Biografi by Lloyd Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

The smokestacks look like some wasted experiment. There is no noise other than the wind off the stony walls of the valley. Opposite the ‘official mechanical plant of Kukës’ I wander through a field full of concrete pillboxes. Their gunholes stare accusingly at the mountains. I suppose if you gaze at such things long enough you just might begin to sense the enemy on his way, if not today, then just around the next bend, in the next valley, beyond that peak. Tomorrow he will come through the mountains to learn the secret of Albania’s success. ‘Above our homeland,’ the inscription reads, ‘we have everything…and that is freedom and independence.’
    I soon find the playground promised the inhabitants of old Kukës. It had started out as a reasonably bold idea before foundering along the way—for lack of either materials or will to take it any further. The playground bomb shelter has made it through to completion, likewise a white cement sculpture of a mother cradling a child.
    The sculptured mother cradles her child a short distance from a rusted Ferris wheel that has seized up. Surrounding it is a mangle of steel, from which small children in cotton clothing and bare feet swing from the makeshift bars. The children barely make a sound. I wonder if they know they are just seven hours’ ferry ride from Italy.
    A hand suddenly rests on my shoulder and there is Mustaph, with his clever smile.
    That night in the hotel bar Bill and I got a little drunk on raki and Bill talked about Sharon. They had met while out jogging. This was in Washington. They jogged the same route, although in opposite directions. ‘Oh, she was real cute. She’d smile and I’d say “Hi.” Then we’d run off with both of us kinda looking back over our shoulder.’ One morning Bill just turned around and ran with her, and moved into her house soon after. He felt around in his jacket.
    â€˜Goddamn,’ he said. The photo was back in Tirana. So I showed Bill my postage stamp of Enver Hoxha—it being the only likeness I had of Shapallo. Then I told Bill about the playground, where Mustaph had surprised me. On the way back to the warehouse Mustaph had chatted away amiably. He said he had met the Great Leader three times, here in Kukës.
    The first time, Enver had been visiting the copper plant. It was the second time, however, while out on a walk that Enver suddenly paused to stare at a bare hillside. Seeing his famous smiling lines tighten with disapproval, the local Party people duly took note, and the next day, when the Great Leader’s eye fell upon the same spot a tree was found growing there. Such was the warmth of Comrade Enver’s smile that it appeared to enrich the earth around the sapling—an observation which Mustaph had been obliged to report in his newspaper. These magical powers set him apart, of course. Otherwise, he had seemed a nice man. They had even talked, recalled Mustaph.
    â€˜About what?’
    Mustaph said the leader had reminisced about his childhood. Soon after that, work had started on the playground.

9
    THIS IS HOW the day had started out, with Bill’s hand drawing an imaginary line. ‘Now, Anila, tell him to drive smoothly between fifty and sixty. A good driver makes it smooth…
    â€˜Anila, tell him when I was learning to drive my father used to say, “Always assume there is an idiot around the next bend…”’
    Several hours later it is pitch black. We’re about to enter Shkodër, but no one is talking much because of a strongly shared sense that Teti’s short driving career is drawing to a close.
    For the last hour we have driven through the night with Teti switching his lights off and on. As another vehicle approaches he switches his lights off and we vanish into the night. Then, just as inexplicably, the lights come back on and startled faces show up on the roadside.
    Bullock drivers raise a hand