The Concert

by Ismail Kadare

  One day he saw a funeral procession in the street, and this reminded him of his friend’s reference to the Balkan mourners.

  He didn’t set much store by manifestations of this kind, and if he asked his guide to take him to a funeral it was so that when he got back home he could phone his friend and say: “I went to one of those ceremonies you were talking about, and the tears were just ordinary tears, that’s all.”

  But his escort said that instead of taking him to a funeral he was going to take him to a cemetery. Or rather to two - the ordinary city cemetery and the cemetery reserved for national martyrs.

  Krams had visited the latter before, on his first trip, but now, compared with the city cemetery, it made a different impression on him. While the graves of the martyrs were all the same, standardized, right down to the inscriptions and even the tombstones themselves, the ordinary graves presented an infinite variety of size, shape, style, symbol and sentimental epitaph. Distinctions were at their most evident among the dead. Perhaps that’s where the great change begins, thought Krams: in the sky, where you no longer heard the sound of bells, and in death. Yes, that might well be it, though as yet he’d never heard of the “new dead”.

  He could feel his thoughts getting hopelessly scrambled. This was one of his rare lapses from lucidity. He was jolted out of his preoccupation by the guide, who nodded towards a tombstone of white marble:

  “My wife’s grave,” he said,

  “What?”

  “My wife’s grave,” said the guide again, pointing to a photograph set into the headstone.

  “Oh…I’m sorry…I didn’t know…”

  “No need to apologize,” said the other, his eyes fixed on a bunch of wilted roses lying on the grave. “She died a few years ago. Breast cancer.”

  Krams waved his hands about helplessly. He felt horribly embarrassed, and couldn’t think of anything to say. So he kept on saying, “I’m sorry."

  He’d felt ill at ease ever since he came. Human beings have good memories - it’s one of the human race’s worst afflictions, Mao Zedong had said to him during their one and only interview. And when Krams asked him if he thought there might ever be a relatively simple way of explaining the complex mechanisms of the memory, Mao answered, “That’s exactly what I’ve been working on lately.”

  As he often did when his ideas were undermined or challenged from without, Krams shut himself up in his hotel room earlier than usual, and sat himself down amid all the papers he’d brought with him. It was only when he was surrounded by documents that he felt completely safe. There, away from noise, perfumes, and unwelcome phone calls, he would steep himself in work until his mind settled down again. His enemies might call this world of his a verbal desert, a wilderness of empty phrases, a political Sahara — for Krams himself it was the only world worth living and fighting for. He liked to pore for hours over the notes he’d written about everything relating to it: parties, splinter groups of left or right, Trotskyites, communists, Euro-communists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists; their theories, tendencies, sub-tendencies, strategies and tactics, transfermations, conflicts, and international connections. He knew that small world as well as he knew the palm of his hand: he’d belonged to some of its movements and even to their leadership, and after taking part in endless discussions within one group after the other had ended up in “Red Humanity”, But although he was affiliated to one group, he felt linked, if only through hostility, with the whole galaxy revolving around him: the Organizing Committee for a Revolutionary Movement (the O.C.R.M.), with Trotskyite leanings, a large proportion of Spaniards on its boards, and a considerable network of foreign relations; the Movement of the 22nd of March (M 22), which had anarchist sympathies and was against democratic centralism and the dictatorship of the proletariat; the Communist League (the CL), a large almost folkloric organization with Trotskyite leanings which made little distinction between Stalinists and revisionists, since it regarded the latter as Stalinists who’d changed their name to make it easier for them to betray the communist movement. Those who took part in this group’s demonstrations had had to shout “Ho-ho-ho-Ho-Chi-Minh” when Ho Chi Minh was the current idol, and “Che-che-che-Che-Guevara” when Guevara was in vogue, and now members of “Red Humanity” were expected to hail “Ma-ma-ma-Mao-Zedong”. Then there was Workers’ Straggle (W.S.), also Trotskyite, which didn’t always draw the line at almost fascist violence; the Centres of Communist Endeavour (C.C.E.), whose militants unfortunately enjoyed an authority acquired during the Second ‘ World War; the Proletarian Left (P.L.), which claimed to be Maoist and carried out acts of sabotage in order to promote unrest, in accordance with the Guevarist slogan “Provocation-Repression-RevolutionI”; not to mention the United Workers’ Front (U.W.P,), the Marxist-Revolutionary Alliance (M.R.A.), the Anarchist Groups for Revolutionary Action (A.G.R.A.), the Anarchist Federation (A.F.), the International Situ-ationists (I.S.), and so on and so forth. All these groups, together with their platforms, their lines and their positions on the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Party, the state and the future, made up a seething microcosm of passions which Juan Maria Krams wouldn’t have exchanged for anything else in the world.

  His visit to China had been much less upsetting. There no outside force had threatened his own universe. He was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of official phrases designed to protect him against the trivial attacks of what people usually called life. Against harmless, humane utterances like “Cooler today, isn’t it?” or “What a boring afternoon!” a great barrier had been erected of new sayings and slogans: the two just and the three unjust things, the four chief recommendations, the seven faults, the five virtues and the ten evils, etc. These all acted as patrols, keeping Krams’ world from being infected.

  When the first rumours began to circulate about a cooling off in the relations between China and Albania, the first question that occurred to Krams and his comrades was whose side they should be on. Since the worsening of the situation arose from the rapprochement between China and the United States, Krams and his friends should logically have sided with Albania, who could be relied on to stand up for pure and inviolable principle, and to reject any dialogue or compromise.

  But a kind of sixth sense made Krams jump the other way. China might be moving towards the West, but his own universe — what his adversaries called the “Krams-world” — would probably survive longer in China than in Albania. He hadn’t yet identified the fundamental reasons that had led him to this conclusion (history, the geo-political situation, mental outlooks, ethnic origins, perhaps even the Albanians’ racial characteristics), but he was sure his intuition wasn’t leading him astray. He never forgot his visit to the cemetery in Tirana that memorable Sunday. The Albanians have very good memories. But Mao had told him clearly: “People who remember too much are a danger to us.”

  That was what Mao had told him during their one and only tête-à-tête, when they had spoken at length about the possibility of world communism.

  Krams had listened fascinated as Mao said it might take ten thousand years. This, after the hare-brained Krushchev’s assertion that communism would be fully realized in the U.S.S.R. by 1980, sounded like a Titanic challenge. Everyone knew the advent of communism lay far away in the future, just as they knew that nevertheless — distant and Utopian as it might be, like any great hope — it influenced the destiny of the world. People were also aware that at the coming of the communist paradise after thousands of years of tension and hardship, the human race might grow soft and degenerate. But none of these considerations — especially the last - had ever been formulated by the communist leaders. Mao was the first to dare to do so. In his interview with Krams he had clearly intimated that communism not only was but bad to be unattainable, and so would never be realized.

  “Communism is like a star,” he had said. “One of the most beautiful of stars. It looks as it does to us because it’s so far away. Have you ever thought what it would be like if a star came close to us? The c
ollision would be a catastrophe …”

  So the star had to remain inaccessible. Anything that seemed to bring it close - wellbeing, culture, emancipation — only put it in greater danger. That was why those things must be attacked without mercy, together with all who tried to bring the star nearer. They must be sacrificed in order to keep it at a distance.

  “It may seem tragic,” Mao had continued, “to strike at the very people who are most — even excessively — devoted to your owe ideal Bet it has to be done. There is no other way.”

  “What about the enemies of communism, then?” Krams had asked. “Were its opponents better for communism than its supporters?”

  “Yes,” said Mao, “Communism has always needed enemies above all else. And it always will. So much so that…”

  Then he’d smiled without finishing the sentence. But Krams knew what he meant: “So much so that if necessary it would have to create them.”

  How magnificent! thought Krams, every time he recalled that forgettable conversation. He even said it aloud, especially at the time of the Cultural Revolution. It was then that he was able to verify the perfect cogency of Mao’s argument: the break-up of people’s lives, destruction, brainwashing…The star was farther away, and thus safer, than ever.

  Cambodia begins in you…Yes, he thought to himself, Cambodia, and probably lots of future crimes as well.

  For a moment he was filled with euphoria at the thought that he himself was also a fundamentally tragic character.

  He had now emerged into the Place de la Concorde, but he was still so much absorbed ie his own mental state that he wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had whispered in his ear, “Look out! there are three kings’ heads on pikes in the middle of the square!” He’d just have steered the car around them.

  He really did see himself as a tragic figure, but he accepted his fate. He knew deep down inside that he’d chosen what side he was on in this new schism. Even if the Chinese would one day disappoint him, he’d made up his mind to support them. The third world was territory where he could sow his ideas: and if they failed to take root in the towns and the country, he would take them into the desert, among the primitive tribes where it would take at least a thousand years to make people understand the meaning of “autumn sadness”. Cambodia starts in you …“But what is it that starts in you, then?” he cried angrily, narrowly avoiding a collision with a car in the next lane. The other driver put his index finger to his forehead and yelled, “Are you crazy or something?” “It’s all of you who are crazy!” Krams bawled back. “All of you without exception! Crazy and small-minded!”

  He had never acted out of base self-interest! Even when, during his visit to China, the small community of resident Europeans had bristled with rumours, half amused and half sarcastic, that Mao Zedong was going to make him his pao pe or godson. The rumours weren’t entirely without foundation, but even so Krams hadn’t indulged in dreams of power or hoped for any other vulgar advantages. True, he had sometimes imagined or even hoped he might one day become a leader — but no ordinary leader. He agreed with those who thought a real leader shouldn’t have any power: but he went further still. Marx, Christ, Buddha and Che Guevara hadn’t wielded any power, yet they had ruled, in a way, through their books, their ideas or their words. Krams thought a leader should be without even those adjuncts: he should be a kind of demiurge of the international workers’ movement, half committed but half anonymous, without books or ideas of his own, and if possible without a name. But this was all a long way off still …For the present he was just the militant leftist Juan Maria Krams, an ascetic according to some, for others the Don Quixote of the movement. Some people called him Huan Mao Maria, or Marihuana for short, since his trip to China and the first accounts of Mao’s plan to subvert Europe through drugs. The nickname had been pinned on him out of malice, but all in all he didn’t really mind.

  He was now driving towards the grands boulevards. He hadn’t yet decided whether to go to the Café de Madrid, where the Latin American militants usually met, or to the bar frequented by the Portuguese, But finding himself near the latter, he parked the car and went in. The place was fairly empty, and as he looked around for a familiar face he suddenly froze. It must be telepathy! he thought, going over. The other man looked up, seemed equally surprised, and came forward to greet him.

  “Great minds think alike!” exclaimed Krams, holding out his hand. “Fancy finding you here! …I was just remembering some of our earlier meetings.”

  “How are you?” asked the other. “Well? I expected to see you at the reception tonight”

  “I did drop in,” said Krams.

  “Really?”

  “I only stayed for a minute. We must have missed one another.”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, I’m very glad to see you, comrade Struga,” said Krams. “Have you been in Paris long?”

  “Just a few days. How about you? Sit down for a while if you’re not in too much of a hurry. These people are members of the reconstructed Portuguese Communist Party, Perhaps you know some of them?…This is comrade Juan Krams,” he said, turning towards the Portuguese. “I acted as interpreter for him when he was in Albania.”

  Krams now looked at the others for the first time. He had met two of them before. The others were strangers to him.

  “We came here straight from the Rue de la Pompe,” explained Besnik Struga.

  “A pity I didn’t see you there, but it’s a stroke of luck finding you like this,” said Krams.

  The others made room for him at their table.

  “Sure I’m not disturbing you?” he said before sitting down.

  “Not at all,” one of the Portuguese reassured him. “On the contrary.”

  “We were talking about the third world,” said another.

  “Very interesting!”

  As soon as he sat down, Krams realized this was the table he’d been looking for in vain the whole evening. The discussion soon turned into an argument, chiefly between Krams and Besnik Straga. The Portuguese only put in a word here and there, until finally the other two held the field alone.

  “Well, it’s as I expected,” said Krams, after a pause. “All the rumours about China and Albania disagreeing on a whole lot of fundamental questions are true.”

  “Apparently,” answered Struga, He gazed at his coffee cup, picked it up, put it down again in the saucer, then went on, with a sidelong glance at Krams: “And i suppose the rumours about you taking China’s side in ail this are true too!”

  “Apparently,” said Krams, smiling.

  The argument then flared up again, but the courtesy which had restrained their debates the year before was now abandoned.

  Krams insisted that it was crazy and unforgivable to deny the existence of the third world. Struga maintained that the division of the world into three was a myth which flew in the face of scientific objectivity.

  As Krams listened to Struga he felt a twinge of jealousy. This man was present at the Moscow Conference, he thought. He’d have liked to forget that this lent Struga a certain superiority, bet there was no denying it. What wouldn’t he himself give to have been there! Would there be other meetings like it in the future? In other words, meetings where everything was smashed to bits and then rebuilt as if after some apocalyptic catastrophe in which the fault line ran through the whole cosmos.

  The discussion moved from the third world to the Sino-American rapprochement and back again. Krams tried hard to keep calm. He could bear anything except people denying there was such a thing as the third world. Again the exchanges grew heated.

  “That’s what your Mao Zedong says!” Struga interrupted at one point.

  Krams looked at him in surprise.

  “Our Mao Zedong?” he said with a bitter smile, “You mean he’s not yours any more, if I heard you correctly?”

  “You heard right,” said Besnik. “Yours.”

  Krams shook his head.

  “How strange,” he said. “I
’d never have thought it could come to this.”

  “What’s so surprising?” asked one of the Portuguese. “Everyone has to make his own choice…”

  “Of course, of course,” said Krams placatingly. “And I choose Mao. With pleasure!”

  Then he picked up his cup, and drank down his now cold coffee in three gulps.

  “What ravings !” exclaimed the observer on duty at the station near the North Pole, taking off his headset for a moment. “My God, what ravings!” He rubbed his ears as if to get rid of the painful buzzing, then put his earphones on again. It was the busiest part of the day and he couldn’t take more than a few seconds rest without the risk of missing an important signal.

  The diplomatic receptions being held in the various European capitals had jest ended, and most of the radio messages reported the comments the guests had exchanged in the midst of the hubbub, between whiskies. Such circumstances naturally enhanced the stupidity of their remarks, though these would have been stupid enough anyway. The radio officer laughed whenever he came upon the same conversation reported differently by two different embassies. The whole hotchpotch seemed to belong not to a number of different receptions but rather to a single long one which had been going on from time immemorial and would continue until the end of the world…Don’t you think there’ll be great upheavals in Yugoslavia when Tito dies?…As many as there will be in Spain after Franco…But Tito’s different! …Of course, of course!…Have you seen who’s on the Chinese committee for the funeral? …Romania…Romania’s foreign policy…“Hell, I missed that bit!” said the radio officer. But he wasn’t too worried — he knew he’d hear the same phrase again, probably so many times he’d get sick of it…Hey, here were our two lost pigeons again…Then came something, apparently not very important, about Portugal. The European parliament… N.A.T.O. interests in the Mediterranean…Spain doesn’t intend …If the price of oil goes on rising. My God, how often must they go on repeating the same thing?