Part One
Memorie.al / Five years have passed, and the portrait of my friend remains unerasable from my memory. Perhaps this is because our meeting points in Paris were numerous – with mutual friends and shared work – days and years where a true friendship was forged. It was a friendship that would always radiate kindness, respect, and gratitude, remaining for me, at the same time, a philosophical reference for life and human value; what it represents in itself and what the itinerary of a person in this world is – what power is, what modesty is, and what it means to be human.
Five years have passed quickly, as if it were simply a single season. Perhaps this happens because at this moment I am in Paris, and I happen to walk along ‘Avenue Victor Hugo’, where Jusuf had lived in the 1920s-30s, and along ‘Rue de Grenelle’, where after him, I lived in the same apartment for three consecutive years. Or when we gathered at the sweet home of Liri Begeja and Luc Barnier, at the embassy or UNESCO, and even at his last apartment in ‘Rue Croix-Nivert’ near Porte de Versailles, there where he would spend the final days of his life.
A hot season filled with people, intimate meetings, conferences, conversations about literature and art, and about beauty as a whole, for Jusuf had a soul extremely sensitive to beauty. Hundreds of memories and conversations as friends and colleagues, as people on the roads of Europe, in love with France and freedom, always with our eyes toward Albania.
Five years ago, Vrioni died on a beautiful, sunny morning, when perhaps he had thought of strolling in ‘Saint-Germain-des-Prés’, with the hope that his health was taking a turn for the better. A day before his death, he called me to his home. He wanted to tell me something, but again, he did not say it. He was homesick for Albania; he was in pain. Sad and tired, he sought peace. Peace with the world he lived in, peace with life. The peace he had so greatly desired for all people, even for his inquisitors. Peace…!
That morning, the telephone of Agi, his beloved wife, made me rush with my car toward his house in ‘Rue Croix-Nivert’, somewhere near ‘Porte de Versailles’. – “Come quickly, I don’t know what is wrong, Jusuf isn’t answering me!” Upon arriving, I rushed up the elevator in one breath and entered the bedroom.
Jusuf’s body had moved slightly from the bed, forming a cross with the mattress, and his face – I don’t know why – immediately reminded me of the pale but very expressive figures in the paintings of El Greco. I spoke to him, I put my hand on his neck, I touched his hands, his feet…! But no, Jusuf would not answer. With his eyes open, dressed in blue clothes, he gazed into the void of lifelessness.
- “Agi, Jusuf has left us… He is gone!” Agi did not want to believe that death could be so peaceful and wordless: – “But he is warm,” – she whispered to me in confusion, not wanting to believe and pacing around without knowing what to do: – “Jusuf! Jusuf!” – she sought to wake him from that heavy, eternal sleep. The El Greco figure, in the white light of the morning, with hands open in the shape of a cross, answered no more.
There was something sacred. At his side, his work table, books, countless dictionaries, the computer, the final texts, and two folders where it was written: “Mira Meksi”! They were the last stories he was translating for his friend…! As chance would have it, I was the one to accompany the deceased Jusuf Vrioni to the homeland.
We were flying, strangely, over the ‘Arc de Triomphe’, from where, not far away, one could discern the Eiffel Tower, the dome of the French Academy, and that of the church at the “Hôtel des Invalides,” the Seine, and the boats on the river. Jusuf Vrioni had never seen from above and so closely this city so dear to him where he had spent his youth.
He was flying lifelessly, on a journey he had never desired, on a journey he always feared in those last months and which he refused to contemplate: his return as a dead man. At the embassy, the writer Yves Mabin, a friend of many Albanians, shortly before we departed, had left me a short note for Jusuf, where among other things he wrote:
“Jusuf the Albanian! We had no reason to meet, to know each other. Circumstances, which are usually unnecessary, were favorable for our friendship. As soon as we saw each other, we became friends. Friends forever. Friends of a friendship where we understand each other without the need to speak, to explain, to justify. We admired the same values.
We gave preference to the same feelings, priorities. We laughed at the same pretensions we had. We were moved by the same events. We also knew how to laugh together…. You loved your country. You worried about it. It was always at the core of your heart.”
- “Comment vas-tu mon cher?” (“How are you, my dear?”) – he would often say to me on the phone or when he came to drink a whiskey. With Jusuf, the conversation was always pleasant. I admired his perfect and elegant French, French that had remained in the aristocratic tones of the 1940s-50s, but which was a pure and very refined language.
When it came to his youth or the era when he had lived in France, his eyes would take on a special light and nostalgia would seize him. That time would snatch him away with the magic and intensity of memories, of the life he had lived, as if that had been the most beautiful part of his life.
He had landed in Paris one day in 1925, when his father, Iljaz Vrioni, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Albania, was appointed Ambassador of Albania to France. Ahmet Zogu had just been elected President of the new Albanian Republic. The Legation was first established in “Rue de la Pompe,” but later, Ambassador Vrioni together with his family settled at 11, bis, “Avenue Victor Hugo”, very close to the square of “L’Arc de Triomphe.”
It was precisely at that time that Jusuf would begin his Parisian life: studies at one of the most famous lyceums in Paris, “Lycée Janson-de-Sailly”, where André Maurois studied in a parallel class; sports on the tennis courts in the Bois de Boulogne; family vacations in Evian, Brittany, in the castles along the Loire, or in Merlimont near Touquet, in the north of France.
His favorite writers of this time were Proust, Claude Mauriac, de Montherlant, Gide, etc. Even after 70 years, he remembered those days when he read “La condition humaine” by Malraux (noted: author mentions Gide but the book is by Malraux), or “Voyage au bout de la nuit” (Journey to the End of the Night) by Celine. Jusuf would undoubtedly be one of the most integrated Albanians in French society of that time.
His life was passionate, with a thirst for knowledge, for knowing science and art, the enigmas of mathematics and chemistry. In those years he played hockey, and their team with Captain Jacques Lacarrière would become champions of France. Suddenly, when he turned 16, one day later, on March 17, 1932, his father would die of cirrhosis. His body would be escorted with full honors by the French government, which had honored him with the high decoration “Officier de la Légion d’Honneur.”
After the death of Iljaz Vrioni, the family would continue to stay in France. The young Vrioni was a perfect student and well-known in Parisian circles. Thus he knew Coco Chanel, the actress Micheline Presle, and other characters of the French mondanité. After the lyceum, he continued his studies at “Hautes Études Commerciales” (HEC), one of the most famous schools in France. After a license at “HEC,” he enrolled in political science as well as for a doctorate in Law (en Droit).
But at this time, the winds of war were approaching. In the spring of 1939, he was forced to leave school and Paris with pain. – “I remember like it is now that last evening, when I was with a friend of mine in a famous restaurant by the Seine, at ‘Tour d’Argent’,” – he used to tell. “The next day, together with my brother, Ali, we went to Gare de Lyon. Filled with longing and a strange feeling from this departure, we kissed the cobblestones of the station and set off toward Rome. It was a kind of farewell…”!
On August 5, 1939, Vrioni landed in Albania occupied by fascist Italy…! “The war had then begun and I met Jusuf in Nice,” – one of Jusuf’s friends, Robert Durant-Vienne, a former student with him at HEC, had told me one day. – “What will you do now that Albania is occupied? – I asked. – I will go to Albania, – he replied immediately, – my country is there! …This answer of his surprised me.” As patriotic as Jusuf was, he was equally European, as his life was forged in a circle where cultures, languages, and societies mixed. Rightly, Yves Mabin had written to me:
“Jusuf the Frenchman! You loved France, its culture that you knew so well, the language that you used in an admirable way, as evidenced by the translations of the work of one of the greatest world writers among the living, your friend and ours, Ismail Kadare. You loved that difficult, strict, rich dialogue between the language of your mother and the French language.
You loved this language so much that, as you told me, when you were in prison, in the isolation cell, you spoke to yourself in French so as not to go mad. What a beautiful compliment for a language that was also yours, as you were just as much a Frenchman as all those French people who speak this language and who love this country, protector of freedoms and human rights…”!
I had met Jusuf in France in 1991, when the Albanian Minister of Culture would make an official visit to Paris. In the beautiful hall of the Ministry of Culture, in “Rue Valois,” the then-minister Jack Lang hosted a lunch, where Ismail Kadare and Jusuf Vrioni were also invited, as well as French writers like Bosquet, Nourissier, Yves Mabin, and Robert Escarpit, two books of whom had been translated and published in Albanian.
Yves Mabin was there, near Jusuf. It had been precisely he who had made it possible that for the first time, after five decades, Jusuf could step again on the streets of Paris. This had happened precisely on the occasion of the activities of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, which was celebrated with grandeur throughout France.
I also remember the winter of 1992-1993, when together with Liri Begeja and Luc Barnier, we went to the airport “Charles De Gaulle” to wait for Jusuf. This time he came invited by Kadare’s publisher, Claude Durand. From the airport, we went straight to Liri’s house, where he would be settled for a long time and where he would find extraordinary pleasure and rest. In the evenings we would gather among various friends, among whom was always Edi Rama, and Jusuf would start his lectures and memories.
You had the desire to listen to him. As soon as he stepped in Paris, it seemed as if the French capital fully absorbed him with its elegance and fascination, with his former friends, various intellectuals, the streets he knew by the palm of his hand, the memories of youth, the cafes of ‘Saint-Germain-des-Prés’ or ‘Montparnasse’. In February 1993, Jusuf would come back again to Paris. By now a permanent “going-and-coming” had been created, Tirana-Paris and Paris-Tirana.
At the end of 1997, Jusuf Vrioni, the former political prisoner of the totalitarian time, was appointed Ambassador of Albania to UNESCO, and a year later, the French Academy honored him with the Francophonie prize. A few months later he would be honored by the French Ministry of Culture with the Order of the Knight of the Legion of Honor. In the being of Jusuf, one of the things that stood out the most was his simplicity.
Perhaps because he always sought for everything to be in its perfection, which had turned in him into an absolute and unreachable value. Modest in his appearance, modest enough not to be seen on podiums, reserved not to always say “I,” even when he had the right to say it, it would be difficult to find another as simple and soft-spoken as he.
It was difficult to get an interview, as his answer would always be: “What can I say? And what do I know more than others?”! For a long time, director Jean-Louis Berdot and producer Michel Faure, authors of several documentary films on Albania, tried to realize a film about Vrioni’s life. – “Tell Jusuf a bit,” – they would say to me, – “why indeed does he not accept for us to film him?”!
One day they were able to convince him to record him for two hours in the lower hall of the embassy in “Rue de la Pompe,” but when they asked to film him, Jusuf’s answer was negative. – “A film about me? And who am I? To whom will this film be of value?”! – he had told them with a laugh, patting his friends on the shoulders. Another time I was with the filmmaker Luc Barnier, whom he admired.
He too wanted to realize a film about Jusuf. – “Who knows, maybe we convince him,” – Luc told me one day. We took a car, a lighting lamp, a tape recorder, the camera, and together with Jusuf we set off for the house of a friend of his from the time of prison, a political refugee who had come to Paris in 1990. Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
