Title:
Lora
Place of
Publication: Tirana
Publication
date: 2014
Publisher:
Omsca-1
Genre: Novel
ISBN:
978-9928-132-57-4
© all rights
reserved to the author:
leonardveizi@yahoo.it
Subject: This novel handles a social topic. Although the novel plays in many places of
the world, they show the Albanian way of life with its ups and downs, with its
loves and disappointments, with its brutality and humanity. The novel can be
interpreted in many plans and play on earth, in the air, in different cities,
states and institutions. In center of the novel is Rron Grabova, who leaves
Albania after the massacre of Lora Emerson, and moves to different places of
Europe to investigate for the crime. Through this novel we get an image of
prostitution, corruption, crime and the different relations between the
individual and the society: between police and prosecution, Interpol and
foreign informative service, as well as an image of the tragic fate of the two
main characters.
Characters: In this
novel there are at least 42 characters. The main characters are Rron Grabova
and Lora Emerson, who are shown as complex, special and they have a dual
personality. They commit some bad deeds, being obligated from the wild reality
and from the need to survive to act so.
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Leonard
Veizi was born on 29th of August 1968 in Tirana. He finished his studies as
agrarian engineer. He worked as a
journalist in the written and electronic media since 1991. Among his works are
the short stories Grahma e shpirtit të mjegullt (Gasp of the Foggy Soul),
Treni i fundit i metrosë (The Last Train
of the Metro), I dënuar me vdekjen (Sentenced to death) and the novels Surpriza
e natës së fundit (Last Night’s Surprise), Rrëfimi (Confession), I çmenduri i pavionit
3 (The Mentally Disordered of Pavilion 3), Orgji në famullinë e at Ludovikut
(Orgy in the Parish of Fr.Ludovic), Lora and Rrënimi (Demolition).
Extract
Above the
white sheet of the big bed, a woman laid all naked, while her body and
everything else around her were splashed with blood. Her wide open eyes, which
seemed as out of orbit, showed off clearly all the terror that she had
experienced during her last breathes of life. A huge commando –style dagger,
with ditches in each side, a very sharp blade in one side and cogs on the
other, and stained all over with blood, was still stabbing the mattress,
precisely between her opened legs.
The whole
room was soaking in a kind of purblind light, as if it was a film negative, and
everything could be espied only thanks to the light of a lamp-shade which stood
near the big bed. In that moment, that tiny space had become an infinite cosmic
space, dark and cold, where fear ruled. Maybe somewhere out there, where no one
understood what was hiding beyond visions and perceptions, a mystery that could
be far more enigmatic from what it appeared at first sight, was being hidden.
In front of
the bed where the breathless body laid in a puddle of blood, the hotel
receptionist, a man with thick gray hair and a pair of thick myopic glasses,
kept on staying there as if he was totally frozen. It seemed as if he had lost
his mind and his whole being had been plunged somewhere very deep in that
shapeless poorly lightened room. After a little while, he shook his head, as if
he was trying to come out of that passive and utterly amorphous and passive
state of mind, and beginning to believe that everything he had seen was real.
-My God – he
murmured with a trembling voice. The redness of the blood, its thickness and
the fact that it had congealed throughout that woman’s body, while still
falling drop by drop on the floor, made him fill sick. He almost vomited and
didn’t quite understand how he succeeded to resist to that interior welter he
was feeling. His reasoning, that till that moment had been like deformed and
frozen as if it had been stiffened inside a piece of ice, begun to come back to
him with dizzying speed. His eyes now were fixed on the military digger that
stood between the victim’s legs, giving the impression as if it had cut her sex
in two pieces. – Oh my God! – he stuttered again, while still not quite
understanding what he was doing in that room, alone and so near to a bloody
corpse.
He took a
step forward, driven by a sudden and uncontrolled impulse that made him think
that he maybe had to check her pulse, because even as she had been so rudely
massacred, she could still be alive. He had no need to hurry and call the
police, because first he could call the hospital and tell them to send an
ambulance and a doctor. But his own shadow that followed his steps and the dim
light that pulsed on the membrane of her glassy eyes, made him tremble. He felt
so terrified, that his curiosity fell apart, and his being refused to want to
know any further details about that macabre sight. An instant later, he rashly
walked out of that room, passed through the long hallway with an erratic
scurry, stroke the lateral wall with his shoulder after losing his balance for
a moment, walked down the stairs grasping the board guardrails and finally,
gasping he bumped at the reception. He grabbed the phone and formed a
three-digit number.
-This is the
police, the control room, – someone told him on the phone. The man was about to
talk, but his words seemed like to have been stuck in his throat and all he
could do was to crepitate. – Hello! Do you hear me? The police…
He was
desperately trying to outdo his gasping, as he was more and more breathless.
-Send
immediately a patrol here! A person has been killed! – he finally managed to
say with a trembling voice, sobbing, with a sense of alarm that was still
hanging in the air.
-Stay calm
please, – a voice from the receptor told him. –Give me the address.
The man
watched his fingers trembling on the counter, his yellow hand skin and
eventually lost his mind again, at the point that he didn’t remember the
address anymore.
-It’s the
“Apolon” hotel, near the Train Station, – he said, feeling like he was saving
himself from the double nightmare he was living, – You know, on the right down
the road.
But the
voice on the phone interrupted his explanation that was getting longer as he
was struggling to justify his little loss of memory.
-I know
where it is. Please do not touch anything in the crime scene! In two minutes
the patrol will be there.
The man left
the receptor feeling more comfortable and raised his head looking at the
ceiling, right where her room should be. The puddle of blood that had already
swamped her bed and the floor soon would begin to leak drop by drop from the
ceiling. He squinted at the hall. There was no other sign of life, besides him.
This made that silent place even more frightening. Suddenly a red stain
appeared on the white ceiling. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Two or three
seconds later it had spread in an unbelievable way.
-Oh my God,
– he screamed with a horrified face and his sense of vomit returned to him
again. He rushed towards the toilet keeping his mouth shut with both of his
hands. “It’s only a daydreaming, a hallucination, it’s not real, you fucking
have to believe it man”, he thought as he was having a quick rinse with the
cold water coming down from the tap.
Far away he
heard the howl of a siren that was beginning to be felt constantly nearer. He
went quickly to the hall and while the policemen were entering hurriedly
through the glass sliding door, he didn’t feel his legs anymore and fell down
on his knees.
-Encircle
this place! You have to control everywhere. No one should walk out of this
door. – he heard a resolute voice saying, and he lost it again.
The extract
is translated from the Albanian by Elvi
Sidheri.
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| Leonard Veizi |
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