Biografi by Lloyd Jones Page A

A man in corduroys and a blue woven jersey rubs his hands. He looks like he has cottage pie on his mind. The other, a shorter man with thinning red hair, and generous enough to smile delightedly at the sight of me dining alone, rushes over to introduce himself.
    Terry and Don both start to speak at once before catching themselves. I get the impression that this is something they do often. They laugh and exchange smiles. The one called Don says, ‘Don’t mind, do you, old man?’ And he helps himself to a chair at my table. He turns it round and leans his chest against the backrest and asks, ‘Been long in the country?’
    â€˜No. Not long,’ I say, and immediately regret it.
    Because, suddenly, everything changes with that admission. A kind of forfeiting of seniority takes place whereby they talk and I listen.
    British Telecom had given Don a vehicle stocked full with British Telecom jerseys to drive across Europe, down through Yugoslavia to Albania. Across the border a mountain man in just bare feet and a blue singlet had been the first Albanian recipient of a British Telecom pullover.
    Don says, ‘It was pitiful. Just pitiful.’
    â€˜Have you heard? ’ they chorused—and this time Don graciously gives Terry the go-ahead.
    â€˜Well, the thing is, we’ve heard rumours the Socialists are deliberately delaying distribution of grain until the election.’
    Leaning forward, Don rests his chin on the chair top.
    â€˜These are just rumours of course,’ he says, and he proceeds to pass on pickings from the rumour mill. The sigourimi has run an aid truck off the road. An Albanian-American journalist has received threats and also survived a near thing with another car on a mountain road. Don is pretty sure this is the work of the sigourimi .
    â€˜Well it’s typical isn’t it?’
    Terry tells me he is with Feed the Children. ‘Perhaps you saw the BBC clip on us? No…Well,’ he says, ‘we’re taking over the institution for the mentally handicapped children. Roger Hamilton is coming over from the Sunday Times. He’s going to do a piece. He really cares about it.’
    â€˜Oh yeah, Roger does,’ says Don.
    â€˜I mean it’s not just copy. He really does care,’ vouches Terry. ‘We were going to put in windows and fix it up—but in the end we decided the mobs would only ruin it. So we’re going to take the kids out and relocate them.’
    â€˜Relocate them is the answer,’ Don says. ‘You have to just move in and take over.’
    It’s such a tragedy,’ says Terry. ‘Listen. Eat your yoghurt. Don’t let us hold you up. God, I would kill for sausages.’ ‘Give me a pint of Guinness,’ says Don, a little later. ‘Have you tasted the grog here? Pure horse piss. Still, food would be nice too, wouldn’t it? In one village I saw a family of seven living in a single hut with two pigs and a cow. Seven! And they had only one bed and two aluminium pots between them.’
    Any moment one of them is going to ask, ‘So, what brings you here, mate?’ Any moment now and I’ll have to explain away my various jigsaw pieces—Cliff, Kansas Street, Shapallo, and the exiles.
    I stand up to leave and Terry moves his chair back. ‘Well, it’s been lovely,’ he says. I get to the door just ahead of Don’s discovery: ‘Oi, what about your supper? You’ve left your yoghurt.’
    I hurry across the foyer and bound up the stairs. Then, for godsakes, I hear footsteps hurrying after me—but it is the woman with the light bulb. She waits until my light goes on; then the hallway is plunged back into darkness.
    I shut the window and slip into bed with Queen Geraldine’s account of her marriage to Zog.

10
    IN 1938 GERALDINE appeared on the balcony of a villa in Tirana, the Albanian flag fluttering behind her. When a sudden breeze wrapped the red and