The False Apocalypse

by Lubonja, Fatos; Hodgson, John; Hodgson, John

  Qorri did not wait for the spook to greet him with his habitual cordiality, so perfectly simulated that anybody not in the know would think this was the last person to be suspected of being a spy. Instead, he looked across to a table at which sat Delina, Edi Rama’s wife, with Rama’s old friend Dash Peza and Blendi Gonxhja, his former student at the Academy. Qorri stood up from the politicians’ table and went over to them. Without sitting down, he told them of the proposal put to him.

  Delina almost shrieked, ‘Fatos, something has to be done. They beat up Edi Rama. They could beat up any of us!’

  ‘But Edi’s run off to Paris,’ Qorri said.

  ‘He’s gone for treatment until the situation calms down. He’ll be back.’

  Dash Peza and Blendi Gonxhja said the same. Dash was a boyhood friend of Rama. He had recently returned from America where he had tried without success to build a new life. He said he had become a born-again Christian there but this had evidently been a survival strategy, because in Albania he showed no symptoms of piety. Gonxhja was much more famous because he had taken part in the first students’ strike and later had become one of the most active members of the Democratic Alliance. He was now caught between his need to make a living, his love of art, his passion for politics, and his plans to leave Albania forever. Dash and Gonxhja both insisted they were ready to help the cause.

  The lack of opposition from Bar West was beginning to persuade Qorri that he might agree to represent the left in this new organisation that was to be created. But he felt no enthusiasm. He harboured doubts on which he still brooded as he left the bar.

  The same doubts assailed him just as they had done before, at Noel’s. He was unsure if they arose from trepidation at this dangerous enterprise or his lack of political zeal. Nor did he feel at home in this company. Could he court this kind of danger alongside people he didn’t know? He believed that these were the people intellectually best equipped to bring about democracy, because they were the best educated, but what had happened to them morally during those two decades while he himself had been in prison? Edi Rama, among the instigators of this group, had fled immediately to Paris. Even at the start of the anti-communist movement he had run away to Greece in fright straight after making a speech against Enver Hoxha. This entire generation of intellectuals with their double lives, opposing the regime and yet collaborating with it, seemed to have a tendency to bolt. Their way of life had taught them never to put complete faith in what they were doing but to always leave an escape route open, and ultimately never to trust one another. In one of his articles, he had used the phrase ‘grey area’ which in other countries of the East denoted the region between the ‘black’ of the regime and the ‘white’ of the dissidents. Could these people be ‘light grey’? In Albania, he believed, there had never been any white, but only black and grey. He did not think of the prisoners, including himself, as dissidents but victims. They served the regime by scaring the rest of the population. Hoxha’s regime had been a totally black hole, unillumined by the rays of courage and hope that Sakharov, Michnik or Havel had spread elsewhere in post-Stalinist Eastern Europe. Only now, after the fall of communism, was the ‘grey’ divisible into the ‘dark grey’ of those who had risen to power with Berisha and the ‘light grey’ of the opponents of the authoritarian regime. But this colour chart did not cover all the shades that distinguished these people from one another. What Qorri called ‘light grey’ had its dark patches, too. He remembered the rumours that the so-called democratic movement had been entirely a contrivance of the former Sigurimi and that most of its leaders had been its former agents and informers.

  No enterprise of this kind could expect to rely entirely on well-known, tried and tested people. Certainly these members of this opposition were united by a need to free themselves from a regime that had violated their liberty, although each of them perhaps had their particular expectations and ambitions. Qorri could not tell where this adventure would lead: to the pinnacles of power in a future government, or somewhere very far from them.

  Yet he felt he would accept their offer. He was tempted by the prospect of a leading role, and also driven by his old desire to overcome his fear of any task fraught with danger. Whenever faced with important decisions, since the clashes with the authority of his father in adolescence and his conflicts with the dictatorship and the prison authorities, it seemed to Qorri that he had always been trying to overcome fear and repress the weaker part of his nature that did not allow him to become his stronger, fuller self. That was what the dictatorship had done to people. It had made them fear to live and left them diminished. But did not these diminished selves ultimately become real selves? Fear had to be fought against, if you were not to be diminished. Qorri’s relationship with fear had been decisive in his life and in the lives of people among whom he had lived, because in their society fear was the main instrument of control. It created relationships. But it was also the main obstacle to being free. Since prison, he had established a different, less confrontational rapport with fear and with authority. He was no longer so ashamed of his fear. He was more willing to accept it as a part of himself. Sometimes he even thought of fear as a mark of dignity and respect for life. Experience had taught him that the problem was not of feeling fear, but of not allowing oneself to be mastered by it. It was less a question of not falling than of picking yourself up again. This meant that he had to nurture within himself the figure of a hero that challenged fear, but without feeling heroic. More coolly considered, this hero figure was perhaps the obverse of a repressive culture based on fear.

  Chapter VI

  First Meeting

  Qorri entered the premises of the Association of Former Victims of Political Persecution, studying the building with interest.

  The architecture of the villa housing the association was like nothing else in Tirana. The eclectic 1920s style of the façade included a round protruding balcony with a conical roof above it, which added a distinctive charm. The building also occupied a special site on a small but important square where the flag of independence had first been raised in Tirana.

  The villa had been built by a former Ottoman military officer who later sold it to the Italians for their consulate. During the Fascist occupation it became the seat of the Luogotenente. On his visit after the invasion, Ciano had looked out from its balcony on the crowds of Albanians at an organized rally in the square. In his famous diary, he mentioned ‘silent students’ among the throng.

  Most of these students later became communists, went underground and took to the mountains as partisans. In 1944, they seized power and turned the headquarters of the Luogotenente into the offices of the Albanian-Soviet Friendship Association, until the beginning of the ‘60s, when the Albanian communists broke with the Soviets and remained loyal to Stalin. The building subsequently became the headquarters of the Veterans of the National Liberation War until the fall of communism.

  The Democrats, as soon as they gained power in 1992, decided to give this villa to the recently formed Association of Former Victims of Political Persecution. But the desire to break the moulds of the past soon yielded to a tendency to emulate them. The PD was very successful in enlisting the support of former political prisoners and their families as a way of reinforcing its own anti-communist credentials. These former prisoners were required to take the places of the communist martyrs and war veterans. The ex-communist Berisha believed that they were more interested in recognition and compensation for their past than their future careers. The gift of this building was intended to mark the start of a new epoch, and invited the former victims of communist persecution to accept the symbolic role of veterans.

  In addition, the only monument to communist persecution in Tirana at that time had been erected in a corner of the square in front of this very building. This sculpture was intended to represent a victim of torture, but it gave the impression of a body whose neck, at the moment of beheading, had been stopped with a cork so that its blood had spread through
its body, turning its limbs into swollen lumps like inflated balloons.

  The former prisoners, especially the group who from the start had rejected the PD and called them ‘tools of the communists’, did not like the absence of a head. Most of the former prisoners were not old men content to be honoured as veterans and pillars of moral support, but were active people of ambition. Many of them indeed subtracted their years in prison from their age, thus presenting themselves as even younger and more purposeful. But most importantly a deep gulf, created by their different histories, yawned between the former victims of persecution and the elite anti-communist leaders. When the anticommunist movement erupted, most of the victims of persecution were either in prison or internal exile, or were living quietly in obscure corners out of the way of the dictatorship. They had minimal contact with the elite, which consisted almost entirely of members of communist families, if not party members. Qorri quoted Machiavelli to describe their position: ‘Stay neither too close, nor too far from the Prince... If you are too close, you may be buried in the rubble when he falls, but if you are too far you have no time to move in to take his place.’ The prisoners had been too far away to play a major part in the overthrow of communism, but they felt morally superior because they had not collaborated with the regime. So the elite envied the prisoners their moral stature, and the prisoners envied the elite their opportunities for education and entry into the country’s higher intellectual strata.

  Quite a few former prisoners nevertheless joined the Democratic Party. Some were ambitious people who saw in it a launch pad for their careers and hoped that they could soon get rid of the communists in the leadership. Others, with lesser pretensions, joined this big party in the hope of landing a job.

  But the Association, led by Kurt Kola, had broken with Berisha’s party after a hunger strike started by former prisoners when the government refused their claim for compensation. The strike took place in the Association’s premises and became the focus of media attention. One by one, former prisoners joined the strike in solidarity with its initiators, making the situation more complicated every day. Finally Berisha saw fit to put a stop to it. Early one morning he sent in police squads who dragged the strikers out of the building by force. After this incident the more intellectual former prisoners increasingly saw Berisha as a figure resembling the dictator Enver Hoxha, their one-time persecutor. More of them also believed the rumour that the Sigurimi had created the Democratic Party and that most of the former prisoners active in it were informers recruited in the camps and prisons, sometimes with the promise of release.

  ***

  The inaugural meeting of the Forum was held in Kurt Kola’s office, the room that had once been the office of Luogotenente Jacomoni, then the chairmen of first the Albanian-Soviet Friendship Association and then the War Veterans.

  Qorri was a former prisoner, but he had never been in this room. It was a large room with a parquet floor, a group of old armchairs on one side, and two tables in the shape of a T on the other. Clearly the furniture had not changed: what particularly irritated him were the T-shaped tables that created a barrier between the chiefs and their subordinates and also reminded Qorri of a hammer, one of the symbols of the regime and an instrument of brute force. Qorri had suggested in an article that this sort of furniture should be replaced by round tables, but nowhere had the old layout been changed.

  Kurt’s office was almost full. The first person he encountered was Rexhep Meidani, one of the regular Socialist clients of Bar West. Meidani was taciturn and listened carefully, in contrast to Pandeli Majko who as always was smiling at everybody for some reason or for none. It was hard to tell why the chain-smoking Meidani was so silent; perhaps he was sure of the support of his large party, perhaps he felt guilty for having joined this party, or perhaps it was his moderate and cautious nature. Paradoxically the Socialists were both the strongest and the weakest party seated at the T. This party formed a majority in the room. It had plenty of foot soldiers ready to enter battle, and the structures inherited from its fifty years in power. But it enjoyed minimal trust, precisely because of the past exploits of these troops. After the fall of communism the Socialist Party was a cadaver, brain-dead, drained of its life-blood, about to decompose. But this corpse had been quickly resurrected because its troops needed to survive. One hundred and eighty thousand members of the former Party of Labour were stuck without a party and without work. They were well known as people who had enjoyed privileges under the regime. Some, like Berisha, turned into anti-communists, but not all of them could join the PD, and nor would they have been admitted. Others remained loyal to a party that no longer existed, and boasted of their honesty and consistency, while others left politics forever. But most became members of the Socialist Party, as the old party was to be called from now on.

  Apart from a couple of others, Qorri did not recognize the other people or the parties they represented. One of the most striking figures present was an energetic, blue-eyed, white-haired man of sixty, the most elegant in the room in a blue suit, a snow-white shirt, and a blue tie with pale spots. This was Petrit Kalakulla, the chairman of the Democratic Party of the Right. He came from the long-persecuted class of former landowners. He had been the Democratic Party chairman for Tirana and agriculture minister in Berisha’s government, but he had left the party early on. He had a reputation as an extremist for wanting to purge the party of communists and announcing at one of the first sessions of the PD-dominated parliament that communism in Albania had been worse than fascism.

  ***

  Kurt, as host, talked to everybody with extreme benignity. A courteous atmosphere prevailed, and an exaggerated willingness to reach an understanding. It was as if these people had kept all their bitterness for their enemy, and to each other were uniformly smooth and sweet. Qorri wondered if this was unity against a common enemy, or the solidarity of the weak. Some treated Qorri himself with a respect that bordered on servility because he was one of the three at the head of the T.

  This atmosphere could not be sustained, and the meeting was short. Those present had already announced their intention of joining together. They approved a statute that welcomed any party or association to the Forum regardless of its political programme or orientation, as long as it supported its platform for a solution to the crisis. Everybody who joined would have an equal right to speak, and to propose and sign the Forum’s declarations.

  Qorri and Gjinushi undertook to draft the text of the Platform, which was to appear in the press as soon as possible.

  ***

  ‘This Forum isn’t clear to me. What do you make of it, aren’t we too much of a mixture?’ Qorri said to Gjinushi as they made their way to Kindergarten Nr. 19. Gjinushi looked at him from under his bushy eyebrows and replied, ‘It’s a discussion table of political parties working for early elections.’ They walked on a little, and he added with a chuckle, ‘So don’t take it into your head that we’ve brought you in so you can take power.’

  Qorri was taken aback. His meaning was obvious. They had installed three former political prisoners as their spokesmen, but kept power for themselves. Who were ‘they?’ Clearly he was talking about himself, but who were ‘we’ at a time like this, when nobody knew how the game would end?

  Qorri thought back to Gjinushi’s career under the dictatorship. In 1990, Ramiz Alia had sent him with Berisha to pacify the rebellious students, precisely because he was a trusted figure. This role became his bridgehead to a future political career. Berisha had been put at the head of the anti-communists and had taken the leadership of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile Gjinushi had waited a little and created the second opposition party, the Social Democrats, which in the first years had been in coalition with the PD. Then, as Berisha gradually cemented his power, Gjinushi found himself sidelined and had joined the opposition. However, all told, he had survived longer in power than anyone else. Qorri had wondered if people like Gjinushi were the kind who, according to Machiavelli, had stayed neither too
close to nor too far from the Prince: people who lived with danger and were poised to take high office. But in fact neither Gjinushi nor Berisha belonged to this category. They had been close to the Prince but had known when to run away. They had betrayed him at the last moment and escaped being crushed by the rubble of his fall. These people should have fallen with the Prince, but in the absence of anyone ‘not too close nor too far,’ who was ‘poised to take office,’ they were the only people who could fill this role. That was the drama of Albania and they were the country’s only chance, Qorri reflected. So this ‘’we’ stood for the former communists who were accustomed to power, whom Kalakulla hated. But there was still a big difference between Berisha and Gjinushi, who was not a communist transformed into an anti-communist. He was subtler. He almost never looked back to the past, and neither deplored it nor glorified it, and he had formed a party whose name at least was left wing.

  He and Gjinushi finished drafting the Platform, and with these thoughts running through his mind, Qorri was left alone. The roughly plastered walls of Kindergarten Nr. 19 suggested all kinds of images to his mind. This time his eyes rested on a shape resembling the profile of a man with a shock of hair. His cat Nusi, the only other resident to share his living space, was curled up asleep at the foot of the bed.