Asgard Park

Chapter 3

Book 1, Shequere Avxhiu

Chapter 3IN THE SHADE ACROSS from the Dajti Hotel, Avxhiu made up her mind. “All right!” she told her brother in English with a stately air. She would translate for this German foreigner. Happy to do her brother a favor, she wanted more details, but Spiro had spotted a man coming out of the hotel. Her brother nodded at the Kid.

“This is the man I told you about.”

Spiro Shituni left them to cross the limpid boulevard in the sunlight.

Avxhiu saw him shake hands with a tall old foreigner on the hotel steps.

“Who is this foreigner?” She asked the Kid.

“A rich foreign businessman: maybe he wants to f**k a young girl. Spiro is helping them out because the old man didn’t want anything to do with the girls in the hotel.”

“But you work in the Dajti?”

“He doesn’t know that. Some of the tourists think the Sigurimi will spy on them and blackmail them.”

“Do they?”

“Spy sure, but I don’t think they blackmail. They have always spied on people. Spiro says they have nothing else to do. They like to watch.”

“That is disgusting! Where will you take this man?”

“Spiro will sort it out,” the Kid’s voice was wistful. “I wish they paid me for talking, like you, “especially the older ones.” Avxhiu smiled, Rakipe was thinking of the businessman from Germany she was to translate for.

Spiro guided the tall foreigner out of the afternoon furnace to the shade of a tree. Between fifty and sixty, he wore a dark suit with tiny white stripes. Avxhiu had never seen a suit that fitted a man so well. Wearing a spotless white shirt and colorful silk tie, the man was perfectly superior and sure of himself as only foreigners and State directors could be.

They stood up to greet this new visitor to their poor country, and her brother introduced him to the Kid. The man had fine soft hands, and the strange cuffs on his shirtsleeves were joined by a gold link. And he had a big gold watch.

It was the first time Avxhiu had met a foreigner up close. She would have to talk to him, since neither Spiro nor the Kid had any English to speak of. This made her uneasy. She stood away from the covered rusty bucket of smelly guts and placed her newly won bottle of shampoo in front of her. He could see she was no peasant.

The foreigner turned to her.

“And this lovely creature is?” His voice was mellow and clear. The words he expected none of them to grasp rang in her ears. They were the first words spoken to her by a native of this great tongue. To her amazement, she understood, and her natural assurance trickled back.

“Shequere Avxhiu, nice to meet you, yes please, sir.”

“Ah, what a wonderful surprise, you speak English. I have been here ten days and you are the first woman I can talk to,” his hand was large and strong, and he did not let go of hers, “not counting the Sigurimi spies.”

“Thank you, sir!” She was not sure why she was thanking him. “Could I invite you over for a drink at the Dajti? The heat is unbelievable out here.” She withdrew her hand sharply and he immediately let go. He was well mannered. There were drops of perspiration on his chin.

“No thank you please, sir. I am younger sister for Spiro. I am good girl!”

“I am sorry. I meant no disrespect. You are a beautiful young woman. I understood your brother wanted to introduce me to someone. I didn’t know who. I made a mistake. You must forgive me.”

“I forgive you very much, sir.”

Charles Grenville was Canadian. The director of a profitable mining company, he was long married with four grown daughters, all of them older than this nymph. What a striking young woman; unpainted, in a simple cotton dress; Eve in a Garden of Eden cursed by the ideologies of misguided men. Her apparent innocence went well with the delicious craving that flushed through his body. Grenville was thrilled by a lust so long dormant. In his married life he seldom cheated on a wife whom he quietly loved. Aside from the odd lapse in fidelity, he prided himself in being a man of unassailable virtue. It was his strength in the real world. This was not the real world. Maybe he had one more experience coming.

“Would you possibly have dinner with me tonight at the Dajti? with your brother of course. This is a lonely place, mademoiselle!”

“Talk slow please. You pay dinner for all people, yes?” “Of course, I will!”

“I ask brother and girlfriend, sir.”

As the teenager spoke rapidly to the others, Charles Grenville tried not to stare.

“My brother ask if you want Rakipe to come, yes?”

The brother was probably a pimp for the Sigurimi, and the kid was too young; her youth so insistent that it shone through the layers of cheap cosmetics, put on with a bricklayer’s trowel. He was wary of accepting that offer on so many levels. It put him in a bind.

“She is your friend, is she?”

“Avxhiu best girlfriend, yes.”

“Well, as your friend she is welcome to join us.”

This was a problem that would be easily solved with a twenty-dollar bill after dinner. In this hermetically sealed nation, there seemed less need to hold his every move against the mirror of middle-class morality.

“We say all right to dinner. We thank you very much so. You have card, please, sir?”

Grenville pulled out his leather wallet and handed her an embossed card. She glanced up at him in wonder and their eyes met. Looking back at the card, she started to blush uncontrollably.

That blush made old Charles Grenville’s day.

“Shall we make it six o’clock? I will await you by the entrance.” He wiped the sweat from his eyes and lips, and tasted salt in his mouth.

The others wanted cards too. Grenville handed them out. He felt safe with his budding decadence. It had caught him unawares. The paparazzi on the Riviera would not snoop around here, even if they could. Visas were hard to get outside the country. The tourists here were expatriates with families on the inside to bribe officials to obtain their papers. Others who cleared the hurdles were gritty pros bred in a shady flora and unburdened by ethical baggage. This was no place for tenderfoots.

Pressed by the economic collapse, the government was desperately seeking foreign capital and new technology. They wanted to capitalize on 20 million tons of chromite reserves in the mountains to the north; a vital source of currency. But what should have been a profitable visit was being sabotaged by corrupted officials. The ideas of their government on equity financing were more obsolete than their mining and smelting techniques. The State had no intention of sharing the profits with anybody.

He felt overdressed and out of place. The unpleasant odor from a covered bucket to the side troubled him. He gave the three youngsters a spirited smile. He knew it was a perfect smile, but it felt like an echo from some parallel universe; he didn’t know if it got through. Wooing this magnificent young woman felt more real than government intrigues but the problem was the same. The secret police would be in the way. They had already executed hundreds of Central Committee members. The body count of ordinary citizens was anybody’s guess.

It would take a few days for the Lehman Brothers in New York to turn down the proposed equity venture. Winning this girl was a thrilling thought. Doing it with the Sigurimi looking over his shoulder was not.