Asgard Park

Chapter 2

Book 1, Shequere Avxhiu

Chapter 2HARDLY WAS THE KID out of sight before a young man walked across the street.

“How are you, Avxhiu?”

“I am fine, and how are you and your family?” She kept the conversation carefully within the rules of conduct.

“I have a proposition for you, Avxhiu. We can make money together. American money. And later I can get you a visa to Italy. It is little work and loads of fun.”

Her brother Spiro and the Kid said that living was easier in Italy. She had no great confidence in their judgment. They believed everything they heard.

“You keep your filthy proposition, Skender Krasnigi, or I tell my brother you asked me to w***e for you.”

“I only wanted to help, Avxhiu. I heard you were not doing well.

“You should not believe everything you hear.”

“You are attractive for a widow. Why not use it while you can?” He shook his head and ambled back to his cronies.

It was always like this. The men she attracted wanted up her skirts or to use her for money. Few husbands would accept that she spoke English. It was for the elite. She had learned English from her late husband. Emir had owned four English novels. They came from his academic father who sat in the Politburo until recently. Emir had taught her to read all four novels, every word, and to pronounce most of them correctly.

The Kid came prancing back across the boulevard. She carried a paper bag. The men gave catcalls and made dirty gestures. The Kid handed her a pink plastic bottle with a lovely round picture. It was a young foreign woman with long blond hair and a halo of flowers.

Best Apple Shampoo. The label made Shequere suspicious. She knew ‘best’ and ‘apple’. “This is for drinking, she complained.”

“Zote, how silly you are! Open the bottle. I would not taste it. It is soap but it smells like perfume.”

Carefully she screwed off the cap. The fragrance was overwhelming. Its freshness shook her to her core. She had never experienced anything like it.

“Wow!”

“When you use it to wash with, you smell like that. Your lover will want to smell you all over.” The Kid gave the older girl a knowing nudge with the elbow.

“Thank you for the shampoo.” She embraced her friend. “All right, tell me what the foreigner told you.”

This sudden trust caught the Kid a bit off guard. “Well, I don’t believe all they say. They boast a lot. I can tell when they are boasting, I’m not stupid.”

“So, tell me.”

“Yesterday I f****d my first American. Ugh, he was old, but I think he is rich. His father was Albanian, so he’s not really American. He wants to change Albania, so it is more like America. He was stupid that way.”

“So, what is it like in America?”

“In America they have democracy, and everybody gets money to spend.”

“I got Leks but there is nothing to buy.”

“That is not the same, they get dollars, and the shops are open for everybody and full of goods.”

“What goods, milk and bread?”

“All kinds!”

“Meat and vegetables?”

“You don’t get it, Avxhiu: everything! Good coffee and soap and toilet paper and Coca Cola and whiskey and chocolates and cars.”

“Don’t be silly! How can they buy cars in shops?”

“He said there are big shops full of cars; new shiny cars that nobody sat in. People can go in with dollars and they can buy any car they want to and drive away.”

“And you believed this?”

“Maybe he was boasting about the cars.” “Cars in shops, I ask you.”

“He said cars had telephones in them to use when driving.”

“Silly, he’d run out of cable before he got halfway across town.”

The Kid sulked a minute for missing the obvious, then brightened. “Anyway, he wasn’t a real American, was he? Leonora Bocaj has been to Greece with her family. She says it is better there; plenty of food. They had no foreign money so they could not stay. Her father could not get paid work.”

“Then it is the same. If you have dollars, you can buy everything.”

“I get dollars from the foreigners. I can go to America. I’m going to live in a house with an electric stove and a hot shower and television. I can show you. There are Italian television sets in the Dajti. One is in color. The picture is not good but there are women dancers!” The Kid lifted her eyes to heaven.

Avxhiu fought the temptation. It was hard because her independence masked a childlike admiration of all things foreign. She admired the self-assured ways of the foreigners. They came and went as they pleased. She had a different relation to them. She almost belonged to them, having mastered their language.

She brightened when she saw the old battered Italian car of her youngest brother roll up, the only one of her rural relatives who made a good living. Spiro helped her out all the time. Her older brothers envied him, but they were burned-out drunkards who faced the same old rut, their brains spoiled by bad liquor.

Spiro had worked hard for what he’d gained. He told her little. The state had imprisoned him for burglarizing the wrong house. Avxhiu did not hold it against him. Without him she would have starved this winter. She had no illusions. Her molars had begun to spoil, the first tangible sign of the decay ahead.

Her brother walked round the car to inspect it. People stole what they could get their hands on. The wing mirrors and the chrome were already gone, and so too the sign that said Fiat. There was nothing left to pilfer from the outside of the car but everything under the hood was in working order. There were excellent mechanics in Albania. They could do wonders with modern machines and Spiro knew many of them. He always had petrol for the car.

Shequere stood up and greeted her brother fondly. He was a few years older, of medium height and slim strong built, and he wore modern clothes.

“I got guts for you!” Spiro put down a rusty bucket on the sidewalk. The handle was a piece of hemp, and the top was covered with cloth. Her brother had contacts in the slaughterhouses outside Kavaja. They traded him guts for Italian cigarettes at fair prices. Shequere felt the hunger stir from its slumber.

“Clean it well. If the electricity is off, wait. Cook it well before you eat it.”

As if he had to tell her. Avxhiu lifted the cloth and recoiled from the rancid sour smell.

“This is not fresh. I must cook it at once.”

“Stinks worse than an unwashed c**k,” said the Kid and made a face. She was getting used to better fare, invited by foreigners to eat at the Dajti since her deal with the Sigurimi last week.

“It’s bad out in the countryside, sister. Next time I must take friends with guns. There are bands all over. They have no respect. He waved at the car. Someone had scratched a curse ‘JA QIFSKA NANON’ into the matt green paint with a nail, right across the hood. Spiro put his hand on his sister’s shoulder.

“Cousin Fatos asked to tell you he has repaired Emir’s motorcycle. It is running again. He will bring it. Pay him nothing. That is between us. Keep the bike inside and cover it. They are stealing everything now.”

From his breast pocket he fished out a batch of cards and handed one to each girl. “This is my calling card. It is in English!”

“SPIRO SHITUNI” Director, Skanderbeg Enterprises Ltd. Rruga Siri Kodra 206 Tel:355 42 273 60 Tirana - Albania leave message!

Avxhiu didn’t recognize any words from her old English novels except ‘leave message’ but she knew that directors run state companies and Skanderbeg was the famous national hero who ousted the armies of the Ottoman Empire. She played her curiosity deftly.

“What is this enterprises?”

“My company! Foreigners do business with enterprises. I call mine Skanderbeg Enterprises. Keep the cards!”

Avxhiu was proud of her youngest brother.

“The foreigners all got cards,” said the Kid, “some have colored cards. They give them away.”

“I need an important favor from you, sister. A powerful businessman is coming to Albania from Germany this week; to meet influential men on private business. They asked me to find an interpreter who does not report to the Sigurimi. I know nobody else who can be trusted and speaks English. He will pay you well in dollars.”

The suddenness of the offer shocked Avxhiu, but, of course, she was no informant. There was recognition in that.

“There is nothing else, Spiro? This man will want nothing else from your sister, other than English?”

“Trust your brother! He will want nothing from you but English!”

She didn’t know how far she could trust her brother in such matters. His release from camp last year was part of the general amnesty and his group thrived despite the times. Some of her neighbors called them petty criminals. Some said they distributed for an Italian smuggling network. Tongues always wagged whenever anybody made good. She shrugged and thought of faraway places where life was simple.