The Concert

by Ismail Kadare

Her boss and Linda had just arrived in the office. Silva said good morning, took off her raincoat, and sat down at her desk. But she didn’t do all this in her usual manner. She told herself this odd feeling would soon pass. This misfortune of hers was connected with society, and her first encounter with other people after it had happened was bound to be difficult. But she couldn’t imagine how she was going to get through all these hours at the office without unburdening herself to someone, Gjergj had advised her not to talk to anyone about it for the moment, but she could tell it was going to be hard for her not to. Suddenly people seemed to be divided into two groups — those she could confide in and those she couldn’t. It wasn’t a question of trust, but of something else which even she couldn’t define. ln any case, she couldn’t make up her mind for two minutes together whether she wanted to talk to anybody or not.

  She tried to concentrate on her work, but it was too much for her — what had happened was so much a part of her, she couldn’t get it out of her mind for more than a moment. How painful this first stage was, when no one else knew about her trouble yet, and she had to speed hour upon hour alone with it. No, it would be better for the others to find out, whatever the consequences. Gradually she persuaded herself that she ought to speak out somehow, but she didn’t know how or to whom. It was easier for Gjergj: the Party had definite rules for such situations. A Party member had to report such a thing right away to the secretary of his cell.

  But ordinary citizens had no such guidance.

  What Silva feared most was the beginning of the mysterious and inexorable process which took a person out of the category of ordinary people and put him into the category of those whose life is tainted. It was a process which began with the individual concerned, but as other people saw that individual withdraw into him-self, so their own attitude changed, provoking another retreat in him; and so on until he became unrecognizable, no longer having anything in common with what he used to be.

  Though she didn’t make a show of it, Silva took a pride in her family’s past. She’d always been conscious of it, and it had acted as a foil to the image of themselves she and her sister — especially her sister - had created in their palmy days: the freedom of their ways, their poise, the clothes they wore…She could foresee how much she would miss it if it were lost, I shall grow ugly I she thought. Then she reproached herself: “Selfish brute that I am! My brother’s in prison, perhaps being interrogated at this very minute, and I…” But she couldn’t quite suppress the thought that from now on she wouldn’t be able to wear her most elegant clothes.

  “What’s the matter, Silva? Have you got a headache?” Linda whispered.

  “No.” Silva smiled gratefully. “Well, yes, a bit.”

  “Would you like an aspirin?”

  “No, thanks, Linda. Later on, perhaps,”

  Heaven knows what she was going to have to face later on! It would almost certainly include the sarcasm, perhaps even the vengefuleess, of people who didn’t like her: “Oh, here’s the Biografibukura!” (God, why had she said that instead of Sybukura}).

  Silva shook her head as if to get rid of these thoughts. She knew that if even a fraction of what she’d been imagining came to pass, she’d go out of her mind. But she wouldn’t let it get that far! She’d fight, she’d leave no stone unturned, she’d explain to everyone, beginning with herself, that she…But what? What? She nearly asked it aloud…Her thoughts were in utter confusion.

  “Linda,” she croaked feebly. “I’ll have that aspirin now, please.”

  At any rate, she must do something before this mental turmoil got the better of her. Right. She’d tell Linda what had happened, straight from the shoulder. Then she’d see what attitude to adopt. She might even discuss things with her. But first their boss would have to clear off and leave them by themselves.

  The prospect of talking to Linda calmed Silva down somewhat, but just as she thought the boss was about to go out of the room, it was Linda who walked over to the door.

  Silva, taken aback, watched the door shut. Then she was thrown into a state of agitation again by the thought that she was now alone with someone she could talk to, even if it wasn’t the person she’d have chosen. An opportunity had occurred which might not present itself again that day and which she’d better take advantage of before it was too late.

  “Comrade Defrim!” she found herself saying.

  God, how could his parents inflict such a name on him? She and Linda hardly ever used it, and she now realized for the first time how inhibiting it was.

  “Yes,” said the boss, raising his eyebrows but not looking up from his papers.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” said Silva, in such a faint voice that now he did glance across at her. “My brother was arrested yesterday.”

  She felt him subside with all his weight on to his desk, and even thought she heard his body give out a groan as if he’d become a block of wood himself. She kept her eyes on his face, as if it might reflect the gravity of her brother’s situation. After a moment of stupefaction, the boss broke out into a sweat. He didn’t know where to look. His whole being seemed to be groaning, “What have I done to deserve this?” He obviously wished she’d never opened her mouth.

  “But your husband’s a member of the Party, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. But why was he suddenly addressing her with the formal second person plural? And what had her husband got to do with it?

  She watched him, waiting for him to go on. It didn’t matter what he said so long as he said something!

  “So how did it happen? I mean, what was the reason?”

  He spoke reluctantly, as if to convey that he didn’t want to discuss the matter: she could think what she liked about him, but after all she belonged to an iniuential family, and had a husband who worked at the foreign ministry and was sent on secret missions…And so on …So why didn’t they just sort it out for themselves and leave him alone? — he didn’t have a Party card or the advantages that went with it, and there was no reason why he should share the disadvantages.

  “The reason?” Silva repeated. “It just happened — we don’t know the reason.”

  So much the worse! said the boss’s expression. Worse for the individual concerned, and worse for him too - having to listen to this rubbish, and so early in the day! He would probably have got up and left the room to avoid being left alone with her, but at that moment the door opened and Linda walked in. The boss felt reassured: Silva thought she heard his desk creak again as it was relieved of his weight.

  It could have been worse, she thought. He might have lectured her or told her to disavow her brother, even though she still didn’t know what he was accused of.

  What had Arian really done?… How many times had she asked herself that? And what if he’d merely been detained for questioning as Gjergj had suggested, and all this anguish turned out to be unnecessary? That was what she’d wanted to talk about to someone, but she’d applied to the most unsuitable person. From now on she’d be able to tell the sheep from the goats.

  She got up and went over to the telephone. Her boss watched her furtively as she dialled the number, as if trying to make out what unfortunate wretch was being drawn in now. He wouldn’t be in his shoes for anything! A private conversation in the office was one thing, but the phone was a completely different matter. Other people might be listening in, and might even pass on a distorted version of what was said.

  “Hallo? Is that the switchboard?” said Silva. “I’d like to speak to Besnik Struga, please. Extension four-four-five, if I remember rightly…” She was standing there with the phone resting against her cheek, staring into space, when she met Linda’s inquisitive eye. It suddenly struck Silva that her colleague might be interested in her own former brother-in-law. “Hallo, is that you, Besnik? This is Silva.”

  Linda listened with a mixture of envy and resentment to her colleague making an appointment with the man she herself so longed to meet. Then suddenly she caught her bos
s’s eye. What was the matter with him} She was tempted to laugh. Did the silly idiot think there was something immoral going on? She herself believed more than anything in the world in the integrity of the people who gravitated around Silva. Even Victor Hila, for whom, out of pity, she’d had a moment of weakness, had behaved very correctly, and far from trying to take advantage of her lapse he’d never made the slightest allusion to it since. Just once, a few days later, he’d phoned her up, apologizing over and over again for disturbing her, to stammer that he was calling to explain that he was on the point of leaving Tirana because of the business of the Chinaman’s foot. Not that he had any right to bother her with all that, but just to tell her he thought she was wonderful, and that he felt the greatest respect for her - really, the greatest respect imaginable — and that she was absolutely peerless and unique. She’d been genuinely touched by his decency and selflessness, and had thanked him. But what was this Silva was saying? Besnik Struga was going to drop in here? Yes, sure enough - Silva was repeating: “All right, I’ll be waiting for you in the office when you’ve left your meeting…” Now she had rung off.

  “Is Besnik Struga coming here?” asked Linda, not trying to conceal her agitation. “Will you introduce me?”

  “Of course,” said Silva. “He’s just leaving home to attend a meeting at the Ministry of Education, and when that’s over he'll come on here.”

  Linda’s hands reached out of their own accord for her handbag and mirror, then something held her back. The wave of pleasure which had swept over her at the thought of actually encountering Besnik Struga, the man she’d dreamed of meeting for so long, seemed to call for some dissimulation, like everything else one holds dear.

  Although it was Silva who kept looking at her watch, Linda waited just as eagerly as her friend for Struga to appear. At one point Linda almost asked her colleague why she seemed so anxious, but she was afraid this might reveal her owe nervousness.

  Besnik Struga arrived just after midday. Silva introduced him both to the boss and to Linda as “a friend of mine”. The boss looked at him with a mixture of astonishment, contrition and irony. As for Linda, she didn’t try to hide the warmth of her feelings. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said as she held out her hand. “I’m very glad to meet you.”

  “Me too,” said Besnik, looking at her with interest.

  They immediately struck up an animated, even sparkling conversation, as often happens when two people take an instant liking to one another. She told him what she knew about him; it wasn’t much. His trip to Moscow with Enver Hoxha, to attend the great congress of communist parties which she had had to write about in her history exam,…He interrupted to point out how this underlined the distance between them - he meant the difference in their ages. Blushing a little, she hastened to explain that this hadn’t even occurred to her. On the contrary, he looked very young (at this she reddened again, but luckily this was partly camouflaged by her permanent smile). So young, in fact, that she found it hard to believe he’d met Krushchev. And since he’d taken part in that confrontation, it wouldn’t be surprising, would it, if the present situation brought him face to face one day with Mao Zedong? Besnik laughed. As she must know, dialectical materialism — perhaps she’d sat for an examination in that too? — said that situations never repeated themselves in exactly the same form. As a matter of fact, according to Marx, what occurred first as tragedy was very likely to recur as farce.

  “Do you think this business with China might be regarded as a comedy, thee?” she asked. “Oh no, not at all. I was only referring to my owe role.”

  Linda couldn’t help noticing that Silva was following this repartee with a cold, almost constrained smile, as though, its vivacity displeased her. This deflated Linda at once: her previous flow of words ended as suddenly as a spring shower.

  “Shall we be on our way, then, Silva?” said Besnik, holding his hand out first to Linda and then to the boss.

  The office seemed lifeless after they’d gone. But Linda’s face still wore a smile.

  “Funny to think he was at that historic conference, isn’t it?” she said to her boss as if to justify herself. She felt she ought to try to explain the warmth of her welcome to their unexpected visitor. But the boss wore an expression of complete detachment. He was obviously thinking of something else, Linda felt reassured, and let her mind wander back to Besnik Struga. It was the first and most beautiful moment of an attraction between two people — the moment when nothing’s yet settled, no decision taken, no habit formed, no timetable established…there isn’t any hurry… Everything was as new as the creation of the world; time was eternal, free of the servitude of hours; all was vague, unconstrained by any material calculation.

  Linda gazed thoughtfully at the faint gleams projected here and there by a meagre sun. The impression Besnik had made on her was no mere passing fancy. She’d felt attracted to him even before she met him, a month ago, in the corridors of the ministry. He was associated in her mind with a period for which she felt a strange fascination: he was that period personified. She opened her bag, and, seeing that the boss was buried in his papers again, got out her mirror and looked into it for a moment, trying to see her face through Besnik’s eyes. But she couldn’t.

  Even before they’d reached the nearest café, Silva had told Besnik what had happened to her brother. They sat down in a corner of the Riviera, and Silva scanned her companion’s face. He looked thoughtful

  “Strange!” he said at last. “Very strange indeed!” She began to recount in detail her conversation with her brother, when she heard for the first time that he was probably going to be expelled from the Party. But Besnik, instead of asking for further explanations, just exclaimed again, “Very strange!” Nor did he comment on Gjergj’s hope that the arrest was nothing more than an ordinary detention following some disciplinary offence. But he did convey that he didn’t really agree with this interpretation. Silva felt despondent, almost offended. Besnik’s mind seemed to be on something else. She was almost sorry she’d phoned him. But she didn’t say anything - just looked at him curiously. Was he taking the same sort of line as her boss? She began thinking of how she would apologize for bothering him: she’d adopt an extremely sardonic tone, implying that this was the last time she’d ask him any favours…Meanwhile he spoke, in a low voice, as if to himself.

  “A group of tank officers…I think I did hear something about that…”

  “Really?” Silva almost shouted.

  She was ready to burst out: “In that case, what are you waiting for? What was it you heard, and what are they going to do to them?” But she restrained herself.

  “Yes, I did hear about it,” Besnik went on, “but I didn’t think Arian was involved. And anyway …”

  She didn’t want to interrupt, but the pause grew so long she was afraid he’d forgotten what he was going to say. Unless he’d deliberately decided not to go on…

  “Anyway…?” she prompted.

  Besnik swallowed.

  “Anyway, it’s a very complicated affair,” he said, “No one knows much about it, really.”

  Always the same! she thought. Incorrigible. The flash of exasperation in her eye didn’t escape him.

  “Silva, I’m not trying to hide anything from you,” he said. “I did hear something by chance, but I don’t know anything definite. It’s a very mysterious affair.”

  “Mysterious?”

  “I might have been able to find out more, but unfortunately I’m due to go abroad on a mission. As you can imagine, what’s happening in China is turning the international communist movement upside down.”

  He looked at Silva for a moment.

  “When are you leaving?” she asked.

  “In three days’ time. Not long enough to find anything out — you can imagine all the things I have to do before I go,”

  “Yes.”

  “But as soon as I get back — and I shouldn’t think I’ll be away long - 111 do all I can.”

 
“Thank you,” said Silva.

  “It’s really incredible,’ he went on, still rather abstractedly. “Especially to think that Arian might be mixed up in it…”

  “That’s what we all thought.”

  “As I said, I did hear of something of the sort And at the time, without dreaming Arian might be invoked, I thought…But just in passing, as you might about anything you heard about by chance …If I’d known he was mixed up in it, of course I’d have tried to find out more…”

  The more Silva tried to puzzle it out, the more she felt she was missing the drift of what Besnik was saying. She was right: he’d just finished a long sentence, and she realized with horror that its meaning had entirely escaped her.

  “Look, Silva,” he said earnestly. “I’m not saying this just to reassure you, but I have a feeling — well, it’s more than a feeling, but… forgive me …I can’t tell you any more about it now - a feeling that it’s all a misunderstanding and that it’ll eventually be cleared up.”

  Silva suddenly felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The look in his eye told her she could believe him.

  “Thank you, Besnik. To tell you the truth, knowing Arian as I do, I find his imprisonment so inconceivable I expect him to be released at any moment, in a few days’ time at the worst…But meanwhile he’s there, and you can imagine how painful it is for all of us.”

  “I do understand, Silva,” he said. “I understand perfectly.”

  After a little while they stood up, and he saw her back to her ministry. On the way there she felt reassured, but as soon as he left her, anguish closed in on her again. She seemed to have every reason to worry rather than to calm down. All Besnik had really told her was what anyone with the least consideration would say to a friend: he was sure it would all turn out all right, he had a feeling…But what else could he say, after all? The opposite?

  Silva opened the door into the office. Linda and the boss were both there. They watched her as she went and sat down, the boss with a rather shifty eye, Linda inquiringly, but quite ready to smile. Silva, pretending not to notice, opened her drawer and took out a file. Neither of the others addressed a word to her for the rest of the morning.