The Lame Historian

/, Literature, Blesok no. 22/The Lame Historian

The Lame Historian

“A new two-bedroom apartment in exchange for my two-bedroom house on Poplar Street,” he answered as if from a rifle.
The man in charge lifted his eyes. He stared long at the professor, looking above his shoulders where a transparent layer of dust lay, as if he lived in a mill.
“What do you want?” he asked again to destroy his self-confidence.
“A two bedroom apartment, because today they’re knocking down my house by the poplars,” he answered, pressing his manuscript under his arm and looking across the office at the new development where he hoped to have his apartment.
The official rubbed his gold tooth, tightened his tie, combed his black hair in front of a round mirror, and, after snorting as if he had horse flies in his nose, took the register of the citizenry from the shelf and with the tip of his pencil checked all the names that started with the letter Q. He bit his lips in a show of surprise, and after putting his pencil back in its place, he addressed the professor.
“I’m sorry, comrade, but according to us, here in our carefully maintained documents, you are deceased,” he said, and over his name and surname underlined in red, he added another line—signifying certainty of death.
The professor, as if hit by a bullet, took a step forward. He carefully looked at himself to see whether he was really alive, dusted off his shoulders, and spoke as if in front of a history class.
“Pharaohs, emperors, four social systems, and two world wars are deceased. But the history professor Qazim Qella is still alive. Indeed, he was mortally wounded by the reviewers’ bullet, but he remained alive within the Trojan Horse.” When he remembered that he was not writing history at this point, but looking for a roof over his head, he mopped up the river of bitter sweat with his hat and took a deep breath, as if to remind the clerk that there was still life within his chest.
“We can’t meet the needs of the living, much less extend a hand of mercy to the dead,” the person in charge said, blood boiling in his head as he drew another red line of death under the name and surname, with the same pencil–as if he were making sure the professor was buried.
“When did I die, then?” he said, trying to come up with the name for a cannibal, as if in ancient history, because though he had a head like a drum, he still reserved some empty space in it for understanding. “I do consider myself dead in history, but not in life,” he added loudly, just to convince the respected gentleman that he had lived in just this way. He lived near the poplars with one leg, like a widower, beaten with worries. He had a disability pension and not a single person who loved him…
“What you claim is true. You really were born the year you say, but you died in nineteen sixty-five. You have been dead to this very day. During this time no changes were carried out. Also, during these years the municipality had no headaches with you,” the official said to convince the professor that he really had been buried four years ago.
“Between the dates your excellency has mentioned, professor Qazim Qella indeed tried to write ancient history. He did this in his house, among the two rows of poplars, in a room facing the sun, and not in a grave. History is not written in a grave as much as it is forgotten.” The professor provided this explanation with his bones trembling, because out of time, or before time, they had buried him.
“Can you show me part of this written history as proof that you are still alive?” the clerk asked, stretching out his mottled hand to take the text of the written history.
The professor kept quiet, but his eyes all at once filled with tears and his hair stood up under his hat. He shuddered in fear. He was afraid of the reviewers as if they were gravediggers. But he had nothing else now to prove that he was alive, that he had worked in his own house, that… he hoped to rewrite the rejected manuscript, to uncover new historical evidence, to sow the seeds of a new plant before the gates of life. Eh! A sigh formed deep in his chest, as if he were tearing facts from the dead flesh of history. The professor stood in the office on two petrified legs: one of them stuck in his shoe, the other of wood. He had nothing, absolutely nothing as proof of his own existence. He had no children; his wife had abandoned him; his friends had not visited since he decided to rewrite his ancient history, because he had no time for small talk; the neighbors had closed their shutters, because as a widower he had no place among their families. For a year he wrote regularly to his only brother, who had moved to Turkey, but after he received no answer, he crossed him off too. Only one student, after he had given him part of his pension, would deliver him bread, liver, fruit, a piece of cake. In this way he spent four years—quite dead to his town.
For a moment, it seemed to him that the whole office buzzed like a beehive. Three other clerks, after checking on the cause established for his actual death, were left speechless. Then, one of them, who appeared wisest, rose to his feet in attention as if taking an oath before his work gloves, thought for a while, and said: the professor’s death is not imaginary. I remember when his former wife came to us, her eyes flooded with tears, and publicly announced the death of her legal spouse, the result of a traffic accident. She received fifty thousand denars for funeral expenses. After that day she left the city, and the professor was never seen again. The signatures of his former wife and two witnesses assuredly testify to the fulfillment of all obligations towards the deceased. And we have fulfilled our obligation. Qazim Qella, a professor by profession, has been transferred to the death registry, and consequently all of his debts—two unpaid loans, some unpaid electric bills, have been declared null and void.
To this end… —he didn’t proceed. He scratched his neck and placed a period at the end of his thoughts. He also placed a period on the record against a well known seller of apartments who sold the empty ones and switched them around without anyone’s approval.
The professor lost his patience. He slapped his forehead and said: Listen, you blessed things! The dead Qazim Qella, the history professor, here I am in person, God damn you! I’m right here, alive, thank God, with two arms, one leg, here—he started thumping his chest.
“You need to verify that you are alive and are a professor by profession,” one of them said without lifting his head.
The professor was left with nothing to do but clutch his crutches under his arms and go back where he came from. When he got home, he saw clouds of dust rising above the roof of his house. The workers on the municipal project had begun the demolition a half hour earlier. He felt as if he had broken his other leg too, and he yelled as loud as he could: “I’m alive, alive, but I need to convince others that a living man lived in this house. Here, in a tiny two-bedroom house a professor has been giving life to ancient history for quite a while.”
“Ancient history needs nothing from a dead man, since it died a long time ago itself,” the clerk had said.
That night, on a bench of his former school, Qazim Qella sat down to write an affidavit testifying that he still lived, despite the fact that life took no account of him. He lived in hope, though life pointlessly took his leg, snatched away his wife, leveled his house, rejected his manuscript. Attempting to enter history, he had entered the grave. After he convinced himself with indisputable facts that he was really alive, he thought of something unusual. He leafed through the other manuscript and wrote in its margins: “Ancient history also requires no grave, but it requires a testimony—it is then that it lives its life, when people consider it dead.”

Translated by: Elizabeta Bakovska

AuthorMurat Isaku
2018-08-21T17:23:42+00:00 October 1st, 2001|Categories: Prose, Literature, Blesok no. 22|0 Comments