Albania 12: Tale of Terror pt.2

[NOTE: This blog/diary of Mykel's Italian-Albanian trip starts several entries before this one. Due to the oddities of Blogging, the entries appear in reverse order. As much of the reportage is base on the previous days, I recommend reading from the start, at the entry ALBANIA 1.]

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Qeparo (Coldsore day 9, but will it matter anymore?)

I don't sleep very well that night. When I do manage to drift off the dreams are terrible. Fortunately I can't remember most of them. Only one where I was standing outside, just standing, my eyes closed, seeing nothing. I feel a hand grab the front of my shirt, just about solar plexus level. In the dream I know it is a dream. This is not real. I read down and feel the hand. A human hand, masculine, holding tight. I grab the hand and squeeze. It crumples in my grip. Then I wake up, again.

I must have drifted off yet again, because I'm again awakened. This time by the sound of the glass door being slid open. There he is, unsmiling, with a large cup of coffee and more fruit.
The only thing I've eaten in the past days was fruit. Figs, pamagranite, and a mysterious cactus fruit. It all grows in the garden 30 or so feet directly below. Fertilized, I'm sure, by many others who have stood in this exact spot.

I understand why he asked me how long I'm staying. He really hates what he has to do, and wants to postpone it until the last possible minute. I could escape, maybe. But I'm so far out of town, so lost, how would I ever get anywhere? And he'd see me with my backpack, that'd be a... er... dead giveaway.

Finally he tells me his name. Coocho. I'm horrible with names, but I know if I don't remember this one, I'll be in even worse trouble. Somehow it becomes the most important task of my life to remember. Let's see: Ocho is eight in Spanish. Co-means together like co-worker or cooperate. Two eights together. I fix the image in my mind and superimpose it over his face.

I take out my camera and motion that I want to take his picture. I figure when my remains wash up on shore, they'll find the camera and then catch the guy. Surprisingly, he agrees. I guess he figures on taking the camera after the act.

After the photos he points out to the sea. He asks me if I'm going to go swimming. I tell him it's too cold. He says maybe tomorrow. I say, no I'm leaving tomorrow.

I can see the sadness in his face when I make it clear I'm not staying another day. The longer he can wait the better. I know doesn't want to have to do this, but he's got to. But now it has to be tonight.

Dua te shikoj Himara. (I want to see (the town of) Himara.), I tell him. Not thinking clearly, that if I manage to get into town I could never find my way back to this place. I get lost in Soho, for God's sake.

He points to me, then himself, and then makes the two-fingers-next-to-each-other sign that means together.

Ok, at least that will get me back to the death chamber.

Together we climb the stairs to the alley that leads to the tunnel that leads to the ditch, that leads to the stone steps that lead to the road where the bus will come to take us to Himara. We wait for a bit. The bus does not come.

I take a picture of the stone staircase, another of the garage door close to it, another of a sign that says QEPARO FSHAT, right near the descent from the highway. I have no idea what “fshat” means, but maybe some cab or bus driver will recognize the sign. Besides, if I escape, like the girl in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I can use the photos as clues for the cops to find Albania's Ed Gein.

Still, the bus doesn't come.

A car pulls out of a nearby driveway, off the main road somewhere. Slowly, it makes its way to the outer street. Coocho walks over and signals the man to stop. He has a conversation with him and opens the front and read doors of the car. He motions for me to get in the rear. I do. Then he closes both doors and waves good-bye to me. We head into town.

The driver lets me and the other passenger off at the post office. I look up the word return in the Albanian-English dictionary: kthim.

Ku kthim? I ask him. (When return?)

He shows me two fingers, one bent halfway. I guess that means in an hour and a half. I figure he'll park his cab here and return to it when it's time to leave. That doesn't give me much time, but I can buy some stamps and mail my postcards, go for a stroll down the beach, look at the ocean, have a cup of coffee. When I get out of the post office, the cab is gone.

I'll never find my way back now. My bags, most of my money is there. My computer. I know the only logic is death, but what if I'm missing something? What if he's just this nice eccentric old coot who does want to take care of me. It's not logical (or true, it turns out), but what if?
I walk to the taxi stand near the post office. Maybe the driver will be there. He isn't.

Most of the cabs are empty. In the only one with a driver, the driver is asleep on the front seat with the door open and one foot out of the cab. Knowing my own consciousness on just awakening, I decide not to wake him for the drive.

From a nearby restaurant, another guy, late thirties, needing a shave as do all Albanian men, walks toward me. [Note: Albania joins that list of countries: Turkey, Mongolia, Brazil, where the women are neck-wrenchingly beautiful, but the men are as ugly as the Bush family.]

Taksi? he says.

I pull out my camera and flip through the pictures until I find the garage on the main road.

Ju dini ketu?I ask. (You know here.)

He squints at the picture and then shakes his head. “Po (yes),” he says.

Then he says 13 Euros in English. I try to bargain, but he sticks to the price.

Taxi-meter he says.

During the ride, he never turns on the taxi-meter.

But he does get me to the garage. And actually a little past where the QEPARO FSHAT sign is. I get out and go down the stairs, trying to remember the way to the house of horrors.

A strange kind of trance music comes from someplace. It's like a pop version of Phillip Glass. I never heard it before, but it may be what's popular these days. It sounds spooky to me.

I walk down some steps, through a tunnel, another tunnel, past a ditch, through an alley. I see a
pile of bricks I never saw before. A door with a large round knocker... never saw it before. I'm lost.

I turn to retrace my steps. An old man comes the other way.

“Co-ocho?” I ask him.

He laughs, and points back where I came from. Then he makes a downward motion with his hands, and a sweeping curve with his arm. I retrace my steps, and soon get lost again.

“The sea, the sea,” I think. If I can find the sea, I can look up at the houses. I'll recognize it from the blue front and the sheer drop. If I go down, any path down, I'll find the sea.

I pick a downhill path. The music is louder here, more menacing than mellow. Like a horror movie soundtrack.

I follow the path until it ends... dead ends, then I go up a little and take another path through a bunch of fruitplants, and then down again. Sand, plastic debris, I've found the sea.

Turning my back to it, I scan the houses. There it is. Blue, in its glory, ready to fall with me, into the sea. I head right for it, up the path to the lower gate to the house. I know this gate, Co-ocho took me through it yesterday, to show me the fruit and the path to the beach. I'm sure this is the way back to the house.

The gate is locked.

I do not scream. I do not pound on it. Instead, I keep the house in view, and go up through the trees, catching my sleeve on the cactus, then pulling free. The music continues, insistent, droning. Up to a small trail. I've lost sight of the house, but I think I know where it is. I follow the path. The house comes into view again. I can see it slightly below and to the right. I reach the set of steps I recognize. They lead down toward the house. They end at a gate.

The gate is not locked.

I walk through it and escape into my room. It's warm. I collapse on one of the two beds in the room and fall into a dreamless sleep.

I awaken when it's still light outside. There is a rattle as the glass door slides open. Co-ocho brings a tray with more figs and other strange fruit on it. Much of the fruit from yesterday lies rotting by the sink. He doesn't seem to notice. He moves the food in smooth motions, like a robot. Gliding the tray to the plastic table in my room.

He makes an eating motion, putting his hands to his lips.

Bukë? (Bread?), he asks.

Po (yes), I say. I need something besides all that fruit. It'll just go right through me. I'll be a pretty messy corpse after all that fruit. He'll deserve it.

“Did you take a shower yet?” he mimes.

“Yo (no),” I say.

He shrugs, goes away and comes back with a couple slices of bread and a few cubes of cheese. He also brings about a cupful of cold spaghetti with tomato sauce. Everything looks homemade.

Then he goes away for a bit and I write a little more. Just as the sun is setting over the Adriatic, he returns. He looks grim.

Opening the sliding glass door, he takes a chair and puts in next to mine.

The miming starts again. You eat. You sleep. Now you pay. I recognize the Albanian word.

Pagoni. (You pay.)

Pay with my life? I don't ask.

He holds up one finger. A thousand Lek?? That's ten dollars. Hah, that's wonderful. I give him two thousand.

“You're my friend (I use the Italian word amici, since it was a word I never needed in Albanian),” I say. “Take more.”

He nods NO.

I don't understand. One night, four thousand lek. Two nights, eight thousand. That's robbery. That's more than I paid in my jacuzzi hotel in Vlora. This is a haunted house! $80, that's ridiculous. I'm not going to...

I hand him the money. It's most of what I have left from my last trip to the bank. But, he's only robbing me! He won't kill me. It's just extortion. He's a hustler, a con artist, not a murderer. Take my money, please! I cudda kissed the guy.

I ask him what time the bus leaves for Saranda tomorrow. He tells me 9 AM. I say I'll get up at 8.

Too late, he says.

OK, I tell him. Statë ore. Seven o'clock.

I set my phone alarm (that's all it's good for, it doesn't work here) for 6:30, just to have time to clean myself up and empty out all the fruit.

At 6:15 he opens the door to wake me up. He stands and watches as I get dressed, stuff my remaining clothes into my pack and go out the door with him. He leads me back upstairs through the alleys and ditches to the road. His wife joins him.

My bus comes and I get on it. He does not say good by. I watch him cross the street to go back to Vlora, and wait at the bus stop. Someone not from around here, will get on a bus headed South.

He will ask them where they're staying, then he'll offer his own place. Eventually, someone else will say yes, and move into the room I just left.

Albania 11: Tale of terror

[NOTE: This blog/diary of Mykel's Italian-Albanian trip starts several entries before this one. Due to the oddities of Blogging, the entries appear in reverse order. As much of the reportage is base on the previous days, I recommend reading from the start, at the entry ALBANIA 1.]

Qeparo, Albania, find that on a map! Coldsore day 8

It's time to begin the terror tale. Though it's not over yet. But life also is a terror tale. After it's over, it can only be written by someone else.

This tale starts in Vlora. The concierge at the hotel told me that all the buses from Vlora to Saranda had left. My only choice was to go to Himara, about half-way. That bus doesn't leave from the regular bus station, but one a bit out of town. I can get there by taxi. No problem.

(My guidebook lists S'ka problem! as Albanian for “No problem.” It also has this note: Often turns out to mean there is a problem.)

The bus leaves at 1PM. It's now 9 o'clock.

“Is there anything I can do at the bus station for some hours?” I ask the concierge.

She nods. “There is nothing there,” she says.

She makes a plan for me. The plan is to take a walk, return to the hotel and eat lunch in the hotel restaurant at 11. Then, after lunch, take a taxi to the bus terminal. I'll be there in plenty of time.

Maybe that's why I don't see people eat. They have lunch at 11AM. Maybe dinner at 4. Who expects people to be eating at that time? But nope, that's not it either.

I walk along the beach for a little bit and sit to watch a bulldozer push the plastic garbage around. I go to the post office and mail some postcards. Do other people still send postcards? Well, they still make 'em, so I guess so.

At 11, I return to the hotel and go to the restaurant. It's empty, though the door is open. A heavy-set woman mops the floor.

Une dua te ha ditchka. (I want to eat something.) I say. She tsks once and motions for me to sit down. I'm the only one in the place.

I ask for the menu. She brings it to me and stands over me while I decide what I want to eat. It's my first meal of the day. The menu has beefsteak, fish a la hoity toidy, pizza, pasta. I order a salad and a mineral water.

“Vetem salada?” (Only a salad?) asks the waitress, clearly meaning You disturbed me, made me open the kitchen and neglect my cleaning duties for a salad? What's wrong with you?”

“Vetem salada.” I reply.

It turns out that the salad is enough. It's weird, but on this trip I have less of an appetite than I do in New York. I drink more beer here, but eat a lot less. I wonder if I'm going to lose weight. The food is so salty, I expect I'll gain blood pressure.

My stomach is strange, as it always is when traveling. It suddenly clenches, in extreme pain. A rush to the bathroom clears me out, and I'm good for the rest of the day. After my salad, come the clenches.

I have a long bus ride ahead. So after I pay the bill, I'll clean myself out, and be ready for the long ride to Himara.

I stand to signal that I'm finished. The waitress come to me, collects my money and through the open restaurant door walks a burly guy wearing a black and white knit sweater. He walks right up to me.

“Taxi bussi Himara,” he says grabbing my bags. “We go.”

So, me, my stomach ache and I are off to the bus station, It's just a space in the street out of town, barely big enough for a bus or two. I get in one that says HIMARA on the front.

The driver takes my backpack out of the bus and puts it someplace I can't see. I'm the only passenger in the bus, but not for long. People arrive about 15 minutes before the schedule leaving time.

One of the first of the new arrivals is an older guy. About my height, he wears a typical Albanian tan straw hat. He has a worn-but-clean tweed jacket, and black slacks. His eyes are deep-set, and half closed, like they've seen too much. He sits in an empty seat, the one behind mine. He taps me on the shoulder and I turn to face him. I can see that his eyes are watery-- not sad watery, but sick watery. And one doesn't look exactly in the same direction as the other. He says something to me in Albanian.

“Une nuk flac sqip,” I say.

He shrugs, then motions for me to come and sit next to him. I do. It's not long before I begin to fear that is a mistake.

The bus leaves about a half hour past schedule.

With very few words, THE GUY speaks to me: some Italian, some Greek, some Albanian... but mostly with sign language... like he's done it hundreds of times before.

He asks me where I'm from. New York.

Where I'm going Himara.

Where I'm staying in Himara. (He puts his hands together and tilts his head on them. Then closes his eyes meaning “place you sleep.” I don't know, I shrug.

You (he points to me). Sleep (the sleeping gesture again.) My place. He points to himself, makes a little house-like triangle with his fingers, and then the sleeping gesture again.

I know. I know. But I'm sick of hotels, and Albania is supposed to be safe and small-town people are always friendlier than city people, right? I shake my head in agreement.

There's not much more to say as we ride along. Once he taps me on the shoulder and makes a straight ahead motion, then up and down, as if he's explaining the torturous mountain road ahead. I say koptoj (I understand). But maybe I don't.

During the next hour or so, I look at him every once in awhile. I'm trying for human contact. A smile or something. There is nothing. He looks straight ahead, eyes half closed as in worry, or very serious thought. Sometimes he looks at his knees. His forehead furls. I begin to feel uneasy.

After about two hours of silence, the bus pulls into the Albanian equivalent of a highway rest-stop.

It's a small mountain restaurant called: BEGO

The bus empties. Most everybody goes inside to eat. A few have a smoke first, then join those of us inside. THE GUY stays outside. He walks around. He does not smoke. He just walks, looking at the ground most of the time. I eat a simple rice dish and have some water. Just as I'm finishing, THE GUY walks in and sits at my table. Juu doni te ha ditchka? (“You want to eat something?”) I ask. He smiles weakly, shrugs and leaves again. A few minutes later, I leave and take some pictures around the restaurant, then get back in the bus. THE GUY looks at me without smiling and pats the seat next to him.

We take off, going up and down mountainsides, hairpin turns, just like buses in the mountains always go.

I look at THE GUY and smile. He doesn't smile. He looks at his hands. In them now are rosary beads. He's running them through his fingers. Squinting in something between worry and sorrow. I begin to read his thoughts.

Forgive me mother Mary for what I am about to do. I know it is evil and against your ways, but I must. I have no choice. This is my life. You know me, mother Mary. I know it is wrong to take a life. To inflict so much pain, spill so much blood. But I must. You know that, mother Mary, don't you? I pray for forgiveness.

The beads run through his fingers, one after the other, until they run out at the cross. Then, he starts again.

The bus stops to pick up some school children. They look somehow off. Especially the boys. High foreheads and small jaws. And they're quiet. Ages that from six to ten... and quiet. It's spooky. Like Children of the Damned. They don't stay on the bus very long.

We pass a roadsign. 5km to Himara. Somehow that's a relief.

When we reach what looks like Himara, most passengers get off. We do not.

An old woman, wearing all black, with a black babushka gets on the bus. THE GUY excuses himself and talks to her. She glances at me, a sad look on her face. Then, he shoos me to the window and sits down on the outside, blocking my exit.

The bus closes its doors and heads out of the city.

THE GUY taps me on the shoulder and points to the woman. Then to a ring on his finger. I guess that means she's his wife. They sure didn't act very friendly. Maybe she doesn't approve of what he feels he has to do.

For the next quarter hour, he's back to his rosaries.

In the middle of a hill, the bus doors open and the women gets out. The only two people left are THE GUY and me. A little while further, the bus stops. The end of the line. THE GUY gets out. I do too, retrieving my pack from the back.

Then we walk, through a little opening in the wall. Down a long street. Through a tunnel twisting and turning, to a gravel path, through a ditch. Turn here, there's a staircase, probably built by the Romans, or the ancient Greeks. They'll never find the body in a place like this.

Will I be slowly tortured in the basement? Tied to a cross like Jesus? Helpless, THE GUY wraps his rosary around my balls and asks mother Mary for forgiveness before he bites them off. Will it be quick? Have a seat, I'll be right back. POW! Between the eyes. Will he drug me, then do things to my unconscious body before slitting my throat, severing my head, and boiling it for dinner?

Finally, we end up at a building that overlooks the sea, sheer cliffs to the rocks below. THE GUY brings me to a room that has glass doors and enters from a balcony-- like a motel. The room has two beds, a small unplugged refrigerator, a sink, cabinets, and a bathroom.

THE GUY takes a plastic table and a couple chairs from MY ROOM. He motions for me to sit down. Then he walks away. While he's gone I run my eyes over the tile floor and plaster walls, looking for bloodstains, stray pieces of flesh. There's a dark spot. Some discoloration along the wall. I wonder who that was.

Then, he comes back with some coffee, some strange looking fruit, and a bottle of water. I see by the plastic ring that the bottle has previously been opened, then refilled. I guess that's what's drugged. I don't drink from it.

The coffee is delicious. Turkish style, made by boiling water and coffee grounds together and pouring the mixture into a cup. After you drink it, it leaves a thick black sludge on the bottom of the cup. Heavily sugared, it's the best.

It's hard to find in New York. The first time I had it was in the former Yugoslavia, with a friend whose mother read coffee grounds like old gypsies read tea leaves. I wish I could read my future now.

“Kafé Turke?” I ask.

He nods, “Kafé Grek! No Turke!”

Yowsah some rivalries die hard.

Then he asks if I'm married, do I have kids. All the things that will tell him how much the world will miss me when I'm gone. I guess he's relieved when I say I have neither.

He asks how long I'm planing to stay. An encouraging sign. If he were going to kill me, why would he care? I tell him two nights.

He shakes his head. I realize it's a trick. Something to make me feel more at ease.

Then he asks me if I want a shower, Duche, he uses the Italian/French word.

“Uh oh,” I think. “Here it comes. Get me naked and the fun can begin.”

“Yo, falaminderet” (No thank you) I say, shivering to show it's too cold to bathe.

Actually, it's unbelievably cold. In Italy, and the first two days in Durres were summer. When I got to Vlora a bought a bathing suit, a $30 Armani-- the only one they had left. It was hot. I planned to do the beaches in the south. Then came the rain and since then, cold. Now, it feels barely above freezing. My Inspector Gadget hat and coat are not enough to keep out the cold.

THE GUY wishes me good night and I open the glass doors and enter the room. I try not to think about what will happen later that night. I try not to think about how none of it makes sense in any other way than MURDER.

If he was just being generous, why didn't he take me inside and introduce me to his wife? Why didn't he offer me a little family? Why the lack of smiles? The questions about who will miss me?

Inside the little room things are so cold that I wrap myself in the only blanket in the place and sit with the computer, typing this, photoshopping my pictures, playing spider solitaire, planning as if there were going to be a tomorrow.

It's then that I notice that the glass doors to the room-- the only entrance and the only escape-- lock from the outside. Only the outside. What kind of place is this? What hotel has rooms that only lock from the outside? What house?

At about 9:30, I go to sleep, fully clothed, wrapped tightly in that blanket. Outside a dog barks incessantly. But it's not the dog that keeps me awake. I'm still freezing. I wonder how much of the shaking is from the actual cold, and how much is from fear. I shake like the flu chills. Shake like there's no tomorrow... waiting for the sound of the bursting into the room with guns or machetes. Or worse, the sound of a key turning in the lock outside.