Bolla by Pajtim Statovci (translated by David Hackston) is the third novel I have read by this author, following My Cat Yugoslavia and Crossing. I did not enjoy it as much as the others, for the author injected the story with an albeit minor element of fantasy involving a recurring winged serpent and a battle between God and the devil. I did not believe that it added to the story in any way, and was an unwelcome distraction. In addition to the main story, which was printed in a standard unadorned font, preceding each chapter were short episodes that parallelled the storyline which were printed in italics. I have a hard time reading this cursive font, and although this was a rapid read of merely 218 pages, I spent more time deciphering the pages in italics. Thank goodness there weren’t that many of them.
Arsim is a young man living in the Serbian province of Kosovo. He is an Albanian, thrust into an arranged marriage with a woman, Ajshe, whom he despises. He abuses her both verbally and physically, and it broke my heart to read of the ways he torments her. When she announces she is pregnant with their first child, although it is not said, you can feel that Arsim is just two seconds away from demanding she have an abortion. Ajshe is stuck in the marriage with two children and has no support from Arsim.
Arsim meets Miloš and the two embark on a secretive gay relationship. They meet in a café:
“The next hour feels more comfortable than any I have ever experienced. We order coffee, lower our voices, and when I see that his books are in English we switch languages. Though improbable, random even, it feels natural, because by speaking English we can be different people, we are no longer ourselves, we are free of this place, pages torn from a novel.”
No consideration is ever given to Ajshe and the children. Arsim disappears whenever he wants, hooks up and comes back to his wife who is too terrified to ask where he has been. Only at the end of the book does she grow a firm spine by telling him off and calling the shots.
With the threat of war looming all around them, Arsim and Miloš must separate. The anti-Albanian sentiment makes Arsim wary of others and the less said the better. Bribery, though, always works wonders.
As is typical with Statovci I remarked again and again how gifted he is with his ability to create evocative images, especially with simile. I wrote down numerous examples to share:
“I have held a friend’s heart in the palm of my hand, I have thrust my hand into a chest ripped apart by bullets, grabbed a torn aorta, slippery as an eel, felt the vertebrae of the spine like teeth against my knuckles, rested my fingers on the lungs like wet pillows.”
“On our wedding day, she was brought to me. She was remarkably beautiful, silent as a drape, as was expected of her…”
“In giving me oral sex, he sounds like a moose injured in a car accident.”
“As I step through our front door, Ajshe looks at me as though I were a ghost. It is a mid-spring morning and there is a chill in the air, and she is wearing an apron; her eyes look ridiculously large, her tongue is numb, it rests at the bottom of her open mouth like a dead eel, her dry hands, white as paper, on her bony hips.”
“In the early-evening April light, the valleys around me look like a smoker’s withered lungs…”
“His tired eyes stand lazily in their sockets, and his cheeks and forehead dangle like hand towels on a clothesline.”
“She stands up and leaves the room mumbling under her breath, and my legs feel as limp as boiled bell peppers, my hands as moist as freshly caught fish.”
‘That night it pours with rain. Water slaps the concrete like hands against young cheeks, and I cannot sleep.”