Sunday story/ Cosette's birthday

2024-03-17 10:00:00, Kulturë Agim Xhafka

Journalist Agim Xhafka

When I remember that near-death adventure today, my flesh tingles. My thoughts stiffen, I feel a fever in my body. This happens to me even if, for example, July. In the cold and the frost, that event sends shivers down my spine.

It started off calm, like those days with sunny mornings and a windy storm in the evening with palm-sized snowflakes. I was 13 years old, not even a teenager. I was in the sixth grade and with lessons like always I was stamped on the honor roll. I remember well that on that day in April it was the birthday of Kozeta, my friend from the bank. My friends called her my girlfriend. I accepted her because she was beautiful, with black eyes, with a smile, full of humor and she came close to me in lessons. So it was the second in the class. I had been preparing for her birthday for months. I thought of many gifts, but I deleted them all because I didn't have any money. No one gave it to me because there was no one. As a family, we barely survived. Until the salary came, it happened that some days, two or three... we slept without dinner. Or with a glass of mountain tea and some stale bread floating on top. But my mother solved my problem. I will make you a pair of gloves for Cosette, he promised. He took his father's woolen boater, tore it up, made it into a ball of thick yarn and got to work.

I was happy that she was an artist when she worked with spears. He had been making our t-shirts, sweaters and many other things for years. I was happy when he told me that he finished one hand. He let me see it. Dark brown color and the five fingers that at that moment did not appear to me to be knitted, but to be Cosette's. As if she was right there in front of us and trying them on. I started to rub her fingers and lost my mind, but my mother pulled me away and didn't let me dream anymore.

In class several times Kozeta asked me what gift I would give her.

- Find it! - I told him.

-Book?

-No.

- Ribbon?

-No no.

He no longer counted. Such were the age and living possibilities of our families. In two more days, his birthday would knock. Mom almost finished the second glove. He showed me from afar and laughed. I went to sleep happy. As if I had found a treasure trove of jewels. I was happy for my mother and called her great luck that she was mine. Compared to the mothers of my friends everywhere. More beautiful, more smiling, more hardworking. I slept like in a fairy tale and when I woke up I went straight to the drawer where my mother had put the gloves. I opened it and...I found two balls of wool. Wow, I was surprised. How did gloves turn into balls? I spoke aloud as it seems that my grandmother told me:

- I broke the gloves because...

I didn't hear anymore. I ran away angrily from home and when I got to school I met Cale.

- Shall we run away? -I told.

- In Greece, or in Yugoslavia?

- In Prrenjas.

I had my uncle there. He worked as an engineer. I had a special relationship with him. While I had a 20-year age difference with my father, I had ten. He had just finished university and had started working in the Pishkash mine. In the chaos that had engulfed me, only he could calm me down. How do you milk me?

We headed towards the bus station to Maliq. Then either a random car would pick us up or we would do it on foot. At night we would reach Pogradec and the next day we would manage to capture Prrenjas. We had neither money nor food. But we were angry and did not turn back. That tomorrow was Coseta's birthday and I would rather kill myself than go to her without a present.

No one asked us for a ticket on the bus. When we got down to Maliq, we asked someone where Pogradeci came from. He extended his arm to us and from there we started the march. I remember April of that year being cold. When we were walking towards Pogradec, it started snowing with pain. We were dressed only in overalls and were shivering from the cold. Cale's nose turned red and there were drops hanging from it, just like the kitchen faucet when the gum was thinned. We entered the tomb down the road. As soon as we heard the sound of a car, I ran out and held out my hand. But in vain, no one stopped. So I ran into the tomb to escape the wind. We were warm there. Hunger was knocking, we were driving it away. As soon as the sound of another car came, Calja ran out. After a while the noise stopped. Well done Cale, I said. I came out all happy. Calja had succeeded. The car stopped and got out of its cabin...my father. I rubbed my eyes because I couldn't believe it. He grabbed me by the ear and threw me into the cabin. Then he punched and bit Cale.

- What do you have with me? - shouted the black man. - I am not your son.

- I know, I know, - his father told him. - I don't have you at home because I'll tell Gimit later.

So until Korça. He locked me in the house and ran away. I was waiting for the punishment when he came home from work. But it became night and neither father, nor mother, nor even grandmother, could be seen. Late, very late there was a knock on the door. It was mother and grandmother.

- What about father? - asked.

- He was hospitalized. They did the tests and visits since yesterday. It's cold. He had to go to bed in the morning, but you opened work for him, - said the mother.

I stood with my mouth open and burst into a cry that came from my shame, not from my body.

- That's why I broke Coseta's gloves, - said the grandmother. - I made woolen canoes for my father because that's what the doctor said.

I didn't speak. I was silent and thinking about what punishment to give myself. Not to eat for two weeks to spare the family, I thought. And I started the implementation that evening. I slept without eating. In the morning I would go to school without putting anything in my mouth. As soon as I was about to pick up the bag, I saw two black leather gloves.

-Mama left them for you, Uncle Guri sent them to her from America, you know she likes them a lot, but she told me to take them to Coseta. May you be 100 years old, - said the grandmother and left the house. I was going to the hospital, I heard my grandmother on the stairs.

Lessons did not go well. Like my boots when they got stuck in the mud, meazallah they came off. When the five o'clock bell rang, I ran out of the classroom.

- It's not her birthday now, it's at four o'clock, - Calja shouted at me.

I heard him, but I didn't answer him. I was running and running towards the hospital. To meet my father, to tell him I'm sorry, to kiss him and smell his sweat, which to me resembled the scent of the sturgeon under the balcony. I walked and cried. From mistakes, from regret and from longing for my father. But also from the desire to meet Coseta. As I said her name, I felt the leather gloves in my pocket. I felt like I was flying to the hospital hand in hand with my friend. I had braided her fingers with mine. And I didn't squeeze them hard, I didn't hurt them. Because I thought that inside my palm I had her hand so warm, so beautiful, so elegant. So full of butterflies that swirled in my mind like the burdock in Shëndëllia.