It’s Better for a Girl to Lose an Eye than Her Good Name: Neno at the Big School
The granddaughter had been asking for a while. Would Neno come to school with her? Neno’s first response is characteristic: have you lost your mind, my girl? I am an old woman. At my age, in my old years, to start from the A — that’s not possible for me.
AUTHOR & LITERARY HISTORYTRANSLATION
Albanika Press
9/15/20264 min read
The granddaughter had been asking for a while. Would Neno come to school with her? Neno’s first response is characteristic: have you lost your mind, my girl? I am an old woman. At my age, in my old years, to start from the A — that’s not possible for me.
The granddaughter’s reply: in the school I go to, nobody says half a word to you. Everyone — big and small — comes and goes.
Neno’s response, immediately: well then, if that’s how it is, why shouldn’t I go too? I’ll graze my eyes a little myself.
This quick pivot — from flat refusal to immediate curiosity — is one of Neno’s most consistent qualities throughout the Rome stories. She resists, and then she goes. She is skeptical, and then she looks. The school, like the theatre and the shops and the city streets, cannot be assessed from a distance. She has to see it.
A Whole City
The campus stops her before she has even entered a building. The grounds are like a whole city — you walk and walk and there is no end to it. Enormous palaces. A great courtyard where people at the far end look like flies. In the middle, a fountain; all around it, flowers; nearby a marble pedestal with a copper-armed woman on top — she cannot quite remember what the woman held. Trees and benches outside.
“I liked it very much.”
The admission is simple and unguarded. Whatever Neno expected to feel here, she did not expect to like it. She observes the students going in and out — grown girls dressed neatly as if going to a wedding, men with bags tucked under their arms, someone with a girl on his arm — and murmurs to herself, there it is again, as if strolling in the parks isn’t enough. But she goes inside and sits down at the back.
The Old Woman Taking Notes
Inside the lecture room, the first teacher arrives. Everyone stands. He speaks; students take notes. Neno, who understands nothing, looks around — and notices, on one side, a woman not quite her age but close, covered in white and red, who is also writing.
The detail stops her:
“This is a place of learning… it’s meant for people to study. But that old wretch, with one foot in the grave, and she’s still learning?”
The observation is not entirely dismissive. There is something in it closer to astonishment — the discovery that the boundaries Neno has assumed, between the age of learning and the age of sitting at the head of the room, do not apply here. Old men are listening too. The lesson ends; only those who want to leave, leave. The granddaughter asks if Neno is bored. She says no: if you still need to be here, we can stay.
The second teacher enters and darkens the room as if they are in the theatre. Projected images: a human head, the teacher pointing at the mouth, the hair, the nose. Then more heads, bodies without arms or legs. Neno’s verdict is swift:
“What are these things they are learning, and what use are they?”
She cannot connect anatomy to any practical outcome she recognizes. The blasted school, as big as it is, still doesn’t teach them anything worthwhile. The professor, standing there for a whole hour showing a cracked skull and a ruined nose, should feel shame. The critique is genuine — this is not performance. Neno is applying the only measure she has: what does it do?
The Book and the Boy
When the lights come on, the granddaughter disappears from sight. Neno spots her at the back of the room, talking with a young man. They lean close, then part.
“My heart almost stopped beating.”
She says nothing in the moment. She waits until they are walking home, then asks who the boy was. The granddaughter’s explanation is straightforward: he had borrowed a book and was keeping it a few more days; she asked him for one in return.
For Neno, the explanation does not resolve the problem. It deepens it. Her response layers two concerns: the immediate one — what will people say — and the longer-term one — what happens to the girl’s marriage prospects if gossip takes hold. She reaches for the proverb that concentrates both:
“It’s better for a girl to lose an eye than her good name.”
The granddaughter’s response is patient: let them talk; who can hold their tongues; after all, to each their own. Neno shushes her. A person’s life is how the world sees it.
The exchange is one the collection has prepared us for. Neither voice is simply right. The granddaughter’s calm reflects a social world in which her reputation is not defined by proximity to men she studies alongside. Neno’s anxiety reflects a social world in which it very much is — and where that definition has real consequences. What makes the story remarkable is that Neno herself delivers the final turn: despite everything, she tells Haso, she liked the school very much. It put her soul at ease.
The worry and the wonder coexist, as they have throughout the Rome stories. Neither cancels the other out.
Old Neno’s Stories — the first English translation of Musine Kokalari’s work — is available now:
📖 Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/old-nenos-stories-musine-kokalari/1149899284
📖 Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Old-Nenos-Stories-Selected-Literature/dp/B0GYGKL94G
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