The Concert

by Ismail Kadare

  Mao Zedong was getting a headache. All this thinking, after several days of virtual unconsciousness, seemed to have exhausted him, I ought to have read the letter more slowly, he said to himself. He tried to be detached, to transport himself mentally to the plateau of Tibet, which seemed to him all the more uninhabited because he himself had never been there. “You really ought to pay a visit to the Roof of the World,” his wife had suggested several times. “It would be really appropriate.” He had joked about it and accused her of vanity, but deep down inside he did consider making such a visit. So much so that he’d spent some time reading the works of the Tibetan hermit Milarepa. And now Milarepa’s poems, full of the terror inspired by the Himakyas, began to come back to him, together with the names of the caves the hermit lived in. He even remembered some of the phrases he’d learned in preparation for the journey: shos-dbying, for example, the Tibetan name for that primal state, beyond being and non.beieg, which had always fascinated him; dje-be, the ten goods, and mi-dge-beu, the tee evils, the first of which he’d later made use of in his instructions to Communist youth, while the second were included in army regulations.

  Shi-gnas, he said aloud. But he realized that the more he tried to follow the hermit’s teachings and strive for serenity, the more the letter preyed on his mind, Shi-gnas, he said again, and then repeated the same thing in Sanskrit: samatha. But still to no effect. It was the same as with sleeping pills: either they put you out like a light or else they kept you awake indefinitely.

  It was all of no use: in the end he just gave in and lost his temper. The letter seemed more and more monstrous. Relations with Albania had been deteriorating for years through that country’s owe fault, but hitherto he had turned a blind eye. His colleagues had grown increasingly irritated: how long, they said, are we going to put up with their whims and fancies? But Mao had been patient, ignoring Albania’s coldness during the Cultural Revolution, their attitude about Shakespeare, and lots of other nonsense. When the Sino-Soviet frontier crisis blew up, his colleagues had come to see him, blue in the face with rage at the Albanians’ intolerable attitude: instead of coming out directly and unequivocally in support of us, their allies, they’d actually said there were faults on both sides, and that China’s territorial claims smacked of nationalism. That crowned all! They were setting themselves up as knights errant, nobly committed to their principles, like characters out of the Chanson de Roland! Ugh, what cheek! “Now do you see?” they had demanded. But again Mao had turned a blind eye. “Just wait,” he’d said. “I’m saving it all up. One of these days they’ll get into a row with Yugoslavia over, what’s it’s name?…Kosovo, and then well pay them out.”

  He’d known Albania would go on being restive — but that it would actually get to the point of giving him orders …! It was inconceivable. Yet it had happened, unless his wife had gone out of her mind and what she’d written was just a figment of her imagination. But that was highly unlikely. There was little doubt that the letter had come: the thing had happened, and if the Chinese people got to know of it he’d be reduced to grovelling humiliation. Mao realized he was getting angry more quickly than he’d expected. I’ll show them! he thought. I’ll teach Albania a lesson it’ll tremble to remember for a thousand years! I’ll play with it like a cat with a mouse!

  He hadn’t yet decided exactly how. For the moment only one word whirled around in his head: economy. He dimly felt that was the beginning and end of everything, but the vagueness only increased his vexation. As a matter of fact he had given orders during previous periods of dissension for policy to be angled on economic considerations, but the idiotic officials whose business it was had evidently misunderstood his instructions. Their way of doing things was obvious, their tricks stuck out a mile. They thought there was only one way of going about it: by slowing down ships carrying machinery and cutting off aid. How often had they come to him and said: “We oughtn’t to deliver that steel works -- let’s leave them to stew in their own juice!” But he would always say: “Really? So they can get what they want from Sweden instead, and thumb their noses at us? …No, we’ll send them the goods, but it’ll be the sort of stuff that’ll make them curse the day they took delivery of it!”

  When he explained what he meant they ail had a good laugh. That steel works would be more like a blacksmith’s forge! Then he explained that such measures needed to be accompanied by others in different sectors. The idea was to drive the Albanians crazy little by little. It was in such terms, many years ago, that Mao had defined the policy to be adopted towards Albania. He had gone into it in the minutest detail But obviously the idiots in charge of carrying it out hadn’t understood a word. And now, instead of China having atrophied Albania’s whole brain-centre, Albania was trying to tell China what to do. How horrible! he cried. Now he really did feel angry. Memories about the relations between the two countries were beginning to come back to him; conversations with his colleagues; plans. Not long ago he, Jiang Qing and Lin Biao had studied a letter from a middle-ranking Chinese official who had spent some time in Albania. His account was full of bitterness and repining. Their standard of living was much higher than ours, he said. The people lived in apartments; the shops sold lipstick, armchairs, and all kinds of other degenerate objects; young women and girls frequented cafés and drank whatever they liked; there were no curtains at the windows; the women reeked of perfume; you could buy novels, and as much bread as you liked. The question was bound to suggest itself: why should Albania still be receiving aid from poor old China? To help it wallow even deeper in luxury and extravagance? Cut off ail aid, dear Chairman Mao, said the official, ending his letter, or else find some other way of putting an end to this scandal.

  Samatha, he muttered to his unknown correspondent: calm down. But he didn’t feel at all calm himself. The first letter from the irate official, which he hadn’t answered, had been followed by a second that painted an even more sombre picture. Punish me if I’ve done wrong, wrote the official. Denounce me as an agent provocateur, an agitator, drag me through the mud, gouge my eyes out - but reply! He must have realized his first letter had been completely ignored: Chinese aid to Albania, far from being reduced, had actually increased. In his second letter he tried to express himself more calmly, attempting a description of the Albanian national psychology. It was a tiny little country, he wrote, and there was nothing more horrible than seeing a place like that in the grip of a mania for expansion. According to him the Albanians, in the past, enable to wrest a single inch of territory from their neighbours, who were just as tough as they were, had hit on a novel way of extending their influence: by flirting with the countries that occupied them, offering their services as allies. After they’d been beaten by the Turks, or rather when they finally admitted defeat, they offered their help to the victorious Ottoman Empire, acting just as their lllyrian ancestors had done towards Rome. (These forebears too were not only rough and excitable but also feeble-minded, and had taken about a hundred and fifty years to accept that they’d been conquered by the Romans.)

  These potty little countries! thought Mao. He’d often wondered how he’d have seen things, how he’d have judged events, even what his reaction would have been to the depression that sometimes swept over him, if China had been smaller, or if it had been an archipelago, like Japan, Once, in Tchangsha, he’d been afflicted by a really deathly fit of dejection, a boredom so monstrous it would have overflowed the boundaries not only of any little European country but of half the whole continent! Yes, he sighed, he really was made to measure for China, just as China was specially created for him!

  He remembered a dream in which Mongolia had been transformed into a lake. His officials had all run hither and thither in such agitation, telephoning and transmitting his latest decisions, that he’d grown impatient: what are you getting so worked up about? he’d asked. They’d been abashed. It’s not easy, you know, Chairman Mao: there are all sorts of problems, and all the files and archives need to be altered. For example, that b
usiness of Lin Biao’s plane going up in smoke in the Mongolian desert…Oh yes, he’d said — I remember. But all you have to do is change “bursting into flames” to “sinking into the waves” — no need to make such a fuss! But it isn’t as easy as that, the others insisted. It’s common knowledge that Lin Biao was ill and what’s more had a horror of water, And what were they supposed to do about the burned wreckage of the plane and the bullet-marks on its fuselage? That’ll do! he’d snapped. It’s up to you to take care of the details. And then he’d turned his back on them.

  His thoughts returned to the letter from the official. For some obscure reason, the man had said, the Turks accepted the Albanians’ services, and this resulted in one of the strangest phenomena in the whole history of the Ottoman Empire: in 1656 an Albanian was made prime minister, and five of his compatriots succeeded one another in the post. And you can easily imagine the long string of ministers and generals and admirals that went with them. They’d converted to Islam, blithely exchanging Christianity for influential posts without the slightest trace of remorse. Their possessions extended from Hungary to the Sea of Azov; they controlled provinces and cities, armies, governments, whole nations. Some of them became so powerful they had the impertinence to set themselves up as rivals to the Sultan, to disobey him and sabotage his foreign policy; some of them even founded dynasties of their owe, in Egypt for example.

  What chaos! thought Mao, though not without a tinge of envy. He made a face every time he heard the word mentioned. “Chaos in Cambodia, in Chile, in Ireland…” Pooh, he’d sneer: what sort of chaos could you get in those petty little countries no bigger than the palm of his hand? Genuine chaos could only occur in states of some size, and super-chaos only in China itself.

  Shos-dbying … He’d always been fascinated by great upheavals. What he liked best in the works of the ancient poets were the descriptions of chaotic political convulsions. Li Po or Du Fu - he couldn’t quite remember which - had written passages like that. The Mongol armies sweeping over the country. The imperial armies put to flight. Couriers’ steeds roving about without their riders. Wolves and jackals with tufts of human hair between their teeth…But the biggest upheaval ever had been the one produced by him: the first state of chaos in which the opposing sides both acclaimed the same name. His. They vied with one another in adoration of him at the same time as they set about one another, slaughtering and reducing one another to ashes for him, while he stayed aloof down in his cave, listening to the sound of the tumult above. All he had to do now was get them used to the idea of his death…

  Shos-dbying…Oh yes, the famous letter! God, what a screed! Was he remembering it in slow motion or was it really as long as that? The Albanians could easily have broken away from the Ottoman Empire, wrote the official, but after a certain point they themselves didn’t want to any more: they didn’t want to lose the enormous state which they’d partly transformed into their own. The ruled were acting as rulers: they’d acquired a taste for power, a power wielded not over the mere square inch of territory that was their owe country but over great expanses of Europe and Asia. Needless to say, all this, together with their pride in their illyrian origins, produced an arrogance as ill-founded as it was extreme.

  Pooh! said Mao. The end of the letter was what he remembered most clearly. Early in the twentieth century the Albanians actually had won their independence, though the country they found themselves confined to seemed as small as a baby’s cradle. The dream was over. So this horde of tattered and deluded Don Quixotes set out in search of another occupying power, or at least of some new and powerful ally they might lead up the garden path, pretending to submit only in order to exploit him more easily. And that was how these dreamers, whose pride the Germans had exacerbated by proclaiming them a master race, had, after ogling the countries in their immediate vicinity and coming to grief first over the Yugoslavs and then over the Soviets, turned their attention to us, to China. And it must be admitted their cunning plot is meeting with great success. The whole world regards Albania as a satellite of China, and perhaps even we ourselves feel flattered to hear such a thing said about a country in Europe. Meanwhile the Albanians have every reason to laugh up their sleeves at us. Our ships queue up in their ports to unload their cargoes. Our standard of living is low in comparison with theirs. We go on calling Albania a satellite and its people the lackeys of China, but since when did lackeys live better than their masters? Wasn’t it all just a tragic farce?

  Mao Zedong, his eyes half closed, remembered almost word for word not only the end of the letter but also the note that Zhou Enlai had written underneath: “What he says about relations between Albania and the Ottoman Empire is factually true, but that’s only one side of the case — the side concerning their pride. However his interpretation of the facts in general is quite naive and misleading. The analogy between us and the Soviet Union doesn’t hold water. As for the standard of living in Albania, I don’t believe it’s so enviable as our provincial correspondent supposes. Things are much more complicated than that. Still, the letter does contain some small points worthy of notice.”

  “‘Some small points’!” exclaimed Mao. Zhou was brilliantly clever, but sometimes he failed to spot certain aspects of a situation. That letter was nothing short of prophetic! Not content with having exploited China as if it were their own back yard, the Albanians were now openly trying to lay down the law. Incredible as it might seem, the Albanian president’s letter had actually been dispatched. Unless Jiang Qing had gone crazy and made the whole thing up. According to her, the Albanian president not only commented on the American president’s visit - he went so far as to ask for it to be cancelled! How abominable! thought Mao to himself. The Albanian leader telling him what to do! The leader of Russia himself had never dared try that on. Just wait, fumed Mao. I’ll soon show you who’s boss!

  He tried to laugh through his wrath, but it was too soon for that. You’ll see what the old man’s still capable of ! he muttered stoutly. Don’t imagine I didn’t foresee this when I made you a present of all those factories and industrial complexes. Comrades were always coming to me and complaining, The things we’re sending those Albanians, whereas they …! Just wait and have patience, I told them. I knew they were very annoyed; perhaps the letters purporting to come from the official were really written by my assistants, or by Lie Biao, or even by Jiang Qieg — they’ve always been impatient, that lot. I, on the other hand, have always bided my time, in accordance with the old Chinese proverb, “Don’t worry: wait by the bank of the river, and it will bring you the head of your enemy.” And now the time has come. We couldn’t really teach the Albanians a lesson a few years ago, before they’d started laying the foundations of their chemical factories, their steel complex and their big hydroelectric plants. No - now’s the time to twist their arm, when they’re in the middle of building them. But the comrades couldn’t wait: every time we sent Albania a new turbine or the equipment for a new factory they sweated blood, their eyes flashed. “What are we going to ask for in return?” they kept demanding. “Wait till they really get started building and then we’ll see,” I told them. This exasperated them, though of course they didn’t show it. Perhaps they muttered among themselves that the old man was getting past it, or even that I was frittering away our country’s heritage. While I was just thinking: Wait a bit longer…

  Finally the laughter broke through, Mao propped himself with one hand against the wall of the cave and nodded. The moment has come, he thought. The building work is in progress, and all the sites are as vulnerable as open wounds. A half-finished steel complex or an abandoned hydro-electric dam are no better than ruins. When everything’s left high and dry, that’s the time to start thinking about dictating terms. Now I can torment them just as I like. For every factory I shall demand a sacrificial victim. For every chimney, for every turbine, for the smallest bit of funding. You’re going to have to pay back something in return for everything you’ve had, I’ll say. You’re going to hav
e to strip away your insufferable pride, your history, your art, your intelligentsia …I know you quail at the thought of an impoverished intelligentsia, of writers abolished by - a stroke of the pen. Perhaps you don’t feel you can wipe out your literature as we have wiped out ours? Perhaps you shrink from seeding pen-pushers to prison, or out into the rice-fields, or forcing them to clean the latrines? I’m such a kind old gentleman I’ll show you how to manage by a completely different method, apparently diametrically opposite from ours. Have a vast renaissance! Create hundreds of novelists a year, and thousands of poets, by calling any report containing a bit of dialogue a novel and any rhymed petition a poem, and you’ll see that after a few years your literature will have vanished without trace. No one will accuse you of doing anything wrong. On the contrary, you’ll always find admirers ready to acclaim you for nurturing all those writers. What an unprecedented flowering!…And you must do the same with all the rest: give and it shall be given unto you. For every turbine, every credit, give something: for every electronic brain, give part of your own brain. But wait - that’s nothing compared with what I’ll ask you for next. For you’ll have to give your Party too! I know how unacceptable that may sound to you; how barbarous and sinister, I realize it’s your dearest, most inviolable and undisputed possession, and that you’ve based all your security, your present and your future upon it. I know all that. But wait: I may be an old man, but I’m not so stupid as to ask you to violate the inviolable or question the unquestionable. No, not at all Far be it from me to do such a thing! Besides, what good would it do me? Without your Party your whole country would go down the drain and I’d lose you for ever. You’d move away, you’d drift off. So I wouldn’t dream of entertaining such an idea. We must act with the Party, always with the Party, my pets - but with a Party that’s slightly more…what shall I say?… more open! Wait — hear me out! It’s not as bad as it may sound. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve got a flag with a two-headed eagle on it, haven’t you? So why should the idea of a Party with two lines strike you as so terrible? It’s unacceptable and barbarous, you say? Very well, let’s say no more about it - well think of something else. We’re not short of symbols, thank God.