a creator of financial pyramids, had become famous. Her creditors, waiting in vain for their money, had demanded that Sudja should come out and explain. She finally appeared at a window and announced, ‘I will give you an answer when I have consulted with the person in charge. But you will have to wait because I am going on holiday tomorrow!’ The news that Sudja was leaving ‘on holiday’ fell like a bombshell on the waiting people. This was an end to any hope of them receiving their money. They took to the main streets in fury, shouting anti-government slogans. They wanted to know who was the ‘the person in charge’. In the cafe, the word was that this person was probably Prime Minister Meksi himself.
Rama was often carried away when he started talking, and loudly ridiculed Sudja’s holidays. Some people from nearby tables, including one of the policemen, turned their heads. At Rama’s table they lowered their voices.
‘Good that you’ve come,’ Rama said to Qorri. ‘I met those people from the Alliance today. They all said that it’s time to act, and the opposition has to lead the protests. After Sudja’s, all the pyramids will fall one by one.’
The Democratic Alliance was a party formed by disillusioned intellectuals who had been the first to leave the PD. Everybody around the table supported the Alliance. Rama said that the Alliance leaders had told him they were ready to co-operate with the former communists to create a front against Berisha before it was too late. But they wanted Qorri, a well-known former political prisoner, to joint this front. They had also talked to Kurt Kola, the chairman of the Association of Victims of Political Persecution, who was willing for this association to take the initiative to create this new front.
‘I’m not the right person for this job,’ Qorri told them.
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t think I have the talent for leadership. I’ve supported the Alliance in my articles, and I’ve just drafted a declaration and a protest on their behalf.’
‘What about?’
‘Demolishing Berisha’s claims that he knew nothing about the pyramid schemes. That’s what they’re saying now: they knew nothing. How can’t they have known? Berisha has done all he can to find out about us, and yet he never looked into the pyramids! I’ve put down the facts, the advertising for the pyramid schemes on State television, the threats from their bosses before the elections that if any other party came to power, people wouldn’t receive their interest payments, and the election campaign with the cars and flags with the symbols of Gjallica and VEFA. So my conclusion is that these people are incapable of solving the crisis, and they can’t deceive us by arresting a couple of crooks. All the Albanian political parties have to sit down at the table.’
‘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
