translated by Kevin Phelan & Bill U’Ren
It’s late at night and I’m alone when the word reaches me that Edmond Spaho has died. For some reason, it’s news that I need to share, so I pull on a coat, lock the door, and begin the walk over to my friend Leni’s top floor apartment. He lives at the far end of the city, across the boulevard, through the park, and past the university. Although it is quite cold outside, I look forward to the long walk, the chance to breathe in the crisp night air and the opportunity to escape the oppressive walls of this empty apartment.
Preoccupied with my work at the Ministry of Slogans, I haven’t seen Leni in a good while. It has been nearly three weeks since we met at Selman Kratka’s place to toast my fortieth birthday. Against my vague protests, Leni had invited a few mutual friends, as well as some colleagues from the Ministry. It was a rather enjoyable party, although I found myself somewhat distracted by thoughts of my ex-wife Ana and how strange it was to be celebrating another birthday without her.
I head up the back stairs to Leni’s flat and knock lightly, peeking through the brown window. A rumbling sound arises from the other side of the apartment, a light appears, and then Leni emerges, his face a little distorted through the warped glass.
“Ah,” he says, motioning me in.
“Did I wake you?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbles, rubbing his eyes. “I guess.”
“I’m sorry. We can talk tomorrow.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” he insists, lighting the burner on the stove.
“Cocoa?”
“Yes, please.”
We sit at the kitchen table for a while, both quietly sipping our drinks, warming up, vaguely watching the empty courtyard below. Leni casually relates his most recent efforts to further a relationship with this girl, Kosi. She seems to like him, although I suspect she’s afraid of any commitment. For weeks now Kosi has spurned his invitations, instead requiring that each of their meetings happen only by chance—no plans allowed. As a result, Leni and I have spent a lot of time devising new ways for him to circumvent this required atmosphere of happenstance. Recently, however, we’ve been running short on ideas.
“I feel like she’s figured me out,” he says.
“How so?”
“I’ve been watching the downtown area, as we discussed, and sometimes even loitering around the museum, trying to casually run into her.”
“And this hasn’t worked?”
“A couple of times, yes. But mostly, no.”
“Oh,” I say, unable to come up with the right words to allay his frustration. Then, silence. Finally, as if the thought has just occurred to him, Leni declares that we now must formulate a brand new plan, something ingenious and foolproof.
“Yes!” I agree. “At once!”
“So be it!” Leni shouts. But then, despite our seemingly dynamic and industrious exclamations, we simply sit there speechless, continuing to think. Action, apparently, cannot be taken just yet.
Although I’ve personally met Kosi only twice, I can safely say that she is a bit of an odd girl. In my mind, I quickly conclude that any new plan has to be something of equal peculiarity, something that would make her embrace fully this concept of fate, and subsequently realize that, indeed, she and Leni were meant to be together. Perhaps not forever, but at least for now.
“She works in the Italian Embassy,” Leni says, brightening.
“So you’ve told me.”
“There should be something we could do with that, don’t you think?”
“Yes, of course,” I say. “Perhaps you could take a crash course in Italian and then disguise yourself as a businessman from Milan visiting for the first time. A requisition can be made for a tour guide from the Embassy, someone young enough to understand the youth market here. You will be the young fashion consultant trying to capitalize, and Kosi will be your escort! As time goes on, she’ll slowly fall in love with you, and then, when it’s too late, you can remove the disguise and show her that she’s actually fallen for Leni.”
“Perfect. That will be Plan A,” he says.
“Agreed!” I laugh, trying to picture him as an exotic clothier, slyly donning a thin brown moustache and a generous supply of powder to make his skin appear more Mediterranean. Yet somehow, this vision is too difficult to conjure up, and in the end all I can see is Leni looking like himself, only slightly darker.
“Or what if I were to get a second job, perhaps as a guard at the Embassy,” he says.
“Yes, good one. Of course, you would have to pass a marksmen’s test, and then maybe demonstrate some abilities in martial arts. Not so hard.”
“Plan B,” Leni exclaims.
He looks at me for a moment, awaiting a response.
“Yes, Plan B,” I say. “These are both brilliant.”
Maybe fifteen seconds go by before we both falter in our attempts to maintain a tone of seriousness, a tone of solemnity—as if real problems can be solved only when approached with a somber, perhaps even grave, disposition. Leni smiles lightly, nearly a sigh of relief, and I cannot help but grin in return. Unfortunately, the levity quickly fades and the room’s subsequent silence becomes far too distracting, temporarily delaying new plans to fool Kosi. We sit there for a moment, staring out at the courtyard and then back at our empty mugs.
“More?” he asks. “I stole a canister from the hotel.”
“Sure.”
He fiddles with the broken gas knob on the broiler, then places a small saucepan full of milk atop the burner, a blue flame kicking up as it touches the metal. Clearly, neither of us desires the actual cocoa as much as the heat which will be generated in the process. After that, it’s quiet again, Leni casually stirring the milk, me staring off into space. I like this about him. Obviously, I’d come over to his house to discuss something specific—Why else would I appear so late and unannounced?—and yet still, he feels no need to pressure it out of me.
“So,” I finally say, “Edmond Spaho has died.”
“Really?”
“Yes, a few weeks back.”
“Where did you hear this? From Ana?” he asks, still moving the fat wooden spoon around in the milk. Perhaps, this sounds like a strange first question. Anyone else would probably ask, “How did he die? When? Where?” Not Leni, though. He knew the story well. He knew that whenever Edmond came up, we were really speaking of Ana and me, and so, plainly, his first question was the logical one.
“No, unfortunately. I was talking to my cousin. Remember Arti?”
“The smelly one with the goatee beard?”
“He called for a favor—his nephew has applied to the Ministry—and he simply mentioned it in passing. ‘Spaho’s body has finally washed ashore,’ he said. ‘What!’ I said, not believing him, ‘Spaho is dead? Edmond Spaho?’ ‘Yes,’ Arti answered, almost annoyed. ‘Didn’t you know.'”
“Such an awful way to find out,” Leni says, bringing the cocoa over to the table.
“I know. Typical Arti.”
“How did it happen?”
“Nobody’s sure. Supposedly a fishing accident, although that sounds unlikely. His boat was still docked at Fierze, nets up.”
“Strange,” Leni says, handing me a jar of whipped cream—Property of the Hotel Dajti stamped along the side.
“Yes. But remember that letter I got a few months ago? Edmond rambled on about the past, covering everything in such detail that you’d think it had all happened the day before. Yet his wife’s been gone ten years now, and his son almost five.”
“Yes—since the Butrinti,” Leni absent-mindedly mumbles, leaning back in his chair.
“Suicide then?”
“Probably. I’m really not sure—perhaps it doesn’t even matter. Edmond was so unhappy. At least now, his misery is over. But it still seems surprising.”
“Well, he was a young man,” Leni says, then quickly laughs at his unintended meaning. At my recent birthday party, we’d disagreed as to whether this milestone of forty was an official sign that my youth had passed. Edmond and I were the same age.
“Not so young,” I respond, smiling.
Leni drops another dollop of whipped cream into his cocoa, spilling a little down the side. It slowly drips to the table, leaving behind a snail-like trail on his mug.
“On the walk over here, I thought it was Edmond’s predicament that made me unhappy. Now, I’m wondering if it is simply my own.”
Leni looks up with a puzzled expression.
“I guess I’m talking about Ana,” I say, continuing. “How strange, yes? And embarrassing, too. Edmond is dead, and my thoughts turn to Ana, or, even worse, to myself.”
“Well…” Leni mumbles.
“You know, when Ana and I first met on that train ride, I was on my way to visit Edmond Spaho.”
Leni nods, like always, and it’s as if he too had been on this train ride twenty years earlier, as if his stake here is equal to mine. Whenever I tell this story, I feel like, just for a second, that if we imagine it hard enough, the two of us might be able to recreate that day, recreate the whole scene, and change something along the way—slightly altering the future so that I still might be with Ana. At times I think maybe I should have played hard to get, or maybe we shouldn’t have eaten in the station together, maybe I should just have gotten her telephone number and met Edmond as planned. Any little thing could have made a difference. It’s hard to know whether something that has happened in the past is important or marginal. How can you tell the difference? How can you assign responsibility? Perhaps something as simple as the way I held my salt shaker or the way I opened the door for her led me to where I am now.”She was coming back from Isa Drumberi’s.”
“Of course,” he says. “Isa, Ana’s best friend.”
“Hard to believe it’s been three years since she died,” I say, remembering the moment Ana told me the news.
“That’s right,” Leni nods, having mentally verified my calculations.
“I guess I’m just picturing that train ride again. First, Isa, and now Edmond—the two destinations. And, of course, in the middle, Ana herself wants nothing to do with me. I’m just wondering now that everyone involved has disappeared, does the event itself disappear, too? If all the pieces to a puzzle are missing, is it still a puzzle?”
“I don’t know,” Leni says, obviously thinking. “Who’s to say? Then again, if I—Leni, an outsider—know the story, it must be real, right?”
“Yes, yes,” I immediately reply, chuckling at the thought of a conversation we’d recently had about his great-uncle Bardhyl. The uncle, in his old age, Leni claimed, had been convinced that he would not die until the stories about him faded. So, hoping for a longer life, he began weaving lengthy, sordid tales about the things he’d done. At first, Leni said the family found it amusing, almost entertaining, but then time ran on and the stories became decidedly less interesting. Soon, everyone tired of this strange obsession; friends stopped calling, and neighbors refused to visit. Fortunately it was not long after that he died—reportedly in the middle of some story about a pony he’d briefly owned as a child. Leni and I agreed that it was all a nice idea though.
“Well,” Leni mumbles, huddling over the stove, warming his hands, “I suppose we’re finally done with the cocoa.”
“Yes. I couldn’t drink another mug.”
“That’s what I thought,” he says, resignation in his voice. It’s not that I’ve offended him, that the cocoa isn’t good enough to merit a fourth cup, but rather, just the idea that the oven will no longer be in use, making it hard for our conversation to continue. Without heat at this time of night, Leni’s kitchen can become unbearably cold in an instant. Yet, we cannot simply leave the oven burning; it’s hard to rationalize using the expensive fuel for mere conversation.
“Well, I suppose I should head home,” I say.
“No, stay,” Leni urges, rising, “let’s make a cake.”
“What?”
“I’ve got recipes here from the hotel. Why not? I’ve been wanting to make one for weeks now.”
“Okay,” I offer, surprising myself. “A cake, then!”
Leni turns the oven up a notch, opens the pantry and removes four grey cartons and a notebook teeming with papers. “Citrus cake, fig cake, sponge, pound, chocolate leaf,” he reads aloud.
“Sponge cake.”
“That does sound good,” Leni responds, pulling a mixing bowl and steel measuring cups out from under the sink.
I casually rummage through the cabinets and pull down the required ingredients. “You know,” I say, returning to our previous conversation, “during the first year after Ana left, I continued on, almost controlled by this need to somehow fix our relationship, to recapture that amazing feeling of our first day on that train.”
“You thought that it would solve your problems—put you back together,” Leni adds, cracking an egg into the mixing bowl.
“Yes. As Dr. Viseri used to say, ‘You’re born, you come out, and then you spend the rest of your life trying to get back in.’ For me, I suppose, it’s the same with Ana. I squandered so much of our time simply trying to renew that original feeling. It was such a waste!”
Leni nods, smiling slightly to put me at ease. “Kosi says this strange thing trying to explain why she is the way she is. The courtship, she tells me, will never last longer than the mystery and curiosity. Not even one moment.”
“Yes, and I am proof,” I laugh, measuring out a small spoonful of vanilla extract.
Leni is due for work at the hotel in a few hours, and yet he doesn’t appear worried about getting back to sleep. “Do you believe that? Do you believe that it’s over when the mystery ends?”
“Well,” I hedge, trying to remain optimistic.
“I’m not sure either,” he offers. “Kosi says a lot of crazy things.”
It’s hard to hide my confusion about this theory. Yet, I know any uncertainty should remain concealed. For Leni’s sake, it’s my duty to inform him that Kosi is wrong, that closeness is, in fact, a key ingredient to successful relationships, that you must know everything about each other—needs, wants, desires—before you can truly be together. It’s what he wants to hear, what he believes—it’s what I believed too for all those years with Ana. Yes, I must explain how this need for mystery and curiosity is merely some misguided idea on Kosi’s part, and that it will certainly pass. Yet, how am I, of all people, able to judge whether or not this is true? And secretly, I’m wondering if Kosi might be a little wiser than I had originally ascertained—even if such a conclusion means I have a better chance with some stranger standing on a street corner than I do with Ana.
“Is that what’s coming between you two?” I say, handing him the whisk. “Is this why she won’t see you like a normal person?”
“I suppose,” he offers, almost resigned.
“Well, maybe that’s a good thing,” I mumble, glancing out the window toward the courtyard. The sky looks so familiar to me at this strange hour. I am reminded of all those late nights following my promotion to the Ministry of Slogans. In the years before that, while working for Hansa at the Ministry of Symbols, I’d thought the elevation in status and responsibility was something I wanted, but when it finally happened, I became anxious and troubled all the time. At night, it got even worse. While Ana retired to our bedroom for sleep, I retired to my study to work, often keeping the candles burning for hours, plagued with worry. Soon, I got no sleep at all. Grey halfmoons appeared under my eyes. My complexion became a pale gloss, curiously resembling those small wax Hoxha figures that once adorned the Palace of Culture.
“I’d never dreamed you would be like this,” Ana confessed one morning as she found me propped at my desk, hopelessly awake, melted candlewax spread about. “After all, this isn’t the way Deputy Ministers are supposed to act.”
“I’m new at this. And for all we know, perhaps it is. Certainly, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that every high-ranking official in the city lies awake at night. How could they not?”
“Because they have confidence and poise, something leaders are supposed to have.”
“I’m not exactly a leader.”
Ana frowned and poured us each some coffee. I stared at the mug for a moment before pouring in some sugar and gulping it down.
“I don’t want to belabor the issue,” she said, “but how can you expect me to sit back and not say anything? You’re up when I’m asleep, and you’re up when I’m awake.”
“Right. So you get to see me more often,” I said, forcing a laugh, trying to ease the conversation.
“Yes, normally this would be good. A great difference from your position with Hansa, when you were busy all the time, when you had to fit me into your schedule. But now you are not the same person. While I see you more often, it is not actually you that I am seeing. You’ve changed.”
“Change is good I thought.”
“I’d rather see you the old way instead of this. You’re awake, but too tired to do anything except be awake.”
It was true. I’d lost interest in nearly everything but the job, my new position as the Deputy Minister of Slogans. Fear of failure, fear of not making a great impression on everyone, had consumed me. Everything else was pushed to the side—my health, my friends, my sense of humor, and Ana. It wasn’t until the season changed, sometime after Skenderbëg Square was covered in frost, that I finally was able to balance the new job with my old life, my old self. I’d finally secured the confidence of the key dignitaries, the other Ministers, my staff. In fact, I’d probably had their confidence all along, but how was I to know? Unfortunately, in the process of discovering this, I seemed to have lost a piece of Ana’s confidence, and maybe even some of my own. Or perhaps that’s not it at all—perhaps I simply allowed her to see a side of me that she did not like.
Inside at Leni’s, the faint, sweet smell of cake slowly drifts around the room and around our conversation. Outside, the streetlights remain off, leaving only the moon to illuminate the dingy apartment buildings and the small cement square that they surround. As the wind begins to gust, I can detect outlines of the different items hanging from Mrs. Dronka’s clothesline. Pants, shirts, towels, blankets, underwear. None seem to even bend in the breeze, apparently frozen stiff by the winter air. Closing my eyes, I can almost imagine her walking outside each morning to check if they’re dry, and then quietly walking back inside, disappointed. Spring is nearly four months away.
I watch while Leni mixes the creme topping, whipping it loudly and feverishly, as if there’s a time limit. Then he dips his index finger in for a taste, nods, and dumps the concoction into a separate tin. “Want to lick the spatula?”
“Thanks,” I say, leaning over the sink with it. When I’m done, I wash the pans and measuring cups. Behind me, Leni laughs.
“What?” I ask.
“Oh nothing,” he laughs again. “I was just thinking about you and Ana on that train.”
“Yes?”
“About how you woke up and realized she was sitting there—a pretty girl alone in the compartment with you!—and how the first thing that ran through your mind was the sudden fear that you’d been snoring.”
I cringe with embarrassment, although still smiling at the memory.
“And it turned out to be true!”
“Well, I was hoping you’d let me forget that.”
“But it’s part of the story…”
Then we both just sit there replaying some absurd event that occurred nearly twenty years ago. With a strange ease, I can picture it all so perfectly, every detail coming alive, the colors bright and vivid. And from the look on his face, it appears that Leni is able to do the same.
“Tell me again,” he says. “How does it go?”
Time Out Scotland once named Jiri Kajane “the second greatest living Albanian writer,” after Ismael Kadare. But who is Kajane?
According to some accounts, Kajane was raised in Kruje, Albania. His satirical drama, Neser Perdite (Tomorrow, Every Day), is rumored to have received great acclaim in a singular 1981 performance before being banned by the Albanian Ministry of Culture. Due to Kajane’s allegedly precarious standing before the revolution, his work has never been published in his home country. Kajane has never been photographed.
“Okay, A Cake Then!” is collected in Winter in Tirane: Stories by Jiri Kajane, published by Fiction Attic Press.