Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones

time. ‘What language is this?’ she asks again, looking at the writing on the walls of the bus.
    â€˜It’s French.’
    â€˜Why do they write on our buses in French?’
    â€˜The government bought them second-hand from France.’
    â€˜They had to go that far to find a bus?’
    Hana sits next to her aunt and leans her head on her shoulder. Katrina kisses her hair. She is quiet for a while and then asks:
    â€˜Are the French communists?’
    â€˜No, what are you talking about? The French aren’t communists.’
    â€˜Not even a little bit?’
    â€˜Maybe some people are, but the government is not.’
    â€˜So why did they sell buses to us?’
    Katrina can’t get enough of the city. She chats with the girls in the dorm, asking them where in Albania they are from. She looks out over the campus from the fourth-floor window. She pats Hana’s bed and looks at herself in the mirror. ‘Your aunt is so beautiful,’ a girl from Durrës tells Hana. Katrina is embarrassed. Hana’s roommates smile. One of them has brought a big onion byrek from home, and they share it out and wash it down with tap water. Katrina thanks everybody profusely and eats with gusto.
    When Hana takes Katrina back to the hospital, visiting hours are over, but one of the nurses says she won’t look if they slip into Gjergj’s ward quietly.
    He is sedated and fast asleep. Katrina gives him an adoring look, caresses the back of his dry hand, red and blue from the nurses’ attempts to find a vein for the drip.
    â€˜One day, when you want to get married,’ Katrina says to her niece, ‘you’ll find a good man like him.’
    â€˜If this man is so good, he won’t want me.’
    â€˜Of course he will. With your schooling and your intelligence, and your foreign-looking face. It’ll be love at first sight.’
    â€˜What do you mean by a foreign-looking face?’
    â€˜One that’s beautiful and smooth like yours.’
    â€˜But I’m so short.’
    â€˜You’re petite and beautifully built. Your breasts are perfect.’
    â€˜My breasts are tiny, Auntie. You can hardly see them.’
    â€˜You certainly can see them, if you don’t walk all hunched up as if you’re scared a man’s going to look at you.’
    Hana has never heard her talk like this.
    â€˜Well,’ Katrina shrugs. ‘We’ve never talked about these things, but we’re in the city now so it’s allowed, isn’t it? I look at you, my love, I look at you a lot, but you never liked talking …’
    Katrina strokes Hana’s hair. Then she turns around and looks at her husband.
    Hana’s uncle and aunt leave Tirana on a beautiful spring morning. Gjergj is wearing his usual blue suit and manages to walk without any help. Next to him is the rolling drip stand.
    Hana hugs both of them, hiding her eyes. She’s already thinking about the distance that is about to separate them. She’s happy they’re going home. But she’s sad too. She can’t control her sobs. She’s going to have to run back to the Faculty as soon as they’re gone.
    The village doctor promises her he’ll get them to Rrnajë safe and sound, that he’ll keep an eye on them even in his free time. ‘There’s not much to do up there, after all.’ Hana thanks him.
    â€˜I’ll call you when we get to the village, if you give me your number. You have a telephone in your dorm, right?’
    She scribbles the number down for him, but she knows he’ll never manage to catch her. Their supervisor is not the kind of guy who goes and looks for a student when there’s a call. They say he works for the secret services, and nobody would dream of protesting or making an official complaint against him. Some even say he sends a report to the government every month about what the girls are doing and saying.
    â€˜I’ll call