By Shkëlqim ABAZI
Part seven
SPAÇI
– The Grave of the Living –
Tirana, 2018
(My own and others’ memoirs)
Memorie.al / Now in my old age, I feel obliged to confess my truth, just as I lived it. To speak of the modest men, who never boasted of their deeds, and of the others whom the regime silenced and buried in unnamed graves? In no case do I take upon myself to usurp the monopoly of truth or to claim laurels for an event where I was only accidentally present, although I desperately tried to help my friends, who tactfully and kindly avoided me: “Brother, open your eyes… don’t get involved… you have only two months and a little left!” A worry that clung to me like an amulet from the morning of May 21, 22, and 23, 1974, and even followed me in the months that followed, until I was released. Nevertheless, everything I saw and heard during those three days, I would not want to take to my grave.
Continuation from the previous issue
Continuation of the Memoirs of the former prisoner of Spaç
I examined the object that was giving off a heavy, stinking vapor, as if it were a time bomb, but I couldn’t spot where the carbide was supposed to be. But Jemini snatched it from me and split it into two parts, poured out the pebbles, took a tiny piece of tin from his pocket, like the small lead weights used to sink fishhooks, and dipped it into the curved spout. After fixing a thin steel wire, as fine as a hair, in the center, he struck it with the sharp edge of the hammer.
When he withdrew the wire, he tossed the pebbles (carbide pieces) in, joined the two halves, and filled the reservoir with water. Then, after moving a type of piston on the upper part, he brought the lighter near. A reddish flame burst from the spout, accompanied by the smell of rotten egg.
That day I learned that without these preparations, you couldn’t enter the mine. We put the wagon forward and stopped about ten meters further, on a metallic rotating disk, which they called a turntable. We fixed it onto the plate, which I had no idea what it was used for, and Jemini forcefully spun the wagon. It flew, and along with it, I also flew with my feet in the air, gripping the edges of the bucket. For a moment, the entrance spun around me, so much so that I almost fell into the water line.
“Did you hurt yourself? I should have warned you, but I thought you knew!” – My colleague came to my side.
-“No, I’m fine!”
This flight helped me to be more attentive at every rotation.
“Where is your cap, man?” – roared Arshini, who had put on his long ago. – “And what about the clothes, man?”
“I am dressed!”
“With these thin clothes, you will freeze completely, you simpleton? Caci, give your fur coat to this boy, he is naked!” – He yelled at someone coming out from inside the mine.
“It’s dirty, but it will keep you warm!” – A man with a burnt face handed me the fur coat. I thanked him and threw it over the logs.
“No need to thank just put it on!” – suggested Anastas Lapi, who would soon become my friend. I put it on, even though the temperature must have been over fifteen degrees.
“Forward!” – Arshini ordered and hurled the crowbars into the bucket, the axe and saw onto his shoulder, and set off. Now the wheels were squealing on the rails, giving me the sensation of plunging into the tunnel.
This hole amidst the darkness and chaos foreshadowed doom!
The deeper we penetrated, the more it got darker (got black/darker).
“Unlike the similar ones that promise hope for light, in the belly of the mountain, the darkness and the absolute night devour you.”
Under the faint light of the lamps, the shadows of the logs resembled twisted gangs, where the real and the surreal intertwined as in a game of ghosts.
“Lend a hand, O God, and save me from Hades!”
Myths of dragons, minotaurs, and Cerberus flashed before my eyes.
But we, the wretches of modernity, were not the Heracles of antiquity who faced the giants, nor Perseus who killed the Minotaur, but some fragile victims, claiming to survive the Red Minotaurs and the Communist Hydra, who were plunging us without a thread into labyrinths to lose our direction and wander aimlessly past corrosion-shattered beams, detached from the turntables, and gnawed and shattered by the Cerberus-like teeth of the acid that turned them into rust.
And then we lacked Ariadne, to guide us in the dark labyrinth, because our ragged Cinderellas had been banished to the collective stables, to the swamps of Myzeqe, where they struggled for the crust of survival, which they were taking away from the little ones’ mouths, in order to roam the roads of the prisons, where the Prometheuses bound to the Communist rock languished…!
“Watch out, man, the pipe will snap your head!” – The voice of my comrade roared near my ear.
Suddenly, an abrupt blow sent my hat flying and banished the dreams of titans, Cinderellas, and Prometheuses.
“Did you get hurt, man?” – Jemini stopped the wagon.
“No!” – In fact, I was stunned, but I didn’t feel pain.
“I told you to duck your head, but I don’t know where your mind was!” I kept silent, startled.
“Keep your eyes open, the pipes at the crossings are a bit low and will snap your head off, especially with a full wagon, when the terrain has a slope, the weight takes you with it,” – he continued the chorus of scolding-lessons.
“I didn’t get hurt, but my hat flew off,” – I replied.
“May the hat not go to its mother?” – Arshini swore under his breath, found it under the lamp’s light, and gave it back to me. – “Keep your eyes open, youngster!”
“How many meters have we penetrated under the mountain?” – I asked to change the subject.
“We passed the kilometer mark, a little further and we reach the front.”
The draft of air mixed with dust particles and gunpowder smoke stung my nose, my eyes burned, and my sight couldn’t penetrate the faded lights of the lamps.
“Damn it, they haven’t turned on the air, man! Let’s go back to the pocket (side passage) until the front is cleared, or we’ll inhale the smoke (literally ‘ate the straw’)!” – Arshini swore under his breath, fidgeting with something behind the pipe.
Turbulence blew up, almost extinguishing the lamps, while we abandoned the wagon and returned the way we came, took a right, and immediately found ourselves under an unarmored rock space.
That sight terrified me, I retreated and huddled under the reinforcement.
“Where are you going?” – Jemini shouted.
“The mountain will collapse on our heads!” – I replied, horrified.
“No, no, after five minutes the smoke will enter the funnel-like mouth and take the terrain (clear the air).”
The lights of the lamps disappeared high on the walls of the rock face and vanished, without managing to penetrate the abyss. I slumped onto a pile of stones, lit a cigarette, and extended the pack to my comrades.
“You’re bad with tobacco, my friend!” – Arshini scolded and continued: – “Here, three smokes will mix, the carbide, the dynamite, and the tobacco, and good luck getting out of the hole!”
“I quit once, but they put me in the cell, and the habit (worm) got me back!” – I tried to justify myself.
“What a story you told us! Why, did they bring us here for vacation?! Get your wits together, man, every time they put us in and take us out of the cell, we’ll get mad and smoke!” – He finished his scolding remark.
After five minutes, plumes billowed in the mouth of the furnace, like fog in the mountain ravines, but they stopped at the corner where we were huddled, as if pulled by a bridle, made a swirling motion, and charged into the chimney, like wild horses. This play of currents got me into aerodynamic reflections; it seems I developed the habit of linking everything to the emotional state, even in the heart of the earth.
Arshini and Jemini were sitting indifferently.
“Oh God, are they sleeping and being lulled by the danger over their heads?”
As I waited for the mountain to pour down on me, a voice pierced the darkness, echoing through the dome:
“Why are you disturbing my millennia-old sleep?!”
“It was neither my intention nor in my mind to disturb you, but they brought me here in handcuffs!” – I excused myself.
“The human nonsense, solve it yourselves; you came to me, you will no longer see the light!”
“I didn’t want to come, but they brought me by force!” – I complained to him.
“Here you are dead, therefore!”
“They didn’t ask me; they grabbed me by my rags and brought me in a prison van!” – I added, hoping to soften the invisible threat.
“Worse for you! Since the beginning, billions of souls have roared in my kingdom; some earlier, some later, one more, one less, here you will end up!”
“It’s icy here!”
“Preparation for eternity!”
“Who are you?”
“Me? Hades!”
“I didn’t wish to meet you this early, comrade Had!”
“Fight to survive!”
“The slave suffers all his life, without knowing if he will see tomorrow! What did you leave at home, man?” – The darkness spoke. I thought Hades was speaking.
“Hey wedge, I’m talking to you!” – They shook me by the shoulders.
“With me? They imprisoned me with the label of an enemy of the Party and…”!
“Gather your goats (idiom for ‘focus/get your act together’), man! Why, did they put us here as friends of the Party, man!” – Arshini was speaking, but I was far from the living.
Perhaps the confrontation with the underground turned out to be fatal and shook me so much it frightened me to death.
I had always been horrified by the miners’ suffering. On the screen of my brain, the macabre scenes of Émile Zola and A.J. Cronin were reproduced, in the coal shafts in France and Britain, where tens of unfortunates were lost.
“Oh God, when these horrors happen in countries where life is valued, woe to us here!”
My heart trembled and my flesh crept. Behind every pillar, I saw a victim; behind every wagon, a mutilated person; on every turntable, a dead person; in every front, a disaster, a catastrophe after the ray of light I left outside, and chills ran from my head to my feet.
“Oh God, save me!”
Terror mixed with the mystery of the unknown hidden by the darkness, awakened my animal instincts in my subconscious, while my comrades were sitting indifferently (without worrying).
Later, the impressions of that day would fade, and I would lose my caution, so much so that I would lie down under the rocks of the abandoned gallery mouths, without worrying, and even enjoy dreams of freedom, more beautiful than on the prison bed. But this carelessness belongs to the period when I would become accustomed to danger and equate life with forgetfulness.
Anyway, I was truly terrified that day.
On the Paths of Hell
“Let’s go, the front must have been cleared!” – Arshini swung his lamp like a pendulum and led the way to the turntable.
We pushed the wagon to the left until it got stuck on the inert material. The lights flickered like owl eyes, amidst the smoky cloud. After our eyes adjusted, we distinguished a pile of stones and gravel that had covered the rails.
From behind some half-fallen pillars, Jemini took out two shovels, handed one to me, and threw the other one away.
“If it hurts your hands, we will change the handle,” – he spoke, bending over the pile of stones.
The more we advanced, the bigger the stones; after five minutes, we filled the wagon.
“Take this poll and put it on the right!” – but he apparently didn’t trust words, because he moved to my side, and when he was sure that the lower part came out near my shadows, he went to his side and ordered: – “Push hard!”
The wheels moved sluggishly, squealing like beaten dogs.
“When we get outside, remind me to grease them, they’ve gathered dust. But watch out, where your hat fell, we need to brake, because if it comes off the turntable, good luck lifting it!” – he advised.
“The gallery seems the same to me, here as well as further!” – I complained.
“You’ll get used to it; did we know at first?”
The wheels slid more easily, but the squealing continued. The wagon gained momentum, and Jemini climbed onto the nose of the chassis, while I was straddling the bumps, splashing water splash-splash with my boots.
“Why are you pushing, get on top, you’ll break yourself!” – He shouted at me.
“I’m afraid I’ll hit my head on a pipe!”
“Jump when we approach it, we will break!”
“Where is that place?”
“Wherever I say!” – he concluded the instruction.
As I climbed onto the chassis, the speed increased several times, turning the clatter-clatter into a roar. Oh, what pleasure!
My childhood flashed before me and the carriages I used to cling to, hiding under the carcass to escape the coachman’s whip or the eye of the policeman, or I would spend the night in some hole.
Now the wheels were imitating the sound of a train, while the wagon was flying like a whirlwind of hell.
The ride made me happy, but the realization that I was in a mine and the feeling of not ending up crushed behind the reinforcement made me all eyes and ears and increased my heartbeat. The fear of a sudden blow forced me to lower my head to the level of the material, even though the height was over two meters, while the currents hit my face, water drops, sometimes and streams poured over my cap and soaked me.
“Watch your feet when you get off, don’t land badly on a crosstie!”
My colleague hung onto the pole in his hand, while I lowered my feet, but my boots hit the back of the crossties.
“Get off, what are you waiting for?” – He snapped at me.
I jumped, but the inertia pulled me, so much so that I almost slammed my face onto the chassis. In the final moment, my comrade saved me; the wagon picked up speed and disappeared along with the lights.
“We are left in the dark.”
“Where?”
“God knows!”
“Don’t move until I light the lighter!”
Before he finished speaking, a clatter of iron provoked a tremor that shook the dome, and a river of pebbles fell on our backs.
Under a faint light of the lighter, I saw my comrade approaching the wagon that was stuck in the water line. We couldn’t see the lamps anywhere; perhaps they had ended up crushed behind the reinforcement or had fallen into the stream.
“Comrade, don’t stand between the rails, a wagon will crush you!” – He shouted.
I moved to the side, but I wasn’t sure if I was in the right place. Shivers ran through my bones; God knows if it was air currents or the fever of fear!
“Here we are stuck at the most problematic intersection!” – My colleague stammered. – “Where this one buried its face, we can’t pull it out alone!” – He burst out despairingly and moved aside.
I waited for him to scold me, but he was satisfied with just that.
“I’m sorry; you are suffering for my mistake!” – I apologized.
“It’s my fault for trusting me!” – He eased my mind. – “Find a corner, because we have no light!”
“What about you?” – I spoke, trembling.
“I will stay with the lighter on, until we hear the sound of a wagon, to signal them. But first, let’s block the road with two logs.”
He gave me the lighter and placed some rocks between the rails, found two logs and laid them behind the rocks.
“Give me a cigarette!” – cursing myself for the trouble I caused him, I handed him the pack and the lighter. – “You light one too, and if you see a wagon approaching, wave it over your head.” Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
