A Litany of Breaths

[Leila]

Te me falni per lajmet e hidhura por A Litany of Breaths nuk mund te vazhdohet me tej pasi personazhi kryesor ka vdekur. Nje moment qetesie per te.

[Humdinger]

Ohuuuuuuu sa ke akoma për të shkruar ti??!!
Plot ....po pres the next post

[Leila]

Mire, vazhdoje ti. E lashe tek Zytka.

[Humdinger]

Mire, vazhdoje ti. E lashe tek Zytka.

mire po e vazhdoj une..anyway :)

Në fshat e thërrisnin "kashtare", kjo ndoshta, nga flokët ngjyrë kashte, a mbase nga ç'rregullsia me të cilën vishej dhe që kridhej në ato rroba, një javë të tërë.
Shumë nga qentë e fshatit e ndiqnin pas duke lehur dhe ca banorë thoshin se qentë, nuk ja pëlqenin erën e rëndë që mbarte. Ajo kishte dhe një të ecur të çuditëshme pakëz të krrusr e sikur shtyhej me vithe përpara..sikur e ndihmonin. Reth të pesëdhjetave, e çmëndur dhe jo agresive, Zytkën, s'kish njeri në fshat mos e dinte.
Atë ditë ajo kishte vajtur në Varshavë, gjë që e bënte 1 herë në muaj dhe ashtu siç shkonte, ashtu kthehej..duarbosh. Zbriti nga autobuzi i pluhurosur dhe mori nga e shpinin këmbët e thata e tërë damarë të dalë e të vyshkur. Kaloi andej nga kafeneja dhe ca që s'linin gjë pa trazuar, i hodhën rromuze të trasha për ta vënë në lojë. Zytkës aq i bënte. Qeshte gjithnjë...aq sa ca thoshin, ajo buzëqesh edhe në gjumë. Ditë e zakonshme për fshatin e Zytkës që quhej Potkovce dhe ishte rreth 10 kilometra jashtë Varshavës. Qentë filluan ti lehin e ta shoqërojnë e ti venë lukuni pas. Zytka në botën e saj çapitej e qeshur dhe po merrte rrugën që të çonte nga Përroi i Kurbanit. I kishte mbetur kështu, sepse dikur atje thernin e bënin kurban bagëti për ti shtuar zoti begatinë Petkovces.
Në atë stinë ujrat ishin të shumtë në përrua nga shkrirjet e dëborës. Më në fund ajo arriti në përrua dhe u ul buzë tij mbi një gur, që të ngjante me saçin. Lukunia e qenve kishte ikur pothuaj... dhe ata dy që kishin mbetur, nuk i lehnin më. Zytka shtriqi këmbët e thara përpara dhe i futi në përrua...u drodh ca nga të ftohtit, por të qeshurën se ndaloi. Ta shihje ashtu do mendoje "ç'të mendojë mendja saj e çmëndur tani ?"
Që thoni ju, kjo Zytka kishte një histori të hidhur të familjes së saj në Përroin e Kurbaneve dhe po të keni durim.......më mirë po ja u them në postin e ardhshëm.

[Leila]

lol... me shkrive! Kam nder mend te ta le ty ne dore tani.
Po pse nuk i thoshin "kokashta?"

Perfitoj qe je ne pune dhe po ve foton e saj... dhe haj cokollata per dreke ;)

Zytka:

[Fiori]

Leila e vogël që po rritet. Duartrokitje...më pëlqen e gjitha!


p.s. mos e bëni lëmsh me krijimet ampidampit apo shpjegime pa lidhje. Lëreni të pushojë kur ka nevojë ; )

[Leila]

We had just had breakfast at a little place accross the street from the butcher's shop and I returned to the apartment by 10:00am where I was to wait for Zytka, our then just-hired house cleaner whom He hired because she somewhat spoke English. Humming "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies" -- pi-pi-pin-PINK-pin pi-pi-pin-PINK tyryryryryyy-TUN-TUN-TUN tyryryryryyy-TUN-TUN-TUN -- I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the building where the apartment was and my heart took a flying leap to my throat when I saw a woman standing by the door. It was the small windows and the lack of sunlight that gave everything a ghastly shadow. The second floor had only two apartments, one of them being empty at the time, therefore nobody ventured upstairs but us. She had on a blue summer dress, drab, despite the flowery designs which struck me as resembling the remains of a mass abortion of better flowers, of grand flowers that inspire intuitive dignity, solipsistic purity, and an eternally resurrecting smugness. Her hair was shoulder-length, a stringy ash blonde, and I wondered if that's what "swamp blonde" was. She had sun damaged skin and desperate for a way to best comfort me, confirmed her agitation in her green eyes as she lifted her hands towards me.

I recuperated in a split second and checked my cell phone, 9:58. Right on time. Zytka? She nodded. I introduced myself. Had she been waiting long? Only a minute. Apologizing profusely, I promised that this would not happen again. It was nice of her to come right on time, I made a point of telling her this, meaning that I appreciated punctuality and that I hoped she'd always be there on the dot like that day. I gave her a tour and we made small talk. We had just moved in the apartment and had no pets. Yes, it was a self-built bookcase; we couldn't find one big enough so we built it ourselves. She selected some names from the shelves -- Stanislaw Lem, Ivan Klima, Witold Gombrowicz, Adam Mickiewicz, Wislawa Szymborska, and Bruno Schulz -- Polish writers. She was Polish. Well, partly. Her father was a Russian soldier who fell in love with her mother, Polish and 16 years old, during the Warsaw Uprising when Russia's Red Army won against the Germans. Her parents must have waited two decades to have her because Zytka couldn't be more than 45 years old and the Warsaw Uprising took place sometime during the early 1940's. Specifically, they married around February 1945 during that conference-- The Yalta Conference, I knew, with Churchill, Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt. When someone is speaking with a broken English, interruptions like these are reasonable. It all went so fast but every now and then I took a deep blue breath to smell the cadavorous little flowers, the denouement of Persephone's offsprings, that Zytka wore like her scarlett letter.

Next, rules. Clothes were to be arranged according to their material as to prevent pilling and they couldn't be hung on hangers that mutated the shape of the sleeves. The working desk was off-limits because nobody in the world could fix it the way I could. Books were separated by the writer's nationality -- Albanian, French, German, Russian, American, English, Polish, etc.. If she didn't know which writer belonged where, she had a special shelf where she could place them until I fixed them later. She was warned that she would suffer with the bathroom and kitchen the most because they were my least favorite places to bother keeping clean, and finally, the bed sheets were to be changed daily.

I must say Zytka was well-paid because I couldn't make a mess fast enough for a daily house cleaner. She still came, if only to change the bedsheets and scrub the bathtub. Sometimes she came and we ate and watched TV together, or she would bring a book of her grandfathers' and sell it to me according to the prices on amazon.com and judging on the condition of the book. She often gave them to me for free on good days, like her birthday or some Saint's day. "Nobody read them after he dies," she said. "You use them better, I'm sure." Her grandfather was such a smart man that I actually paid more for the books he had written his comments on. The depressing blue dress was forgotten because I didn't like to think of myself as someone who obsessed with others' life choices that didn't affect me in any event.

[Leila]

"Have you noticed my skin is darker than yours?"
"You're white."
"But I'm dark enough," I insist and hold out my hand next to His. "You're pink, I'm yellow. Yellow is darker than pink."

He woke up to the sounds of commotion under the balcony and got up only to find an angry mob entering the building. By the time He turned around, they had wrapped up His naked bride with the white bed sheets like they wrap corpses in their coffins. His sleeping sun-bride, golden from the star's seething fervor, but white nonetheless, white in her breast where it counts, was being dragged by the mob that kept relentlessly pulling at the bed sheets she was wrapped into, defenseless and utterly unaware of the chaos. Try as He might to protest and struggle violently to protect her, it seemed as if the whole world was driven to form endless layers of impregnable antipathy, devoid of any sort of conscience for having demolished a sanctuary that never imposed anything on them. The last image He was left with for consolation was of her wrapped like a caterpillar in her coccoon, perpetually deprived of metamorphosis.

[Shpitiruk]

She had on a blue summer dress, drab, despite the flowery designs which struck me as resembling the remains of a mass abortion of better flowers, of grand flowers that inspire intuitive dignity, solipsistic purity, and an eternally resurrecting smugness.

Ti me vertete qe din te shkruash, po une e paskam shume te veshtire te te
kuptoj dhe pse flas anglisht. A mund te me perkthesh fjale per fjale kete fjali
se po mundohem ti jap dum dhe spo mund.?

[Leila]

In the beginning I obeyed an inner clock that woke me up every hour or two during the night to take care to cover Him. I never told Him what I did those nights but when I finally did He claimed He never knew. Oh. With the passing of time, I woke up less often but would always feel His movements when He woke up to go to work, never fluttering an eyelid. He always wakes up early enough to give Himself time to lounge around, while I always wake up as late as my stamina could endure running around the apartment nonstop getting ready. He always showers, makes me two cups of chamomile (He buys His coffee when He goes to work), watches the news on TV, picks out my outfit for the day (we think it funny), and watches me keep my eyes closed. At times He'll sing vulgar and outrageous songs to make me react, covers and uncovers me any way He feels like, sprays water on my back, pokes me, talks to me ("Why does it feel that the world and I are changing but you remain frozen in time and space,") and meddles with my ring too big for my finger -- "Hey, you promised me you'd grow up so it would fit." Eyes closed, I doze off and often wake up catching Him in mid-sentence telling me his most recent dream.