1.
Luke arrived at the border on foot. Montenegro and Albania. End of July. 1991. From a distance, as he approached with a small knapsack on his back, the border guard looked at him without seeing docks. He stared at the dusty footsteps of the boy-faced teenager, her hair with their tails stretched on his back and curls on his head. The legs of one of them, a Slav, he would also have to say. If it were not for those jeans, that shirt with the words: no, it was clear that was not one of them, who was a tourist. A tourist: it was not a common figure in these parts. Of tourists there do not see it. The dot
Luca Luca was getting closer and more detailed. A few steps from the bar and inside the hut where he stood guard to protect the boy took out of his crumpled the envelope with the invitation of the Embassy of Albania that would allow him to enter the country. Handed it to the military and somehow tried to make himself understood. That began to speak his language without that Luke, of course, could understand a single word. Only by shaking of the head of that man with the rough face and lips tight sensed that something was wrong, it would not be so simple to set foot over the bar. The man made it clear to him that that paper was worth nothing. Luke had a lot to point the finger on the stamp of the embassy, \u200b\u200bthe signature below, the few lines that he did not understand but he knew that it was written down on paper his passport to that country that a few months, in theory, had opened its borders. Nothing.
The boy-man showed another tourist package: the woman's name was written Embassy in Tirana with whom he had contracted the invitation to Albania. If that deaf and stubborn military had convinced him to call her by phone, she would have explained it to him in his language, which could enter the Italian boy, who was a tourist, as odd was that his feet to present a border forgotten by men, in the mountains in the heart of a very boring summer afternoon there.
Nothing to do. The soldier's face to understand that today you could not call.
He wanted to move it. Maybe, if she made the difficult thing, that boy would withdraw, would be turned back, retreating quickly from his capricious adventure. Perhaps pointing to a beach in his country, one that occasionally the Slav had seen on television. What was needed then go for the young Italian conceited in Albania? Luca
for that day was sure there was nothing else to do. Then, for the first time since he arrived at the border, rolled his eyes, only one behind him, had walked along the road to get there, and was convinced to find a way to reach the last country he had left behind.
None. Not a machine.
She resigned herself to turn on his heels and walked. Departed from a dozen steps, however, turned back toward the man who from his sentry pretended not watch it. "See you tomorrow!" Shouted points against the index. Without
two curves, somehow, from somewhere, a guy came up with a beat-up scooter that black smoke and explosions erupted syncopated. The boy who was driving did not wait to stop the gesture with which Luke was for help.
"Where to go? Where to go?" He asked.
Perhaps he had seen in secret to long scene at the border and he knew that Luke was Italian. So he introduced himself immediately with the name of Mirak, drew those two or three words of Italian who had learned to repeat the power to hear the Italian television channel that reaches there in Montenegro, and which was almost always tuned to the small screen black and white the only bar-restaurant-hotel in his village.
Luke made it clear to the boy, who had to have more or less his age, but his face marked, dark teeth and hands like those of a gnarled old man, who needed a room for the night.
"Hotel. Hotel. Hotel. Hotel," he kept repeating.
Mirak had understood perfectly what he was looking for Luca but pretended not to understand. And he lied, trying to make him understand that in those parts a hotel just was not there. Then he gestured to Luke to pick him up riding his scooter. Would go to his house, understood the Italian, would have housed them for the night.
so it was. And Luke found himself at the table, in a country house in Montenegro, the Albanian border. The father and mother were farmers Mirak and this gave them a degree of prosperity, though the house was just a large room on the ground floor: kitchen with a long rectangular table where the family dinner staged by Mirak Mars for that came from a place that, as the crow flies, was not so far - thought Luke - but over time it seemed far away dozens of years. From the kitchen you went out on a porch where the family kept his tools, the son's scooter, a wooden bench with cushions faded flowers, a cart and several old pieces of junk. On one corner there was a staircase leading to two rooms on the first floor, one inserted inside the other. The first was the room where they slept Mirak and his sister, who - told the family - she married a year ago and now lived in cities. From there he went into the bedroom of the parents, the only one with the glass windows protected by tendon terital ready to give the shock as soon as he touched.
What was going on Luke in Albania? asked at the end of dinner, pulling out of the pantry homemade grappa. A glass, another and another and Luke began to turn heads and melt the gab. The Italian explained to the family of Montenegro, which had three weeks of vacation from work, he wanted to see a country that did not know, referred to his house then you start talking about the world, after 89, it was expanded to include places that previously existed only in stories of a few. He wanted to see with his own eyes, meeting people. He showed his camera. He tried to tell them that car had visited many other countries. In Europe, of course, then many times the great African continent, illustrated by sliding your finger on a travel atlas that always accompanied him in his adventures.
Lights, Luke, in telling that he had brought home the portraits of people who had shaken hands, which had a piece of road. The images of the forests that had crossed the villages where he had set foot, sometimes only white man, of the women had crossed eyes, children who had followed him and they smile to his goal.
But the Albanians are bad people, he wanted to convince the mother of Mirak, a spokesman for a hatred that has always separated the two peoples.
"No go! No go!", It was the interpreter of the anguish of the family's son.
After hours of memories and discoveries, paid off by stories of hatred, fear and prejudice, Luke asked to go to sleep. That day, the discussion with the stupid customs officer, then dinner, the mixture of tongues between them and universal gestures, grappa, had suddenly taken away his strength.
(continued)
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