Biografi (3 page)

Bess, Cliff 's wife, pushed open a door into the side of the house and called out, ‘Cliff…You have a visitor.'

She leaned around the door as if reluctant to enter. ‘Shall we say fifteen minutes?' Then to me: ‘I bought a leg of lamb especially.'

Cliff emerged from the gloom of the hurricane lamps which lit small areas of bitten and scraped clay banks. He waited until the footsteps of his wife climbed out of earshot, and he said disapprovingly, ‘She prefers it up there to down here.'

At the far end of the basement there was a bed, some expensive electronic gadgetry, a table and a chair with a stiff back. Along one wall were plastic clothes baskets piled high with back copies of
Albania Today
and summarised news bulletins from Tirana published in English for the foreign readership.

But back at the door Cliff was studying my feet. He said I might like to pull on a pair of house slippers, or jandals. There was a pile of them at the door. I would be much more comfortable, he said, and in such a way as to suggest that non-compliance carried the weight of a cultural slight.

He found me a worn pair of green jandals. ‘There,' he said, happy.

‘Chai?' And he busied himself with lighting a Bunsen burner. ‘Go ahead. Look around.'

On his table was a copy of the
DX Times.
He had underlined some references to himself in the editor's chatty ‘Mailbag' column. ‘Cliff, we're getting around this month…From up in the tropics Cliff has heard from one he describes as Vientiane and the Voice of Afghan 17540…Some really unusual ones here, Cliff. Nice work. Ed.' Another section, ‘Shortwave Bandwatch', listed the reception details sent in by league members—the kilohertz, the country and program: 3385, Papua New Guinea, East New Britain, ‘drumming and singing…'; Papua New Guinea, New Ireland, ‘Linda Ronstadt singing…'; Dubai, ‘the war in the Gulf and light music…'

Cliff glanced at his watch. ‘Right now,' he said, ‘Radio Tirana should be broadcasting to Africa.' He poured the tea, then he reached over to his dials. A moment later came the familiar static cloudburst. Then, Tirana…

Later, when I surfaced from this world, I was greeted with the rolling calm of Kansas Street, its tidy space and tripwire fences. Islands of tall maize grew wild around the fence posts where the mowers couldn't get close enough, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that here in the South Pacific were bits and pieces of another world poking through, a piece of the prairie that had taken seed from our imagination.

5

THE FEW THINGS I knew about Albania then I had gleaned almost entirely from Cliff. It was around the time of the revolution sweeping Eastern Europe that my interest re-emerged. At the tail end of the massive crowd scenes in Prague and the wintry loneliness of a broken East German Party leader walking in the woods of a Russian asylum came the grainy blue television pictures of a street mob in Tirana.

I moved forward to the edge of my armchair as one of the mob broke clear. This renegade looked like an extra in an Elia Kazan movie—ill-fitting trousers of a rough kind of denim and something like a black pea jacket and a peaked cap. A rope was tied around his waist, and as he stepped onto the statue's knees, those at the rear of the mob raised a cheer.

Now the young man stretched for the dictator's breast pocket. He took purchase and swung freely. The crowd moved involuntarily forward, but the young man was able to clinch with his legs and grab the bronze neck, to which he fastened the rope. From here the coverage jumped forward. The screen filled up with the face of a reporter, and over his shoulder, high up in the picture, groups of men were urinating over the fallen idol.

A few months later, in Rome, the first Albanians I meet are some of those figures I had seen in the photographs dragging themselves out of Durrës harbour, clambering up the sides of ships. Short, humble figures like the ones I remember from old school photographs of men in the twenties felling timber to clear farmland. Men amused by any special attention given them.

A need for birth certificates and other documentation has brought them back to home soil, but for so large a group their silence is chastening.

The Albanian consulate is hidden behind high walls, and from via Asmaria you can't see the tall elegant trees, the sweep of lawn or the circular drive. There is an entranceway of perhaps half a dozen steps cut from stone, but once you are inside the door the grandeur falls away and you find yourself at the threshold of another world, one which has made a virtue out of neglect.

In the gloomy hall and waiting room the light bulbs haven't been replaced and the wallpaper has started to sag out from the wall. A shabby blue cotton shift sits loosely over a couch. Four young men perch on the edge and rise nervously to their feet whenever consulate officials in overcoats make brief appearances. It starts out orderly, but the moment pieces of paper are produced, everyone begins talking at once and the off icials simply don't want to know about it. They wave their arms and retreat behind closed doors, and there they remain until the consulate closes at noon.

This was the case on Saturday. On Monday the halls and lobby are deserted—it's an entirely different place—and a man in a dapper suit and with polished English says, ‘You would like to visit Albania. Yes, why not.'

Two days later, in Bari, I'm standing at the stern of a ship watching the procession of secondhand cars crammed with food and clothes and electrical appliances enter the hold.

Already we're an hour late in leaving and another dozen cars are still on the wharf. The drivers check that the ropes holding down fridges and televisions on the car roofs are secure. They can't check this enough times. The overwhelming concern is for practicality, which is the kind of thing Cliff would warm to. For the first time on this trip I can actually place him. One driver has removed his shoes and another driver is examining their heels. Cliff would have an opinion on such things.

Just two cars left now. An announcement that the bar has opened clears the decks. A little later the ship gives a shudder, and down on the wharf three Italian officials in black uniforms rock back on their heels with the satisfaction of a difficult job at an end. There are no other farewells. I stay out there until one by one the lights go out along the Italian coast.

In the night something like a cold hand touched my cheek and I felt Albania reach out—a cold puff of wind sent down from those tan-coloured mountain peaks which, for a moment, I can't think where or how they have come to mind. Of course, I'm thinking of Syldavia from the Tintin books.

The lounge is quiet as a morgue—men in socked feet lie back with their mouths open. The ship feels like a giant crib rocking gently in the swell.

Out on deck there is a full yellow moon, and briefly, I think I have it all to myself. The next thing I see is the lit end of a cigarette, and here he comes, a lone figure shuffling from the doorway of the saloon. He takes a few steps and stops, to hold his position against the pitch and roll of the ship; then he sets off again.

He stops short of me with his pissed-pants stance. ‘Allemagne?' Then he tries something in Italian which I fail to pick up. He shakes his head, and in perfect English he says, ‘I asked if you were Russian.'

His name is Mister Jin, although this comes later.

I tell him I am visiting Albania.

‘Well yes,' he says. ‘We all are. This is where the ship is destined, surely. But you are not Albanian.' Then he asks that I forgive his rudeness, but he is unaccustomed to such a phenomenon. ‘Why would anyone visit Albania?' he wonders. ‘Perhaps you are a spy? In Albania there is hardly anyone who isn't a spy.'

He waits to see what I think of that—instead, I congratulate him on his English. And he laughs loudly and heartily, a laugh which smells strongly of alcohol.

‘Allow me,' he says, ‘to introduce you to one of my closest friends…' From the inside of his coat he produces a bottle of Greek brandy.

He is returning home from visiting his son in Italy, and this being his first time abroad, I am curious to hear his impressions. Was it everything he had expected? But he answers by saying his son is very happy there.

‘His life is very satisfactory. Very satisfactory,' he says.

We drink to that, and Mister Jin suddenly begins to sing.

‘Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream…' He asks if I know this particular English song.

Then, with passable sincerity, he says he has one or two questions on his mind. There are some things he would like to know about my country.

‘Did you fight against the Nazis in the war?'

‘Do you possess the grape—and grow corn?'

‘Is it a prime minister or a king that you have?'

‘Do you have black people?'

‘It is coming into summer there, I believe. Do you like to swim? My personal preference is to frogkick.'

‘Oh dear,' he says merrily. He checks himself. ‘That is also an English colloquialism, yes, this is a fact? Good, I am satisfied.'

‘So why, my friend, what has brought you to Albania?

‘Ah, you are a writer. This is good. This is very good indeed.

‘Ismail Kadare. You know him? Excellent. But you must read Dossier H
.
To understand the tragedy of my country this is the book.'

‘I'll look out for it.'

‘Ah, but naturally you will not find it in English. So I will tell you.

‘First,' he says, ‘you must understand. Information and genealogy are everything in Albania. Under Hoxha there was no other reality. You understand?

‘Under Hoxha, everyone had to write out their biografi. Each year it was to be updated and added to—information such as: Have you been turned down by the Party? Was your father a partisan? Were your grandparents Zogists? Or collaborators? Your biografi would tell.

‘The story Kadare wrote was of two Englishmen who have come to Albania to research an academic work on Homer. Our secret police are immediately suspicious. Who is this person Homer? What does he want? Is he a collaborator? A foreign agent? We must find out. So, a
sigourimi
is sent to spy on the Englishmen. He eavesdrops. He learns the questions the Englishmen ask. And eventually a dossier emerges on this foreign agent…this saboteur called Homer. You understand?'

I mention my interest in Hoxha, although the word I use is ‘dictator' and Mister Jin reacts with mock surprise.

‘“Dictator”, you say. “Great Leader”, we said.'

Enver Hoxha, he continues, had been a religion.

‘Even I. I was very, very sad when Enver died. At my office no one was brave enough to mention his death. We didn't dare speak for what might come out. This is a fact. Imagine, please, if we said the Emperor was dead and he turned out not to be? We waited for the radio report before we could speak of his death. Some had cried with genuine grief, others cried because they thought it dangerous not to. Some turned white believing something catastrophic would happen. The crops would shrivel and die. The seas would rise. They would be obliged to walk on stilts.

‘My friend,' he says, ‘you cannot imagine.'

In the distance four small lights pin down a charcoal-smudged horizon. Then, around dawn, Albania begins to emerge from something more than hearsay. The notion of clouds gives way to layers of hill; their tops are darkly pencilled and fold back on one another. An hour later, as we enter the port of Durrës, Mister Jin is still at my side. The rest of the passengers have come out on deck. They stand shoulder to shoulder, silent for the most part, and with a kind of shortsightedness that insists landfall is still half a mile off.

And there, high on the hill overlooking the town, is King Zog's palace from one of Cliff 's photographs.

We nudge the wharf and a stern rope is played out. An orderly crowd waits down on the wharf. A single hand is raised—and because it is so utterly alone, there is something almost defiant about it. And it occurs to me that Albanians are probably unaccustomed to welcoming back their own. Young soldiers shoulder rifles. Faces peer down from the upper floors of a grimy yellow building which is located almost ludicrously, as if it intends to meet visiting ships on equal terms. Its upper windows are missing and some of the floors lack walls. The building is a mouthful of broken teeth.

Standing in the rubble are thin, watchful men, unshaven, lank-haired with sideburns, dressed in bell-bottoms. It must have rained a short time earlier. Puddles and grime fetch away in the distance to a ramshackle customs house. Beyond this, a long stretch of rolled barbed wire separates the street from the wharf area, and hemmed in behind, hundreds and hundreds of people stand in the cold and mud, ‘waiting', as it is often said of the fishermen in Durrës during winter, according to Mister Jin, ‘for the sea to freeze over so they could walk to Italy'.

I remember Cliff 's parting advice to take American money, to keep it in small denominations and spread it throughout my person. I should put bank notes in my socks, but not in my shoes. Pack Elastoplast and anti-bacterial powder. Always travel with a bottle of raki. In the event of a hold up offer the bandits a drink, and try to be lighthearted.

I stick to Mister Jin's side through customs, shadow him through the gap in the barbed wire. With widening eyes the crowd stares back. They press their hands against the wire. No doubt they have questions of their own. For the moment it is not Cliff 's bandits that I see in these people but something rather more frightening about a crowd that has lost its tongue.

We get to the railway station ahead of the other passengers off the boat. I have a small confession to make. I tell Mister Jin that I had come here with notions of Greece. I had imagined blue skies and small villages carved out of whitewash.

Mister Jin returns a puzzled look. He asks, ‘Where is this place, please?'

We sit in a carriage blackened from fire. Glass crunches under our feet. A cold draught is blowing through the shattered windows. On the outskirts of Durrës bits of land float on lakes. Feet dangle over the sides of walls with water below. We leave the last of the wet washing hung out over balconies. Then we are in the countryside. A horse strains to pull a cart through a field of ploughed mud. In the distance an old woman ankle-deep in mud is buckled under a load of wood.