columns move along the road. The little raindrops that the wind now and then battered on the windowpane made it all seem even sadder. The retreat went on all morning. At noon the columns of troops were still marching by. In the afternoon, when the last of them had disappeared beyond the Zalli and the road lay deserted (it was the time when the lame traveller was set to reappear), the air was suddenly filled with the dull growl of engines. I gave a start, as if shaken from a dream. Why? What was going on? In an instant I was no longer sleepy. Something unbearable was happening: they were all taking off! Two at a time, or three by three, the bombers were leaving the airfield with a fighter escort and flying away in that detestable direction, north. Scarcely had one group of three lifted off when another came rumbling down the runway. One after another the clouds swallowed them up. The aerodrome was emptying out. Then I heard the massive noise of the big plane, and my heartbeat slowed. It was all over. For good. It raised itself heavily, turned its beak north and flew off on outstretched wings. Gone forever. From the far horizon bedecked with a thick mist which soon swallowed up the great plane came the last sound of the throaty breathing I knew so well, but it had already grown distant and alien. Suddenly the world sank back into silence.

When I looked beyond the river, I saw that nothing was left. There was just an ordinary field in the autumn rain. The aerodrome had disappeared. My dream had ended.

“What’s wrong, my boy?” Grandmother asked when she found me with my head lying like a wrecked ship on the windowsill.

I didn’t answer.

Papa and Mamma also came in from the other room and asked me the same question. I wanted to tell them, but my mouth, lips and throat refused to obey. Instead of words, only a hoarse, inhuman sob came out. My parents frowned with fear.

“You’re crying for that… for that accursed thing whose name I can’t even bring myself to say,” Grandmother said, pointing towards the field, now splattered with puddles like so many wounds.

“You’re snivelling because of the aerodrome?” my father asked angrily. I nodded. He scowled.

“Poor little fool,” my mother said. “And I thought you were sick.”

They sat in the main room for a long while, torturing me with their silence. In vain I tried to stifle my sobs. My father’s face was glum. Mamma looked lost. Only Grandmother moved back and forth behind me, constantly muttering.

“Lord, what times have come upon us. Kids crying because of those flying things. Evil omens, evil omens.”

What was that longing that filled the rain-drenched days? The abandoned field lay below, riddled with small puddles. Sometimes I thought I could hear the sound of it. I would run to the window, to find nothing on the horizon but useless clouds.

Maybe they had shot it down and now it languished on a hillside with its broken wings folded underneath. Once I had seen the remains of a long-limbed bird in a field. Its delicate bones had been washed clean by the rain. Part of it was spattered with mud.

Where could it be?

Over the field, once bound to the sky, a few wisps of fog now drifted.

One day they brought the cows back, and they moved slowly with their silent brown spots, seeking the last bits of grass along the edges of the concrete runway. For the first time I hated them.

The city, weary and sullen, had changed hands several times. The Italians and Greeks alternated. Flags and currencies were changed, amid general indifference. Nothing else.