As he slunk along with his chin sunk in the fur collar of his coat, his attention was caught by a familiar symbol on a poster. No, not a symbol - a line of ideograms. He slowed down to decipher it: “Exhibition of Porcelain”. What’s this, he wondered, going nearer. Yes, it was Chinese all right, though underneath the text there was a translation into Albanian. The poster looked as if it had been there for some time, but the wind and the rain and the street cleaners had failed to tear it down.
But it didn’t look as old as all that. An elegantly dressed couple had stopped in front of it. The man, whom Ekrem thought he’d seen somewhere before, was smiling and talking to the woman as he examined the words on the poster.
Ekrem looked at the pair. He felt as if the man’s smile invited him to join in their conversation, as often happens when strangers meet by chance at some unusual sight or incident. He felt an almost irresistible desire to speak to them. To say, for instance: “Fancy leaving that poster up now! What a joke, eh!” And in spite of his natural shyness he might actually have spoken, but for the feeling that he’d seen that face before. On the way up to the Kryekurts’s first-floor apartment? Or somewhere else? On television, perhaps?
He moved a step forward. Perhaps I should look at the date? he thought. Abandoning all precautions he peered closely at the poster. He thought he must be seeing things. Could it be possible? He took off his glasses and got another pair out of his pocket. Then he read the date, first in Chinese and then in Albanian, then in Chinese again. No doubt about it. The poster bore today’s date. It also said where the exhibition was being held. The Palace of Culture, Impossible!
“Today?” he asked the man, his voice faltering with emotion.
“Yes,” replied the other, looking him straight in the eye. “Today.”
Ekrem thought he could discern a kind of amused mockery in the man’s voice and expression - a mockery aimed not only at him. But this was of no interest to him now.
“Thank you,” he said. And then he made his way back across Government Square towards the Palace of Culture. A surge of pleasure made him almost stagger. He felt his chest suddenly expanding - his old lungs couldn’t cope with it. So things weren’t as bad as all that, he thought. One of the tunes that generally came back to him in moments of euphoria tried to make itself heard. But this time it wasn’t O Sole mio. No, it was The East is Red. He recited the words to himself in Chinese as he approached the Palace of Culture.
Skënder Bermema looked after the stranger for a few moments, thee turned back to the poster.
“Just look!” he said to Silva, whom he’d met by chance in the street a little while ago, “An exhibition like that at a time like this! How exciting! I love it when this sort of thing happens on the eve of great events. Come on, let’s go and have a look.”
“All right,” said Silva. “I’m late already, but I can’t resist!”
The Palace of Culture, where the exhibition was being held, was quite close by, and on the way Silva told Bermema some details about Gjergj’s recent trip to China. He was highly amused.
“He’s dying to see you,” Silva told Skënder. “He tried to phone you but you weren’t there.”
“Really? Well, I’m eager to see him, too…I say, look at all the people!” They had almost reached the Palace of Culture, and Skënder was pointing to the crowd around one of the entrances.
The atmosphere was much as he had expected. The exhibition was probably attracting far more visitors now than it would have done six months ago. Most of their faces wore a strange smile, an unnatural mask-like expression of curiosity mingled with bewilderment. Among the rest there were several Chinese and some officials from foreign embassies.
“I’ve noticed that just before a breaking-off of relations they always put on an exhibition,” said Skënder, turning his own smiling mask towards Silva. “Or perhaps ‘mystification’ would be a better word for it.”
Silva, finding it hard to concentrate, was gazing at a mass of terracotta objects, unenticingly displayed. Her companion’s warm bass voice reached her through loud background music. Chinese music.
“Someone told me,” he was saying, “that in accordance with their habit of conveying political messages by means of symbols, the Chinese have placed a couple of pots in a particularly significant position here.”
“Really?” said Silva. “Where?”
Skënder laughed.
“Ah, there you have me! First we have to find them, and then, if we do, we have to try to guess what’s meant by their placing.”
“Could it be those?” asked Silva after a while, pointing out a couple of vases of unequal size on which a weedy little man seemed to be feasting his eyes.
They both burst out laughing and let themselves be swept along by the crowd.
“There’s a pair of yesterday’s men,” said Skënder, indicating two visitors wearing off-white raincoats as wan as their smiles. “I shouldn’t be surprised if at least one of them didn’t still cherish the hope of our getting together with the Soviet Union again. I don’t believe in argument by analogy, but they remind me of the time when we broke with Moscow. Do you remember? — everyone was asking when were we going to take up with the West again.”
“Yes, I remember."
“Just watch their faces when they look at some Chinese vases. They seem to be saying, ‘Did you really think these objects were ever going to take the place of Anna Karenina and Tolstoy?’“
Silva put her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.
“I don’t know why they don’t just say it outright. And look at the way they dress. Always in the same colours the Soviets wear on their rationalist Sundays - pale grey and off-white. I don’t know if you remember the first New Year after the break — the idiotic way some of them behaved?”
“Yes, I remember,” said Silva again. For some reason or other she was thinking of Ana. Perhaps he was too, for he was silent for a while. Then:
“Look, there’s one of our China fanciers - a genuine connoisseur!” he exclaimed, “I knew we’d find examples of every species here!”
“I didn’t know there were such people.”
“Oh yes,” he said, his tone suddenly harsh. “They’re rare, but they do exist…Do you know that one over there?”
“No,” she said. The person he meant was short and swarthy.
“That’s C— V—, the critic.”
“Is it? I’ve read some of his articles, but this is the first time I’ve seen him in the flesh. Does he really like the Chinese?”
Skënder’s grey eyes went cold.
“After the break with the Soviets he was all poised to step into the breach and fill Albania with Chinese theories on literature and art. And he was the first to suggest our adopting the Chinese habit of not putting authors’ names on the books they write.”
The crowd seemed to have grown since Silva and Skënder arrived. It was quite difficult now to move about the long room, which every so often was lit up by a camera flash.
“Two years ago in this very hall,” Skënder said, “they exhibited the famous sculpture, Outside the Tax Office — a real piece of rubbish, as you may imagine. There were plenty of sarcastic remarks about it, but in those days the people who swallowed Chinese art hook, line and sinker were still in the ascendant."
Silva’s smile told her companion she thought he was overdoing it a bit.
“And look at them now,” he went on, “prowling around those vases, or whatever they are, making disparaging remarks. The whole thing is a cold-blooded war in which neither side really gives a damn about anything. But of course, in present circumstances, the enthusiasts are in the minority…”
“Look over there,” said Silva, interrupting him.
A group of people were gathered around a showcase. A press photographer, who from his equipment looked like a foreigner, kept crouching down to take pictures.
“I should think that’s where the fox is lurking, shouldn’t you?” said Skënder.
; But when they got near enough to see, the vases the group was looking at turned out to be quite ordinary.
“Sorry I interrupted,” said Silva. “You were saying the China enthusiasts are on the wane…”
“Ye-e-es…But that sort of riffraff don’t give up easily. To start with, they still hope the rift with China can be mended. But the main thing is, they think that even if the Chinese do go they’ll leave a useful amount of their jiggery-pokery behind.”
“How can they possibly hope such a thing?” said Silva indignantly.
“Because they’re swine!” he answered. “Still, you ought to know there’s a difference between the two camps. The first lot’s love of Russia was to a certain extent understandable — it was connected to a part of their life that they’d spent there. To Russian literature, the Russian winter, and so on. And especially Russian girls — as you may have heard, Russian girls are very charming. But the other lot’s love of, or rather craze for China is completely base. It hasn’t got anything to do with China really, with Chinese art or the Chinese view of the world…It’s inspired by ignoble considerations that have only to do with themselves …”
Silva shrugged — a gesture he liked, because it reminded him of Ana - to indicate that she couldn’t quite follow.
“Let me put it another way,” he said. “While those who felt a kind of nostalgia for things Russian stayed loyal out of conviction, or misapprehension, or sentimental attachment, those — a smaller group — who went crazy about China did so not out of love for the place but because things Chinese provided them with something that disguised their own deficiencies — inefficiency, lack of talent, envy, inferiority complex and spiritual poverty. It provided them with an outlet for their fundamental wickedness, and ! don’t know what else!”
“Phew! You don’t mince your words!”
“Perhaps, but such are their motives, and that’s why it’ll be difficult to turf them out, even after the Chinese have gone… Just look at C— V—!” he said, turning towards him. “The perfect embodiment of…”
Silva turned round, but the shoulders of other visitors hid the critic from view.
Skënder leaned closer.
“I expect you think I’m fanatically anti-Chinese, Be frank — you do, don’t you?”
“Well…”
He stifled a laugh.
“Well, you’re quite wrong!”
She rolled her eyes mockingly.
“I’m serious,” he exclaimed, looking at her evenly as if waiting for her to stop smiling. “In fact I’d regard myself as an ignorant boor if I did entertain such views!”
Two or three people nearby turned to look at them.
They think we’re quarrelling, thought Silva, and tried to draw him away. Someone must have accused him of being anti-Chinese before, she thought. There was no other explanation for this sudden outburst.
“I have a great respect for their culture, as anybody must have if they’re in their right mind,” he said. “We’ve talked about their culture before, haven’t we?”
“Of course.”
“And who created that culture, that poetry, and so on, but the people you thought I was denigrating?”
Silva felt like saying she’d never thought any such thing, but knowing what he was like she restrained herself.
“If I get worked up and talk like this, it’s because it’s the Chinese people who suffer most when things go wrong.”
“I do understand, ‘Skënder,” said Silva soothingly.
He was talking now without even looking at her.
“People in this country are always telling stories and jokes about the Chinese, and I expect they always will. But it’s got nothing to do with racism, whatever some may think.”
“No…Good heavens, what a crush! It’s like being packed in a tie of sardines!”
The visitors were cruising around in complete disorder. They seemed to have come there to meet one another rather than to study Chinese ceramics. Everyone was beaming, contributing to one great meaningful smile. They came and went, eyes sparkling, ready to burst out laughing at the slightest excuse.
“And there’s the old guard for you!” said Skënder.
“So what’s their position?”
“They’re gaga. If they still had all their faculties they’d be lamenting now instead of exulting as they did when we broke with the Soviets.“
“But why should they be downcast?” asked Silva. “Perhaps they’re cherishing some hopes, now as then?”
“They’ve no reason to hope. We’re drawing away from China at the very moment China’s moving towards America. And so…”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“But they’re completely past it, and can’t understand the situation. Unless they’re only pretending…”
Silva started to laugh.
Then, from their right, there came a sudden noise, followed by cries of “What is it?” “What’s happening?” Heads turned, but no one could make anything out from a distance.
The crowd drifted towards the centre of interest. The more impatient elbowed their way forward. Others could be seen coming back in the other direction, wearing smiles of satisfied curiosity.
“What’s happened?” Skënder asked one of these.
“Someone’s broken a vase.”
“Good gracious!” Silva exclaimed,
“A Chinaman knocked it over by accident,” said the man. “I don’t know what would have happened if it had been one of us!”
Silva thought for a moment of Victor Hila. Scraps of conversation could be heard all round: “That beautiful vase — smashed to smithereens!”…“I was sure someone had knocked it over!”, “What? Who’d have dared?”…“Well, Ï never!”…“It was very valuable, too!”…“Still, I suppose it’s a good sign”…
Silva, turning round to see who’d spoken the last few words, was surprised to see the man they’d noticed a little while ago, looking at the poster. He was rubbing his hands, and his face was flushed with satisfaction.
“Let’s slip away,” said Skënder.
And after having strolled around for a little longer, they left. He went with her for part of the way, and as they parted she could feel on her lips a trace of the collective smile worn by the visitors to the exhibition. It was colder now and she walked faster. As she strode along she wondered if she’d been right not to tell Skënder Bermema that her brother had been expelled from the Party. Perhaps he might have been able to give her some explanation? Anyhow, she’d contrive to mention it to him another day.
As she was passing the Café Riviera, where the lights were on because of the overcast sky, a sudden intuition made her turn and look in through the window. And her whole being was invaded by a deep, burning sensation, spreading like ripples when a drop of water fails into a tank. There, sitting on a bench near the front of the café, Gjergj was sitting with a young woman. “What could be more natural?” she told herself. And then, as if to check the waves of pain that were pulsing right through her body, “So what?” So what if he was sitting in a café with a woman - that wasn’t the end of the world! But some blind force, stronger than her own will, made her do something that offended against her owe code of conduct and her own dignity: she looked again. The young woman - or girl — sitting with Gjergj was pretty. In the course of the two or three seconds that Silva had spent looking at her (I only hope I didn’t look again] she thought later), her mind took it all in: their pensive look, the way the girl was toying with her coffee cup, the smoke from his cigarette, and, worse still, the dangerous silence that reigned between them. How shameful! Silva reproached herself, swiftly turning her head away. How horrible! But between “shameful”, which applied to herself, and “horrible”, which applied to what she’d just seen, there was an enormous distance. “How horrible!” she said again, forgetting her own unseemly behaviour. It seemed to her a mere drop compared with that other ocean of evil.
The farther she left the café behind, the more irreparable see
med what she had seen there. The long light-brown hair, the whirls of cigarette smoke lazily enfolding them both…She’d have to be very stupid not to see there was something between them. She realized how fast she was walking by the sound of her own heels on the pavement. It seemed to come from far away. Then she felt a temporary calm descend on her, though she was well aware it was false respite, a grey, barren flatness bound in the end to emphasize the underlying pain. This was the reason, then, for his over-affectionate telegram. For that over-insistent “fondest”. Of course, a part of that effusion, perhaps the main part, was really directed towards the other woman! She saw again in her mind’s eye the intimate moments of their first night together after his return, moments cruelly lit by the thought that he’d done the same things the next day, or the day after that, in some anonymous room with the other woman.
She was overwhelmed by a jealousy all those long years of happy marriage could do nothing to modify. She made a last effort to throw it off, contain it. Wait - perhaps it isn’t really like that, perhaps it was only a coincidence. But the stronger, the dominant part of herself soon stifled that appeal to wisdom. You had to be very naive not to suspect Gjergj and that woman were up to something. Blind as she was, she’d told herself that sort of thing happened only to other people, never to Gjergj and herself. She’d believed like a fool in her happiness, and all the time it was rotten to the core. She’d shut her eyes to ail possibility of danger, smug as the most empty-headed of women. All the signs had been there, but with an unforgivable lack of shrewdness she hadn’t even noticed them. Hadn’t she found him, several times lately, lying on the sofa reading love poetry? Once she’d even asked him, “What are you reading that for? I’ve hardly ever seen you open a book of poems…” He’d answered, “I don’t really know why…No particular reason…” She must be quite bird-brained not to have thought about what might lie behind such a change. Nor was that all. After he got back from China, not content with reading poetry he’d also taken a liking to chamber music. Quiet pieces mostly, the kind that promotes daydreaming. Yesterday evening she’d found him lying on the sofa, his head leaning on his right arm, listening to some Chopin. What more did he have to do to proclaim that he’d fallen in love? she raged inwardly. All there was left for him to do was draw hearts and arrows on the walls of the apartment. If he did she’d probably ask: “What are those funny symbols, Gjergj? Could they have anything to do with your feelings?”
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