The Crossway

by Guy Stagg

  I was following signs for Elbasan, a small city eighty kilometres east of Durrës. I had expected the used cars, the unfinished architecture and the signs of discarded industry, but I had not expected the cheerful bemusement that greeted me by the roadside. And, as I neared the city, I began to share in this confusion. What was I doing here?

  Learning more about Orthodoxy. That, at least, was what I told myself. Although I could remember that the Christians in Eastern Europe, Russia and the Balkans had split from Rome in the eleventh century, otherwise I knew little about this branch of the faith. However, I avoided most of the Orthodox churches, because the priests were forbidding figures and the services left me baffled – endless hours of standing, bowing, kneeling and chanting.

  On the third morning I entered the Shkumbin Valley, a narrow passageway cutting into the mountains. Each day in Albania had been warmer than the last, and now the sky was spare with light. Farmland flanked the road and allotments lined the river, with elderly couples kneeling in the soil. When I waved they stopped their work to stare, watching me without expression. I kept waving until they went back to work, bending once more to the ground.

  Next day I reached Elbasan. Here the trouble started.

  Esme had green eyes and blonde-brushed hair that fell from her head in spirals. I was already besotted with her. ‘Peel-grim,’ she said, as her friend Arjana nodded along. ‘Yes, in Albania we have a lot of peel-grim.’

  It was late on Friday afternoon. We were sitting in a fifteenth-century fortress in the centre of Elbasan. Earlier that afternoon Esme and Arjana had taken me on a tour of the city: the state hospital, the state university, the open-air markets and the Rinia Park. We even went on a ride at the funfair, a metal pirate ship that squealed as it swung back and forth.

  Elbasan Castle was the final stop. Its outer walls were still standing – a square of mounded masonry with watchtowers capping each corner and ivy overwhelming the battlements – but the space inside was now a complex of hotels and apartment blocks, with gardens, an amphitheatre and a restaurant on propped terraces. We sat on the top terrace, looking out at the city’s muddled rooftops, at sagging tiles and slanting shingles and sheets of pitch-black bitumen.

  Esme kept speaking: ‘In Laç – you have visit Laç? Drive to Tirana, drive to Lezhë, next is Laç. In the hills there is a church, Shën Antoni. Every summer peel-grim are coming to the church. From Albania, from Kosovo, from Greece. Everywhere. A lot, a lot. Ten thousand maybe. Everyone is coming for a miracle.’

  ‘Do you believe in miracles?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I believe.’

  ‘Have you ever seen one?’

  ‘Once I have.’

  ‘Go on!’

  Esme looked embarrassed. ‘My family is Muslim, but everyone is coming to Laç – Christian, Muslim, everyone. When I was eighteen we went for peel-grim-edge. Inside Shën Antoni I prayed to meet a man who I will marry only for love.’

  Earlier that afternoon Arjana has explained how most of her friends were already married, the matches chosen by their parents, the weddings held within weeks of leaving school. However, because these two were nursing students, they had earned a little time. Esme wanted to choose her own husband.

  ‘I prayed with all my heart,’ she went on. ‘One month after, my prayer comes true.’

  By this point the restaurant was filling up. Groups of middle-aged women wearing too much make-up were joined by sleek young men in chrome-coloured shirts. Sitting beside them, it was easy to forget about the walk and imagine that I was here on holiday.

  I asked Esme how they met. She looked embarrassed again and motioned typing. Facebook. First he sent her messages. Then they spoke on Skype. Finally they went for coffee, and Esme fell in love. To begin with she kept the relationship secret, because her parents knew nothing about the boy’s family. However, one day her mother heard her whispering down the phone, and soon the whole story was out. That was when Esme decided the two families must meet. But they needed somewhere special. Somewhere neutral. So, back to Laç.

  ‘We were late when we arrive to the church. My parents thought I was sick because I was too nervous. But when my father sees I am in love, he cannot be angry.’

  ‘And now Esme is engaged!’ Arjana added.

  Heart breaking, smile fixed, I asked when she would marry.

  ‘He is in Manchester. You know Manchester? For two years he has been working there. For two years I have not seen him.’

  ‘He cannot come home,’ Arjana explained, ‘because there are no jobs in Albania.’

  Arjana was smaller than Esme, with tiny hands and a tiny face. Her expression was earnest, but when she smiled she showed every one of her tiny teeth. A few hours ago, looking round the hospital, she had talked about work. The medical staff never had enough doctors, Arjana told me, but too many nurses. This was worse, because none of the nurses were properly trained, and elderly patients would often turn up with their wife or daughter, refusing to let anyone else care for them.

  The hospital consisted of lightless hallways and cluttered corridors – a mess of blue binbags and beds on casters. Patients lay in the wards, the family members at their sides looking out with startled eyes. One of those patients, an old man tied up in plastic tubing, wanted to speak with me. His mouth was folded in, as if he had swallowed his lips, and though the jaw moved up and down, no sound came out. I tried to listen for his voice, but heard only a hollow pock, pock, like the bouncing of a ping-pong ball.

  Esme and Arjana had lessons in the hospital; however, they were both studying at a private college called Università Cattolica Nostra Signora del Buon Consiglio. The college was run by nuns and classes took place in three or four languages. After qualifying, most of the students looked for jobs in Italy or Switzerland, but Arjana was different. She wanted to stay.

  In the late afternoon, as we sat in the restaurant, she tried to explain why. ‘Esme says I am scared to leave home, but if everyone leaves, who will make our country?’ Arjana asked, holding out two tiny hands. Shadows crept through the gardens below, and buried lamps lit the grass in shifting constellations. Over the ramparts groups of men drifted along an avenue of reddish tile, while in the distance I could make out the funfair, its twists and slides and spinning tops shaped like giant toys. When the blue faded from the sky, the fairground lights began to dance, ribbons of neon wheeling round and round. For a moment I understood what kept Arjana here, because in a single day the country had opened up to me, and it seemed now like a precious place.

  ‘There’s nowhere the same as Albania,’ she added.

  Esme hoped to find a job in Manchester. ‘Last year I apply for a visa. Not to work, only to visit, but they tell me no visa.’ She tugged at a spiral of hair, trying to remember the word. ‘I know why. Is because I did not go on peel-grim-edge. So next month I will apply again, but first I will go to Laç. I will pray with my whole heart. And then maybe another miracle.’

  That evening the nuns at Nostra Signora del Buon Consiglio hosted a dinner party. There were four of them: Sr Louisa Antonia, who took countless photographs on a digital camera; Sr Olga, who held a napkin to her face whenever she was in frame; Sr Alessandra, who kept rubbing her eyes as if the whole world was a surprise; and Sr Shalom, the mother superior, who talked less than the others, and smiled less too, but when she laughed she waved her arms like a conductor. The rest of the sisters would always join in, whether or not they heard the joke.

  The nuns shared an apartment on the top floor of the college. It was rather smart: wax candles, embroidered tablecloths, silver picture frames and polished floors. The air smelt of crushed lavender and chopped herbs, with the ticklish afterscent of icing sugar. I turned up carrying a bunch of tulips and expecting three hours of strained conversation, but by the end of the evening I wanted never to leave.

  Although the nuns’ dining table was only big enough for eight, they had invited all the teachers – doctors and lecturers come over from Italy for a term. And, once ev
eryone was squeezed into their seat, the room filled with a shared sense of anticipation, like a surprise party awaiting its final guest.

  On my right sat a lecturer called Andreas. He wore expensive glasses, which he kept pushing up his nose with the tip of his finger. As a child Andreas had spent three years living in Nottingham, and now he spoke English with a Midlands accent. As an adult he had trained to become a criminal psychiatrist, but changed career after profiling too many paedophiles.

  I asked if he was happy teaching here.

  ‘The first time? No way. I left within three weeks. I couldn’t cope with the atmosphere. The last mother superior, Sr Benedetta, was impossible. For the nuns, for the students, even the teachers. You know what she said to Sr Alessandra? Said she was too stupid to work here. Sat through her lessons. Made her take the students’ exams. Sr Alessandra passed, but afterwards she was so depressed she couldn’t leave her room for a year.’

  ‘A year? Poor Sr Alessandra!’

  He leant towards me. ‘One day the governors decided to move Sr Benedetta to a college in Tirana. That’s when Sr Shalom asked for her to be sent elsewhere. Albania is too small, she said. The other sisters would never escape. So Sr Benedetta was taken out of the country. Where? I don’t know where.’

  I started talking about my journey, and about the monks and nuns who had taken me in, trying to describe the fascination of their solitary, surrendered lives. ‘But it must be odd working in a place where half the staff take a vow of obedience,’ I added.

  ‘It’s like being dead. But that’s the culture here: repressed.’ He leant closer. ‘There are young men in my class who are clearly gay, but cannot admit it. They will get married, have children and never understand their own sexuality.’

  When Sr Shalom said grace, Andreas stopped talking. From that moment on, the discussion reeled round the table without settling. I remember Sr Olga explaining that, although this was a Catholic university, they taught students from all religious backgrounds. Albania was the most tolerant country in the world, Sr Louisa Antonia added, because every religion was persecuted during Hoxha’s dictatorship. Yet Sr Shalom worried that Europe was becoming less tolerant and that her students would struggle to find jobs. But perhaps this was a blessing, Sr Alessandra suggested, as the university was meant to train the next generation of nurses, not send them away. At that point the other sisters nodded in tandem.

  There was wine and music and too many courses. I kept turning down carafes of red and extra helpings of food. By the end of the first course, Sr Shalom’s cheeks were shining. By the end of the second, Sr Olga had given up hiding from the photographs. Midway through dessert, while Sr Alessandra talked in tottering French about her favourite Father Brown mysteries, Sr Louisa Antonia ran from the room, returning with a bottle of homemade limoncello. She poured the liqueur into ten tiny glasses, reciting the recipe to herself – white spirit, sugar syrup, six peeled lemons – as the rest of the table simmered with laughter. Then Sr Shalom proposed a toast, wishing me luck for the rest of my trip. Listening to her speak, I realized that today had been my favourite of the whole pilgrimage. In my mind, fantastic plans were forming: I would stay in Albania, live in Elbasan, and marry Esme. (Those green eyes! That spiralling hair!) Now Sr Shalom was raising her glass into the air, the drink honey-bright in the candlelight. I raised my own and took a sip. Another sip. A third and the glass was finished.

  Finally Sr Alessandra opened a box of After Eights, shaking them onto the table. ‘My gosh,’ said Andreas, watching plastic wrappers gem the cloth. ‘English chocolates!’

  Sr Shalom began to laugh, waving her arms in a figure of eight. The other sisters joined in: an orchestra of nuns, laughing in harmony.

  My holiday mood lasted all week. It was the feeling of restless possibility that comes with the spring, as each evening stretches longer than the last. Past Elbasan the valley narrowed and the fields bunched into steep slopes of pine. Plane trees knitted their branches above the road, while the colours in the woods became dense. Rich greens. Richer blacks. My boots were looser now, the soles beginning to soften, so I slowed my pace and dropped down to the river, picnicking by the bank or washing my feet in the water.

  The upper valley was sparsely populated, but there were villages with children playing in the street. As I walked by they would call out in the few English phrases they knew. Hello how are you I am fine. Sometimes they ran towards me, shaking my hand and pulling my rucksack straps. Hello what is your name please. Long after I left their villages, one or two would still be skipping at my side, wittering away in a dozen words of English. Hello how are you goodbye.

  Later, as I hiked on the gravel banks above the river, a man cycled up behind me and got off to walk. He was wearing white trousers, white shoes, white socks and a white T-shirt. His hair was powdery grey, and dry spittle flecked the edges of his mouth. The man’s name was Mehmet.

  Mehmet told me that he was once a wealthy engineer with a house in Elbasan, a flat in Tirana, and one, two, three Mercedes to drive between them. ‘But then Jesus Christ, Son of God, gives me a vision.’

  ‘What kind of vision?’

  ‘White light. Like soap. It washes the buildings, washes the streets, washes the sun. Everything clean after that. All the sin washes away.’

  ‘Are you sure it was from Jesus?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, was the most clean man.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Now Mehmet has no car. Now Mehmet cycle everywhere. Kukës to Vlorë. Shkodër to Sarandë. Everywhere cycle. Everywhere tell the good news.’

  He asked my job. I told him I didn’t have one. ‘Keep walking – that’s my job.’

  ‘You must pray!’ he announced. ‘Every morning, when you get out of bed, you must pray: Please God to give me a job.’

  ‘Haven’t got a bed either.’

  ‘You must pray! Every morning pray: Please God to give me a bed.’

  ‘I used to work for a newspaper.’

  He paused a beat, two beats. ‘When I went to Greece, to tell the good news, I met a journalist of the BBC. He say: Greece will fall out of Europe. I say: Greece will not fall out of Europe. Every morning Mehmet pray to God that please Greece will not fall. Yes?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Patches of grey grew in the pits of his T-shirt. Leaves of paint peeled from his bike. His shoes made a snarling sound on the gravel, and his voice never dipped below shouting.

  I walked more quickly. Mehmet matched my pace.

  ‘Where is your wife?’ he asked.

  ‘No wife.’

  ‘You must pray!’

  ‘Did you pray for a wife?’

  ‘Mehmet prayed. Now he has too many.’

  ‘But I can’t afford to get married.’

  ‘God will make you rich. You must—’

  ‘Yes, I get the idea.’

  Mehmet licked his lips. The skin was chapped and chalky. ‘Every morning you must pray: Please God to make me rich. Then you must give everything away to charity and God will give you ten times more, twenty times more.’

  I told him I didn’t want to be rich, but it was too late.

  ‘If you give ten euro to charity, God will give to you hundred euro. If you give hundred euro, God will give to you thousand euro. Mehmet is charity. Every day Mehmet tell the good news. Give hundred euro to Mehmet and God will give to you thousand euro.’

  I stopped moving. ‘I haven’t got a hundred euros.’

  ‘Give fifty euro to Mehmet and God will give to you five hundred euro.’

  ‘I want to walk alone now.’

  ‘Give Mehmet thirty euro—’

  ‘Go away!’

  He licked his lips a second time. His mouth was clenched, hungry. Then he got onto his bicycle and rode off, tyres grinding over the gravel.

  That was on Saturday morning.

  On Saturday afternoon I entered the lower slopes of Mt Jablanica – a ridge running down the eastern edge of Albania, forming the main bord
er with Macedonia. The road tracked an antique railway as it burrowed between boulders, cliffs and buttresses of rock. Though my path kept climbing, I seemed to rise no higher, but grew dizzy following its twisted course, tramping hour after hour in the sun.

  Eventually I came to Librazhd, a town forty kilometres west of the border, set in the fold of a hill. Mismatched buildings lined the streets, their walls made of brick and mortar, plaster and glass, the corners chipped and the colours muddied. Red balconies, blue porches, green shopfronts and pink awnings – all of them grimed with age. Here and there I noticed wooden gables or tiled roofs, but I saw no church, so I went into a grocery shop and asked for a priest.

  The owner of the shop had a frowning face and a schoolboy haircut. He motioned me to wait and called for his son, Aleks, who swaggered downstairs and started to translate. Yes, there was a church in Librazhd. There, in the hut opposite the shop. The Antiokia Evangelical Church. That’s right, a Protestant church. England was a Protestant country, yes? Good. Aleks’s father was the church pastor. Tonight I would stay with his family, and tomorrow we would go to church.

  Aleks showed me upstairs. Above the shop was a flat with rooms of blond pine and a smell like warm bedding. The furniture was pine too, and the shelves decorated with religious memorabilia: plastic-framed postcards of Jesus, or passages from Scripture carved in stone. Yet the place was too new to feel welcoming, and so tidy that I was reluctant to put down my rucksack.

  The windows in the sitting room faced east towards the mountains. Aleks made a bed for me on the sofa. ‘My father built this house,’ he announced, as he laid out the blankets and sheets. ‘He built it with his hands. I am very blessed; I know that I am very blessed.’

  Aleks was twenty-two. His head was shaved and his movements abrupt, but he spoke softly, his English ornamented with polite turns of phrase. When Aleks was a boy, Peace Corps volunteers visited the town each weekend. Librazhd had the only Protestant church in the region and they came for the Sunday service. They would often spend the night, meaning Aleks could practise his English. One of them married his sister, and now she lived in America. ‘In summer I will go stay with her. When I am done studying, maybe I will move there. I am studying to be physiotherapist. Truly it is my dream, but in Albania there is no money for physiotherapist.’ He shook himself and lit a cigarette. ‘Come, you will meet my friends.’