The albanian, p.3
The Albanian, page 3
I have not been out of my hotel room after dark before. Sometimes I have felt trapped there by my fear of the terrible things that might happen. Maybe he is a good person.
‘I promise I will not try to kiss you again. I am sorry Rosa, is just something inside tell me to do it when I look at you.’
He leads me back up the rocks, through the tunnel and along the walls to the Café Lucullu. I don’t know if this is the right thing to do, but I am pushing past my doubts because I don’t want to be a prisoner of my own fears. Lights are appearing all around me, night is deepening the shadows, changing the scenery. I am still working out where fear and good sense overlap.
2
Inside Café Lucullu the light is yellow. I am in a wooden corner, dark and enclosed by shelves and sets of booths and tables in the same dark wood. There are tiny flies, listless and distracting in the thick, oily air. They circle in the yellow light and plunge back into the smoke of the kitchen. There is a grimy silver plastic cassette player on the shelf behind my head, and it yodels, distorted and unevenly, That’s Amore, Are You Lonesome Tonight. Brass plates and ceramic figures roughly painted in national costume, rows of wine glasses coated in a film of old cooking fat and embedded with dust. There are Americans at the plastic tables in the alleyway. I can hear their laughter and the occasional word between the staticky mandolins and Dean Martin.
The young man carries plates and glasses. I see him passing by, wearing a tight smile, walking high and stiff. I watch his feet move back and forth in black boots, worn to the shape of his foot. They have tapered-in heels, rough with walking, and pointed toes and holes punched in patterns with stitches curving in a cowboy style. They move, one before the other on the dark slate floor, they disappear and return and disappear and then they point towards me, growing larger.
‘You want drink?’
I can see scraps of food stuck to them now and the pattern meeting in points at the top.
‘I bring you something.’
They turn, I see the back of them and the worn heel showing flashes of the raw leather beneath the dyed black skin. They disappear. No guy in Bunbury would wear fancy boots like his and I can’t imagine he has sneakers at home, or thongs.
Maybe that is one reason why I am sitting here, watching this guy who could steal my passport and force a kiss on me. I could have walked quickly to Hotel Bellevue and maybe nobody was lurking in the bushes tonight, it might have been safe. Now I am here and I am waiting for this stranger to walk with me. He is a stranger, but not quite as strange as the guy with the bad teeth, or even the shopkeepers here. I don’t really know why that is, or why I think it’s better to trust him than anybody else. Maybe it’s that I’m tired of being alone and he is interesting. He seems sincere and he looks me in the eyes. Maybe he is the turtle’s answer to my request. I did ask it to find me love. He may be the answer — or it could just be a coincidence.
The boots come back and a plate clatters in front of me.
‘Enjoy.’
He places a glass of black liquid beside the plate, turns and leaves.
‘Thank you.’
‘Is not problem.’
He turns his tight smile on me. ‘You have Italian name so I have think maybe you like this Italian Coke.’
He disappears. I taste the familiar, bittersweet Chinotto. My dad sometimes buys it for a treat at Christmas, a carton of it, which lasts until Easter because nobody likes it except him and me. On the plate are two fried eggs, gooey on top with brown oil in tiny reservoirs, a thick white slice of round bread and a mound of oval slices of potato, yellow and resting in a pool of melted butter. There is also a piece of blackened meat, a lumpy skinless sausage. A small bowl appears beside me.
‘Some salad for you.’
It is filled with finely sliced cabbage.
‘Is okay?’
I pull the bread apart and dip it into the goo of an egg.
‘Yes thank you.’
‘In one hour is nine thirty and I am finish.’
Frank Sinatra bellows about New York and I eat the eggs and bread and the vinegary cabbage. The boots turn and move in the corner of my vision.
Nine thirty. The Americans go and he smiles uncomfortably, bobbing his head at them. He hands them a bill, they pay and walk away. The wooden door closes and he walks towards me.
‘Okay Miss, take up your things, now I walk with you.’
I obey.
‘Oi, Vesna, dobar dan!’ he shouts at the kitchen. A woman’s voice calls back and he sneers and waves. The door is heavy and thuds loudly. We are in the dark street. He lights a cigarette.
‘Come.’
‘Don’t you like her?’
‘Vesna? She is fucking Serbian.’
The guidebook said that Yugoslavia is made up of Serbs, Croats and some others I don’t remember. I guess he is not Serbian.
‘Are you Croat?’
He reels out a long, quick sentence in his language, maybe a curse.
‘I am Albanian, Rosa.’
He says it with force. I think I insulted him. We walk beside each other in silence through the narrow alleys, down stairs, under a dim light glowing down from windows.
‘Do you like being a waiter?’
He laughs.
‘Is easy job, don’t hurt my back and I just be nice, nice, smiling at people. I must be very false, always they must think I am happy to serve them. They pay me better than some job and I like to live in Dubrovnik. I keep some money for my mother.’
Soon, we are in the main Stradun. It seemed to take so long to get to the cafe from the cathedral, yet coming back was so quick and I feel a little more at ease with him now we are in a throng of strangers. People stand in groups, talking, gesturing with their hands as though they are telling stories, and laugh together. Girls are dressed up in high heels with teased hair. I am not one of them, in my traveller shoes, and neither is he, it seems. He walks by without speaking to any of them. He crushes his cigarette into the ancient marble. In silence we pass through the chattering and giggling Stradun and walk through a narrow stairway on the opposite side and into a small bar. It’s dark inside and he shows me to a booth. ‘Sit.’
He introduces me to a narrow, peering man with blond hair who smiles a great deal and they speak. They turn their shoulders towards each other, so I am excluded. They each stuff a hand in their pockets and stand to leave. I stand too. They shake hands and bend forward and the man smiles and nods to me. We walk away. I don’t know what it is that they did and said but it seems a little strange. I want to know, to see if he is trustworthy.
‘Did you buy something from him?’
He is darkly annoyed at my question but I like to watch his agitation because I feel like I have some control, questioning him.
‘No, he is my friend, he go to Svizzera in one week to find work. Switzerland, you say Switzerland in English. Maybe we never will meet again. I give him something.’
‘What?’
‘Is not your problem, why you ask me?’
‘Was it someone’s passport that you stole?’
‘No, of course not.’
I don’t know if I believe him, but he won’t tell me and I let it go. We walk through the Stradun, out through the main gate of the city and over the wooden drawbridge. He pauses a moment, lights another cigarette and tosses the match over the drawbridge into the moat full of flowers. He inhales.
‘Which hotel you live in?’
His smoke clouds around, I can’t help but breathe it into me.
‘Bellevue.’
He unrolls his shirt sleeves, buttons the cuffs, squints in the smoke.
‘Is cold night. This one is expensive hotel, you must be very rich.’
We walk up the hill, past the restaurants and hairdresser, the grand buildings of the tourist bureau. He is interesting, fascinating really, and I want to know more.
‘I am not rich at all. I had to sell my car to come here. It is just that Yugoslavia is very cheap. This one is less expensive than the place I work in.’
He crushes another cigarette butt and pauses, turns to me. ‘Yugoslavia is shit place, too poor. Of course you are rich, you live in Australia, your family is not hungry.’
There is silence. Cars pass. I feel like I should make an excuse for myself. I feel guilty, even though I haven’t done anything to cause this. We walk a little further and pause at a high chain-mesh fence dividing the path from a steep cliff. He pulls me to the edge and looks down at sharp rocks and the dark, turbulent sea. I look down too, at rocks, black water, sea foam, a wild fig tree struggling to survive in a crevice. He sighs, holds me close beside him. I do not resist him.
‘My God, Dubrovnik is beautiful place and I have some happy days here, but always I am alone. When I walk to my home, I stand here and look down to this part of sea. Is beautiful place here. It help me forget all bad things.’
I can feel his chest rise and fall in the silent moment close to him.
‘Is very nice for me to be with you Rosa.’
We turn and walk on, around the corner at the traffic lights, down the hill towards the Bellevue. Stairs lead down to my room with the cobalt curtains, number eleven. He walks with me, but looks over his shoulder. I unlock the door, he follows me in. Inside my belly there is a wad of nerves, wriggling together, pulled tight. I should have stopped him right there, before he walked through the door. I breathe deep and try to be careful, I am wary of him and he’s here now.
The fantastic blue of my curtains is drawn apart in his hand to reveal the sky — a chasm pitted with pinpricks of pale light. I move beside him and open the French doors to the balcony. If I can just stand outside, take him outside, there will be more space there between him and me, we can talk some more. My breath rushes and I feel panicked. I have been alone and frightened in this room at night; now I am not alone, but I am still frightened. Light is wandering on the surface of the water, searching for something, and his hand slips around my neck, pulling me into his heat, close to his mouth and his kiss, which feels too forceful. His grip is firm, he will not release me, although I pull away. I push him in the chest with my hand, but he leans into me, rubbing his hot groin against me. His grip is stone. I don’t want this. There was a moment when it felt nice to be close to him, but this is too much. I arch my back over the balustrade, till I can’t lean back any further. I try to speak, get some space.
‘I don’t want this.’
He draws back for a moment and looks in my eyes.
His eyes are fierce and murky perspex, I cannot see inside. He is not familiar now.
‘I don’t want this,’ I repeat.
His tight smile slithers at me and I am angry at him.
‘You have beautiful eye, like black grape.’
‘Please don’t.’
‘But Rosa, I must.’
I walk towards the door to open it and he will leave. He will.
But his steps are quick and he takes hold of me. His hand reaches cold and effortless up my short skirt. He pulls me closer to him and my limbs seem lifeless beneath his on my nice clean bed. He pulls at my tights, my skirt and I am stripped, eroding and wounded. He stands back, looks at my naked body and makes a low sound, not a word. I can hear the hiss of the sea, hold my breath. You can die in the sea. I close my eyes, try to block him out. I search myself for sensations, there are none.
Somewhere in my mind:
Rosa grew a great set of silver wings. She could rise up, high as the ceiling, and higher into a strange and vast expanse she flew, into the night sky. She could feel a rush of wings and turned to see a magnificent grey goose flying alongside her. Rosa was heading towards a bright star and the goose opened her peach-coloured bill and said, ‘This is your home, Rosa, this is the Southern Cross. Normally you cannot see it from the North, but you have flown a long, long way because someone has stolen your skin, but don’t be afraid: you have feathers on your soul and you can always fly away.’ Then the goose folded her wings and disappeared and Rosa felt herself falling, through the dark, through the stars, past a wild fig tree growing in a cliff and softly onto the sea, to dreamless sleep.
In the dark, his words stick to my flesh.
‘Come to me tomorrow in cafe. I wait you. If you do not come, I find you. I find you anywhere. I have eyes in all Dubrovnik.’
His boots shuffle, the door closes and he leaves.
3
Lucia made me the red box. She sat on the bed in the lounge room, cutting, gluing it into a triangle shape. Then she lined it with paper and covered that with red tissue. I can see dancing ladies with pompadour hair and giant petticoats spinning faintly beneath the layer of red. She filled it with twelve sticks of honeysuckle incense, all bound in gold lengths of satin ribbon where her hand had inscribed the twelve reasons why our friendship is so special. I am burning the last stick — I love you because we have eye-conversations. The unfurled ribbons are in the box, twisted around the few rocks I have collected — slivers of marble, a scrap of limestone from the city walls, a stone from the beach in Bunbury. It is hard to find loose segments of the black volcanic rock. This piece was wedged in a part where the sea rushes in and makes pools. There were shells too and little orange crabs scuttling away to hide from me. I have played on these dark rocks since I was a child, but sometimes people have died there — been swept away while they were fishing. Sometimes I have gone there wanting to die.
I wrap my box of keepsakes in the pink satin of my nightie and tuck it safely into the centre of my backpack.
I am leaving this room, the light is too harsh and I can see brown stains on the ceiling and there are sticky fingerprints everywhere and none of them are mine. The room is acrid and my senses have curled up. I must go. All that seems to exist within me is confused balcony-panic, maggots which spin in a ball in my gut.
I hoist the backpack onto my shoulders, click the waist and chest straps and leave room eleven. Upstairs is the office with the blue gloss door, with framed and faded blue scenes of the Adriatic, views of the city, the islands. I hand the receptionist my key. She slides an account, printed in brown, across the white laminex counter. Her lipstick bleeds tiny bright pink lines into fine wrinkles and she taps her long bronze fingernails, polished cockroaches, on a noisy adding machine.
‘You pay vun hundrid tventy-six US dollar.’
I pull out the dull green and white US notes from my purse. Our currency is so colourful in Australia, exotic. My change comes in Yugoslav dinars, in many-thousand notes. I’ve noticed when I change a traveller’s cheque, the exchange rate is always different. Every day, it goes up by several thousand dinars, shifting sands they are — in a few days this handful will be worth half the dollars.
‘Thank you,’ I say, but her blond knob of hair has disappeared.
At the top of the stairs I am standing in the sun. This is Miramare Bay, these white cliffs, this sea, and there are fig trees by the roadside, perspiring the sweet aroma of overripeness, their parcels rotting on the bitumen. My breathing is constricted by thoughts, his odour, the weight on my back. I cannot speak this feeling, I have no person to tell, I can’t even tell myself. My pulse fills my head, shot through by screeching brakes. TAXI: a tiny white car with rust at the base of the doors. A man climbs out, opens the hatch, it squeaks dryly. He walks to me, takes the weight of my backpack, I unclip, bend my shoulders back and it is gone. He opens the passenger door and I sit.
‘Aeroport?’
‘No, bus station please.’
We hop forward. Rosary beads swing from the rear-view mirror. Traffic lights, the street we walked, Pera Cingrije, curves behind me to the bay, to room eleven. Brakes grab and jerk and brown ends of cigarettes spill from the dashboard ashtray. His stained finger presses into them and white ash sticks in his fingerprint. It marks the pen he takes up to write 86,000 in a notepad on the dashboard. I find the money and he places my backpack on the footpath.
I can smell thick oil, soaked into bitumen, escaping in burnt gusts of grey from rattling orange and blue buses — the Zagrebacki transporti. Oil-tar sticks in my nostrils, up, up inside me, filling my thoughts, moving my feet forward for a ticket. I want to see the movement of this scenery past a window, another place, a dream of golds and blues and minarets. I want Istanbul. It is time to go to Istanbul now. Through the gap beneath a tiny window I am calling out, ‘Istanbul! Istanbul!’
I am giving my money to a dark-haired young woman. I have dreamed of Istanbul. The film in my eyes draws curving rooftops, hips of dancers, Arabic script. She hands me a paper ticket, blue print.
‘Bus leave Sunday, six-fifteen in morning.’
I walk away. I am going to Istanbul at last.
Through the haze of bus-smoke I can see a silver lustre of sea, soft and hushed in the harbour. Gruz is the name of this place in Dubrovnik I have not yet seen and I walk towards it with my ticket and my belongings on my back. The promenade is worn marble and traces a path along the waterfront, which I follow. Chains and ropes of boats, of yachts, of cruise ships are secured to cast iron bollards and there are flowers, white and bright pink petunias, shaking pollen from their heads into the sea breeze.
I am going to Istanbul on Sunday.
Today is Friday.
I sit sideways on a bench, still wearing my backpack. People walk by. He might find me today, tomorrow, before I can get away. He might come looking for me. I don’t want to see him again.
Across the road there are shops and high fences and I walk around a small crowd that is surrounding a man who is pulling electric irons from a suitcase, holding them in the air by their cords like a bunch of onions. A park juts out in a semicircle from the water’s edge and the road curves around it. As I walk, I can see a building several storeys high, its rooms fronted by balconies of white metal framing yellow windows. Hotel Petka: this is where I will hide, at the top of these stairs in a window up there, looking out across the sea towards Italy.
In my room on the fourth floor amid the brown wood panelling I open my backpack, unwrap the red box and place my ticket to Istanbul inside it. I wear the pink satin nightie and sleep in the day while the sun shines and the tourists bathe in the clean blue waters of the Adriatic.
