Poulsen walked back to him.
‘Does Teddy speak Albanian?’ he asked.
‘No, Teddy does not,’ the man himself replied, stepping out of the Toyota. ‘What do these Albanian gentlemen with the lovely manners want?’
‘I’ve no idea. Money most likely. They say they’re from the secret service. As far as I can tell. But they could just as easily be from the mafia. Where the hell’s the UNHCR rep? I called him an hour ago.’
A white Land Rover with Italian number plates came speeding down the road; it braked, sending muddy water splashing in all directions and pulled up at the petrol station. The driver was a tall, gaunt, sharp-featured man with receding black hair swept back from and accentuating his level brow. There were knife-edge seams in his grey trousers and his tie matched the light-coloured shirt under his expensive tan leather jerkin. His boots were new and spattered with muck. He ignored the six men, walked straight up to Poulsen and shook his hand.
‘It’s okay, Torsten,’ he said. ‘I’ll deal with this.’
He approached the men and said something to them. They made no protest, but their faces darkened. Then four of them climbed back into one of the Mercedes and drove off. The other two strode across to the other car, but did not leave.
Poulsen muttered tonelessly:
‘His name’s André. Professor of literature at the University of Pristina in Kosovo. Now a refugee, of course. Acts as coordinator up here for the UNHCR. Brilliant man. His entire family – father, mother, his teacher wife, two young children – is missing. He admires the Albanians’ hospitality, but he’s also a little shocked by their low level of culture. The Kosovars are rather more advanced than their Albanian neighbours. In fact they are a highly civilised people. Or at least they were until the Serbs embarked on their programme of ethnic cleansing and the eradication of the nation’s memory.’
André returned. He had no time to waste on pleasantries and simply ignored Teddy and Toftlund, taking them, perhaps, for reporters.
‘They’re asking for too much money, but they’ll show you the way to the camp. What have you brought?’
‘Blankets, tents, toilet paper, sanitary pads, canned goods, water purification tablets, plastic sheeting.’
‘How many trucks?’
‘Six, one with trailer. That’s the tents.’
‘I asked for at least twice that much.’
‘Talk to Tirana, André.’
‘Okay, let’s go. The tents and the truck carrying the plastic sheeting follow the Mercedes, the rest of you follow me to the factory.’
It was over ten years since the last cigarette had been rolled at the old tobacco factory. It lay in the mud on the outskirts of the town, surrounded by a fence, like a symbol of the whole situation: bleak and overflowing with people, all with eyes that looked as though they had stared into the heart of evil and would never forget the vision of the beast they had seen there. There was neither order nor disorder. Only a seemingly pointless state of turmoil, like that stirred up by a child on a hot summer day poking at an anthill with a stick, upsetting the normal routine and sending all the inhabitants dashing hither and yon in fear and confusion, trying to discover what powerful forces have invaded their home and smashed up their lives. But the bigger boys in the camp flocked around the trucks and – so rapidly that it was obvious they had done this before – formed a long line down which the cardboard boxes could be passed from hand to hand, from the back of the truck and into one of the old, four-storey factory buildings. Their brick walls had once been a warm red, but now they were fetid and filthy, the glass gone from their windows. From every one of the tall buildings there emanated the curiously dense, clammy fug of unwashed bodies and urine. The earth between the buildings had been stamped into a black, sticky ooze. At one window Toftlund saw an elderly woman with a vacant gaze. From another a small child with its thumb in its mouth stared at him with great brown eyes. There were hardly any grown men to be seen. The few Toftlund did spot were old. One in particular caught his eye, a skinny little manikin with a grey beard and a long stick in his hand. Whenever he felt that the children were clamouring too wildly for chocolate and chewing gum he would scream and shout at them and whack them on the back with his stick. No one paid any mind. Nor was there any logic to the way he meted out punishment. Some kids could beg and laugh and jump up and down and generally make a nuisance of themselves without him doing a thing, while others were clouted if they so much as went near a piece of chocolate or gum. A child who was struck would give a little squeal or a howl, duck and run off. And they were very adept at avoiding the swishing cane. But this needless, petty instance of violence here, in this place – the grim result of large-scale, systematic violence – made Toftlund see red. A tiny lad in a pair of rubber boots several sizes too big for him and trails of snot running from his nose elbowed his way between the bigger boys and up to one of the British drivers who was handing out chocolate. The old man with the stick spotted him and tried several times to hit him, but the little kid was too quick for him. He made it to the front, was given a bar of chocolate and a pack of chewing gum. His face lit up in a big smile. The old guy took a couple of steps forward and raised his cane, and Toftlund snapped. He grabbed hold of the stick on its way down and felt his palm sting as he tore it out of the manikin’s hand, broke it across his knee and flung the pieces to the ground. The old man turned and stared at him aghast while the children pulled back into a circle and goggled fearfully at Toftlund’s furious face, the icy, alien blue eyes and the clenched fist raised to strike.
‘Leave them alone, you arsehole,’ Toftlund hissed. ‘For God’s sake just leave them alone. They only want a bit of chocolate.’
The old man looked at Toftlund, retreated a few steps, picked up the pieces of his stick and fell to mumbling unintelligibly, his head and his whole body shaking. He drew back, out of the crowd, away from the human chain which had ground to a standstill like a conveyor belt suddenly breaking down, and stood up against the wall, trembling, with the tears rolling down his cheeks. Three women gave Toftlund dirty looks as they went over to comfort him.
Toftlund felt a hand on his arm and half-turned, tensing his muscles. He relaxed when he saw André’s melancholy face.
‘Come, Mr Toftlund. Come with me and leave them alone.’
Per did as he was bid. Teddy was standing a little way off and had seen the whole thing. He smiled wryly. As soon as Toftlund had been pacified the cardboard boxes full of sanitary pads and toilet paper started moving again, the children’s cries resumed. And the old man was left with the remains of his stick.
‘Why was he hitting them? There was no call to,’ Toftlund said. His voice quivered slightly. He did not know why he had reacted like that. Every day people were murdered, burned to death, tortured, robbed, raped and chased from their homes and he had got upset over an old man hitting some half-grown boys.
As if André could read his mind he said:
‘At some point it becomes too much for all of us and we feel we have to do something, something that will show an immediate result. Then we can feel good about ourselves. We think that by doing one specific good deed we can make the colossal, abstract evil, which we can do nothing to prevent, disappear. We think that with such an act of exorcism we have absolved ourselves of all responsibility. You have no business here, Inspector Toftlund. I know you are looking for someone. Take a look around you. There are five thousand people here, hundreds more arriving every day, but you’re welcome to try. And then go home and let us do our work as best we can. Okay?’
‘Okay. But why was he hitting them? Why does he get away with that?’
‘He is the only man from his village still alive. All the rest are in a mass grave. He was nothing special in the village, he’s a bit of a halfwit really. But now he sees himself as the village elder and, as such, responsible for maintaining decorum, order and discipline. He doesn’t hit all of the children. Only the survivors from his own village. He only hits the on
es he loves.’
‘That makes no sense.’
‘Not in your rich world, no. But here it does. Here it makes a lot of sense.’
‘But what do the mothers say?’ Toftlund ventured desperately.
‘Most of the children have been separated from their parents. Most of the men were killed, most of the women were raped and many of them are dead too, others fled up into the hills, still more could be in other refugee camps here or in Macedonia. All of them have lost everything. The old folk are the lucky ones. Some of them. Find your woman, Toftlund, and go back to your rich little country. You have no business here.’
André caught sight of Torsten Poulsen and with a nod to Teddy he walked over to the UN man and they strode off into the camp.
‘Your case does seem pretty trivial when you look at all this, doesn’t it, Per?’ Teddy said.
‘Shut up, Teddy.’
‘Oops, I hit a nerve there.’
‘So?’
‘Oh, nothing. First the secret agent shows a glimmer of human feeling, then cracks start to appear in the official armour, a little doubt as to the accepted belief that might is right, the necessity of bringing everything to light. The notion that wrongdoers must be punished.’
‘It’s not about that.’
‘Well, what is it about, Per?’
‘It’s about justice. Laws are meant to be obeyed.’
‘Ah yes. Justice. The laws. Very good. And revenge?’
‘There’s an element of revenge in all punishment.’
‘Voilà. But now you’re wondering whether it’s worth the trouble to go looking for this sister of mine, who was mixed up in some dirty business so long ago that no one is really interested any longer. And the reason you’re wondering is that the horrors of today, which you’re looking at here, make the sins of the past seem even less important.’
‘Oh, I can’t discuss this with you.’
‘No one’s asking you to.’
Teddy slapped Toftlund on the back. Per stared at him in amazement.
‘I like you, Toftlund, old man. You’re an inarticulate old sod, but somewhere inside that wooden chest beats a good heart. Now what we have here is a picture entitled: Teddy Shows Affection with Manly Slap on Back.’
Toftlund shook his head despairingly:
‘I’ll never understand you. You’re absolutely nuts. Try to find your sister. See if she’s here, and then we can go home. Because it really doesn’t matter much any more. Let’s just find out whether she’s here.’
Teddy smiled at Per and relished the look of surprise on his face when he said:
‘I already know she’s here. She was washing clothes over there. She ran off when she spied her darling little brother. Or maybe because she can smell a cop a mile off.’
27
TEDDY TRIED TO EXPLAIN to Per about Dante’s Inferno, but gave up when it became obvious that the man had no idea what he was talking about. That, though, was how the refugee camp in the old, disused socialist tobacco factory at Shkodra seemed to him. Like an addendum to Dante’s description of the seven stages of Hell. It also reminded him of a concentration camp: the big, redbrick, four-and six-storey buildings with their barred windows. All those masses of people in the welter of black mud, and the curiously dead eyes of children peeking from under the plastic sheeting on the trucks that had carried them here from Kosovo’s unsown fields and burned-out houses. He had spotted Mira, or Maria, over by the water pump which the UNHCR fed from a long hose. She had been wearing a white jacket and black slacks, and her shorn hair was dyed chestnut-brown. The women were washing the few clothes they had been able to bring with them: as always it was the women who strove to make life as tolerable as possible even under the most intolerable conditions. Children big and small swarmed around them, fussing and whining, being comforted and given a little something to eat. The handful of grown men and youths stood looking on and chain-smoking. It was not cold, nor was it warm, but damp and clammy both outside and in. Per and Teddy stood for a moment, uncertain how to proceed. They heard the clatter of rotor blades and three NATO helicopters came over the mountains and flew across the valley. The children perked up at that. They sprang out into the mud, their hands up above their heads clenched into fists or forming V-signs, yelling in heavily accented English: ‘Go! Go! Go! Kill the Serbs. Kill the Serbs!’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Toftlund murmured.
‘I don’t think he’s anywhere around here,’ Teddy responded. ‘What do we do now?’
Toftlund thought for a moment:
‘We split up. It might be best if you found your sister. Tell her I only want to talk to her. Tell her she has nothing to fear.’
‘Okay.’
The helicopters swooped low over the tobacco factory. The children hopped and danced and cheered. The few men raised clenched fists and smiled without removing the cigarettes from their lips. The women bent their heads over their laundry, averting their eyes from the war machines, on which one could clearly see the heavy machine guns and the missiles attached to their undersides. They looked like huge, malevolent insects rattling and roaring their way across the refugee camp and on over Shkodra to the base at Dürres. Outside the fence were two stalls selling fruit, canned goods, chewing gum, chocolate, liquor and beer, but there were no customers because the refugees had no money, so the Albanian stallholders who had been hoping to make a bit extra here also looked up, grinning broadly and revealing mouthfuls of grey metal fillings, and waved at the helicopters until they had dwindled to the size of small hawks in the distance. A white jeep bearing the Red Cross symbol drove past the stalls and up to the main gate. There were two young men in white jackets in the front and through the smoked windows of the roughly painted vehicle the figure of another man could just be made out in the back.
Teddy’s heart sank as he wandered around the vast factory grounds, in and around the crumbling red buildings. On every floor people lay or sat in the gloom on the frame bunks which the UN had had installed. Row upon row of them. Beds stacked one on top of another. Men, women and children packed in like factory-farmed cattle. But even in such dire conditions people still tried to create their own little space with the aid of small personal touches: a coloured blanket, a couple of pillows, a picture or two of their missing kin, another blanket hung up in order to screen off a corner and give at least a semblance of privacy, however false. The UN had put in a row of chemical toilets. A heavy reek of urine and excrement rose from them, but the silent, blank-faced individuals in the queue outside the small metal cubicles seemed inured to it. This smell was nothing compared to the sickening stench that hit Teddy when he stepped inside the first building. This had been used as a toilet by the first few thousand refugees, until the chemical toilets had arrived a few days earlier. In a refugee camp he had confirmed the truth of man’s most basic need. He felt his stomach turn and hurried out. He scoured building after building, finding them harder and harder to tell apart as he systematically worked his way up and down stairways, looking into identical factory halls filled with identical bunk beds and the smell of unwashed bodies emanating from the huddled figures and the chill, grey, grimy concrete walls. So he could not believe what his nose was telling him when – so suddenly that he was instantly transported back to his earliest childhood – he caught the aroma of fresh-baked bread. Or at any rate the unmistakable smell of bread, making his mouth water and crowding out the stench of shit and piss. His heart began to beat faster and he sniffed the air like a dog, so strong was the memory of his father’s bakery, which he had completely forgotten until that scent hit him. All at once he was there again and could plainly see his father’s white back as he bent down to the oven and pulled out a long-handled tray of freshly baked French loaves.
Teddy stepped into the room. It was almost completely bare, but along one wall was a long table piled high with loaves of white and brown bread. In front of this was another, equally long table. Between the bread-laden table and the empty one two women we
re working. A queue of people was inching forwards. Mostly older children and women. A few toddlers. Everyone was given two loaves which they bore off like precious trophies. The scent of the bread drowned out the smell of bodies. A teenage girl in a pair of tight, trendy blue jeans and a sweatshirt printed, quite absurdly, with an advert for the Hard Rock Café in Los Angeles, took the loaves from the piles behind and passed them to another woman who handed them to the next refugee. Teddy regarded her still slim figure in the black slacks, and the narrow, melancholy face framed by the chestnut hair. The whole exercise was carried out quietly and mechanically with no fuss, no hint of unrest, and when the last loaf was gone those still in the queue simply went on standing there, patiently waiting. The teenager said something in Albanian, Teddy assumed she was telling them just to wait, that fresh supplies were on the way. They obviously believed her, because there were no signs of any build-up to the sort of frantic tussles for a single loaf of bread which he had seen on the TV at home in Denmark a month ago. Teddy walked up to the head of the queue. He stopped in front of his half-sister and said:
‘Dobryj den, moja sestra.’
She smiled at him and said, also in Russian:
‘Hello, Teddy. I had a feeling you would find me. Let’s go outside. It’s going to be an hour or so anyway before the next shipment of bread arrives and is unloaded.’
They sat down on a couple of small stools with their backs against a white wall and the scent of bread in their nostrils. They were alone, a little apart from everything in a spot where, Teddy assumed, the staff took a break now and again. They sat there smoking their cigarettes and soaking up the sun which had miraculously broken through, as if the Almighty, like a great stage manager, had pulled back the cloud curtains. The sun was warm and they turned up their faces to the light which made the snow on the distant mountaintops sparkle like crystal. They carried on talking in Russian, as if with this language they created their own private little world, assuming as they did that no one else would understand what they were saying to one another. She took a long drag on her cigarette and narrowed her eyes against the dazzling spring light.
The Woman from Bratislava Page 41
