By Perparim Kapllani  

The front door of the apartment cracked and fell apart on the floor. Dan Bala was still holding a kitchen knife in his hands, as he slowly approached his stunned wife, Klara.

Albert didn’t want to believe it, what was happening, as he was still on their matrimonial bed, naked. A grey décor was behind his shoulders. It was silent, as in a cemetery. Neither of them was moving, as they were staring at each other, gasping. Dan Bala imagined every single detail: her head cut off, Albert’s broken ribs, the cold cell, where he would spend the rest of his life, the relief of the revenge and the fog of the gossip that would occupy the Albanian community in Marlee area, if the news of the betrayal leaked out. 

A dirty and bad fire lit in his eyes in seconds. 

“Take out, what ever you have in your pockets,” he said to Albert, who was still on his bed. Albert Vreshta jumped out of the bed and grabbed his pants with the hope that he could find something in his pockets. Shivering and sweltering, Vreshta found one dollar and gave it to Dan Bala, his ex-boss and close friend for more than 5 years. Dan took the loonie in his hand, as he was still staring at Klara.

“Now, get the hell out of my house!” he screamed and waited, until the other man disappeared behind the door. 

The couple came into Canada around 7 years ago. Dan was busy all the time with his construction company and Klara spent most of her days inside her apartment, watching TV. The daily sun was finishing its circle from one corner of the window to the other one, as she was counting the rhythm of her heartbeats. She was hardly waiting for her husband to come back from work, but Dan was coming always late after those long hours. She was feeling disgraced and under estimated, as her husband never looked at her as a real wife. Her inner pain drew two boring circles under her eyelids. 

“His long absence is to blame for and not me. He abandoned me a long time ago, that’s for sure and now, he is keeping the loonie on his hand, as a proof of my betrayal. What an irony,” she thought.

“Your secret boyfriend had nothing special. I don’t understand why did you betray me?! He was not more handsome than me…Not taller, not a muscle man. He doesn’t even know how to speak properly. He is not rich. He is my fucking worker. Why did you fall in love with him? If you betrayed me for nothing, than you have to die for…nothing,” Dan Bala was thinking, without saying a word.

Klara kept quiet for a moment. She wanted to explain to him everything, but she couldn’t. She wanted to explain how the things deteriorated, as she was always alone, watching her empty bed with sorrow. How many times she prepared diner for two, but Dan never showed up in time. How many times she was waiting for him at their bed, surrounded by the mouthless walls. She wanted to say to him that Dan forgot about her forever. Did he have another family? She was jealous and angry, but never said to him anything in those few minutes, when they met each other in the early mornings. She didn’t have power to survive at the new reality. Klara lost her hope. The sun became black and all the pictures of their earlier days of marriage came around her in a circle. One day she gave up and met Albert, their best family friend. Albert was there, where Dan was not. 

…

The metallic coin was appearing to him like a closed circle of hell, where his wife would turn around infinitely. Here they are, the ugly lips of the monster, its teeth biting in every single direction of that lost mini space and his wife in the middle of no where, as a scorpion surrounded by fire, seeking its own death. 

The previous bad light lit all over again in his eyes, stronger. 

“Ok. Put your dress on,” he said to her and sat on the chair comfortably, like nothing happened. An inner dual of voices took him out of the reality. He shouldn’t even ask her, why she did it!

From that day, in the morning, at lunch time and diner, and the next morning and all the other days after, in a symphony of terrible movements, Dan Bala’s dream was coming true. Tossing the coin in the air was not just the way of revenge. The coin was dancing in his fingers, tossed by him in such a spectacular way, falling on the table at the speed of lightning and used to stop its crazy jump, when the back of his hand was laying on it. Those invisible circles in the air were becoming snakes around her throat. She was that coin herself, destined to be weak, under the permanent slavery of shame. 

How could such a little and useless coin push her think all day long? The coin was even inspiring her with the dreams of the permanent faith; it was reviving her feelings. Dan was not using even a single harmful word, but not smiling to her either. That stoical coin and icy one was laughing at her with sarcasm and saying to her with a metallic voice:

“I am shrinking your skin, making it yellow. I am thickening your eyebrows. I am covering your body with wild hair and putting a lot of fat around your neck. I am pushing you to lose your identity; pushing you to think who you are not and deciding who you will be.”

As many times as Dan tossed the loonie in the air, a bunch of female wolves were barking inside her self consciousness. Her monotonic grey days were taking the shape of that coin, when ever he was tossing that damned loonie in the air. It was a mortal refrain. It was something big and unknown. It was a predetermined luck and the evil of revenge itself. The coin was such a little thing and unimportant at the same time. 

Klara Bala was surprised at the beginning, when Dan was tossing that dollar in the air. She thought it would be a capricious gesture of her husband, in order to remind her three times a day what she had done to him at that day of unfaithfulness. 

“If he wants to bring into my attention that day, why is he using the easiest way, less harmful way, with less fallouts? If he wants to take revenge, he can do it, in so many different ways, quicker and easier. Maybe he wants to have some fun, like the cat and the mouse in their dreadful game of hunting. Hopefully, it is not that. I wish, I pray to God, this is just a temporary and idiotic caprice. His desire of revenge might die out and he will come back to me one day. It’s time to ask him for his own responsibilities, even to blame him for what happened! If I did something wrong, it’s part of his fault, also. The women are not the only ones in the family to be blamed for.”

Klara Bala looked at herself in the mirror. Two violet circles were still under her eyelids. Her forehead wrinkled and grizzles appeared in her beautiful hair. As soon as she was approaching him, the loonie was pushing her stay away. One day she thought to steal it from his pocket, when he was asleep, but her husband was keeping it under his pillow. Sometimes she saw him holding the coin tight in his hand, as he was still sleeping. And yet...they were not sleeping together anymore. She was scared to death to get into his room. The events could precipitate in a worse manner. Klara was feeling that her life was shortening in every single toss of that terrible coin, in every single movement in the air of that loonie. That coin was not the lamp of Aladdin. It was not fulfilling any of her desires. It was some kind of Skin of Chagrin, mentioned by Honoree de Balzac in his novel. The coin was bringing the situation into reverse: not even a sign in their deteriorating relationship. She hoped in vain that better days were coming. That stupid coin was putting too much pressure on her, it was making her feel down, useless, it was offending her and touching her nerves; she was feeling like a piece of crap. That coin was ugly, wild like a beast, so powerful; it was flying over her head with triumph. Laughing at her like a human. That thing meant so much to its owner!

Dan Bala was so much interested in that little thing. He was so attracted to it, as he forgot that his wife really existed. She started to become high tempered. She was getting nervous, as many times, as her husband was tossing the coin in the air. She was living under the rhythm of the tossing of that coin, from that time on. She was trying to take that coin away from his hands so desperately, but she was feeling so weak, as the days and months past. She was feeling dizzy more often and was covered by the cold sweat. As soon as he was knocking the coin on the table, its cancerous sounds used to get stuck in her flesh like invisible knives. She took it easy, but understood that she was wrong and hated that thing to death. 

Five months passed and her nightmare was over. She collapsed on the floor. Many hours had past after the first collapse, as she tried to open her eyes and look around her. There was no body around to give her a glass of water. Was she sick? She felt sank in a crazy ecstasy. Her room was her cell, in fact. 

He never forgave her. It was a false joy, when she thought that he could forgive her, when he decided not to say anything to her, when he caught her. 

…

The next morning, as Dan was trying to repeat the mortal refrain, he felt that there was no need to use it. He got the loonie for the last time in his hand and threw it away through the window. The coin fell on the top of a pile of garbage, scaring a bunch of dogs. But not her, anymore!