Chronicle in Stone

OLD SOSE’S NEWS

My joints hurt. We will have a hard winter. War has broken out everywhere, a murderous war all the way to the Celestial Kingdom, where the people are yellow. The English are sending banknotes and gold to all countries. Red-bearded Stalin smokes his pipe and ponders, ponders. “You know a lot, Englishman,” he says, “but I know just as much as you.” “Oh, my dear Hançe,” said Majnur, the lady of Kavo, to poor old Hançe the day before yesterday, “when will this war with the Greeks be over? I’m dying for a Lake Ioanina eel.” “Enough, wretch,” snapped Hançe, “my children are starving and you talk of Ioanina eels.” They quarrelled and cursed each other: you ragamuffin, you Italian lackey, you this, you that. As soon as the town hall re-opens Avdo Babaramo will be fined for firing the gun without authorisation. They say the war with the Greeks will be over before the first mountain snowfall. The Kailis’ daughter-in-law is pregnant again. Both of the Puses’ daughters-in-law are in their ninth month, as if they had worked it out together. Granny Hava is bed-ridden. “I won’t live to see winter,” she says. Poor old Lady Qazim finally died too. May the earth be kind to her.