The Albanian by Donna Mazza

Author:Donna Mazza
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2007-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

14

Soldiers surround us. They sit at the back of the bus and in front of us, in their khaki uniforms, with khaki bags and short haircuts. They sit solemnly, speak to each other in low voices. He bites his fingernails. It annoys me. He is insatiable, gnawing at them, spitting pieces into the air. Otherwise he is silent. I stare out the window at the sea, try to block out the irritation of the biting and the spitting. I do not like this about him, it’s something of the brutal and angry parts I see. Even if there is a good reason for this, they are difficult for me to tolerate. I would probably lose patience with it some day.

Five days ago I saw this coast, came past Neum, the fishing boats. They are unchanged, but the weather has turned colder and there is a white froth on the tips of the waves. The soldier across the aisle taps a black boot on the floor of the bus, his skin is almost perfect, his eyes an Adriatic shade of blue. We drive into the night. I feel sick from the rocking of the bus, the bends in the road, and I fight to contain the nausea. The bus pulls into Split, the brakes squealing. He has not spoken the entire journey, neither have I. It is very cold outside; there is snow on the mountaintops.

He carries my backpack and his own small bag and we walk to the railway station. The soldiers have not followed. He ushers me onto the carriage and we find an empty compartment with hard vinyl bench seats, sliding windows, small pictures under the luggage rack: Crno jezero, Montenegro — a dark lake surrounded by shadowy mountains.

‘We can go in this place one day when I take you in Kosovë.’

He says things like this sometimes, but I can’t imagine it happening. It is cold in the compartment. There are the switches for a heater but no warm air. He takes off his leather jacket and folds it around my shoulders. It is heavy.

‘Aren’t you cold?’

‘No, I be very strong. Many night I have go in mountains, in cold snow, in my home and in military. In military they have make us go in summer uniform in freezing temperature and patrol in mountains. They do it to my father, make him patrol in night in water up to here,’ he indicates his upper chest area.

‘Always he be sick after this time, always he have problem in chest and then he die, and still he was young man. He say they do it to destroy Albanians. They do not want us in Yugoslavia.’

I do not know what to say. The awful life here is all-pervasive. Everything seems to lead back to the problem of being an Albanian in Yugoslavia, even his aggressiveness and nail biting. He has a sombre mood and he wants to talk to me. He is beside me and I watch his face reflected in the dark window.

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