Anaya was black as a cormorant, she was as black as the dark waters of her village, and her shining skin brought to mind the leaves of an exotic tree. She walked slowly through Florence’s still-sleeping streets, moving safely now that she had finally escaped from the amber-coloured land, streaked with blood and stained by years of war.
The girl was tall and sinuous, wrapped in a colourful gauze scarf that stood out above tight black pants that covered her long legs like a second skin. She’d passed the night tending to a sick old man with a white beard, and she sang under her breath as she went back home, tired, fighting her sleepiness. Still, she felt satisfied with herself.
Her mind was peopled by the images that followed her everywhere.
She, Anaya, was running fast through the village in flames, she was bending over to avoid the bullets as she ran along the narrow banks of the river engulfed by fire. Then her sister Aza was bursting her sides with laughter, her head cocked to one side, watching the men dancing while she ate roasted meat. The colours were bright and violent. Suddenly the scene changed while the women screamed around a body lying in the dust. It was her mother, still young and strong, who lay with her dirty face on the ground. A thin trickle of blood stained her mouth. The heat was unbearable and the women were shouting and waving their hands. On the barrels of the rifles even the sun’s reflection seemed threatening.
The girl was bent over her mother when she felt the strangely cool metal against the nape of her neck.
She remained motionless, and only her moving pupils saw the ground and the red horizon grow incredibly big. She felt no pain, only the amazement that gripped her and a deaf silence that seemed to possess her whole body. Her eyes were wide open on the flaming desert peopled by silently moving bodies. She tried to keep her lids open, because as long as she could see she felt alive.
She had awoken in a hut that served as a hospital. She no longer saw red, the colours were pale and shadowy, while she observed her strangely black body, blacker than she had ever realized before.
There was a sinister silence under that tent, and a young doctor with white skin and reddish hair was moving around slowly. All around the colour ochre prevailed, reminding her of the dusty earth of her village, and she could detect a strong medicine smell. It didn’t make her feel any safer to see two profiles of tall men armed with two large rifles and bombs hanging from their belts like bananas at the door. She felt an uncontrollable wish to escape and hide somewhere. Every once in a while it seemed she could hear shouts coming from far away, confused with violent, bright images, as if sun and blood had melted into a single vortex. Then she would close her eyes, pushing them into their orbits with her hands so the pain would bring her back to reality.
She was afraid when the doctor gently touched her forehead. Then, hearing his calm voice speaking her language, she was invaded by a sense of peace, realizing that she would get better and that someone would take care of her.
The night was tender, and not even the rustle of wind broke the quiet. Suddenly the echo of nearby gunshots tore the sky apart. There was no moan, no cry, as human shadows crossed the tent. Anaya slipped silently under the bed. She remained motionless for a while, listening. Not even a footstep could be heard on the wooden floor. These men are cats, she had thought, hating them. She started to crawl slowly, an inch at a time, remembering that the tent had a second opening at the back. Relieved, she felt the light breeze on her face. She went out and glanced around her. She was alone in total darkness and couldn’t see any soldiers. She went on crawling and then started to run. She ran towards the river. She’d known it forever, it was a river full of hiding places, a friendly river. When she reached it she found her favourite hiding place, where she had hidden so often when playing with her sisters and the village children. She stayed there two days and nights, eating a few seeds she found nearby. On the third day she saw a boat with two missionaries on the river; aching, exhausted and confused as she was, decided to ask for help. Well, she told herself, let’s try to trust someone. They were also escaping, and luck would have it that the fighting had moved southwards. They found themselves in a free zone, for the moment. A sort of no man’s land. They arrived at the frontier, which was unguarded, and there they found the people of the Red Cross.
Anaya found hands ready to care for and feed her and thought it was a great thing for her body. She would think about her soul later. A group of women and children were taken to Italy, and she felt infinitely grateful to God and to mankind.
By now several years had gone by since her arrival in the city. She felt safe and at peace. She had a job, she was enrolled at university and hoped that as a biologist she could be useful to her country, where the various ethnic groups had perhaps begun to realize that massacres led nowhere. Occasionally she was assailed by violent colours that like a hurricane carried her back in time, even if only for five minutes, to the places of death. Her strong spirit won out and once these moments of terror and panic were over, Anaya went back to being the sunny self she’d always been.
She’d met a dark-skinned man, a Sicilian, who had moved to Florence for work, and he often joked about the fact that his island was “North Africa”. They’d talked about the babies that would surely be born beautiful: they’d decided to take on a mortgage and buy a house to live in together. Only a few months of patience, they said.
That morning the girl was going home, walking along the deserted streets of a city still wrapped in silence, her sleepy eyes noticing the austere buildings and the great flocks of pigeons flying so low they almost brushed against her head. At that moment she heard someone calling her. Turning, she saw a white man with light-coloured eyes, tall and smiling. The man was saying something she couldn’t understand, but she smiled to be polite. The man came closer, still smiling; all at once he opened his arms, and his grasp was so violent and strong that she couldn’t catch her breath. She felt a pain in her chest and the man’s sour whiskey-smelling breath. He tried to kiss her, pulling her towards him, and was surprised by the strength with which the girl tried to free herself. Like an eel she slipped out of his hands and started to run. But she was tired that morning and moved slowly. She could hear his footsteps on the pavement, she could hear his breathing. Then she was stopped by a punch on the nape of her neck. She fell slowly, first on her knees, and then her falling body found a strange foetus-like position. The man was on top of her and her mind was so foggy she could hardly feel his rough attempt to tear away her clothes and penetrate her. He whispered how black bitches excited him the most because they are more instinctive animals. The more you mistreat them the more enjoyable it is, they’re made to bite, the black whores.
She tried to get away with all her strength, until an agonizing pain in her head put an end to all her attempts.
Then she fainted. She never knew how long she’d slept. When she awoke she found herself with her back leaning on a rubbish bin, and the nauseating smell was added to her pain. A black stain on the ground seemed to be her own liquefied body.
Later on someone saw a woman of colour, African or from Sri Lanka they said, certainly not Philippine, thrown on the rubbish, as though she was part of it. They notified the police.
They took her to hospital, where they explained to her that in fact she’d been lucky, and that she would be all right in a few days.
Anaya looked at her swollen hands and at the policewoman at the side of her bed, who asked, “Was he white?”
“White” the woman answered. Then, opening lips were so swollen they formed a sneer, she added, “Does the colour matter?”
The policewoman didn’t answer.
Vesna Stanic was born in Zagreb, where she studied at the Academy of Performing and Fine Arts. In her native town she worked as a journalist for some weekly periodicals and collaborated with the local Radio-TV. In the late seventies she moved to Rome, where she taught Croatian, Serbian and Italian for foreigners at Berlitz School of Languages and at the Panvista Multimethod School. As a translator she has worked with the Agenzia Barberini of Rome, the Centre for Italian-Yugoslavian Cultural Relations, Cospe of Florence and others. In Italy she has published the novel L'isola di pietra (Aiep 2000) and has translated into Italian the novel by Mesa Selimovic La fortezza (Besa 2004). Her poems have been included in the Quaderno Balcanico II of the series "Cittadini della poesia" (Loggia de'Lanzi 2000). Her stories have appeared, among others, in “L'Unità" and "Alias", the cultural insert of the daily paper "Il Manifesto", and her essay Il ponte in the four-monthly poetry and cultural review of Trieste, "Almanacco del ramo d'oro" . She lives and works in Trieste.