The Concert

by Ismail Kadare

  “Qan Shen, we’re waiting for you,” Van Mey silently implored. “Please do come down amongst us, who miss you so,’ His two friends were no doubt sending out the same supplication.

  Finally, after what seemed a very long time, the medium’s breathing changed. In something resembling a silence, you could feel a presence.

  “Are you there, Qan Shen?” muttered the medium. “You can speak to him now.”

  But their lips seemed sealed. Neither then nor later did they know whether they actually managed to speak to Qan Shen or if they only thought the words: “Qan Shee, please forgive us for disturbing you on a night like this …”

  “Don’t ask me questions!” said the medium curtly, transmitting the words of the dead man. “Don’t ask me questions about that day! It’s better for you not to know…It’s always too late…”

  And those were the only words they heard. No matter how often they addressed the dead man again, they got no answer.

  “He wasn’t here long,” said the medium, when he was himself again, “Perhaps he’ll stay longer the next time.”

  The others stared in wonder as the medium’s ashen mask gradually changed back into its normal form and texture.

  It was almost midnight when they all emerged from the apartment and set off for their various homes. The wind was still blowing, the rain was still falling, and the wan streetlights still swung back and forth overhead.

  3

  Four days later there was another meeting in director Tchan’s office. This time it included all those who were going to be involved in supervising the installation of microphones in the town of N—. The two representatives of the Zhongnanhai were there too.

  After he had given a brief account of how the first technical teams were to be trained, director Tchan handed over to the man from the Zhongnanhai, who was going to talk about how the project was to be supervised.

  The envoy from Peking gave a supercilious look at his audience, and opened his address with a question.

  “No doubt, during all the time you’ve been studying this matter, you’ve wondered where the microphones are to be placed, and who is to be bugged, and according to what considerations? The Zhongnanhai's answer is quite plain: the qietingqis are to be placed everywhere. Is that clear? Right, now let’s go on. I expect there are some among you who think “everywhere” doesn’t apply to the Party, i.e. to party officials. The Zhongnanhai's answer to this question is equally clear: if any suspicion arises, microphones will be installed anywhere, from the office of the first secretary of the Party committee to the premises of the humblest individual No need to say more on this point. But before ! conclude I should like to emphasize three things: first, the Zhongnanhai is subject to no restriction; second, nothing must escape the ears of Chairman Mao; and third, you must keep this operation secret, or pay for it with your lives.”

  His audience assiduously wrote down what he said, their heads bowed over their notebooks. Although his message was so daunting, they felt the joy they’d anticipated at the previous meeting beginning to burgeon. They would soon be performing the magical process of listening to what people thought was quite private: outbursts of resentment against the state, gossip, confidences, things people said in their sleep, secret baseness, the things people said when they were making love.

  Already the prospect made some of those present feel faint and parched and short of breath. Others thought of the possibilities concerning men they hated or envied, and women they hadn’t been able to attract and so dismissed as frigid or over-sexed. Others again dreamed of unmasking plots, winning medals, and having brilliant careers.

  When the meeting was over, director Tchan stayed on alone in his office, staring at the ashtray. The thrill he, like the others, had experienced hadn’t lasted. It had been nipped in the bud by an as yet unspecified fear. Not fear of responsibility, or of uncertainty, or of the jealousy of other officials: no, something more vague than any of those, but which nonetheless made him shudder with apprehension.

  He was going to listen to all that was going on in space, to plumb all secrets, go down into the utmost depths of the human heart. But good heavens! - that was like descending into hell, where no one else had ever gone! And if he was going into a forbidden realm, he was probably going to be punished for doing so.

  4

  The first mikes were put in place at the end of the week. The work started with those that were easiest to install: those destined for some rooms in the town’s main hotel, for certain offices, for the guest-house where foreign delegations were accommodated, and for two or three apartments whose occupants were away on missions.

  It was normal to begin like that, without undue pressure, while the workmen involved acquired the necessary experience. But they knew it couldn’t continue indefinitely: they knew they wouldn’t always be able to take down a chandelier or unpick the upholstery of a settee at leisure, and introduce a microphone while a colleague kept watch at the door. They’d soon have to operate in more difficult circumstances, perhaps even in the presence of their victims, who would think they were repairing a switch or a tap.

  In fact, by the following week, the number of mikes to be installed had quadrupled. (The operation, like everything else, was being carried out according to a plan.) The technicians, disguised as plumbers, painters or sweeps (what could be easier than to block someone’s chimney if you wanted to plant a’ bug on him?), embarked on a mass campaign. On two occasions they narrowly avoided disaster. The workers in question were almost caught redhanded, but fortunately, remembering their instructions, they pretended to be ordinary criminals and were taken, much to their relief, to the nearest police station.

  At the same time as the permanent microphones were being installed, a series of tests was carried out with others operated by remote control But the placing of four small begging devices counted as the triumph of that week’s achievement. There were very few of them, and the workers had been told to handle them with particular care (they trembled at the mere mention of them). Bugs were as difficult to remove as to plant. If they were to accompany the suspect wherever he went, they had to be attached to his clothes. The state had spent a colossal amount of money on miniaturizing them for this purpose, said one of the envoys from the Xhongnanhai, However, unlike a kitchen cabinet, a bed or a W.C., which could be fitted with a mike in their owner’s absence, a person’s clothes were something he carried about with him. The only solution seemed to be to slip the bug into one of his pockets. But then, no matter how absent-minded or easy-going he might be, wasn’t he bound to notice you doing it? And even if you did manage to slip it in somehow, wouldn’t he find it the next time he put his hand in his pocket? And then, even if he was the type who never did put his hands in his pockets, how were you ever going to get the mike back again? (For they did have to be got back again once they’d performed their allotted tasks: first, because the Chinese state would never break the sacred rule of thrift and merely write them off; and second, because they were top-secret equipment, and as such mustn’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.)

  Oh no, said the envoy, pockets were definitely out. He passed on to the possibilities offered by linings. For this you had to be able to unpick a seam and sew it up again, or else make a small and as near as possible invisible opening in the material. But you couldn’t do this when your man was actually wearing his clothes. So you had to get into his house when he wasn’t there, under the pretext of mending a tap, etc. Your problem was then solved, if the victim owned a spare suit. But most of them didn’t. Then what? You might put the mike in another garment that was just hanging in the wardrobe, waiting for the appropriate season. But that involved the problem of having to keep someone intended as a winter victim under surveillance the previous summer, and vice versa, which would make intelligence gathering impossibly complicated. There was only one solution, said the envoy from the capital, and that was to wait for, and take advantage of, the moment when the suspect took off some garment in
a public place. This might be during a morning session of physical exercises, in a theatre or office cloakroom, while he was taking part in the mass cross-country run in spring, or in some private sport or other. You might have to follow him for months before you got a chance to slip him his qietingqi. As for getting it back again, you didn’t wait for him to go to the public baths or for the next spring marathon: yoe just watched till he went home one night, and then faked a burglary,during which you managed for a few moments to get hold of his jacket or trousers or whatever.

  But your troubles weren’t 0ver even then, or if - ideally — you got access to the garment in a cloakroom, (By the way, a padded anorak was best for concealing things in.) Not to mention the fact that its owner might leave the meeting or office or factory before you expected him to (there were ways of avoiding this), you needed both skill and sangfroid to remember precisely where you’d placed the bug and extract it neatly without damaging the garment it was in. (This was referred to as “gathering in the fruit”.)

  And all the aforementioned precautions had to be multiplied a hundredfold in the case of the rare and costly independent mini-mikes. These had their own recording spool, and were so expensive they’d only been produced in very small numbers so far. Their advocates argued the advantages of a device which could function independently of the listening centre, wherever the suspect happened to go, and which worked continuously day and night until its battery ran out. It was of course especially necessary to recover this type of microphone when its work was done.

  Director Tchan knew all these dangers and difficulties, and more, so when the technicians came and announced that they’d placed five bugs and two independent mini-mikes in the anoraks of the relevant suspects, he rubbed his hands with glee.

  “But don’t forget,’ he reminded his men, “that you’ve only done half the job so far. The other half may well be much harder!”

  5

  Despite strict and repeated exhortations to secrecy, a rumour grew up, vague and fearful at first, and then increasingly distinct, though still concealed: they were installing bugging devices, people said, in the town of N—.

  Director Tchan tried in vain to trace the leak. His aides were equally unsuccessful though they resorted to threat and even actual arrests. What worried Tchan most was that the representatives of the Zhongnanhat were still in town. If the rumour came to their ears there’d be the devil to pay. He cherished a faint hope that they might leave before they suspected anything: after all, who were they going to End out from except him} But one day the sourer of the two ettvoys said curtly: “There’s a lot of talk in the town about microphones. How do you explain it?” Tchan quaked and tried to babble something. He couldn’t believe his eyes when the envoy smiled.

  “Quite natural,’ he said. “It usually happens,’

  Tchan still didn’t see what he meant.

  “Isn’t it disastrous? Won’t it sabotage …?” he began.

  Now I’ve put my foot in it, he thought. Why did I have to go and meet trouble halfway? But to his amazement:

  “Oh no!” said the man from the Zhongnanhat. “It has advantages as well as disadvantages. The best thing is that it makes everything into a kind of myth. People invent so many fantastic stories about the microphones that in the end the rumour, which makes everyone vigilant to begin with, gradually lulls them into a kind of lethargy. And that’s when the hour of the qietingqis has come!”

  Tchan was so relieved he lit a cigarette. He couldn’t wait to get the first results of this new intelligence technique. Meanwhile he went on receiving information through the earlier network — that is, via the human ear. His own spies, probably the first people to learn of the advent of the microphones, were sure to be annoyed, and afraid these newfangled devices would put them out of a job. Director Tchan had been told of murmurs to this effect, and eventually their resentment reached such a pitch he decided to summon his crack spies to a meeting. They were the fine flower of their profession, and their deeds would go down to posterity, Hun Hu had spent three days and three nights lying like a corpse in the morgue: he suspected his victim wasn’t quite dead, and hoped to extract one last word from him before he finally gave up the ghost. Xin Fung had been decorated by Chairman Mao himself for keeping a factory under surveillance for a hundred hours, while standing near a giant cutting machine. He was completely deaf ever after. Others had made other sacrifices in the service of their profession: some had deserted wives and children, others had renounced marriage altogether. Chan vung was perhaps the star of N—’s spying fraternity: he had’gouged his owe eyes out in order to Improve his hearing.

  le view of all this, Tchan spoke to them with special warmth and consideration, invoking the glorious, three-thousand-year-old tradition of surveillance which in China had been put at the service of the people, No technique^ however advanced, could take the place of the ear, for the human factor was always the most important — only a technocrat or a revisionist could think otherwise. Then Tchan turned to the possibility of using listening devices. These were special appliances designed for special cases, above all those involving foreigners: they had nothing to do with their own great domestic surveillance. Just as agriculture used modern technology as well as beasts of burden; just as medicine relied both on highly trained specialists and on barefoot doctors; so intelligence too would employ not only microphones but also the human ear, which would still play the most important part in surveillance. Carried away by his own eloquence, Tchan embroidered on this theme, maintaining that a microphone was only a pale imitation of the human ear. This ear, reared on the quotations of Mao Zedong, was irreplaceable. And, he implied in conclusion, so were they, his audience.

  The spieSj reassured, dispersed, and m the next few days sent in a mass of information unprecedented in both quantity and quality. As he looked through the weighty file oe the desk in front of hifn, Tchan meditated oe two possible reasons for this iniux. Either the spies themselves were working with extra zeal to show they were far from being mere has-beens. Or the ordinary people, confronted with a future in which rumour would be superseded because of the microphones, were taking advantage of what time remained to have a good gossip.

  Tchan rubbed his tired eyes. Either of those two reasons would account for that fat file. Probably both.

  The spies seemed to have taken particular care to report popular resentment against the qietingqis Tchan noticed, smiling sardonically. Perhaps they cherished a lingering hope that this might help get rid of the horrible things.

  Tchan studied the various comments that had been made about the new device: it was an invention of the white foreign devil, and would bring nothing but trouble; it was a new dimension, but a bad one, and what use was that to humanity? it was the gateway to hell…Aeroplanes were prefigured by the flying carpets of legend, television by magic mirrors. But where were the precursors of the micro-spies? They were to be found in the voices of ghosts and vampires, in occultism, black magic, spiritualist séances and all kinds of other vestiges of the old world…

  Yeah, said Tchan to himself, looking up from the file.

  6

  As he came out of the factory he heard someone calling him from the pavement

  “Van Meyl”

  He turned round, and was glad to see his two friends. They hadn’t met again since the famous night.

  “How are you, Van? If s been a long time,’

  “And you two — how are things?”

  “Fine, fine. We were thinking of dropping in on you to say hallo …

  “Good, good! I’ve been very busy in the evening lately…”

  Why, after that evening, had they all avoided one another, rather than meeting the very next day to exchange their impressions? What had come between them because of the spirit they’d raised?

  “I see you’ve bought yourself a new anorak!”

  “Yes,’ said van Mey, “The old one was falling to pieces. So I counted up all the money Và saved last summer…’’

>   “Quite right. Winter’s early this year.”

  They walked along for a while without speaking, but they all knew they were thinking about the same thing.

  “I can’t get that eight out of my mind,” one of them admitted at last.

  “Neither can I,” said Van Mey, quite relieved now the subject had been broached at last.

  “What do you think — should we have another meeting?”

  Van Mey looked at the other two.

  “What do you think? And what about the medium…?”

  “The medium said the spirit might stay longer next time.”

  “I didn’t mean that — I meant can you get hold of the medium again?”

  “Of course!” they said. “We wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise.”

  “I’m willing,” said Van Mey, with a shudder.

  “What do they say about the micro-spies?” said one of the others, to change the subject.

  “What don’t they say!” exclaimed Van Mey.

  They told one another all they’d heard.

  “I don’t mind betting things are going to get difficult/” said one. “Those qietingqis bode no good.”

  “I expect you’re right,’ answered Van Mey absently.

  In his mind’s eye he could already see the little flames of the candles at the next séance, and their own anguish as they waited for the spirit to come.

  7

  Director Tchan had imagined it quite differently, the fateful day when the mikes would reproduce the very first voices, when his spies of flesh and blood would be joined by an army of soulless instruments. But nearly a fortnight had gone by since the first microphones were installed, and no great day had arrived. On the contrary, the first time he’d listened in live to microphones installed in people’s homes he’d found it tedious and wearisome, as well as unproductive. The mikes in question weren’t those that had been placed in the villa reserved for foreign visitors: the villa was empty at present, and the mikes there silent. The ones Tchan listened in to were in the main hotel, but these transmitted snores more often than words, and if there was a conversation it was usually trivial and devoid of interest. The mikes in government offices conveyed nothing but endless discussions, and Tchan soon gave up listening: he had enough boring meetings himself in his own office!