[AlbClub] Modern myth of Rozafa

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   "Rozafa, the modern myth"
   
  Short Story 
  By Perparim Kapllani
   
   
  I had the first phone call from Mrs Rozafa three months ago. She wanted to rent an apartment for herself and her 3 year old son.  Her voice was sweet and made me sick, since the first seconds of that short conversation. Her voice sounded humbling, alluring and tickling almost. I was imagining a tall woman, a smile full of light, her blond hair laid on her shoulders, penetrating eyes, which could invite everyone to an adventure. That was the portrait painted by my masculine imagination. One of my job standards is not to have any sexual relationships within my workplace. I always had the feeling that it is a terrible and unfixable mistake to fall in love with your colleague or a neighbour. That latent feeling wasn't love at all, but a flared spark of the communication between a single man and the other half of the world. That attractive power was more or less similar to the force of gravity, which keeps us tied to the Earth. It was something natural, unexplainable and
 unavoidable. 
   
  I gave her my address quickly. I repeated to her several times that "I had to work at my office all day, so she could come and meet me any time". 
   
  I hung up satisfied and looked triumphantly at myself in the mirror. It didn't even cross my mind that she made the phone call from the telephone booth on the left side of the street, 15 feet away from the high rise building. My throat was itching.  I fixed a lock of my hair and stretched my whole body, lied on the wide armchair.  I looked up. A female ghost was standing in front of me, quite different from my imagination. Her skin had a blinding white color. Her hands looked so delicate and skinny, like glasses that could break apart in a moment. Her look drilled through my chest as I hardly could breathe. She had a mantilla on her head, some kind of a kerchief laid at the same level with the lid of her skull. A curious and anxious feeling was pushing me to take her mantilla off, in order to have a look at her beautiful hair. 
   
  Half of the woman's beauty goes to her hair. The man plays with the woman’s hair. He keeps her hair in his fingers; he kisses her hair with ardour; the man smells her hair in a moment of excitement. Rozafa had tied a multicoloured mantilla on her head and I didn't even dare to ask her why she was keeping that damn thing on. 
   
  Rozafa started to fill out the application, those papers that I put in front of her, as I thought she was a Muslim lady, with my guesswork, or some kind of a skinhead "honey," very modern, who could get a haircut and dress up any way she wanted, without bothering very much what the curious people of the world would say about her. She was around 25 years old. Two bluish circles were drawn under her eyelids. Her lips were hiding a pale sorrow, desperately. I gave her the best apartment, on the 23’rd floor. I didn't even know what the hell was pushing me to help that woman. I didn't ask her for the last month deposit; I even gave her a free color TV and promised her that "she will never experience any rent increase during her tenancy."
   
  I have seen her very rarely since then, two or three times almost, from that first day, when I met her at my office. I saw her once in the elevator. I was standing so close to her, that I could smell her tall and skinny body. She turned her head to the other side and smiled a little. I was expecting she would say something sweet, but in vain. I saw her once, when she was returning home after work. It was raining for a long time; the rain was huge and heavy, mixed up with hailstones. I saw her through the glass of the main entrance, as she took her mantilla off her head and wrung it out tightly. Her white skinny head, like a dead skull made me shiver. I started to count the lines on her skull, the joint of bones like teeth, mixed up with each other. That map of the skull invited me to follow an unknown path and I was hit by terror. There wasn't even a single hair on her head. Did she have cancer? I imagined the metastasis, like giant and monstrous fingers that were
 occupying her body and eating her cells. I felt such a big pain in my heart, as I touched her on her shoulder, unintentionally and friendly. 
   
  That would be a terrible thing, if she had cancer. She didn't have cancer perhaps, but something heavier, more violent, a spiritual pain, which she had to escape from. Her hair fell off, because of the daily stress, I guess; the difficulty to survive in this cold and gloomy world, where every single one of us takes care of him self and no one offers a hand to help the others. 
   
  She coughed heavily. I opened the door and invited her for a coffee. The woman followed me, feeling shy and all reddened. Her hands were shaking, as she was trying to sip her coffee. 
   
  `` I got married two years ago. The first weeks were okay. My husband had a good job. He bought a house a long time ago. I got pregnant and stayed home most of the time. I was cooking and doing laundry. I was waiting for him every afternoon, when he used to come home from work. We had a normal and joyful life, as the most new couples do."
   
   I filled her coffee cup again and waited anxiously to hear her story. 
   
  ``I was staring at the wooden clock hanging on the wall. It was 4: 45 PM and my husband should have been home around that time. There wasn't a more joyful thing in my simple life, when I was hearing his knock on the door. I was jumping happily and opening the door right away. One day he was too late. It was 8:00 PM and he didn’t show up. My heart was shivering with fear. I thought he was involved in a car accident. One hundred ideas came into my mind. I remember, even now, every single detail of that fearful night. That was just the beginning. I had nightmares that I would see my husband on the news, dead on the street right after a car accident. When my fear was gone, the jealousy used to grab me, a blind and wild jealousy.  I imagined my husband in the arms of another woman. I was getting up early from my cold bed and slamming the doors." 
   
  Rozafa sipped her coffee again and kept silent. I was staring at her and wondered how this story might end. I couldn't get it, why was this beautiful woman telling me her secrets? Why me? This enigmatic woman was feeling some warmth and kindness towards me, perhaps; she found a good friend in me, in whom she could trust her marital secrets, was that so?!
   
   I didn't dare to speak, fearing she might stop the extraordinary conversation at any moment. I didn't want her to keep quiet. I was dying of inquisitiveness, to learn the family secret, which stays hidden and sometimes dies with us, without ever being told. I gave her coffee again. Fresh coffee, just black, from Starbucks! 
   
  ``It was 00:30 AM. I was ready to call police, when somebody opened the door slowly. I pretended to be sleeping, as he kept quiet. He went to the washroom, but didn't take shower, in order not to make noise. He didn't even flush it, after he went to pee. He took his clothes off slowly and went to bed right beside me. I was crying with my eyes open; I was waiting for him to say something. I couldn't wait anymore, so I asked him. My husband answered me with laziness that he had to work overtime, so he didn't have time to give me a call. I felt, that he was lying to me openly, but I couldn't do anything about it. I was consoling myself, that this could be the only case. Days passed by and the bitter taste of that lie was forgotten. I hoped so, at least." 
   
  Rozafa touched her bald head with her skinny fingers. Her secret was making me curious. I felt a hot wave of air infiltrating my hands, a twinge in my heart, like a snake bite. I closed my eyes all of the sudden and imagined myself in her arms on their huge matrimonial bed. What was pushing her to tell me the confidential details of her family? I was nobody and I didn't think I was her type either. The fact that I helped her didn't mean anything; it didn't put me in a better position in our relationship; I didn't even want it in that way. As I was pretending to listen to that beautiful mouth, with white teeth like ivory globules, thin lips in rose color..., I understood that our relationship was something sexual. I understood that I had a lukewarm hope that one day, somewhere, something will happen between us, something very interesting, adventurous, hot and romantic, like a volcano, which erupts from the wet underground. The metamorphosis was very interesting to me, more
 than everything else: Loss of hair, caused by the stress of conjugal life; the numerous betrayals of her husband; his uncountable long absences from his home, in his small family with three members only: himself, his young wife and a baby boy; his irresponsibility to become the man of the house, to be a real man in his poor home. I was attracted by these odds and ends, bits and pieces in their relationship. Not in details. The details are just for color. I was interested in the drama they were going through, when the metamorphosis happened. 
   
  ``My husband was becoming a real maestro of lies. He used to fabricate the most acceptable and credible stories for the woman's ear, when ever he was returning home. He was making up lies in such a beautiful way, as I was standing in front of him without breath and I couldn't find anything to say. He was pretending to be innocent and so naive and poor, as I didn't know what to do next, but accepting without doubt his ongoing story. He never called me, when he was late. The real reason for his justification didn’t matter to my anymore. The most important thing was the fact that he started to change. He was becoming nervous and answering me very rudely, for no reason. Once he told me that he went to his friend's house to learn dry walling.   Another time he lied that he had an appointment with a broker to look at a restaurant that was for sale. He was coming late more often and on the regular basis, so I gave up; I wasn't asking him anymore. My family became a very close
 vicious circle, where I got trapped mistakenly. The house was the trap itself. I was unemployed and spending long hours between the walls of the rooms. I had e baby boy in my arms. One day my husband said that I had to get out of the house, because it had been sold. He gave me two thousand dollars in cash and took me to live "for some time" in a hotel. That was the last day I saw him. I spent a whole month in that hotel, until I found a job as a house cleaner and that's how I met you. My hair fell because of drama." 
   
  Rozafa kept quiet. Something important was missing in her marital story, another secret that her husband took with him. Where was he? What was he doing? Why was he pushed to break up with his wife? Why had he kicked her and his baby boy out and why did he abandon them in a hotel? This simple Albanian family made me shiver deep into the cells of my skin. I wasn't feeling like Don Juan, the well known lover anymore. My heart was occupied by the wild pain, which wouldn’t let me have a breath. I stared at my victim, as an unmerciful investigator and tried to decipher, to decode the untold secrets that this beautiful woman couldn't tell me. I stared again at the lid of that female skull, in order to translate the written letters on those skull joints. Those mixed up teeth, the cytoplasm, the membrane of her brain were shivering by emotions. Maybe someone hit her on the back hemisphere of her head with a long and heavy stick; other than that I couldn't explain why she was
 having these intimae meetings with me, with someone who was no one, but just a superintendent. She was scared, perhaps. Her fear mixed up with my warm look and readiness to help people in need. Very few people say "good morning" in this icy world. I explored her, beyond her story, by staring at her persistently. I found out the secret of the century: That this woman wasn't a human being, but a dead body. I was talking to a dead woman. I rented my apartment to a dead woman. That woman didn't exist. She had a baby, which she was taking care of daily. She was signing cheques and paying the rent on the regular basis. She was paying her bills: hydro, water, gas, Rogers. She was living like a real woman, with her soul on her teeth. Yes, I was talking to a ghost created by my tired brain, by my hot and reddish sub consciousness, red, in flames, like the melted iron. She was a ghost, of course; that's why she was dressed all in white. Her live female skull had two beautiful eyes,
 where I was seeing the pale color of fire. I was scared of my new reality and my hands started to tremble. Not because of fear, but from curiosity, my killing and monstrous curiosity. One hundred questions without answers occupied my mind. When did she die? Did she die or was she killed? She committed suicide, I guessed. She had come from the underworld in the shape of a female image to take revenge and do justice before God and the humanity. When did this killing happen? What was the reason? Is there any justification behind the killing?
   
   ``Sorry to interrupt you, madam! I wanted to ask you a question? Are you dead or alive?"
   
   ``I am dead, sir!"- Her voice trembled. 
   
  ``What about the baby? Is he dead or alive? ". I asked her again, as I was shuddering. 
   
  ``Sir, my three year old son is alive. ``
   
   A dead woman got out of the grave to take care of her son. Yes! That was the super powerful mission of the dead woman, the power which forced her to leave her grave… She couldn't abandon her child even beyond her own death. This Albanian woman, (is it so important the nationality?), kept breastfeeding her baby, giving him hot milk from her dead breast, in the same way, as in the old Albanian myth of Rozafa.  But, who killed her anyway? Where was the smoking gun hidden? Who was her killer, her own husband? Where was he? Was he jogging in the Toronto area? I had the horrible feeling that someone grabbed my throat and wouldn’t let me speak.
   
  ``Sorry madam, I am asking you all over again. Did you die from stress or from an incurable disease? Did they kill you? Or did you commit suicide? And why did all of this happen? ``
   
   Caught in the border between the two worlds, this beautiful woman kept silent for a while and smiled easily. She gave me her skinny hand, those long fingers with humps and squeezed my hand friendly. I didn't believe that she was dead. I was wondering way too much and out of the reality for a few seconds, from that sexual and dreadful reality. I was chosen by this woman, not all of the sudden. I should take care of this unfinished business. I was involved, without knowing it, in a terrible and hopeless situation, from which I should escape as soon as possible. I would have to call police, to catch that woman and put her in jail. Can police put handcuffs to a ghost? An inner voice, deep inside my being was telling me that I should go right to the end, to enjoy that doubtful relationship, to sleep at least one night in her marital bed. I wanted to try the betrayal, to smell the treason, to have sex until I would be satiated, until dawn, when the first rays of the morning
 would wake up her innocent baby in his room. I never betrayed my girlfriend and I didn't really like to start romances with married women, even divorced women. It wasn't right to use the emotional situation of someone else, in order to satisfy my animal and sexual instincts. That's why I call myself a "Human", because of the self-control. It wasn't a matter of love. This woman, dead or alive, needed my help, so I decided to help her. Even beyond my own expectations. 
   
  ``Come to my apartment and I’ll finish my story", she said suddenly and pulled my arm gently.
   I got up like a poppy flower and followed her. A kind of fear and sexual passion embraced my body. We went into the elevator and closed the doors. The bald woman touched the button number 23. We were going up in few seconds. I was hardly waiting for the elevator to stop, amazed, plunged in a shameful and anxious situation. My hands were boiling by the hot blood. My blood jumped onto my face and changed my color. My blood overflowed my veins, making my veins break apart. The hair of my skin went up like prickles, because of the free and uncontrollable travel of the blood in my body, as my blood was finishing the whole circulation. My red and thick blood. I looked under her thin and white neck. I had a feeling like I wanted to bite her. I wanted to bite that woman desperately, to drink a little bit from that live liquid. I wanted to see her, and her to see me, in agony, as we would fall down on the floor of the elevator, because of trauma caused by the absence of blood. 
  The elevator opened and we found ourselves in front of her apartment. She quickly took her keys out and invited me to get in. I saw her three year old son tied up with silken ropes, to the legs of her bed in the middle of the living room. My love was tying her son with ropes, living with him alone and going to work. She didn't have any money to pay someone to care for her child and was committing a crime, unintentionally. She could be arrested, if I denounced her. It was one small, big crime.  She untied the ropes and hugged her little prisoner. She covered him with kisses and gave him her breast. I saw two wonderful and spherical boobs with a terrible white color. A dead woman was giving breast to her live son. They were together, the grown up criminal and the small victim, or the other way around, the little criminal, which was torturing the older victim? Two ghosts, one tall, the other short, which were mixed up and feeding each other. The flesh was mixed. Blood was
 mixed. I didn't really know where her body started, and her son’s body ended. It reminded me the old myth of Rozafa.
   
  “I plead
When you encase me,
Leave my right eye outside
Leave my right hand outside
Leave my right foot outside
for the sake of my baby son,
so that when he starts crying,
I can see him with that eye.
Let me caress him with one hand
Let me feed him with that breast
Let me rock his cradle with one foot
May my breast encase in the castle,
  May the castle rise strong
May my son be healthy”- the myth said.
   
  One part of her breast was left outside; the other part of her breast was encased in the wall. And all her body compressed in mortar. Her female body was sexual and wet.  Her son fell asleep in her arms and I woke up from the myth immediately. She put her son in his own bed easily and pulled my hand to follow her footsteps. She got naked, as I was shivering. I kissed her under her neck suddenly. It's very easy to kiss a woman on her neck. Her lips are the last castle. If a man kisses the lips of the woman he loves, everything else is very easy. I felt the humidity of her lips on my cheek. She was playing with me, with my tired fantasy. She was not a dead woman. She had milk in her breast. She had fresh lips, warm lips, which were soft like petals. She had a human passion. 
   
  ``You told me, that you were dead!” I said deliriously.
   
   “I guess so! The hair is half of the woman's beauty. I am a ghost, who wanders in the street without my hair.” 
   
  “Are you alive or dead?!” I had spoken loudly. 
   
  ``My son is the most lovable person on Earth. I threw away the tiles of my cemetery and got up to feed my breast to my son, when he cries. The world is full of light, when my son smiles. But life is so hard, it is hardening. I can't work anymore. I am exhausted and can't manage my hands to tie him to his bed as a small criminal. Did I say "criminal"? He is eating my soul slowly, little by little. He is reviving my cancer.” 
   
  She closed her eyes and cried suffocated. Her hands started to shiver because of the deep sobbing. I approached her to stroke her hair, but she slid away from my hands. She stopped in front of her son’s bed totally petrified. An ironed expression covered her pale face. One lightening passed my mind in one cracking second: that woman was ready to commit suicide. She was so desperate; I had the feeling that she could jump from the 23-th floor. I came close to the window instinctively and blocked the light with my shoulders. She laughed at me with underestimation and turned her back. I closed my eyes and I fell on my knees, very tired. Something very big will happen. Big, incredible, ugly, that has never happened before. I smelled a killing, a macabre and grave crime under the nostrils of my nose. 
   
  “He threw me away in the street and gave me as a present his progeny: This child, which is the chain on my feet, where ever I go. This little policeman is leading my dog's life. I think my mission has come to an end. I have to go back, where I was, where I belong to and not am present, where I shouldn't. I don't belong here. My child deserves a father. Because he doesn't have a father, my son shouldn't exist; He has to get the capital punishment.”
   
  Rozafa stared at me her blazing eyes seeking an affirmative answer, but I was astounded and murmuring, lying on the floor without breath. I wasn't able to put together a couple of words, as I was looking at that white angel in the arms of that deformed woman, deformed by pain. The woman took her son from the bed and approached the window with her child in her arms. Her son was still sleeping, a deep sleep, sweet and innocent. She opened one shutter of the window and threw her child outside with the other hand, in space. I got up terrified and jumped straight to the window. My heart was broken apart, because of horror. I didn't have breath to talk any more. I was groaning from the human pain.
   
   ``Oh! Why did you do this? ``
   
  Oh! I said "oh", only, in the same way, as in the novel "Oh``, of Anton Pashku, an Albanian writer. I put my head out the window. I saw the baby speedily sliding down to the lower floors. The white diapers were waving like flags of disillusion, as I was hit by terror. I looked around for a rope, to tie that woman. I jumped toward her son’s empty bed. I called 911 and asked police for help. The woman laughed at me hysterically. She sneered at me with her dead teeth and growled like a wounded puppy. She climbed on her window, almost naked. I found out that I was not attracted by her bodily secrets anymore. 
   
  ``I just punished my son to death. Now I feel comfortable to return to my grave!” -she said and jumped out of the window. 
   
  Epilogue
   
  I rubbed my eyes! I wriggled my eyelids! Did I see any dream? Where was I? I wasn't at the 23’rd floor, but in my office, all of the sudden, sipping my coffee. Rozafa didn't exist. It existed just that flash news published in the newspaper and my tired fantasy, tired by human drama. I breathe easily. I wasn't the witness of that killing. I was just a reader, who sighs and passes the pages of the newspaper through his fingers and sips his coffee terrified, as an idle person. I put my coat on. I better go out and have a walk in this fresh air. It could be helpful for my health, for my nerves. I caught a fragment of a woman with the corner of my eye. She was hastening to go somewhere. She had a mantilla on her head, tied up firmly on her skull. 
   
  Was she Rozafa? Does she really exist? I was terrified again and closed the door behind me. I had to stop thinking about her, so I decided to go for a walk right away. Outside! And breathe the fresh air.
   
  The End

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