The Concert

by Ismail Kadare

  As dawn approached, their conversation grew more and more incoherent: sometimes he would nod off, sometimes she sounded as if she were talking in a waking nightmare. She would get into a rage, then a moment later be overcome by an icy wave of doubt. “Unsex all white women, master!” she cried out once as in a dream. Thee became cast down again at the thought of how long it would take. She was afraid everything would peter out when he died. She feared he himself might not be determined enough. He reassured her as best he could. “Don’t worry! Once we get the thing started there’ll be no stopping it,” If it hadn’t still been ie the future, he might have quoted the example of Cambodia: “Look at Cambodia - it started there with hatred of culture and ended up with hatred of everything else. Now they’re even allergic to buildings in their cities!” As it was, he just had to listen to her breathless fretting: “What if this? Supposing that?”

  It was getting light when he started talking about marihuana. Perhaps the rosy gleams of dawn made him think of it. Perhaps he thought it was time to put an end to her ravings. At any rate, he suddenly heaved a sigh and said: “There’s another way I can achieve my ends.” Then he told her of what his enemies called the latest bee in his bonnet — his marihuana plan.

  “When I gave orders for farmers to start growing it, a couple of months ago, everyone thought it was for the four or five billion dollars it might bring in. The idiots! My reasons were quite different…”

  She listened open-mouthed.

  “I’d have told you about it before,” he said, “but I was waiting for an opportunity like tonight.”

  Then he rambled on about the waves of red that would eventually spread out over the whole earth like-ripples on a pond, and about the hallucinations that would fill all those gradually softening brains. A few years’ addiction to the drug brought about a weakening of the mind, while a few years more produced further deterioration, and so on until the persons concerned had lost about half of their mental faculties.

  “And that’s the key to the whole thing,” he murmured. “That’s what will make all the rest quite easy - do you see?”

  And so they began a new day, hovering between sleep and waking. All that was needed was the hoot of an owl to complete Jiang Qing’s resemblance to Lady Macbeth, as there lay in the next room, with their throats cut, Shakespeare, the Ninth Symphony, the Mona Lisa, and all the drunken governments who, like King Duncan’s drugged grooms, woke too late to prevent the murder…

  Mao Zedong took a deep breath as if to drive away the memory of that night. Some time had gone by since then, and what had once been a dream had long since turned into fact. So much so that foreigners had begun to smell a rat. He froze again, thinking he heard the sound of another plane. But when he looked up the sky was empty except for clouds dotted here and there, as before. I must have been dreaming, he thought. Then, a moment later, growled: “They sniff around my marihuana like a pack of hyenas.” But let them fly as low as they liked, let them take photographs, make films, even analyse samples of soil, they would never guess his ultimate object. Their minds are too stale too discover our secrets, he told himself. Even Marx couldn’t have done so, explaining everything in terms of economics and politics as if that were all! He’d have like to remind Marx of Genghis Khan - there’d been no economics or politics, no profits or surpluses, in his tide of conquest: only violence, annihilation, the grinding of everything to dust. How do you explain that, eh, Herr Marx? Your mind can’t cope with our Asian ardours. That’s why you were doomed never to succeed with us.

  He realized his thoughts were becoming confused. Europe, marihuana, the need to strengthen the dose again — the various ideas were not combining into any sort of order. “Mari-hua-na,” he mumbled. “Mao-mari-huana.” He laughed. “The thoughts of Maorihuana! Laugh, the rest of you! You’ll still be the first to come crawling to me for mercy! Ave Mao-Maria!” And he laughed to himself again. But this time it was more like a sneer.

  They’d say he was raving. It was a word they were very fond of. They were always in a hurry to stick labels on any ideas their sluggish minds couldn’t understand, any concepts a bit larger than what they were used to. “Cosmic ravings” indeed! Of course, if someone’s mind isn’t capable of standing back and regarding the world impartially, everything strikes him as crazy. But his mind was capable. He could stand a thousand yards back from the world and examine it closely, even though he was only a tiny particle compared with the whole cosmos. Not for nothing was he the spiritual leader of a billion men. It was this multitude that conferred on its guide the power of seeing the world in its true proportions. You had only to look at it properly to see a tiny globule revolving in the heavens like millions of others, inhabited by at most four or five human beings: one white, one yellow, one red and one black. The white is physically the strongest, with a well-nourished brain that enables him to dominate the other three. These submit to him because they have neither the physical nor the mental strength to oppose him. And so the days (the centuries) go by, until the yellow man happens to discover a plant, which he slyly boils and gives to the white man to drink. The white man swallows it, has sweet dreams, and his mind is weakened. He goes on drinking the potion for years. And then comes the day (the century) when the yellow man, seeing the white man at the end of his tether, seizes the opportunity to wrest his power from him, Now, thinks he, it’s my turn to rule the world. What a pity it’s not a bit bigger!

  That’s all. The rest was just stuff and nonsense. This was the whole history of the globe, past and present. A waste of time to discuss it further. To complicate things was mere foolishness. And now he was brewing the potion for the whole of mankind.

  Mao blinked, thee looked out over the landscape. This was the cauldron in which he brewed his philtre. The red steam rose to the brim. Was the world troubled? Then its fever must be soothed as soon as possible. This was what he’d been working towards for a long time: he was going to give the world a sleeping pill of his owe making.

  He felt drowsy too. Again he thought he could hear a plane, but once more when he looked up the sky was empty. “That’s how the problems of the world might be settled,” he thought. “It’s too small a one to be worth any more bother. I could have dealt with a world that was much bigger.”

  The roaring sound returned. But this time Mao didn’t look up, “It must be just a buzzing in my ear,” he thought.

  Gjergj Dibra’s plane had been flying for ages over the Arabian deserts. The return journey seemed so long it was as if the desert had grown larger since the journey out. He’d given up looking out of the window a long while ago: the monotony of the scene below only made the time creep past more slowly. He tapped nervously at the locks on his briefcase, which as always he was holding in his lap. It was a bit fatter than it had been on the way out, but sealed in the same way. Yet, though he knew nothing of its contents, his intuition told him that even though it might look heavier, its contents were in a way less weighty than they had been.

  And he was right. The briefcase didn’t contain any reply to the letter from Albania to China. At first sight the papers it did hold had nothing to do with the letter. Some of them dealt with economics: four reports trying to explain the freighters’ delay. The fifth document was a long memorandum, accompanied by maps and sketches and drawn up by seven Chinese experts, warning that the main compensating dam serving the northern hydro-electric power stations might burst if there was an earthquake. Work on the site should be halted at once in order that the necessary precautions might be taken. Documents 7 and 8 were accounts of a long series of negotiations between the two economic delegations, strewn with misunderstandings arising largely out of language. The ninth document was the X-ray of a Chinaman’s foot, together with two interpretations of it — one by a group of surgeons at the osteology centre in Peking and the other by a group of barefoot doctors — together with a note from the ministry for foreign affairs. The last paper of all was a detailed report on the evidence collected concerning the mu
rder of Lin Biao, with various theories as to who was responsible. This was the only document with whose contents Gjergj Dibra was more or less familiar, since in the course of the tedious evenings he’d spent in Peking he’d often discussed the rumours about Lin Biao’s disappearance with his friends at the embassy. During the flight home he’d been turning what was said over and over in his mind, perhaps because these comments had disturbed him, or perhaps because Lin Biao’s end had involved a plane journey. As soon as Gjergj had set foot on the steps leading up to the aircraft, he couldn’t help imagining the marshal in some secret airport, hurrying towards a plane over which the shadow of death probably hung already. He was with his wife and son, and all three looked terrified, So much so that at the last minute, just as he was about to enter the plane, Lin Biao appeared to halt, as if petrified, and had to be dragged inside …It was a strange and senseless journey, aboard a plane without a crew — was it possible that his son, a squadron leader in the Chinese Air Force, would have chosen such an aircraft, let alone one with insufficient fuel aboard? It was all very hard to believe, as was the alleged phone call from Lin Biao’s daughter, who betrayed her father by telling Zhou Enlai about his attempted escape five hours beforehand. Not to mention Mao Zedong’s words, “Let him go,” and the suggestion by one of the marshal’s fellow-conspirators that the plane should be brought down by rockets so as to remove all traces of the plot. Thee Mao again: “You’d better let him go, so people won’t be able to say we murdered him.” And then the plane crashed and caught fire in Mongolia…

  Gjergj Dibra gave the briefcase a shake and scrutinized its complicated locks. Things probably hadn’t happened like that at all. This doubt had been expressed several times during his long evenings with his embassy friends. None of the foreign diplomats in Peking ever talked about anything else. Most of them inclined towards some other version of the story.

  And every eight what Gjergj had heard, instead of fading from his memory, merely grew clearer before he fell asleep in his hotel room. What has it got to do with me, he would ask himself — to hell with them and their mysteries! But in spite of himself he would always lie awake revolving all kinds of theories,

  In all probability Lin Biao hadn’t boarded the plane in order to flee, but simply to fly to Peking — and he’d been killed on the way. He must have quarrelled with them about something. Perhaps about the visit of the American president…And so they’d hatched a plot against him. They sent for him — said it was urgent. On the plane, seeing that the flight was lasting an unexpectedly long time, he became suspicious and asked where they were going. Through the window he could see a landscape that resembled the Mongolian desert…

  Although he had made up his mind not to look out, Gjergj couldn’t help leaning towards the window. Below, through the gathering dusk, the deserts of Arabia were still visible. Not unlike Mongolia, he thought, “Well, where are we going?” Lie Biao had asked. And thee, recognizing the country below, he and his men had taken out their guns and shot themselves.

  The light was fading swiftly, as if drawn down by the sands. Oe an evening such as this a few Soviet soldiers, struggling through the desert, had found the wreckage of the plane. Among the débris was the charred body of the man who had once been the second glory of China, Mao’s expected successor. The man of all those presidiums, those meetings, those appearances on colour TV, was now reduced to ashes, a blackened ghost like the image on a photographic negative. After a thorough inquiry, during which spent cartridges were found in the wreckage of the cabin, the question immediately arose: who had fired the shots, and why? The theory of attempted escape was now eliminated.

  Gjergj went on fiddling with the handle of his briefcase. Perhaps the Soviets held the key to the mystery, But how could they know? Was it Lin Biao who had fired first, as soon as he realized he was being removed by force from China; and had the others fired back? Or had the others shot him when he asked where they were going? Or had both groups - if there really were two groups — opened fire at the same time? Gjergj Dibra no longer tried to extricate himself from the maelstrom of hypotheses in which he was plunged once more, as in his sleepless nights in Peking. He just let out an oath from time to time, wishing them all to the devil But he did so only mechanically — he knew this nightmare would last throughout the journey.

  Well, someone had fired shots inside the aircraft. And thee the plane had crashed. Why? Because of the shots? (Perhaps some vital piece of mechanism had been hit. Or had the pilots been killed?) Anyway, the drama had taken place prematurely, unexpectedly.

  But what would have happened if no shots had been fired? Where would the plane have gone to? And, most important of all, where and how would the drama have ended?

  As often happens when one dreams that one is flying, Gjergj’s imagination was drawn towards the earth.

  Apparently the plan was that the matter should be settled on the ground - on foreign soil, evidently, to make people think Lin Biao had been trying to escape. Otherwise, there were plenty of deserts in China where he could have been eliminated without any difficulty.

  So the intention was that Lie Biao should be found on foreign soil (Soviet soil, as it happened). Aboard the plane on which he’d fled. Dead.

  The plan implicit in this hypothesis was clear. The plane was to land somewhere in Mongolia. Before the Soviet frontier guards arrived, the killers would have plenty of time to shoot the marshal, either inside the plane — they could pepper the body with impunity now it had landed — or outside, on the ground.

  In the latter case the marshal and the people with him would have been made to disembark, and then shot beside the aircraft. When the Soviets came on the scene they’d have been told: “This is Lin Biao, our minister. We were his guards. He was trying to escape. We are loyal to Mao. So we shot him.”

  But this fine plan had been foiled by Lie Biao himself, with his question about where they were going, the shots, etc. Unless what triggered things off was the guards’ attempt to disarm him (“As soon as you cross the frontier, take away his gee!”).

  Gjergj shook his head. Was it likely the meticulous Chinese would embark on so crude a plan? The perfunctoriness of it was obvious, but quite apart from that it involved enormous risks. There were two groups of armed men aboard the plane, and Lin Biao’s escort was at least as likely as not to get the upper hand. Then he would have got clean away.

  No! Gjergj told himself. It couldn’t have been like that. Such an unsound plan could only have been set up by someone certain that whatever happened inside the plane — even if Lin Biao did get temporary control — the end of the story would be the same. For the simple reason that both parties would be burned to ashes.

  The plane would be shot down. Someone was sure of that.

  Gjergj leaned his forehead against the window, bet the vibrating of the glass only made him more agitated than ever.

  There were two groups on that plane, and each group thought it knew the truth. Lin Biao’s party thought he was being flown to Peking, His potential murderers knew they were going to murder him in Mongolia. But over and above all this there was someone else, not on the plane, far away even, who really knew what was what: who knew that the plane was doomed to be burned to ashes.

  H’mm, thought Gjergj. So they planned to shoot the plane down. Easy to say, but not so easy to do. If the marshal had been summoned to Peking he would have travelled either on his own plane, or on a government aircraft, or on one belonging to the general staff, Whichever it was, all such aircraft were guarded day and night: it was unlikely anybody could plant a bomb aboard them or interfere with their landing gear. Even if that were possible, it would still be difficult for the killers to get themselves aboard. Lin Biao’s escort would challenge any unknown faces and order them to be thrown off the plane without more ado.

  H’mm…Not really very plausible, Even if such a plan had gone smoothly to begin with, how could the bomb be timed to go off at a precise moment, after the plane had crossed the frontier
? The marshal was the second most important man in China, and in charge of his own comings and goings. He could have delayed his flight by an hour, by two hours even, if he felt like it. No, it must have happened differently. Or perhaps all the theories rejected the facts in some way, only in a different order and in pursuit of a completely different purpose.

  But what does it matter anyway? thought Gjergj to himself in a last effort to get the business off his mind. There was no point in cudgelling his brains over something that was bound to remain a mystery no matter how much one tried to puzzle it out. He was already depressed enough after spending all that time surrounded by mask-like faces inhabiting a seemingly lifeless world, He’d felt his own vitality draining away as the days went by. And now he was leaving it all behind he meant to forget those empty countenances and all the stress he’d endured. To hell with them and their mysteries! Aeyway, this might be his last trip there.

  He tried to imagine himself back at home among his nearest and dearest, but some obstacle seemed to stand in the way. The entrance hall of the flat, the doors into the rooms looked different. There was something strange about the familiar sound of Suva’s footsteps going from their bedroom to the bathroom. There was even a mist over Suva’s and Brikena’s faces. What was going on? he thought worriedly. The spell of Asia seemed to envelop him still.

  He beckoned to the stewardess who was patrolling the narrow passageway between the seats, and ordered a cup of coffee.

  “Where are we?” he asked her when she brought it.

  She gave the usual automatic smile and told him. But he didn’t hear: his mind had substituted the words, “Over Mongolia.”

  “Where are we going?” Lin Biao had asked on the fatal plane, as it speeded towards an unknown destination. “Oh, hell!” cried Gjergj, realizing he couldn’t tear his thoughts away from that other aircraft. He’d heard so much about it during those dreary evenings in Peking —it was going to take time to get it out of his system.