By Agron Gjekmarkaj
Babua arrived like Chichikov at the assembly, with a question weighing on his mind like a hammer: if a man can be physically alive but spiritually dead, are his serfs merely names on a list or people who were once alive?!
This swirl of thoughts went on until eggs fell on his car like hail!!
Reflection was replaced by anger, resentment, spite and other such things! Summer was bitter, autumn more venomous, winter a shambles!
Hidden for weeks, sometimes in a chest, sometimes in a wardrobe, he had aged a little!
He began to turn white, yellow, red and black!
His brave men, too, were somewhat overly frightened by this weather! Many of their clothes became unusable from the soaking and the dirt!
Each of them came to that gathering more covered than dressed, because their wardrobes had run out from the frequent changing!
Demir Demo had borrowed a pair of pajamas with butterflies, galoshes and a raincoat!
Ulësia, in a camouflage suit like those of the army, a German-style helmet on his head, but he looked at Babua with love like a pharaoh, convinced that he had chirped as required in the days of wrath! Now the ulufe is due!
Sofian the playful one, as if eager to show off his figure, was dressed in pink shorts with black snakes on them, and a dragon blouse with lions! Pirro Dengu, like a harlequin, hid behind the former Buçko.
Vullnet Sina, in tights and coarse woolens.
Pandi Majko, newly emerged from the past as if from legends, purposely in a fustanella, gaiters and a robe, on his head a cap like Mihal Grameno’s and at his waist a yatagan.
But let us not dwell on such details!
The Chronicle, which, like Babua himself, thought of hiding for a while, so as not to be a burden after crying, because, after all, in the grey months, alas, as soon as they realize you are not a donkey, they load you ten times over!
In this neck of the woods, the wet one goes for the dry one and gets a blow where he least expects it, instead of a slap!
And the couple of times he came out at the head of protests, the main author did it after Deputy Leader Flamur gave him his word that if a single hair were touched, blood would flow as far as the horse’s knee!
“Children and women are under my protection,” he declared solemnly, drawing admiration behind him! I felt like a child.
The Jorush of the Tabaks, Sajme Koreshi, so sovereign as vox populi, vox Dei—why shouldn’t the chronicler also come out to the gathering?!
Even Kostaqi himself, who has often offered to fall as a sacrifice, took bread with him and plunged into the cellars of the academy, whittling splinters from an encyclopedia! In fact, he was keeping watch around Tabir lest someone set fire to Nikollaq’s throne.
After sweating some ten times, the Chronicle decided that the burden was worth the rent and showed courage when many others were nowhere to be seen!
But yesterday it realized that its roots are deep and are watered by people’s love of putting a smile on their lips!
From inside there, six or seven made a racket as its correspondents, even for free!
They pleaded: “Ah, may I be sacrificed for you! Ah, may I be killed for you! Give it, do the trick! Bear witness for history! Live only to tell! Don’t betray the clan!” — they urged it on.
An entire secretariat was transcribing their recorded voice messages and the written ones as well!
You could hear Babo’s grunts and gasps, the saliva that barely went down, and Klos wiping his nose, Bela’s Siberian chill, Mamica’s hurricane-like breathing, Xhafa’s screams, Tao’s dry cough, Dilo’s dozing, Bora’s stifled moans, Paulin Nufi’s scratching, and Termesa’s vows to slap one by one those who fled the field on doomsday!
Babo rose to his feet!
A deathly silence fell. Only a couple of frightened bursts from the lower rows near the back of the hall could be heard!
Suspense, a prolonged silence, and a fist on the lectern.
Then he raised his bloodied hands and displayed the “stigmata,” like Padre Pio.
“I have been crucified for you, my Judases!” he thundered!
“But God spoke to me! Without me you are sh…!
Scoundrels… pause!
Bastards… pause!
Villains… pause!
Riffraff… pause!
Bigots… pause!
Rogues… pause!”
An eye-roll, as the amateur footage shows, fell over them like frost!
A drawn-out “hmmm” split that building in two!
“You bought my coffin, you wrote my obituary, you smirked, you thought I was finished—but here I am!”
And bam, bam, twice on the board with his fist!
“You settled the score without the dagger, you dogs! With the dagger, with the dagger I’ll come for you!”
Ervin Hoxha collapsed to the ground from trembling! They did not dare even lift him. They left him writhing for several minutes!
“Now I’ll send two people to hell, I’ll make them dance: Mamica and that man from Mirdita, because those kulaks always remain! Plarent! Because we are Enver Hoxha’s party, we don’t turn our backs on tradition!
It’s you, it’s you, Mamica, I’m after! From today on I will no longer be your Gjergj! I have become a Skanderbeg without a cause!”
“Oi, oi, oi, oi! Ku, ku, ku!” a wail like old Nice’s was heard, enough to break one’s heart!
Tezja, Ekonomi, Antoneta and Zeniqeja broke into heartbroken wailing!
Çuçi offered them a handkerchief to dry the stream!
“You, Mamica, are at war with me! On bad days you send me letters, post statuses about me, offer me new contracts, dress me up as Che Guevara, when the crows and ravens peck at my liver!
You are Flamingo!
If you want to take my place, sit on the steps of the PS as I once did!
May you be cursed! In the name of my Church I excommunicate you and banish you like Jovan Bardhi! May the scoundrel cover you, may your name vanish!
Now speak, since it is the last time you will be among us!”
Mamica rose like the prophet before the king, when he knows that everything is lost except honor and God’s judgment!
“Yes,” she said, “I am Flamingo if a better Albania requires it!
I am Flamingo if free and fair elections are needed, without a strongman!
Yes, I am Flamingo who believed—without bosses, without backing—when I joined you!
I am Flamingo if what is needed is governance, not domination!
I am Flamingo if corruption and crime must be fought!
I am Flamingo if dignity must be chosen over submission!”
“Oh, the mother of all diseases!” they were saying on the other end of the phone as they listened!
“Cataclysm! Heresy! Wickedness, damn it! This world has gone mad! Little Mamica is making big Babo see red!”
Fatmir Xhafa handled it with criticism in places and sweetly too, humoring Babo, who was snorting!
But in the end he said: “Punishments, reprimands, self-criticism, opening one’s heart to the party, but no expulsions!”
Majko stood up and issued the announcement!
“Sodom and Gomorrah are among us! The revelries, the partying, the excesses and the money of power are all recorded in a thousand hours of video! They must resign and vanish from sight!”
Most looked on angrily!
“If this happens,” they murmured, “the death knell will sound here and the hall will empty!”
Babua interrupted him:
“Hush!”
Braçja, sullen all these months, a born troublemaker, thundered like Rrapo Hekali!
He lied a little, but for a good cause, when he said:
“We are a party of freedom, not of exclusions! One Mamica falls, thousands rise!”
“What is he babbling?” a thought flashed through Ulësi’s mind. “Where does he see these thousands?”
And he waited impatiently for the government changes that would come at a later stage!
Babua thought of smoothing things over a little and gently winning over Xhafa and Majko, because criticism and non-exclusion were turning into a trend!
Damua was about to speak when he saw how Mamica’s much-gossiped-about curls were catching fire, but he remembered Ditmar, now with a backpack like a Hungarian tourist, who cannot stay still and here and there licks an ice cream while standing, uncomfortably!
He shuddered, goosebumps ran over him, but he pulled himself together and fell silent!
Nikollaq was lost in thought as if in a daze! He received a modest compliment, but better than nothing!
Ogi, as if after a meaningless dream, was trying to wake up!
Toni’s tongue was drying out; he was thirsty but could not find water! The poor fellow has had headaches.
Rifat Salla of agriculture appeared like a sorrowful bust!
Karakaç felt lighter when he remembered how good it was when he was a nobody! Gonxhe ate secretly, now a biscuit, now a sham!
To raise the prestige of the chronicle and to respect cooperation and credibility, Babua read a passage from an earlier one, when he addressed Etilda as an anti-model—composed and hardworking!
Let Mrs. Kore say whatever she likes; she works night and day so that we can see a little light—without a mandate, without a government, she holes up in the Prime Minister’s Office!!
At the corners of her eyes formed crystal tears, soft as velvet!
The return is coming!
Tao sat like a frail man sacrificed for the cause, but he has a generous soul and forgives!
Klosi had to put the lid on it twice!
Once when he messed up after the assembly, with his mouth turning into pilaf, when no one understood the fate of Mamica and Plarent, and once in the afternoon, when Babua took him, scolded him, cursed him and sent him another text saying that they had washed their hands with the “Forums”!
Bledion Nallbaja cannot endure this disaster, if he is the same man we know, who was ready to clash with the great powers—the Slavs, the Greeks, the Turks, NATO itself—for Mamica’s honor!
When you see how the enemy’s hand will touch his eyelashes, to share blood with him, from sister to enemy, to erase his name!
Fear, like the Devoll in winter, is arriving in Tirana with a roar!
Epic nights await us!
Nikolai Gogol had been there yesterday! He did not take Chichikov with him when he left; he left him among us!