SURREL – “ You run away, you run away, I’m bringing your mother here! ” As soon as he issued this typical conjugal warning, he regretted it and changed his tone. “ Come on, my dear, I was joking. Come to bed, warm and cozy, don’t you see that you’re getting into trouble?”
But she didn't listen. " I'll leave, I'll take the mountains. Even now that I think about it, I'll take the fields. I want you to stay in bed, pal!" , and he gathered whatever leaves he could get his hands on, put on his water boots and slammed the door.
He was alarmed. He jumped up, dressed in the pajamas he wore to the office, and followed her.
"Come on, Shqipe, wait for us to talk. Shqipe. Shqipeeeee!"
He woke up drenched in sweat. Instinctively, as had happened to him so often lately, he reached out, grabbed the glass of water, and turned it over in one breath. Then he came to his senses and realized he was dreaming. “Thank goodness,” he said to himself, and checked the other half of the bed with his hand. The sheets were cold. Albania had really gotten out of bed.
***
In a way, he had a premonition that this day would come. He had been problematic in his family relationships from the beginning, and these getting out of bed in the middle of the night were not the first times he had experienced this. But he hoped that in the last 12 years he had found a compromise with Albania. He spoke to her nicely, gave her colorful doodles from the ones he did endlessly during his working hours, often brought foreign guests, whom he tried to amaze with the beauty of his partner, and had even filled all the main centers of Albania with promenades and pedestrian areas, hoping that she would be pleased with these trinkets and, like a good housewife, would prepare a meal for him when he returned tired from solving global crises.
The bride seemed amazed at first. Where had she gotten this luck, with such a tall Tall Man, when the average height of men was 1.68? Educated, with baggage, with a horizon, with foreign languages? They didn't say for nothing, in our times a foreign language is the best dowry.
But the Tall One had his eye precisely on the bride. Albania had endless beaches, lands, waters, military and municipal properties, marinas and harbors, ports and air-ports.
" Where are you, star," the Tall One praised him and, on the other hand, he would steal a beach. " Oh, I'm happy for you," and he would make a concession.
And the Long One grew longer and longer, while Albania grew shorter and shorter.
***
It is not known exactly when the first quarrels began. Once upon a time, the Tall One discovered that Albania was not that clean, so he took it upon himself to collect all the garbage and burn it, thereby also producing energy. Then he noticed that his dowry money was rotting without being used, so he told her that it should be invested in cybersecurity, highways and tunnels. He further concluded that many of the remaining wastelands could be built with the help of some guys from London, Ecuador and Brazil.
When the Albanian woman told him that it would be a good idea to take a look at the bathroom pipes, because they weren't draining properly, he assured her that he had put out tenders and installed powerful motor pumps.
" Do you know what tender is, Shqipe? Tender is like halva, but with a lot of sugar!", explained I Gjati.
But the Albanian, wise and wise, nevertheless noticed that they were stealing from her and many things began to go missing. The Tall One pretended to be revolted and began to blame the servants of the house. He fired them one by one. The clumsy ones tried to protest, “My Albanian mistress, my Tall One told me himself, she even put a tip in my pocket,” but no one listened to them.
***
One of these mornings of heavy rain, the couple woke up to water reaching the head of the bed.
" I told you, man, you didn't deal with the bathroom drains at all?" the Albanian woman shouted, " or did you leave the money with those scoundrels who give away designer scarves and shoes all over Europe?"
The Tall One didn't give up: " The pipes are clogged with garbage, my lady, because you left the caps on all the plastic bottles."
The Albanian woman remembered: " Well, you were supposed to burn the garbage and supply the house with electricity! You also asked me for a pile of money, don't you remember?"
The Tall One chewed and started muttering whatever came to his mind.
" Look... We are in an emergency situation. The rain does not stop with curses and insults, my dear. Have you seen Greece, Italy, Macedonia full of floods. The rivers have overflowed their banks... Germany has taken the bridge. This river is not fordable even in summer, comrade Kabo, think carefully. Are there many partisan girls? Are you going to go from Nazua to knit sweaters for those in the mountains?...".
But the Albanian language had emerged.
PS I Gjati believes that Albania will go back to bed, that there is no one to support it. But no matter what, he insists that no Napoleon has touched her dowry, and that there is no mother and son of a whore looking for her husband's money in the whore's pockets... or anything like that.
Note: The Patronageist is a post-apocalyptic satirical column