and accusing of him of jealousy because his own business venture had failed.
The same mentality was at work in the case of the big pyramids. The more the word “pyramid” was used to describe these unstable financial schemes, the more people sought evidence to convince themselves that they were not fraudulent. They liked to be called ‘creditors’ and hated the word ‘debt’. And anyway, who was in ‘debt’ to whom? Some said that the long-standing depositors were in debt to the recent ones, and all the depositors were simply debtors and creditors to one another.
Others disagreed: No, it couldn’t be true. They were not merely taking the money of those who deposited it later. The interest they withdrew came from the investment of their money, or perhaps from some other source. After a time, to counter these ominous rumours, word spread that these firms were in fact laundering money. Apparently, the state was aware of this and was even abetting the laundering of money because high-level politicians had also deposited their cash. These allegations of state support had, it seemed, persuaded some people who had resisted the temptation to lodge their money with Mimi, to transfer it to the big pyramids of VEFA, Kamberi,
Xhaferri, and Sudja.
The Sugar Boat rumour is born:
Finally Mimi could no longer palm off his creditors with extensions and postponements. He told all those who came to withdraw their cash that their money was invested in a huge boat laden with sugar that Luli had bought and was bringing to Albania. He assured them that Luli had traded very successfully in sugar and this boat would bring all his profits. He put off everybody who asked for money with the story of the Sugar Boat, which now circulated amongst the investors as a sign of hope.
The elections approach:
As the democratic elections drew near, the ruling party boasted that the economy was strong and successful. The opposition, fearful of losing votes, said not a word against the pyramid schemes, even though people had started to grumble about them. Mimi himself lambasted the big pyramids, but his voice was not a public one.
The ruling party won the elections with the help of the pyramid schemes. The election campaign was adorned with the logos of finance houses such as Gjallica and VEFA Holdings.
The Dutch cheque:
One creditor, who has already become a daily visitor to Mimi’s house, came back with the news that a part of the boat’s cargo had been sold and Mimi had received a cheque from Luli for several million dollars in order to pay his accumulated debts.
The creditors’ spirits revived. Those who had doubted the honesty of Mimi and Luli experienced a pleasurable thrill of guilt. How could they have imagined that Luli and Mimi, boys from a good family, could ever sink so low as to swindle money from their own relatives? The keenest investors promptly started counting up their money and their virtual profits for the entire period.
Mimi and Vera run away:
Their disillusionment was swift. Mimi told some of his relatives, who came to withdraw their money, that he was setting off for Holland because a problem had cropped up and the cheque was being held at a bank there.
Shortly afterwards Vera was discovered to have left with him. Some people still hoped for his return with their money and even said that Mimi and Luli had joined the Sugar Boat, which was on his way to Albania.
But the hopes of even the most optimistic crumbled when the first big pyramids fell. Mimi had been a swindler. Even the Sugar Boat had been a fraud. Mimi had used his reputation and the good name of his family to deceive them. Rumour had it that he had not even been a good husband. The woman who had thrown acid in his face now seemed to have had justice on her side. He had been recruited by the state security service long ago. His defenders said that he was a victim of his brother,. Luli was the real fraudster who had exploited his family’s reputation and the prestige of the West.
***
Qorri read his notes so far. He had already imagined the novel’s denouement, in which creditors would attack Mimi’s house after he had escaped without trace. The creditors who had claimed to have deposited more than $200,000 with him would announce that the house belonged to them, and a deadly quarrel would break out among them, with some drawing guns and ready to kill rather than surrender the property.
But what was happening around him went beyond anything in Qorri’s notes. Reality beggared the writer’s imagination. The more eventful life is, the less room there is for creativity, he thought. Perhaps Balzac was right; that a novel lived through is one less novel written. Where history begins, fiction stops short. In this novel, he had found in the ‘Sugar Boat’ a metaphor that organized the narrative and lent wings to his imagination, but the events that he was living through, so tangible and unpredictable, seemed to have demolished the edifice his imagination had constructed.
Chapter II
At Noel’s
Qorri often spent the evening at Noel’s bar in the hope of finding a friend for a chat before he went home to Kindergarten Nr. 19. As usual, on that cold evening in January 1997, he tied his bicycle’s front wheel to the railings at the entrance to the bar and plunged into the semi-darkness of the staircase leading to the basement. But even as the noise of conversation and the odours of cooking emerged from the doorway, he could not rid himself of the worry that Noel’s had lost its usual easy and hospitable warmth over the last few days.
Noel’s was one of the few bars without the aluminium, plate glass, and perspex with which the Albanians, in their frenetic desire to catch up with the times, filled their first post-communist, private cafes. The counter was constructed of the standard red bricks commonly used in communist buildings. The tables and chairs were wooden, with red baize tablecloths. On the walls were racks for utensils like in Ottoman houses, and on these were placed a couple of traditional musical instruments - a çifteli and a lahutë, some radios dating back to the war, an ancient Singer sewing machine, and other objects that recalled pre-communist Albania, as if in an attempt to bring it back. On one wall and on the bar’s round central pillar were black-and-white photos of world-famous actors, and a few from socialist-realist movies.
Noel’s was both in the centre of the city and in a slightly secluded corner, and its semi-basement premises could be passed unnoticed, although the wooden door opened onto a well-known street of old Tirana, where some of the leading state institutions in Albania’s brief independent history were situated. Immediately opposite the entrance was the gate to the former Royal Palace, faced with white marble. For most of its history, this had been the Palace of Pioneers, because King Zog was forced to flee from the invading Italians shortly after it was built, and after the war the communists had turned it into an institution for the education of the children of Tirana. To the right of the palace and adjacent to its yard was the mansion of the feudal Toptani family, one of the few Ottoman-style houses remaining in the city. This house still contained the Institute for the Preservation of Public Monuments, as it had in communist times. Next came the Academy of Sciences, a royal residence in the time of the monarchy, and a little further on was the Parliament, a 1950s building in the Soviet neoclassical style. To the left of the Royal Palace was the National Art Gallery built by the dictator in the 1970s.
Noel’s side of the street also had plenty of buildings that had made history. On the right was the National Theatre, built by the Italians during their occupation, where the Albanian language was first spoken on the stage in the capital. A little further down was the Interior Ministry, which retained not only its former function, but also its frightening aura invoked from the time when it had been one of the main links in the chain that bound the country in 50 years of communist dictatorship. To the left of Noel’s and less than 50 yards away, was a building that had just started to make history, the headquarters of the ruling anti-communist Democratic Party, the PD.
***
The story was that the proprietors had been unsure what to call the bar. Their first idea had been ‘The Milky Way’, after the street’s nickname in communist days. This was not because of some imaginative association with the stars above, but because here the citizens of Tirana had stood in line before dawn to buy