The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  The convoy inched out of Dürres hemmed in by the early-morning buses, big, begrimed Mercedes, the first horse-drawn carts, rusty Chinese bikes and the occasional old woman leading a cow or a sheep or a pig along the hard shoulder in hopes of finding the creature a bit of breakfast.

  Toftlund travelled with Poulsen in the Toyota, while Teddy had climbed up into one of the big Volvos with one of his crap game pals who had announced that Teddy was more than welcome to smoke in his truck. Like a long snake the convoy headed over to Tirana, through the greenish-brown countryside with its scattering of little bunkers and oddly gutted or derelict buildings which might have been abandoned, bombed-out factories. It looked as though an invading army had swept across the country, plundering it and leaving only poverty in its wake. The road was pitted with holes and neither animals nor people seemed to know the difference between right and left. Manoeuvring the long, white convoy through the melee was a very slow business. Toftlund could hear the huge trucks behind the Toyota complaining every time they had to gear up or down, and when he turned his head and looked back he saw the lead truck heeling and weaving round the biggest, water-filled craters in the road like an oversize slalom skier. After only a few kilometres the white sides of the trucks were as grey as the low-lying clouds.

  ‘That’s Johnny right behind me,’ Poulsen said. ‘I’ve worked with him in Iran and in Bosnia. He’s the best. He just knows how to read the road and the other guys trust him, they keep their eyes on him and go wherever he goes. The trick is always to maintain the momentum’.

  Other than that Per did not have much chance to talk to Poulsen. He hung on to the side-strap and swayed with the Toyota as it crept and crawled along the narrow, winding road which, once they turned north at Tirana, carried on straight through a series of small, ramshackle villages, all of them milling with people, cows, horses, pigs, and sheep. Not to mention the children and teenagers who waved and cheered and made the V-sign when they sighted the white snake. Because Toftlund had very soon realised that Poulsen was the snake’s eyes, ears and compass. On the Toyota’s nose bobbed the long, powerful antenna which constituted the lifeline of the VHF radios in the trucks behind them, over which Poulsen’s steady voice relayed a running commentary on whatever obstacles lay beyond the next corner, house or hole in the road:

  ‘Man with goat on the right, people on the left, watch out for a child, stray cow at next right-turn, traffic coming towards us, four vehicles, the last is a red Mercedes. Johnny, you’ve got a clear road now, flock of sheep on the left, horse and cart on the right, very uneven road, slow down, almost to a halt, complete halt, moving again, police checkpoint ahead, children on both sides, stray cow on the hard shoulder, very uneven road again, are the Brits through the crossroads?’

  Poulsen’s commentary was monotonous, but it was fascinating too, Toftlund found: this constant scanning for hazards and hindrances which, Per knew, called for the greatest possible degree of alertness, and it occurred to him that the real heroes in this war as in others, were the civilians in the trucks, forming as they did the only link to other civilians in distress. He very quickly came to sense and to share Poulsen’s relief when Johnny’s or one of the other drivers’ voices squawked over the VHF’s loudpeakers to let the leader know that everyone was now through a crossroads, or safely round a turn, or to confirm that the truck towing the trailer was still with them. Time moved as slowly as the convoy, but Toftlund was feeling confident and strangely optimistic. The journey was almost over. If they did not find the woman at Shkodra, there would be nothing more they could do. He tried to push away a thought that kept nagging at him: that when he looked around him at this morass of destitution, knowing that half a million displaced people were scattered across this mud-bound, broken-down country, his own mission seemed absurd and insignificant. And then it was hard to take it seriously. The fact that some twenty or thirty years ago Danes with plenty and to spare should have toyed with the ideas of communism and revolution seemed suddenly so trivial. He ought, somehow, to be able to see Irma’s complicity in all this, but he found it difficult to differentiate between cause and effect. Was it the Serbian oppression that had sparked off this horrendous refugee disaster? Or was it the NATO bombings which had provoked this influx of humanity? And what were Irma and her mysterious string-puller or controller but tiny pawns in the game, who had not influenced the situation in the slightest. But it didn’t work that way of course. He had to find this woman. Then they could proceed with the case, only then it would be the prosecution’s pigeon. And if he didn’t find her then he could go home to Denmark, see his child being born and begin a new life, because the High Court would dismiss the case by releasing Irma. And he was forced to admit that it would be a huge relief, because he no longer knew what was right and fair. The weight and the feel of the gun in his shoulder holster was reassuring. The swift and accusing look which Poulsen had shot him as he got into the car and noticed the bulge in his jacket had not been lost on him, but the Beretta made him feel secure and confident.

  He sat back as best he could in the comfortable seat and let Torsten’s stream of directions play over his ears like background music while he gazed out at the devastated Albanian landscape. Rocky cliffs reared up, green and grey, into the leaden spring sky. The houses were generally small and tumbledown, but occasionally – behind a hedge or a fence – he would be offered an unexpected glimpse of a large house with a new red-tiled roof, surveillance cameras and the inevitable satellite dish. He was amazed to note that many of the wretched little hovels also had brand-new satellite dishes fixed to their walls. On small hilltops he saw the ruins of what might have been medieval castles. They drove past an old factory, a burnt-out shell overgrown with weeds. It seemed to stretch for ever around a bend in the river, looking as if everyone had simply gone home one day with no intention of ever going back. The rusting hulks of cars were strewn all over the place. Toftlund could not think how they ever came to be in Albania in the first place, far less how they had wound up as scrap on the heaps found in every gap in the hills or small field. Poulsen told him that most of the Mercedes they saw were stolen and had arrived there by some pretty shady routes. Tree cover was low on the plain spreading out on either side of the road and on the greenish-brown hills rising up on the horizon. They passed several mosques and, to Toftlund’s surprise, a number of brand-new, gilded churches which seemed oddly clean and virginal next to the buildings around them. They drove for some kilometres alongside a rusty railway line overlooking a valley in which smoke rose from little wooden cottages to hang almost motionless in the air. Some sort of market was in progress down there: lots of stalls, lots of grey people and lots of animals. Poulsen slowed down even more, indicated, pulled into the side and switched off the engine.

  ‘Pee break,’ he announced, extending his arms above and behind his head to relax the muscles in his shoulders and arms.

  Teddy climbed out of his truck and stretched his back, hands kneading the base of his spine. He ambled over to Toftlund, who veered off to the side, but Pedersen stuck with him. On a low hillside lay what looked like an old refinery which someone had abandoned and left to rot. Twisted, rust-covered iron struts encircled an old furnace, oil residue floated in waterholes and among the rubble the first weeds of the spring mingled with plants which had survived the winter. The place stank of oil, petrol, tar and piss.

  ‘Robert Jacobsen would have loved this,’ Teddy said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Danish sculptor – never mind.’

  Totftlund and Teddy made their contribution to the stench, standing comfortably side by side.

  ‘Oh, Christ, my back,’ Teddy moaned, and then: ‘Aah … relief beyond belief.’

  ‘What is this place?’ Per asked.

  ‘Probably some Chinese development project. Hoxha fell out with the Chinese after 1978 when they revised their ideas about Mao’s cultural revolution. Almost from one day to the next the Chinese left the country. Whatever they were wo
rking on at the time stands in the same state as they left it, or a worse one. Massive factories, railway lines leading nowhere. Albania meant to introduce pure communism, you see. Until as late as 1990 all roads, all factories, all bridges, all schools and anything else you can think of were still dedicated to the memory of Joseph Stalin.’

  ‘Stalin! Even the Russians gave up on him.’

  ‘Papa Stalin. Hoxha came into power in 1944, during the war, and until his death in 1985 he stayed true to Stalin and his principles. The real thing. The other Soviet leaders might have forsaken the pure doctrine but not he. The poor Albanians had their own cultural revolution in the mid-sixties. Every bit as insane as the Chinese. Teachers, professors, intellectuals – out into the fields with them. A ban on all Western literature and newspapers. Religion abolished, forbidden, wiped out. Churches and mosques turned into cinemas or blown sky-high. God was declared dead. Executed, you might say. From 1967 until 1990 Albania was Europe’s only officially atheist country. Why the hell do you think the real dyed-in-the wool Danish left-wingers were so crazy about this place? It was the real thing, for God’s sake. Here they could salve their Protestant conscience. When all the apparatus of the market-economy spilled into this country in the early nineties the population was totally unprepared for it. It was like putting a virgin in bed with a porn star.’

  Toftlund laughed:

  ‘Is this how you teach?’

  Teddy’s eyes flashed:

  ‘No, I’m a very serious teacher.’

  ‘Well, you know a lot, that’s for sure, but I’ve seen quite a few churches around,’ Per said, zipping up.

  ‘Of course. This is primarily a Muslim country, but as you could see from Don Alberto, not everybody here takes the Koran’s words about alcohol and other things too seriously. Italy is not far away and the Catholic church is very active here, building churches and schools everywhere. The same goes for the Turks and the Saudis, only in their case they’re building mosques. To that you can add ranting American preachers with the Bible in one hand and a bundle of emergency aid in the other. In such chaos as this there are plenty of souls to be fought over and harvested, my friend. And that’s what is happening. Would you mind giving me a hand. This picture could be entitled: Teddy with Bad Back Having Difficulty Descending Albanian Mountain with Old Chinese Factory.’

  Toftlund laughed again, took Teddy’s hand and supported him while he half walked, half slid down the slope to the road, where the white snake was parked. The drivers were drinking coffee from their thermoses and both Teddy and Per gratefully accepted a steaming plastic cup. A steady stream of cumbersome old Chinese bikes rolled past them. On their backs little crates from which came the sound of clucking hens. There were also lots of people on foot, poor peasant types with strong, furrowed faces. Some with a goat or a pig on a lead, taking it to market. The more well-to-do had little carts drawn by horses with froth-flecked muzzles and mud up to their knees. Behind them in the cart, besides the driver, there was often a woman, one or two kids and a pig or a couple of sheep. In another, a cow or an old woman holding a basket of spotted apples. In one small waggon with worn rubber tyres, besides the standing driver, there were two young women sitting on the box and a calf and two curly-horned goats in the back. Still more people were walking along the railway line, which did not look as if it had seen a train in a long, long time. This saved them having to run the gauntlet of the muddy puddles. They were all shabbily dressed, but most of them could still manage a smile, a wave or a V-sign as they passed the convoy of white trucks sitting by the side of the road. None of this bore any resemblance to a Europe on the cusp of the millenium; it was more like a scene from some unknown Third World which Toftlund had never imagined could exist so close to the borders of the EU.

  Teddy came up beside him and regarded the cavalcade:

  ‘All the talk back home about smoking policies and home-helps and early retirement kind of pales into insignificance when you see this, eh, Per?’

  ‘Anybody would think Albania was at war.’

  ‘It’s been at war with itself since 1944.’

  ‘Well, there’s certainly nothing picturesque about the poverty in Albania.’

  ‘There never is anything picturesque about poverty, not in the eyes of the poor.’

  ‘The little philosopher again. You just can’t help it, can you.’

  ‘That could be the title of this picture: Teddy the Philosopher Dismayed by the Misery of Albania.’

  ‘What is it with you and these pictures of yourself?’

  ‘Oh, just a little game. If you stand back and look at yourself from the outside every now and again it’s harder to take yourself too seriously.’

  ‘I just don’t get you sometimes …’

  ‘Well, we all have our crosses to bear.’

  Toftlund shot him an exasperated look and almost snapped at him; instead he shook his head and wandered over to Poulsen. Teddy called after him:

  ‘Hey, Toftlund, could we swap places for a while? My back’s killing me.’

  ‘He won’t let you smoke in the car.’

  ‘Ah well, the back before the baccy. That’s Teddy’s new motto.’

  Toftlund travelled the rest of the way in the big front seat of Johnny’s Volvo. Now he could listen to Poulsen’s voice coming over the loudspeakers, giving the same incessant, precise, monotonous directions. He could see what Teddy had meant when he said to one of the drivers during their rest stop that it was like one of those modern poems with no rhyme – the sort Lise was so fond of. Although Teddy had called it ‘broken prose’, but that had meant nothing to the driver or to Per. Poulsen had laughed and thanked him for the compliment. Johnny chatted about all the runs he had made over the past few years for the Danish Refugee Council, the UN and Red Cross and how he missed his family back home in Vendsyssel, but couldn’t live without the excitement and the challenges of this job. He certainly didn’t do it for the money, although the salary was okay, but it got into the blood. Toftlund knew exactly what he meant. He would have felt the same. He knew Johnny was not being cynical – although perhaps a little bit selfish – when he said he was always pleased when the early-morning call came from the Emergency Agency to say his services were required again.

  They left the impoverished villages behind them and struck out across a floodplain covered in green meadows. This sight came as a total surprise to Toftlund. The landscape around them was suddenly so beautiful: a majestic, sweeping valley bounded by steep brown-black mountains, their peaks capped with what looked like snowy chef ’s hats. It appeared to be a fertile valley, but hardly any of the soil was under cultivation. Only in an occasional small garden or vegetable plot had some attempt been made to farm it. There was also something that might have been a rice field. Other than that there was nothing but grass and water, the emptiness broken only by the odd shepherd in the distance with his flock of sheep or a few cows. The river flowed slow and pregnant through the greygreen countryside like a brown ribbon. After another hour the convoy turned off and headed into the suburbs of Shkodra, only to be brought to a halt by a blue-uniformed policeman holding up his lollypop with the green circle on it.

  Poulsen got out. Toftlund climbed down after him, stretched and looked to see what was going on. The convoy leader was clearly trying to make himself understood to the policemen. Did they want money? Was he merely asking for directions? They had stopped right next to a brand-new Agia petrol station. Sporting the Italian colours it sat directly across from a completely new church, its cross glinting in the sunlight that was starting to peek through the clouds. Two of the ubiquitous mangy dogs were scurrying timidly about with their tails between their legs. Poulsen was shaking his head, apparently trying to explain something and showing the policemen some documents, but the four officers only shook their heads in return. Ahead of them lay what had to be Shkodra’s main street. There were surprisingly many people in the cafés. Drinking coffee or beer. Many of them well-dressed, and once again Toftl
und could not help admiring the lovely young women parading about, making eyes at the young men and the outlandish, bearded drivers in the white trucks bearing the Emergency Agency’s foreign number plates. After decades of isolation their country was now crawling with foreigners and dangerous – but at the same time beguiling – ideas and influences.

  Two mud-streaked Mercedes saloons drove up and six men got out, two of them in black, imitation leather jackets and black or blue jeans, the other four in ill-fitting suits. Five of the men, all with black, greased-back hair, looked to be in their thirties or thereabouts, though it was hard to tell. The sixth was a little older, with grey hair and a bushy moustache. As they climbed out of the cars Toftlund noted that they all carried guns in holsters at their waists. They could have been either plainclothes cops or gangsters and, thought Toftlund, were probably a bit of both. Their seams were pressed, but their shoes were caked with mud. The Albanians walked up to Poulsen. Toftlund could not hear what was said, but it sounded as if they were speaking Albanian. Even when Torsten tried to talk to them in English. Per took a step closer and leaned on the bonnet of Poulsen’s Toyota. He saw that the two guys in leather jackets were watching him and it pleased him to see their hands edge towards their belts. It was all to the good if they got the impression that here was a man who might pose a threat. That they might not have it all their own way.