Biografi (25 page)

Alban has been waiting for us. The door opens and closes like a bivalve and we wriggle through. The stairs are lost in darkness. The smell of wet cardboard points to the customs house. Fortunately Alban has a torch, and we follow the spotlight up the stairs.

I notice that this time he knocks on the door with more respect. He flicks off his torch and we wait in the fetid dark for the footsteps on the wooden floor to reach the door.

The door opens and warm oven smells of roasted meat precede a large, balding man in his mid-thirties. He has large feminine eyes in a soft, round, cheerful face. He looks nothing like Enver, or, for that matter, Shapallo. This is Illir, Nexhmije's youngest son.

He speaks a little English, but after we exchange a few pleasantries, it dries up.

I hand over Cliff 's letter, and Illir takes Alban's torch and reads it on the landing. Near the end of Cliff 's salutations and presidential signature, Illir smiles good-naturedly.

‘You have Albanians living in New Zealand?'

Diani takes it upon herself to explain, in a high screeching voice, ‘Illir wishes to know. This letter is from the Albanian Society…' ‘Yes. Yes. We have some Albanians.'

Illir begins to fold the letter. ‘May I?' he asks. He would like to hold on to Cliff 's letter for now.

For the next few minutes he and Diani discuss something. Apparently we had been expected, but Illir regrets to have to tell us that his mother has not yet returned. However, he does not anticipate a problem. If we call at a later date he feels sure that his mother will agree to an interview.

While Alban aims his torch, Illir takes my notebook and scribbles down his telephone number.

‘Please ring before you visit next time,' he says.

We shake hands and he retreats inside the door to finish his dinner.

Outside the customs house the rain is even heavier than before, but neither of us is bothered by it. Diani waits until we are well past the grey van before she shows her excitement. The other occasions she had seen Illir were on television, but never, as she puts it, ‘to share the same air'.

‘I have done well?' she asks.

‘Extremely well.'

‘You will tell this to Kadris, of course.'

She waits, and in the dark comes a high peal of laughter.

‘I am so very happy for you,' she says. ‘You are going to meet Nexhmije.'

Brikena was surprised. She refused to believe Nexhmije was living unprotected.

‘We didn't see a single soul,' I said.

‘Ah yes, but they would have seen you. Definitely. Nexhmije is a very powerful woman. No one can touch her.'

Brikena had read in that morning's
Democratic Renaissance
of Liliana Hoxha, the wife of the older son, Solkol, threatening her critics. Liliana is the vice-director of the Albanian News Agency, and one of her critics, a trade unionist, had been confronted by six armed thugs and told, ‘If you go on talking about Liliana Hoxha we will liquidate your family and children.'

The implication was that if Liliana could muster a gang of thugs, then Nexhmije could surround herself with an army.

‘You know,' said Brikena, ‘there were rumours that the Hoxha family celebrated when news came through of the coup against Gorbachev.'

A couple of days later, Diani took me to the Expo on the ground floor of the Enver Hoxha Memorial. A crowd six deep scrimmaged around a rock video of Prince and his sunglassed blondes. The Czechs had arrived with electronic equipment and chocolate. Everything was ticketed in American ‘doolars'. The Hungarians had sent six pairs of shoes and attractive posters of the Danube. The disembodied bus turned out to be theirs. Diani was very impressed by the fact of a bus having got inside a building. It was a bit like a ship in a bottle, she struggled to explain. Good-naturedly she waved up at a number of Albanians who gazed demurely out the windows, perhaps imagining a passing landscape in the West. Space for the Romanian exhibit had been roped off, but the floor area was bereft of merchandise. Instead a man dressed in a black suit stood next to a tape deck playing Romanian music.

Our appointment was up on the next floor with the chief engineer, an amateur filmmaker who had filmed Enver's only moment of exile.

Gone was the soaring choral music of the official version. On the chief engineer's video was the sound of hammers chipping away at Enver's bulk. The builders were barefoot and wore pointed paper hats.

The engineer explained that it had been planned to preserve the statue as a work of art, that different strategies to relocate Hoxha had been considered, but in every case the plan involved destroying part of the museum to get him out. Finally it was decided to preserve Enver's head and shoulders.

On the video the upper body was clearly supposed to slide forward onto a ready tray, but the weight of the head had been miscalculated and the bust toppled backwards. On impact, the head broke off and rolled loose.

On the engineer's video there was an astonished silence. The camera remained fixed on the head, as if to make sure of the fact. You could hear cameras clicking. Then a length of ply was slipped underneath Enver's head, the way you gingerly remove dog crap from the lawn.

It was in marked contrast, sobering even, after a morning spent in the company of the Sun King, to then run across the same man's son. Particularly when the latter was so much part of the crowd, rolling along with his hands dumped in the pockets of his leather jacket.

This was on the bridge near the Dajti, where Diani and I were sunning ourselves. Over Illir's shoulder was the shrine to his Brahman father.

Away from the bad light of the stairwell, I noticed again the roundness of his head and the feminine eyelashes. Illir seemed so harmless—which Diani later said was exactly how his father had come across: a friendly wave to the crowd; his bending to receive the flower bouquet from the small girl, a pat on the head and smiling back at the camera.

Illir glanced at his watch. He had an appointment, but he accepted an invitation to have coffee in the Dajti.

For once the foyer and lounge were nearly empty. A lovely day must have cleared the usual denizens outdoors. The waitress who set down the tray with the coffees appeared to show no recognition of Illir. For his part, he was perfectly relaxed.

In the light of the recent boat exodus we talked about ‘travel', Illir's favourite places. As director of the Mechanics Institute he had got around: Italy. Germany. Italy. Sweden. Stockholm remained his favourite place.

‘Oh?'

‘Stockholm was very nice.'

And that was Stockholm.

Illir remained wary—he turned innocent questions around in his head. Whenever in doubt he presented a banal smile. But he did mention that his mother, as of this moment, was at a court hearing into financial abuses by the former ‘block men'.

Of course, he said, it was all political. Farcical really. He laughed. We were to understand that the investigation was a bit of nonsense which Nexhmije, in her sleep, would fold into a dart and throw away.

44

BILL HAD HEARD from Mustaph that snow was dusting the hills around Kukës. Soon the outlying villages would be buried and the roads, such as they were, would disappear altogether.

Meanwhile the ‘big guy' had started to worry Bill. He wanted assurances that Shapallo was ‘legal'.

‘Stuff like contraband, and my ass will be kicked from here to the moon,' he said.

I promised him Shapallo wasn't ‘contraband'.

‘I meant that just as an example. Understand?'

It had become too dangerous for an aid vehicle to drive at night. Desperately hungry people were looting warehouses out in the countryside, and Bill guessed the same ones were responsible for rolling trees across the road after dark.

Teti was missing from the team. Bill had acted on his word and sacked him. But Teti hadn't gone without a struggle. First Teti's mother, then his sister, had knocked on Bill's door with various cakes and sweet things.

‘The mother made me this coconut kind of cake with a syrup you wouldn't believe. I shouldn't have accepted it,' he said. ‘I shouldn't have. You know, I nearly took him back? Can you believe that? I swear to God I nearly took him back.' He shook his head in wonder.

We didn't leave until eight in the morning. Bill hunched over the wheel, with his pipe, and Anila alongside, wrapped in her fur coat, gritting her teeth at song after song out of Nashville.

It was a dull kind of day. The skies were lower and everything felt compressed. Towns popped up in quick succession and we sped through them like sleepless truck drivers.

Near Carrik the tape deck fell silent for a period. Bill jammed his knee under the steering wheel to get his pipe lit. ‘How we doing back there?' he asked.

Otherwise, Shapallo and I were pretty much left on our own. A couple of times Shapallo had started to mention something. He leaned forward to get Anila's attention, his hand hovered above Anila's cool shoulder, but then seemed to think better of it and swallowed whatever he had intended to say. After that, he sat back, closed his eyes, and dozed.

Early in the afternoon we started the long descent into Kukës. On the far side of the valley the hilltops carried the snow Mustaph had spoken of, and now Shapallo sat up and started to take notice. As we neared the town he twisted about anxiously, swapping the side-window view for the one out the rear, and mumbling to himself.

Anila lolled her head on the backrest and in her tired way explained, ‘Mister Shapallo does not believe me that this is Kukës.'

Shapallo shook his head, very deliberately.

‘Did you tell him this is new Kukës?'

‘I have said this already.'

‘Tell him old Kukës is under water.'

Now she turned around for the old man's attention and explained the rising of the lake.

Immediately Shapallo began to look around for the lake. It was no use telling him. Bill put off Mustaph for the time being and drove to a vantage point near the hotel high above the lake, where we parked and got out of the Landcruiser. Shapallo could not believe it. A vast silver lacquer covered everything he had remembered about Kukës. The faintest of breezes stirred the lake, and yet, somehow, the same breeze sliced with remarkable ease through our layers of clothing.

For quite a while Shapallo shook his head at the lake and smacked his lips the way he had when he discovered Enver's giant statue gone from Skanderbeg Square. He started to wheeze, and his breathing became ragged. He couldn't take his eyes off the lake. He was quite mesmerised. The rest of us had got back in the Landcruiser, Anila with her hands held up to the fan heater.

Bill was first to notice that Shapallo was not quite himself. He pulled him back in the van. Shapallo's head fell back when he sat down, and Bill raised his eyes.

‘We just gave him a helluva shock.'

Now Shapallo was babbling away again, as if talking in his sleep.

Anila chewed gum and listened.

‘Mister Shapallo is talking about photographs.' She stopped chewing. ‘Photographs. That is all he is saying. He cannot go back to Topojani without the photographs.' She stopped to listen again. ‘I don't know. I think perhaps he is saying this.'

We drove to the hotel and booked in. With Anila's help we got Shapallo upstairs to a room on the second floor which looked across to the hillside slogan PARTI ENVER and the copper smelter. We manoeuvred Shapallo onto the bed and pulled his shoes off, then covered him up. His teeth were chattering with cold. Anila found an extra blanket. Shapallo closed his eyes and raised a hand to say he was okay.

While there was still enough daylight Bill and I decided to take a run across to the start of the gorge. It's ten minutes' drive to the hillside, then the road passes underneath the copper smelter. The road dips and meets up with the river, which is every bit as fast and furious as the river Shapallo had described. It is only halfway across the bridge that you become aware of the gorge wending its way to the frontier. Suddenly limestone walls rise to hundreds of feet either side of the river, their tops buried in a thick grey mist.

We bounce along a road which sticks to the left side of the river. Out my window there's no road to speak of, just a sheer drop to white and brown rapids rushing out to the plains.

Every hundred metres or so the gorge discloses a little more of itself, each bend seemingly further isolating us from the late twentieth century. We catch up with some women in traditional dress. Further ahead, there are some men and small undernourished boys with caps and in hand-me-down army uniforms worn casually like overalls.

We don't feel to be climbing, but soon the river is reduced to a muddy, squiggling thread. Above, the limestone cliffs are smudged with mist.

Bill is driving with his headlamps on now. Around one corner the lights trap a woman butchering a calf on the side of the road.

‘Holy shit,' says Bill. ‘Did you see?'

We had slowed to walking pace, and as we passed the woman she was holding the calf by its ears while sawing at its bloody throat.

The walls of the gorge narrow down—never further apart than the distance you could throw a stone. Then we start to drop, and drop until we meet up with the river again.

Another twenty minutes and we realise we're on our way to Zapod on the Yugoslav border. We've come to a smashed wooden bridge dangling in the rapids, right where the river falls in great bucketfuls over smooth round boulders. We backtrack and find a turnoff and start the climb for Shishtavec at six thousand feet.

It is completely dark now, but continuing to show up in the headlights are stragglers carrying loaves and sacks over their shoulders. They push through the milky fog; then these ghosts fall back into darkness. God only knows how they avoid walking off the road and falling to their deaths.

Soon, we come across a group of men loading donkeys with heavy sacks. As the wheel hits a rock the headlights leap up the hillside to where a number of donkeys are making their way up a vertical zigzag, to disappear into the fog.