The flat was on the fourth floor of a building on the outskirts of the city.
“The guy at the agency was very nice,” says Mark.
We’ve lit up a cigarette while we’re waiting. Mark is still young, this is the first flat he’s seen and he’s nervous. He’s 18, and he’s only been in Italy for a few weeks. We met because his father knows mine, and his father asked mine if I could possibly look after him, and my father, surprise surprise, said yes. Not that I mind, shit, of course not, but he could have asked me first. But it’s ok. Mark is a nice kid. He’s young and full of confidence. Granted, he studies International Economics and Trade and How we can Fuck over the Working Poor, which I don’t appreciate a whole lot, but otherwise he’s ok. I’m enrolled in the literature department and I’m two years ‘behind schedule’. I should have graduated two years ago. Ok, I’m a little behind in my exams, but why do they have to call me ‘behind schedule’. I try to decide if that isn’t politically incorrect – after all, they could call us ‘Not on schedule’, it sounds better.
Two years more than the legal duration of the course of studies. Maybe that’s why Andrea has that surprised look on his face when he looks at me. He can’t understand how come a person isn’t able to graduate in the regular time. And it’s useless to try and explain it to him, he’s too optimistic about everything.
“ For what we’re paying him, I’d be really nice, too. He should give me a blow job for what I’m paying him.”
“ Ha ha, a blow job, you’re too much, Haxhi,” he laughs.
My name is Haxhi, like the football player, but it’s spelled differently. And most of my friends can’t manage to pronounce it, so they call me Ax, but Haxhi isn’t really so difficult, is it? You just have to try a little, shit.
“ No, really, he was nice,” insists Mark.
I shrug my shoulders. Sure he was nice, why not? They’re always nice until the landlord says he doesn’t want any Albanians. And they’re even nice when they tell you. Incredible.
It’s the sixth flat we’ve seen in a month. Not a bad average, but I know I can do better. Two years ago I got up to 19 flats, still a record that none of my friends has beaten. And what’s really funny is that I liked all of them, or almost all, except for one that was falling to pieces. They were asking something like 1000 Euro for it, plus possible expenses, and what the shit does possible mean, it’s obvious that there’re going to be these expenses but they want to make you think that maybe you won’t have to spend anything. And when the agent shut the door he was real careful ‘cause maybe he was scared it would all fall to pieces. Ok, but apart from that one I liked the others, it’s just that, I don’t know if you know, but for people not from a European Community country, and I’m one of them sort of, there’s another procedure for finding a house, different from the one used for EC members. Even small house-owners have a preferred track. First families, then EC member families, then non-EC member families, then Italian students, then students from the South of Italy, then Erasmus exchange students, and last of all us. I take note. I took note of it years ago.
“ You know, once we were looking at a flat near the station. It didn’t have a lift. We started climbing up the stairs, joking with the real estate agent. About football and pussy, that sort of thing. First floor, football. Second floor, pussy. Third floor, he asks us where we’re from and we tell him we’re Albanians. We’re honest, we don’t tell lies”.
“And then?” asks Mark.
“And then nothing. The guy looks at us. The flat’s on the fifth floor, we’re on the fourth and he stops. He says the landlord doesn’t want foreigners in his flat, he doesn’t want problems. So we start going down and we say good-bye like nothing had happened.”
“ And you said nothing to him? Nothing at all?” asks Mark, incredulous.
“ Oh, yes. One of the other guys said, “ Couldn’t you have told us before mate instead of talking about football, couldn’t you have told us on the ground floor?”
“ Cool”.
“ Cool as shit. There’s nothing cool about not having a house. Try staying without one for a while and then we’ll talk about it again.”
He’s staying at my place. I couldn’t have left him out in the cold, could I? We have to move out at the end of the week. There are supposed to be three of us, but by now there are eight or nine. We all have friends who have friends they can’t leave in the cold. It’s a hard job arranging places to sleep for everyone. To turn the three beds into six you take off the mattresses and you throw them on the floor. The result is three mattresses that are all right the way they are. You have to put some pieces of carton on what remains of the bed, with a blanket on top. That way you have six beds. But then if the six people become nine, well, I just don’t know what to tell you.
“ So what, you can stay outside for a couple of days if you have to, can’t you?”
In the end, yes, you can do that, too. Though I don’t recommend it. I tried it about six years ago, just after I arrived in Italy, when I didn’t know anyone and the bank had blocked my account because I wouldn’t wish a money transfer from Tirana to Bologna on my worst enemy. In short, I slept outdoors, in a public park. It was September but at night it was bloody cold, you can believe it. I only had a sheet I’d bought the same day so I hardly slept at all. I woke up at sunrise. While I was still sleeping I saw a vague shape me on the bench opposite me. I went up to it and saw three covers and no one nearby.
I never swore so much in one day.
I don’t feel like explaining all this to Mark now. If he thinks he can spend two or three days outside, good for him, he’ll learn the hard way.
He doesn’t like it when they call him Marco, but he’ll get used to it.
“Why do you tell everyone you’re from Tirana?” he asks.
“Because I am from Tirana.”
“ No, I mean, why don’t you say from Albania? ”
“Because I don’t feel like it, that’s all. Once a girl asked me what province Tirana is in. And I answered Tirana, Province of Tirana”.
“Is that him?”
Of course it’s him. You can tell by the way he’s dressed, by the way he moves. He sees us and comes towards us. He’s smiling.
“Are you the kids who called?”
I nod yes. Mark says it’s us.
He shakes our hands while he feels for his keys with his other hand. He opens the front door and invites us to follow him.
Before getting into the lift he asks where we’re from, still smiling.
“From Tirana,” I say.
“ Albania,” says Mark.
We watch motionless while his smile fades. He gulps.
Darien Levani was born in 1982 in Fier, Albania. He graduated from high school in Tirana and then moved to Ferrara, where he is in the fifth year of Law School.