The Concert

by Ismail Kadare

  Since it was difficult anyway to find Albanian institutions corresponding to those to which the Chinese delegations belonged, the relatively lowly officials sent to meet them tended to be from bodies that were almost irrelevant. A team of workers from a collective producing Mao Zedong badges had to be welcomed by the assistant head of a ferro-nickel factory, much to the annoyance of the Chinese, who lost no time in pointing out that workshops which turned out badges bearing portraits of Chairman Mao had nothing whatever in common with ordinary factories. Thereupon the organizers tried to find someone else to preside over the official dinner at least, and came up with the assistant head of the Mint.

  Another problem was presented by the toasts which had to be proposed at banquets and receptions. Not only had it become necessary to modify their form, but it grew more and more difficult to match the wording of the guests” own toasts. Adjectives were weakened, adverbs strengthened, among many other adjustments. All the guests were constantly on the alert - especially the interpreters, fearful of getting some nuance wrong. Things were even more complicated when it came to reporting these occasions in the newspapers. Whenever a banquet was held in honour of a Chinese delegation, the official in charge of press coverage had to stay on in his office till late at night waiting for the copy to be phoned in. He happened to be on a strict diet, and his colleagues joked that these parties were just as bad for his liver as if he’d actually attended them.

  The Chinese were the first to modify the formula used to round off accounts of receptions and banquets given in honour of the delegations. Such occasions had previously been said to have “taken place in a very warm and friendly atmosphere,” At first the Chinese omitted “very”, then they left out “warm”, and finally they replaced the closing words of the communiqués altogether with the phrase, “those present were observed to exchange smiles in the course of the evening.”

  The Albanian press stuck to the old formula, except that “warm and friendly” was replaced by the one word, “cordial”.

  None of this was lost on the reading public, though some people predicted that this period of coolness would eventually wear off as others had done a few years earlier. Just as trees lost their leaves in winter but flowered again in spring, so the delegations would eventually flourish anew.

  Yet at the same time everyone talked of how work had slowed down on many big construction sites, especially those building hydro-electric plants in the north. This was because of hold-ups in supplies of equipment from China. Freighters now took an unconscionably long time to reach their destination, and when they did arrive they might be carrying the wrong cargo. On two occasions ships had turned back without even entering Durrës harbour. All this was said to be part of China’s famous “turn of the screw”. Cafés in Tirana were full of stories about this tactic: no one realized that one day the whole country would be its victim.

  The Chinese press made no mention of the subject. For weeks their newspapers and airwaves concentrated on accounts of the Spartan life-styles of two of their country’s own leaders. One hadn’t worn any new clothes since the liberation of China; the other, to save the people unnecessary expense, had no furniture except a couple of barrels, one used as a bed and the other containing his only food - chick-peas. It seemed that the first of the two, easily recognizable from the towel he wore round his head in magazine photos, was engaged in some sort of argument with his opposite number, though exactly what it was about no one quite knew. Some rumours had it that their rivalry, comical as it might appear, was really nothing to do with the two men themselves, who in fact merely symbolized two important factions engaged in a power struggle. Incredible as it might seem, some people were prepared to take all this quite seriously, and to debate it at length. During one television account of the arrival of a Chinese delegation in Mexico, led by the turban-wearing member of the Politbureau, the camera, as if trying to solve the enigma, dwelt for several seconds on the arrangement of the towel round his head.

  Such things had apparently so little to do with the late arrival of the freighters that the Albanian ministers concerned about these delays just shook their heads in bewilderment. Meanwhile, foreign press agencies announced that Mao Zedong was seriously ill, if not as dead as a doornail, and that the man who’d been seen at public receptions recently was merely one of his doubles. Some people even said Mao had been dead for ages, and everything that had been going on in China since then was the result of quarrels between two of his doubles, each claiming to be the great man himself.

  Some saw a connection between reports of Mao’s illness and the recent deterioration in Sino-Albanian relations, and hoped that when he, or one or both of the doubles, got better or died, the situation would be cleared up, things would go back to normal as they’d always done before, and this period would be no more than a disagreeable memory. And so that autumn, the delegations, though diminished, went on coming and going; for the first time in years, an invitation even went out to a delegation of writers. But any lingering optimism was roughly extinguished by a rumour to the effect that the Chinese ambassador had asked for an audience with the Albanian foreign secretary on the subject of an X-ray: if the matter at issue wasn’t actually a brawl, it was said to be the bruising of a Chinese foot by an Albanian one.

  Linda had a bath and then started to wander aimlessly around her apartment. Ever since breaking off the affair she’d had with a government television engineer the previous year, she’d found the afternoons terribly long. Now and again she would pick up a half-read book from the settee, but she soon threw it down again. Finding herself in the hall, she stopped and looked in the glass. Still undecided as to whether to go to the dressmaker’s for a fitting or call on one of her workmates at the Makina Import office, she started to do her hair.

  For some reason or other she couldn’t get out of her mind a poem she’d read a few days ago, waiting at the hairdresser’s:

  Ever since you left

  I can feel myself gradually forgetting you,

  Feel your eyes dying in me,

  And your hair, and all

  She took out a hairpin and adjusted a couple of small combs. Forgetting someone’s hair, she thought as she fiddled with one of the combs. “I can never forget you,” he’d said in his last letter, his last attempt to revive their affair.- “I can never erase anything about you from my memory — your words, your eyes, your hair…” And yet, writing in that magazine, there was someone strong enough to say he could forget. “Feel your eyes dying in me…and your hair.”

  People said that when you died it was your hair that died last, Linda smiled, in spite of the comb she was now holding in her mouth. Then she dropped it, put on her raincoat and opened the door, still not knowing where she was going.

  The late afternoon was still warm beneath the dull autumn sky, as if ignoring the seasons. Several times Linda almost went into a shop to buy some material, but each time she changed her mind. She felt relaxed and at ease with herself. For no particular reason, Suva’s words came back to her: “I got married during the blockade.” As a matter of fact, her thoughts had lately been turning more and more often to Silva and things connected with her. The surge of happiness she’d felt when she first met her, eight months ago, kept recurring. She now rejoiced in her good luck at working in the same office as Silva, and shuddered at the thought that one of them might be moved. Every so often she found herself adopting one of Suva’s expressions or gestures, and while she did her best to avoid copying the older woman, she didn’t feel guilty about it. She liked everything about Silva - her face, her way of dressing and doing her hair, the way she spoke on the telephone, the atmosphere around her and the relations she created with everyone, from her fellow secretaries to her superiors. Linda also admired Suva’s relationship with her husband, and had even, on the basis of just a few glimpses, taken a liking to the husband himself, with his stern-looking and yet not forbidding face, and the deeply etched lines on his forehead that seemed signs of youth rather tha
n age.

  “‘I got married during the blockade,’“ she repeated, smiling. Would she herself get married during this second blockade? She turned towards a shop window so that no one would see her smiling to herself. She certainly liked doing as Silva did, even at the risk of seeming like a pale imitation of her friend. Anyhow, mightn’t anything happen during a blockade? Hadn’t Silva got married, while her late sister got divorced in order to marry Besnik Struga, and Struga himself, a person still shrouded in mystery for Linda, had broken off his engagement? She’d met Struga, Suva’s former brother-in-law, only once, by chance, in the corridor, when he’d come to the ministry to see Silva. But — perhaps because Linda had heard so much about him — he’d made a strong impression on her. Most of the people Silva knew were somehow out of the ordinary: her brother, the tank officer, who’d come to see her two days ago, looking distraught; Skënder Bermema, the writer, an old family friend who’d had a rather enigmatic relationship with Suva’s sister; and other cousins and acquaintances whom Linda had met or whose voices she’d heard when they’d called in at or rung up the office to speak to her friend. All were interesting; almost all had something in their lives - some phase, some act or some episode - that was connected with the Soviet blockade. Linda was growing more and more fascinated by that period, and by anyone who’d been directly involved in it.

  And why shouldn’t I too get married during a blockade? she joked to herself as she made for the Makina Import building. Bet thee she’d have to find someone to marry. And furthermore, was this really a genuine blockade? By all accounts the other one had weighed down on everyone like lead: a period harsh in itself had been slashed through as by an icy abyss. But it was still hard to say how serious the present crisis might prove. You needed to be a code-cruncher to deduce anything from the articles in the press. But things might not turn out so badly as that: there mightn’t be a blockade at all. And detecting a tinge of regret in this thought, as if she could only get married if there was a blockade, she smiled at her own absurdity.

  “If anyone suspected the idiotic notions that go through my mind!” she thought. It was a good thing Tirana was big enough for one to daydream as one walked along without bumping into people one knew. Then, paradoxically, she had a feeling someone was watching her. She turned, and thought she recognized a face. The man just nodded vaguely. Where have I seen that ravaged face before, she wondered. And then she remembered. It was in the cafeteria at the ministry.

  Linda smiled at him. They both walked on a little way. Then he spoke.

  “You’re Suva’s friend, aren’t you? We’ve met before, if you remember.”

  “Yes, indeed!” Linda exclaimed. But he didn’t take the hand she’d half extended.

  “How did that business about the X-ray turn out?” she asked, laughing.

  But he remained serious.

  “No developments,” he said. “Nothing.”

  “Really?”

  She gave him a sidelong look, and her own smile faded. If she’d met anyone else in the street like this, she would have walked on without more ado, but there was something about his downcast expression that made him seem different from other people.

  “Perhaps things will sort themselves out faster than you think.”

  Victor Hila shrugged, as if to say it was better not to talk about it. They’d been walking along together for some time now, and it seemed to make both of them uncomfortable. Linda had noticed before how disagreeable it is being overtaken in the street by someone you know, rather than just meeting them coming towards you and passing by. Although the man looked even gloomier than he had the other day at the ministry, she resolved to give him the slip at the next shop they came to. Then he, as if reading her thoughts, asked her point-blank:

  “Are you in a hurry?”

  “Yes,” said Linda, though she spoke rather uncertainly. “I'm on my way to see a friend.”

  He looked at her closely for a moment.

  “Would you mind if I asked you something?”

  “Not at all,” answered Linda, staring straight ahead.

  “Please don’t misunderstand me,” he said, “but I feel so depressed this afternoon that you really would be doing me a kindness if you’d have a drink with me.”

  Linda stood still for a moment, hesitating. The man’s expectancy was almost tangible.

  “All right,” she said, surprised at how faint her voice was.

  “It’s very kind of you,’ he murmured. “Thanks.”

  Linda didn’t know what to say. They went across a square to a little café. “But I was right to say I’d come,” she thought as they went in, “He really did look down in the dumps.”

  There weren’t many other people in the café.

  “What will you have?” he asked.

  “A coffee, please,” said Linda.

  They sat with their elbows on the table for a while without speaking.

  “I’d been wandering around for an hour,” he said. “I'm really out of work now, you know. It wasn’t so bad the day I first met you — I’d been suspended, but I could still go to the factory, see my friends, turn my hand to something. But now, with the Chinese on the watch all the time, I can’t go anywhere near the factory. You can’t imagine what it’s like when those devils have got their eye on you.”

  Linda felt she might risk a smile, Victor’s drawn face relaxed.

  “I’m just a figure of fun,” he said. “Do you see what I mean? I’ve dropped out of time. In the past I might have been punished for what I did; in the future I might be praised. But in the present situation between our two countries, it’s neither one thing nor the other. That’s the worst of it, I’m suspended between two different periods of time. Which means ! don’t belong to either. To any. Do you understand?”

  “Perhaps that just makes you a man of today,” said Linda,

  “Do you mean I’m typical of our own age?”

  “Who can say?” replied Linda, smiling. “Perhaps. A hero of our time!”

  Victor gazed at her for a while as if meditating a decision: should he or should he not forget his pain and smile with her? He had a vague feeling it was his sorrow that had made Linda interrupt what she was doing and come here with him, and that if he showed less of it she might feel no further moral obligation and go off with an easy conscience, her mission accomplished, leaving him alone again.

  He hadn’t worked this out clearly: he just sensed that she’d come with him because she felt sorry for him, and would go away again as soon as she saw him feeling a bit better. But in fact, apart from the pleasure of sitting here in this charming girl’s company, he didn’t feel any relief whatsoever: on the contrary, Linda’s presence, by reminding him that life went on normally regardless of his distress, just made him feel further pangs. So it wasn’t a pose when he went on looking sad.

  Linda’s smile faded first from her lips, thee from her cheeks, and then from her eyes, leaving her with a sense of guilt. She picked up her cup, only to realize at the last moment that it was empty.

  “Some witticisms are very amusing to quote after the event,” said Victor, “bet sometimes they’re rather painful at the time.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny,’’ replied Linda. “I sympathise with your trouble, and as a matter of fact…”

  She’d been going to say, “that was why I agreed to come here.” But she didn’t finish, partly out of annoyance, partly perhaps because of some sort of inhibition.

  “I wasn’t referring to you!” cried Victor. “The thought never entered my head! On the contrary, I’m very grateful to you for giving me your company on a day like this. It would be really boorish of me to bother about such trifles …”

  “Anyhow, it’s of no importance,” said Linda.

  Another silence fell between them, unrelieved by the clatter of their empty cups or the sound of Victor’s lighter as he made several unsuccessful attempts to light a cigarette.

  “Have you been working in the same office as Si
lva for long?” he asked at last.

  Linda perceived that the best way of relieving the tension was to talk about a third person. She spoke of Silva with a warmth, almost a passion, which she herself found hard to explain.

  “Have you known her long yourself ?” she asked.

  “Yes, for a very long time,” Victor answered.

  He stared for a moment at the whorls of cigarette smoke, thee added:

  “I was closer to her sister, though. Perhaps Silva has told you something about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was a remarkable woman. We’d known each other since the time of her first marriage. Then she divorced and married one of my friends — Besnik Straga. I expect you’ve heard of him.”

  “Yes, Didn’t he act as Eever Hoxha’s interpreter in Moscow in 1960?”

  “That’s right. He was an extraordinary person, too. But such is life — their happiness didn’t last long.”

  “Besnik Struga was a friend of yours, was he?”

  Victor nodded.

  “I met him when he came back from Moscow,” he went on thoughtfully. “As chance would have it, it was through him that I was one of the first to hear what had happened there.”

  Now Linda was listening with bated breath,

  “He wouldn’t say anything about it even to his fiancée. Some people say that was one of the reasons why they broke up.”

  Linda longed to hear more, but didn’t like to ask questions for fear of seeming inquisitive.

  But she could see how restlessly his hands were moving about on the table. The man sitting opposite was one of the people who’d been involved in the first blockade. And one of the first, perhaps the very first, to be involved in the present one.

  “Well, there it is,” he said suddenly. “A Chinaman turns up from the other side of the world and ruins your life for you.”

  He waited a moment to see if she was going to laugh again. Then, as she hadn’t even smiled: