Asgard Park

Chapter 1

Chapter 1ACROSS THE SLEEPY BOULEVARD from the Hotel Dajti, a sagging prewar hotel built by Mussolini, two young girls passed the time of day in the shade. They sat on the cool surface of stone that topped a concrete parapet circling the small park. It was the perfect resting place. Behind them lay a tree-lined expanse of wilted grass.

One of them was no more than a kid, dressed up to show she was not, in American jeans and a black sweatshirt. In the summer of 1991, this was not a typical outfit in Albania. The older girl was in her late teens and wore a faded cotton dress with traditional patterns.

Traffic was sparse at midday in Tirana. A few trucks rumbled down the road with growling gearboxes, spewing plumes of exhaust. Under the palms outside a hotel entrance among the straggle of well-waxed cars loitered the hangers-on. They were a blend of fixers, pimps and honest people looking for a break.

The sun beat down with intensity that kept foreigners holed up inside the hotel within easy reach of the only public bar of the communist republic.

Outside, the handshakes were many and conversations went on forever. The fixers had nothing to sell. They were conduits of contacts within a hidebound government, one year after the abandoned one-party state. They were mediators between officials who could deliver nothing but block everything.

Inside the hotel, under the discreet eye of the Sigurimi, the Albanian secret police, officially disbanded in the recent reshuffle, the only currency was dollars. It allowed access to a threadbare restaurant and poorly stocked bar. Down the hall at the far end, the hotel offered the city’s only long-distance telephone open to the public, and in working order.

Within the hotel entrance there was a tiny shop that offered a handful of western products for currency. Few locals had the means or courage to enter. They were proud people who could afford nothing. Albanian women of repute were not welcome in The Hotel Dajti. In a nation of traditional values, chaste women knew their place. The only women in sight outside were the two young girls shooting the breeze on the other side of the boulevard.

“You must be careful”, said the older girl in Albanian to the Kid, “the foreigners promise you anything, job or visa to their country. Afterward they forget. You have no rights with foreigners.”

This was no daunting prospect to the Kid, who frowned and tossed a handful of straws over her shoulder. “For one so old, you know so little, Avxhiu. Foreigners pay in dollars. The Sigurimi has agreed that I can work in there. I have to pay them but maybe I will meet someone later who can get me a visa.”

Shequere Avxhiu knew the matter was out of her hands. When the Kid was a baby, her parents had been unable to keep her. The father was a traitor who had spat on the statue of Hoxha. Avxhiu’s mother had tended their neighbor’s youngest, but the task soon became her daughters.

Now Rakipe Hallidri was the Kid, half-grown and wild with men. That’s how she earned her English nickname. Avxhiu knew that her protégé would never get a husband.

“Albanian boys won’t marry you if they hear, Rakipe, there is already talk. Everybody knows what goes on in the Dajti Hotel.”

“What do I care? Albanian boys are stupid and dirty and unsophisticated.”

“Unsophisticated?”

“They don’t know how to treat a woman. They are louts. They don’t wash and they don’t dance. They have no manners, and they know nothing about the world. They are jealous bullies. They lock you in the house. Is that a life? What if I like to f**k foreigners? They know how to treat a woman. Why should I care about Albanian boys?”

“Don’t be angry,” the older one said softly, and put out a hand, “don’t you want kids and a family?” They had this conversation often; too often.

“Come on, Shequere, what home can I get in this dump? Do I want a mean husband without money who drinks all day? How would he get an apartment?”

The older girl did not complain. She lived in a photo studio where her husband hung himself from a sewer pipe in the ceiling last fall. There had been nobody to take over his job, so she did. But the commissions for photographic work from the Sigurimi dried up. Now it was closed.

“Rakipe, you already got a room in Tirana, and you are young and single.”

“Yeah, a stupid laundry room with a filthy joint toilet. It’s always clogged, and the water never comes. I had to suck the c**k of that committee secretary for every tile in that bloody room. There was no heat this winter,” the Kid smiled, “the one good thing about the place.”

“The cold was?”

“Yeah, it was so cold the bastard wouldn’t take off his trousers. He found a warm room for another girl and stopped coming.”

Her older companion gave a squeal of merriment and slapped the Kid’s shoulder.

“You are impossible!”

“Oh, Shequere, you should see the rooms in the Hotel Dajti. They are warm in winter and there are large beds with clean covers and hot water in every bathroom and the toilets always flush and they are spotless and clean.”

“Hot water? You are always boasting.”

“Come in and I will show you.”

“I am not going into that place!”

“It’s another world, Shequere. I can buy anything in there, and you are even sexier than I.”

It was an uncommon compliment, and the older girl blushed. She worried that in a short time her scruffy protégé had become stylish, with painted nails and a face that looked almost foreign. The bluish tattoo on the back of her hand gave her away. Foreign women were not that wild.

The Kid had bought western clothes for the first dollars she got at the Dajti, jeans and sweater and a short black leather coat from France. The Kid wanted to enjoy life. Maybe she thought it was almost over. In this, Avxhiu knew better.

“I will find another husband, Rakipe, and have children.”

Her resolution was an honest expression but her natural optimism had little foundation in reality. As a widow she was not a virgin, and hardly eligible for a good marriage. Her mother had secretly prayed to God, during the Hoxha years. She had told her that God would save her from evil. In this her mother had been wrong.

“Come in with me, Shequere, and I’ll buy you shampoo. It is soap, only a hundred times softer than soap, and it smells like perfume. Can you imagine?”

“Go and buy me this soap. I will wait for you here. Then maybe I’ll believe you.”

“You promise?”

“Well, at least I will believe you better.”

“A deal,” said the Kid in English. They shook on it.

She watched the Kid prance across the boulevard in her Italian shoes with high heels. It made Avxhiu proud. She has the bottom of a kid, she thought.