‘And what about the protest letter?’ Delina asked.
‘We’ve sent it to Voice of America, and a copy to the U.S. Embassy too. Their correspondents in Tirana are bastards. It’s a scandal, how they report. They’re totally in the service of Berisha. When the crowds are being forcibly dispersed, they even openly drive about in police and secret-service cars.’
‘OK, but what did the embassy say? Do they know yet that they shouldn’t support this government?’
‘Forget it,’ Artan Imami interrupted, trying to keep down his heavy, resonant voice. Rama used to tease him about this, often saying, ‘You’re all mouth.’
‘Why?’ his wife asked him.
‘Because the ambassador is of Italian origin. She’s a good friend of Foresti, the Italian ambassador, one of the closest people to Berisha.’
But Edi Rama reverted to his conversation about the Alliance. “I wrote an article too in Paris,” he said to Qorri, “but as soon as I came back here it seemed so out of date. Events were snowballing. Articles and statements aren’t useful any more. You have to take action.”
‘Leave me alone, I’ve started writing a novel about the pyramids,’ Qorri replied. ‘It’s called ‘The Sugar Boat’.’
‘Never mind the Sugar Boat. A boatload of people is drowning right here.’
At this point, Deputy Prime Minister Shehi stood up with two characters from his table, came up to them, and stopped. He was drunk, and spoke with the characteristic ambiguity of drunken men in whom affection and aggression are hard to tell apart. ‘The government is paralytic,’ Edi whispered to Murtezaj, who was sitting next to him. Shehi sensed they were talking about him and wanted to stay, but the owner of the bar escorted him to the door.
‘I’m a Tirana boy, born and bred,’ Shehi shouted as he left, his voice thick with drink. What did he mean by this? Was he setting himself apart from his boss, President Berisha, derided by his opponents for his origins in the mountain fastnesses of the North? Or did he want to show that he belonged more to Tirana than anybody else in the bar, and so didn’t give a shit about them?
Qorri didn’t stay long, but before he left, he went to Shvarc’s table to say hello. He had known the translator since childhood. He had a fixed image of him, sitting alone for hours on end in the Café Tirana, alone with a book or a notepad and a cup of coffee in front of him. Even long ago he had intrigued Qorri. He wore a trilby hat like the communist leaders, but on him it looked different. He was not an Albanian, but a Jew born in Sarajevo who had come to Albania with his parents when he was very small.
Shvarc was rarely enthusiastic about anything, but it was hard to tell if this was his nature, because he had never felt totally at home in Albania, or if it was because of the way life had treated him. It was hard to work out if he was without friends or simply kept himself to himself. Was he lonely or solitary? He sparked into life only when he talked about the translations he was working on.
But Shvarc was not indifferent to the drama of the pyramid schemes. With that irony of his, that only those who knew him could distinguish from earnestness, he was telling Dita the story of an Albanian who had deceived a Jew, keeping him in his cellar and taking money from him for several months after the war was over.
‘But we’re the only country that protected the Jews,’ said Qorri, using the word çifut, just to tease him.
‘The word is hebre!’ said Shvarc staring at him angrily.
Qorri knew that he could continue this conversation with Shvarc all night, so he stood up and said goodbye to everyone at his table. The others were staying a little longer, because Artan Imami, the only one with a car, was going to take them to the house of Edi and Delina, where Myrtezaj lived.
It was very cold outside. Qorri hurriedly untied his bicycle from the railing outside Noel’s and set off, holding the handlebars with one hand and clutching his overcoat tightly to his chest with the other. As he negotiated the potholes on the streets of Tirana, he thought of the proposition put to him by the people in the Alliance. He was wary of entering politics, yet he was not sure why; whether it was because of its dangers or because he did not have the passion that would make him heedless of these dangers. He decided that the second reason was the more valid.
Chapter III
Knuckledusters
The next morning, still in bed, Qorri heard Ben Kumbaro calling him from below in an ominous voice. He went to the window and saw Ben with one leg over the crossbar of his bicycle, his expression more sombre than usual.
‘What’s happened?’
‘They beat up Edi Rama and Lad Myrtezaj, knocked them round the head with knuckledusters.’
‘When?’
‘Late yesterday evening as they were going home from Noel’s.’
‘How bad is it?’
‘They’re out of danger, but it’s serious. Especially Edi.’
‘Where are they?’
‘The hospital stitched them and sent them home.’
‘So their lives aren’t in danger.’
‘No.’
Qorri put on his overcoat, rammed his beret crookedly on his head, pulling it more firmly than usual from behind, and hurried downstairs. He unlocked his bicycle from the banister and set off with Ben for the house of Edi Rama’s parents, where Edi had gone after they discharged him from the hospital. Some unknown men, hooded and masked, had been waiting for him in a dark place near Edi’s apartment, just past the place where Artan Imami, had dropped him in his car. They let Delina go and attacked the other two with knuckledusters. Lad had escaped lightly with a cut on his head but they gave Edi a much rougher time, and he arrived in the hospital with deep gashes in his scalp and a broken nose. He was now improving, but was in deep shock, and his head was swathed in bandages.
Qorri listened to this story from Ben, perched on his bicycle, and racked his brains for the reason behind this attack. He was also fearful for himself. He recalled the faces of the police chiefs at a dinner he had recently attended, and the drunken expression of Deputy Prime Minster Shehi as he left Noel’s. These were the people that must have given the signal for the attack, yet Qorri did not want to believe it. Did they know about their conversations with the Alliance and their plans to create a united front? Did they want to crush this front before it was even born? He would rather believe that they had been attacked because of their quarrel with a neighbour in the apartment block opposite, who had complained after seeing two artists dancing naked in their house, on the grounds that that this outrage to family values had obliged him to keep his curtains drawn. But that had been a long time ago, last summer. No, it was naive to think that this attack was not linked to what was happening all over the country. It was a sign and a threat to them all.
For the past three or four years, Berisha’s media had been stirring up hatred against intellectuals who protested against the PD’s behaviour since coming to power, calling them anti-Albanian, traitors, spies and homosexuals. They had even dreamed up new labels such as ‘Greco-Slavic-Orthodox’, which summed up the vulgarity that had taken root in the first anti-communist political party. Edi Rama had been among the first to be attacked for his writing. Now that the government felt threatened, it was translating hate speech into direct action. But who had selected Edi Rama, and who had carried out the attack? Was this the impulsive act of some fanatic emboldened by the climate of hatred, or had it been done under orders? Unfortunately, the second possibility seemed more likely.
***
The home of Edi Rama’s parents, an apartment on the third floor of a communist-era block, was open to visitors as if to receive condolences.