The Doll by Ismail Kadare

Author:Ismail Kadare [Kadare, Ismail]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473560888
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2020-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

8

DESPITE HER bewilderment in the first weeks, my impression was that the capital city suited the Doll. Her spirits perked up, she learned the streets and went looking for relatives.

I was sure that the naivety in her character, perhaps a result of her constricted life in the city of her girlhood, would lessen in Tirana.

After a time, I noticed that the very opposite was happening. Her naivety only increased.

For a while I wanted to believe that it was perhaps the big city itself that fostered illusions in someone like the Doll. In the end, I discovered that this was not the case, when she tried to conduct with me the most serious conversation in her life, about a proposed engagement.

Although considered slightly old-fashioned, it was still not entirely anachronistic for a mother to advise her son about his future bride.

When one day she said to me, in the old-time manner, that she wanted to have ‘some talks’, I at first laughed it off, as usual. But when I realised what it was about, my laughter hurt my ribs. It took a while before it sank in that my mother was thinking of a bride … for myself.

I could hardly believe my ears. Yet out of curiosity I cut my laughter short and waited for her candidate. The Doll’s proposal was not merely disappointing, but beneath anything I might have expected. It would be impossible to find a more mistaken choice among a million mothers’ suggestions. In short, I heard my dear, good mother, as described in hundreds of poems, suggest that I should become engaged to … a semi-prostitute.

This is what had happened: One afternoon there knocked on the door of our apartment one of my acquaintances of what my friends and I called the ‘pre-Hellenic’ period, the time before my relationship with Helena. This acquaintance was one of those girls with very forward behaviour who mixed in intellectual circles and acted as models in artists’ studios. I had got to know her one evening after dinner with an artist friend of mine, and indeed it was one of the rare cases in which, before I imagined a girl naked, I saw her thus on the wall of my friend’s studio.

Our first words while dancing were about this picture. With a sugary and supposedly bashful smile, the girl, nodding towards one of the nudes, asked me, ‘Do you like it?’ She went on to ask whether I could imagine who it was, and I said unhesitatingly, despite the bad light, ‘Isn’t it you?’ Smiling, she said that she had asked the artist to change the face a little, so she wouldn’t be recognised …

She was very sweet, and it seemed her honeyed tones had instantly attracted the Doll: ‘Good morning, ma’am, is this Smajl’s apartment?’

The Doll was taken aback, but invited her in and was totally enchanted by the stranger.

I had never before heard her praise anyone so fervently. She had been dazzled not only by her appearance and manners, but by her Shkodra accent, which reminded the Doll of the time when she had lived there.

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