Kuteli's bequest, for his wife, children, Albanians: Love the country and the language, even to the point of suffering

By: Dhimitër Pasko (known to most by his nickname, Mitrush Kuteli)

Dear Efterpi,

I wanted to write this letter, which is perhaps the last, by hand, but I can't. Today I don't have a safe hand, it's shaking. You are not here. You went with Pandi to Rrushkull to see Polixenes and Atalanta. I encouraged you more. From worry, from longing. I'm alone at home. Doruntina has gone wild with the Bajram girls.

My mind is clouded by insomnia, by bad dreams. As if the Germans were following me, to hang me. I ran away, entered the pits and wells, came out again. They followed me. I was being caught. Run away again. In an instant, you were also by my side. And we ran away. Then we parted. In the end I found myself being followed by our people. Again pits, wells, precipices. As if I was in Berat, under the Castle. In a terracotta of the Castle, near the Church. Further, in Fier. I had escaped from persecution and was looking for a house to hide.

I was barefoot, naked. Someone called me: "Stay, Dhimitri! Let's take it." They surrounded me, took me and were trying to kill me. I laugh. I enjoyed being killed... And here, I found myself in prison. Many people. Among them Sofo Çomorra, who has died. He looked at me with pain. "How did it happen, Pasko? What have you done?" - "I don't know". - "Look here". And he gave me some beautifully written papers: an indictment and some other links. They called me a gambler. They told me that I had made a poem for the glyra with Italian rhymes. I saw Andrea. I'm sorry. They decided to kill me.

I was happy again. -"The end, I will die, I said. I will save. I will relax. My life has been very turbulent, confusing, good and bad. How well it ended." When I got up, you were getting ready for Rrushkull. My head was, and still is, heavy. You went at half past seven. After 7 minutes, Ilua i Sterjo's father brought me the news: Thanas Cikuli died... In my mind, he survived. I envy him.

Death is great rest, separation from pain. True, even from newspapers, but at a time when a person is very sick, bored, death is salvation: from physical and spiritual pain. Both are heavy. You know how many such pains I have had lately. One, that you know, is that as a result of them I am not good at working, creating, paying the bread that the state gives me for myself and my children. I have never been and never want to be a parasite. What should I do, woman? I can't. My head is fuzzy...

I started the letter for another thing: to repeat my last orders. I'm sorry to bother you. I have told you so many times. I have poisoned your life, because others have poisoned me too. And I haven't been good at keeping the poison to myself, as I should. May this be the last one I bring you.

We got together, lived, and had children in stormy years: prison, urbanism, hotel. And then I was healthy and I overcame everything. Now, you know... I know my days and nights. Diseases and worries consume me, eat me. I now see death as a release from pain. I don't want it, but I can't get rid of it. I see it coming, it's coming.

I regret that I will leave the little children, without an arm, perhaps in great poverty, unable to reach their goals. My pension will not be enough. I have no "years of service". Of course, 22 years out. I also worked there until I died, but these years of work do not count for the pension effect. My bad luck, their bad luck. Perhaps, after death, when passions and hatreds cease, our country can help you for the sake of my past work: in journalism and literature, from a young age, and especially in the economic field.

A part of my writings - Albanian and Romanian - are there, in the National Library. Some people know about my efforts against Italian capital, against German robberies. I worked without self-interest, even against self-interest. I have never pursued my own enrichment, because this enrichment could only be made by two means: by theft (there are a thousand and one ways of theft, and I have used none of them) and by treachery, serving foreigners to rob the country and receive money for this service.

I chose the opposite path: the fight against those who wanted to rob, those who robbed. I couldn't stop them all, not because I didn't want to, not because I had interest, but because I couldn't. That much I could, that much I did. Against Italian robberies, against German robberies, against Yugoslav robberies. I never chose the path of self-comfort, the path of "the wise, the gentle and the spoonful". I worked hard, I loved a lot, I made a lot of mistakes.

Now life is gone, it cannot be returned, it cannot be repaired. I told you that the Germans would hang me in front of the town hall, when they found out that I had sabotaged the release of the new currency that they wanted to do. I was saved by luck. I will never blush with shame even with my action in the early days of liberation. I worked like crazy, fought against Yugoslav robberies. I can't be more ashamed of my practical activity - in the economic field - in Romania. Even there against the Germans. As a son of a small nation, I have always had a great hatred against the black idea of ​​"peoples over peoples" or "big people over small people", but "peoples alongside peoples".

This principle has fed consciously and unconsciously, automatically, my activity. I have been against the Russians because they subjugate and denationalize other peoples; against the Germans because they exploited and exterminated other peoples, against the English for the same reason. The son of a small people could not do otherwise. In Romania I fought, as much as a small man can fight, against the exploitation of domestic and foreign capital. I had this attitude even when I was a bank director.

One of the first consequences was a "black tab" in the German apparatus of Vienna, in 1940-41. Someone at the bank told me about this "black tab": "What are you doing like this?" Don't know what to expect? Why do you object to the place of Jewish capital being taken by friendly German capital?" I know one thing: capital can never be a friend, only capital. Ay feeds on profits, sustains on profits, lives on profits. And the profits never end. One wants to become two, both four, four eight, one thousand ten thousand, one million hundred million and so on. To the detriment of people, peoples. As a former director of three banks (always poor) I know that old profit is not saturated with new profit, like the sea is not saturated with water.

Will someone recognize and understand me, at least after death? I don't know. I wanted him to understand and know me, not for honor and glory, but so that my children - to whom I bequeath my work and my dreams - do not suffer for bread when they are small, pursue studies and find their way in life.

I am sure that if my work and efforts in the past were appreciated in this direction, the children would not suffer.

I set out to write you a short goodbye letter, and I got excited - although my ears are ringing and the back of my head hurts, and look where I got to.

Listen!

I don't have good signs. The tension rises and falls, the heart stops. I leave for the office or for a walk and my legs are cut, my breath is held. I stop and poison myself with medicine. My nights are hellish, as I know. All this says that I don't have it long. So don't be upset that I am ordering you once again.

When I die, don't make announcements from the ones that climb the walls.

Death is an event that belongs to the dying person and his household. Why should the world know? I don't want!

You will not announce, before the burial, anyone, except for five or six people closest to you to do the formality of the burial and burial. That's it!

I don't enjoy bothering anyone. Everyone has their own problems.

I once wanted to be buried in Pogradec, next to my father and mother or up in the chestnut trees, in Shën e Djëlë. Now I have changed my mind. Burial is a mess. Bury him here, in Tirana. All of Albania is! I don't want any inscription on the grave. Just a cross, like father, grandfather, great-grandfather.

I command the children to love our country and language to the point of suffering.

Do not open your heart against Albania even when they will suffer without fault. Homeland is home, even when it kills you. They were born here, they live here with flesh and soul, even with pain. Atalanta and Pandeli have a penchant for literature. Let them finish their studies in some practical branch - that of physics; ay, medicine or any other faculty, the word comes, for education - and let them also deal with literature. But not as a main profession. Professionalism in literature, in our country, is always a path of suffering, its bread is bitter. Bitter, I say, for one who does not know tricks and hypocrisy. The field of literature is a land where snakes roam.

Your friends kill you because you are a shadow. And when you don't shade them, it means that you are not good at literature. I leave the manuscripts to those two, especially Pandeli. Let no one touch them! Ay will grow, read the unrealized notes, process them. For this he must first accumulate a lot of culture. Talent, inclination are worth nothing without work, without culture.

Let no one touch my manuscripts before my son grows up! You put them in the cash register, close them!

Polixenes and Atalanta! Pandeli and Doruntina! Love each other, help each other, bear with each other! Don't notice trifles, don't fight over trifles, over anything. Throw away anger, because it is the source of many evils. Try not to get carried away. Anger and arrogance have done us great harm. They spoil us. May your heart not know hatred, strife, malice. Wisdom, gentleness, generosity! Open your eyes to every step you take in life.

Life can be ruined by one wrong step, just one step. Then come the precipice. When the time comes, get married. To listen to the voice of the heart, but also of the reason. Often, the heart leads you on the wrong path, if not guided by reason. Don't ask too much of life, because life is stingy in kindness. Do not dream what cannot be realized. Do not measure yourself with the shadow of the morning, which brings majesty. You will ask life as much as it can give you.

Love and honor mom, because she was brave in life, she suffered a lot. We both missed. Sweeten old age a little after so many storms. She has accumulated a lot of experience from bitter life, and this experience can be useful for you, so that you do not suffer.

Doruntina is the smallest. She needs many years of help and guidance. Don't spare your help, so that I can rest peacefully on the ground.

Don't make me cry! Hold on! I saved my life, I finished my life. I don't want others to see you cry. do you hear me Tears are useless. Who dies does not rise again. I don't want to be resurrected, I don't want to start life again. Enough! Do not violate this order.

Efterpi, sorry for this latest upset! Hold and encourage the children. Do as I ordered. Don't change anything. I don't want people at my funeral. Most come for beauty, for form. I used to hate loud, boisterous funerals. A few more words: it is understood that you will not even inform your people, here or in Korça, with the exception of Foq and Nesti.

I hug you, please forgive me and goodbye.
yours
Dhimtraq.