Ruins of Autumn

18• You Are My Enemy.

    "Whoa!" Blerimi froze as he closed the door of his room and looked at the entrance of the house.
 
    Xhuliana was taking off her sneakers while holding her hair, dyed dark blue and pink, with her left hand behind her back.
 
    He was beginning to suspect that his sister, who was two years older than him, was really hiding something that had happened to her in Tirana, and that was the reason why she had decided to continue the third year in Architecture the following academic year by excusing herself that she needed that year off to calm her mind because she felt very stressed from school and after a gap year she would be better.
 
    "You look good," he seriously complimented the hair colour and the new model with the bangs of the twenty-year-old, because if he asked her why she had dyed them, when Xhuliana took pride in her black and thick hair, he knew that he would start an argument with her.
 
    That compliment earned him a dismissive look from her, totally unusual from his sister. 
 
    "What on Earth have you done to your hair?" Alma, on the other hand, forty-five years old and with the same physical features as her daughter, didn't hesitate at all in giving her opinion, without first thinking in silence whether she would do right if she said it or not.
 
    "Whatever I have wanted," Xhuliana didn't bother to hide her irony towards their mother, who was following her with wide eyes from the kitchen threshold, while Xhuliana entered her room and Alma looked for help at Blerimi to explain to her what was going on.
 
    He let out a frustrated sigh and went into his room as well. His sister had been behaving strangely since November. She didn't make her classic jokes, she didn't hug her mother once every ten minutes when she came home from school, she didn't disturb her brother when he was using his phone, and she didn't listen to him, as if she had sworn not to leave him alone without playing with his nerves, and she left her room less and less. He longed for the vivacity and humorous side she had. Why had she turned into such a distant person?
 
    "Mom, get out of my room!"
 
    Her highly crass voice drew his attention, and he went out into the corridor.
 
    "But staying all the time inside will suffocate you."
 
    He heard the warning from Alma while going to Xhuliana's room.
 
    "At least go out and get some air."
 
    "I don't want air! I don't want anything!" Xhuliana cried. "Why can't you just leave me alone?"
 
    "What's going on?" Blerimi pushed the door shut noisily and looked sharply at his sister for shouting at their mother. "Keep your voice down. No one is afraid of you."
 
    Xhuliana turned her back and took a deep breath to calm herself with her face towards the window.
 
    "What's this attitude of yours these days?" Blerimi remarked bitterly. "Have you killed someone?"
 
    'I wish I could have!' his sister thought in tears. "Get out. I'll change," she said harshly.
 
    "Come on, let's go." Alma touched Blerimi's arm, hurt by her daughter's state, and he obeyed her.
 
    Two hours later, Xhuliana got out of her room with the same clothes that she had returned home from the hairdressing salon—jeans and a black leather sweatshirt—and went into the kitchen to prepare some tea.
 
    "I'm going to Tirana tomorrow," she announced upon entering the living room, while they were both watching TV. "I'll stay for a few days at Denada's house."
 
    "When will you be back?" Her mother asked objectively to let her go, but maybe the company of her best friend would do good for Xhuliana. 
 
    The latter didn't respond right away.
 
    "After a week," she lied, and Blerimi understood it.
 
    "Why are you going?" he asked clearly suspicious.
 
    "Women's personal business," Xhuliana justified, and she went to her room without giving further explanation.
 
    He offered to accompany her to the bus stop the other day, and Xhuliana accepted.
 
    "Have you forgotten anything? You have what you need?" he asked her, still confused by her behaviour, while they were waiting at the station.
 
    "Yes," she said monotonously while keeping her gaze fixed on her black sneakers.
 
    "Xhul," Blerimi sat down to her right on the wooden bench and stroked her hair. "What has happened to you?" he asked her gently. "Talk to me."
 
    Xhuliana clenched her teeth, not to show through crying that she was in tears and was suffering.
 
    "Has someone told you something bad?"
 
    From her, he only got silence again.
 
    "Have you dropped out of school, and you don't tell us because you're afraid that we will yell at you?" he guessed. "We won't say anything, Xhul; we just want you to be OK."
 
    His sister didn't speak.
 
    "Why don't you tell me? I will fix every problem that you have." Blerimi promised. "Please, Xhul. Say something. I feel like knives are stabbed in my head when I see you like this."
 
    She took advantage of the arrival of the bus to stand up and not answer him.
 
    Blerimi didn't insist any longer. He thought it would be better if he waited for her to return from Tirana, and then they would talk quietly at their home in Përmet. Maybe a few days in the company of Denada in Tirana would really do good for Xhuliana, and she would return to her previous state.
 
 
    
    If only she had told him. That was everything she should have done, and Blerimi would have taken care of the rest.
 
    He would have served Amarildo Idrizaj's head on a golden plate to Xhuliana if that act had consoled his sister in the slightest and would have been enough reason for her not to kill herself.
 
    Apart from the hatred created towards her—why she had considered only her rights and had ended her life without thinking of the responsibilities towards his mother and him, thinking that they would both suffer her loss—he hadn't cried at all at his sister's funeral. 
 
    What if he had killed himself? Would Xhuliana have been happy? Would it have been good for Alma, who suffered such a misfortune?
 
    Whatever had happened to her, she shouldn't have been that selfish by thinking only about herself and choosing death as the only way out.
 
    He had sworn with all the strength of his soul that he would never forgive her for what she had done to him and to their mother, but he had felt that soul broken into sharp pieces that had been scattered all over his body when he found out about Amarildo's crime against Xhuliana, over seven years after her death and one month after Alma's death. 
 
    He had cried that day; his other self had been under so much torture and trauma, and he hadn't persisted enough to know. He had left her alone, with the thought that Xhuliana would be able to solve the problem herself and everything would have been returned to normal; his kind-hearted sister, who had always put him and their mother before herself, had always spent only half of the money she got for school and bought sweets with the other half to eat them at home with her family.
 
    Xhuliana Agolli had left to die that day in Tirana, and her brother, Blerimi, hadn't stopped thinking since then that he could have prevented such a tragedy if he had insisted a little more on knowing what had been the matter with her.
 
    Amarildo had deserved the kind of end that he had suffered, but the hit of the payback, gotten from life through Leonora's existence, was mercilessly teaching Blerimi that he shouldn't have included the innocent Anila Idrizaj in his plan for vengeance.
 
    Maybe even she, after breaking up with him, had been given the chance to meet someone else in life, but out of fear that she could experience the same trauma as she had experienced because of him, she was staying away from that man, whoever the latter was. 
 
    Amarildo had started it all! If he hadn't been the cause of Xhuliana's death, she would most likely have been alive and happy in those moments. Blerimi and Leonora would have met in other circumstances and would have gone out together, and Anila would have lived her latest life, traversing another path in the present.
 
    Now, with all that chaos caused and their lives turned upside down, Blerimi was thinking that the only way to forget Leonora was to meet another woman. He would hang out with her and then start to feel for her; they would go on dates, and he would no longer be a prisoner, longing for the freedom before his eyes that he couldn't touch.
 
    His attention was being drawn by the girl standing a little further from him, next to a twenty-year-old boy dressed in black. The colour of his clothes contrasted with those of the unknown brunette: baggy wine cherry trousers, a white T-shirt with the inscription "built not to fall", and sandals of the same colour.
 
    She had let her dark hair loose, and the wind of the Adriatic Sea was taking advantage of it to play with the many silken threads as it wished.
 
    He himself was sitting at the top of the steps of the Sphinx in Durrës with his back to the sun, next to his friends, three other men sitting with him, and two women standing, and he was surveying the look on the impatient face of the girl towards the man in front of her.
 
    Blerimi thought her nerves were at their peak when the man inhaled the cigarette in his right hand and blew the smoke in front of her face. It seemed like he did that to impress her, but the stranger wasn't impressed at all. She looked annoyed at him, unaffected by the smoke in her eyes, as if to say, "You can't be serious with this."
 
    When he noticed that the girl was left alone because the smoker walked towards a group of young men further away, Blerimi took a can of energy drink from the bag behind him and stood up to go to her side.
 
    "I thought you might need this." He handed her the drink, smiled flirtatiously to break the protective ice barrier between them before recognition, and closed his eyes more slowly than usual when he noticed that after her bitter glance, he earned a look of surprise and contemplation at his physical appearance from the girl's side.
 
    No matter how dangerous the darkness may seem, there will always be something seductive about it.
 
    "Thank you," she took the can still hesitantly, that she shouldn't take anything from a stranger, but the handsome man in front of her looked like he just wanted to get into a conversation with her because he liked her.
 
    "Are you here with someone? I don't want to cause you trouble." He looked very worried for her so that the brunette would be affected by his concern, and he realised that he succeeded when he saw gratitude in her soft brown eyes.
 
    "I'm with my friends. Because I have to." She twisted her face a little out of boredom. 
 
    "OK. We can sit somewhere if you want so you won't get tired standing on foot, or we can take a walk around if you have time."
 
    "A walk," she agreed, overcome by the positive feeling and attraction of Blerimi, to spend more time with him, to get to know him, and maybe they would still hang out together some other day.
 
    She waited for him while he went to talk to his friends, and then they both agreed to walk along the seashore.
 
    "So, are you going to give me a chance to know more about you, starting with your name, or should I prove that I deserve that chance first?" He asked teasingly, and the girl chuckled.
 
    "I think we would be more comfortable if we talked, knowing each other's names," she suggested, holding out her hand. "My name is Margarita. Rita, for short. Rita Doku."
 
    "Blerim Agolli," he took her hand and looked more intently at her round-shaped tanned facial features, fine eyebrows slightly straight in the arch, small dark pink lips, and two moles on the left chin. 
 
    At first glance, she didn't seem like someone who could immediately earn attention, but if she was given a glance, she managed to cajole with her seriousness a haughty man who seemed to prefer solitude to trample. Cute and strong beauty.
 
    "OK, then, Rita. Who is the person who deserves to see 'Atonement' as a sign of torture for forcing you to come here?"
 
    He himself had never seen the film, but he recalled a conversation between Denada and Xhuliana, where Denada had told her that for her nineteenth birthday, on September 16th, she would give her a cinema ticket as a present to watch 'Atonement' and Xhuliana had immediately refused, with the argument that she didn't have the psychological strength to watch that film for a second time.
 
    Margarita giggled and remembered the reason why she was there in those moments and not at her house, watching some fantasy movies, her favourite genre.
 
    "My two older sisters," Rita said. "They got obsessed with flesh and soul for me to hang out with my friends and not stay locked up at home all the time, studying and getting out of the house only when I have to go to university. I study pharmacy in my third year because I'll go crazy if I don't change my routine."
 
    "And why did you choose these people?"
 
    "They are friends of the group at the university. One of them invited me to join them today. My sisters, Teodora and Fabiana, heard the invitation, and the lighted match did its thing in the gasoline." She turned to him to see if she had bothered him with her complaints, but Blerimi didn't look upset at all and was listening to her attentively.
 
    "You don't think they're suitable for your level of conversation?" He doubted her company and realised that he had been right when Rita avoided looking at him, feeling guilty for thinking and talking negatively about them.
 
    "Maybe I don't fit their group. I don't know the truth."
 
    "The truth is that you can't defend yourself because you don't want to go against them," Blerimi explained. "Now, whether you have this attitude because other people have imposed it or because you have imposed it on yourself, I'm not sure why."
 
    "Well..." Margarita felt the need to breathe deeper than usual. "These are people who don't take things seriously, and I don't like that," she said. "I mean, every time I talk about a topic, they laugh with what I say, and most of the time they just use their phone while I'm speaking. This behaviour also makes me feel bad, because I think that maybe they are annoyed by me, and through those actions, they are trying to show me indirectly that they don't want to have me in their company.
 
    'Overthinker,' Blerimi immediately brought Brunilda Idrizaj to his mind, but he put her aside so as not to lose focus on Margarita and create a negative impression on her, like her friends had. 
 
    "I have close friends, but I'm not the type who goes out too often," Rita said. "I don't know what to do so that my sisters leave me alone."
 
    "Tell them just once that not everyone will live life the same way because that's how they want, and if they insist on their opinion, just to be against you, although they know that you are right, ignore them and don't say anything to them. Ignoring works great sometimes," he suggested, and she considered his advice. "Oh, and burst out laughing as if you're mocking them, to show that you aren't at all affected by the inappropriate criticism they do, and you'll be fine."
 
    Margarita laughed more cheerfully than before, now that she had a concrete solution for what to do.
 
    Before, when she was reprimanded for her way of life, she immediately went on the attack, reprimanding them back, and she always ended up angry and feeling overwhelmed by negativity. But now she wasn't going to ruin her peace for anyone. She would act, as he had suggested.
 
    "Where do you live? In Durrës?" she asked him.
 
    "No, in Tirana."
 
    Blerimi talked about some fragments of his life in general from the past that he knew wouldn't get him into trouble, the present, and the future as well.
 
    He went out with her often during those remaining days of November, and, despite wishing he was with Leonora at every moment rather than with Margarita, he convinced himself that it was still the beginning and the Durrës girl deserved a chance from him.
 
    He reluctantly kept the latter in his thoughts, especially when Albioni invited him one evening to watch a football match in a bar with some other friends, and he agreed to go there together.
 
    He was waiting outside her house, imagining that Leonora could come out of the apartment building at any moment, and therefore he would have the opportunity to see her. He missed her terribly.
 
    Maybe he just needed more time to get her out of his mind. It felt like it was still too early to test if he had forgotten her a bit or not.
 
    His suspicions proved that it was totally early when he saw her walking alone down the alley towards the apartment building where she lived, and Margarita didn't appear anywhere in Blerimi's memory at that moment. 
 
    No rule that he shouldn't break and no voice of conscience could extinguish the fire within him and make him stop looking at her with all his desire to hold her next to him and then look deeply into her eyes.
 
    Leonora had slowed down her steps from the unexpected meeting with Blerimi, the longing for which she was told once again how slaughtering had been during those days, that she hadn't seen him, and now it was telling her how much she wanted to be alone with him somewhere, without any responsibility to anyone else, with no shackles around their souls, except for the two of them being given to each other with all the possible passion they felt.
 
    They had to be greeted formally, not to make it obvious what they wanted to do in those moments. They had so much to say and love to express to each other, but there was no safe way in their favour to remove that aching sorrow from their lives. 
 
    "Good evening," she greeted him, muttering with an averted gaze, unable to look him in the eye.
 
    Blerimi received such a privilege before they parted.
 
    "Good evening." He admired the perfection that passed by him and felt excessively woeful that he had her so close and also had her love, which was the most important, but they couldn't be together.
 
    He watched Albioni that evening as a rival from time to time during the game, without involving friendship at all.
 
    He was certain that Albioni knew that Leonora didn't love him, but nevertheless, he wouldn't divorce from her.
 
    Blerimi repeatedly said, through his envious look at his close friend, the words that he couldn't say out loud in order not to put Leonora in danger.
 
    'You have someone that belongs to me.'