The Concert

by Ismail Kadare

  “All this talk about a body!” said Arian Krasniqi, Silva’s brother one evening. “They’d do better to tell us what they’re going to do with his soul!”

  Since Gjergj had been away he’d come to see his sister more often, and Silva was glad to see him joining in the conversation again.

  “You’re right,” she told him. “Even if you have to talk about the body in these circumstances, it’s the soul that matters.”

  “What?” said Brikena. “And supposing the soul doesn’t exist?”

  Silva and Sonia burst out laughing.

  “We were only talking about his ideas!”

  Sonia stroked her niece’s cheek. Brikena had blushed after she’d spoken.

  “My clever little girl,” Sonia whispered to her.

  “Skënder Bermema got back from China a fortnight ago, and the day before yesterday he read us a poem about the embalming of Mao,” said Silva. “Wait, I think I’ve got it in my bag.” She went over to the sideboard. “Yes, here it is. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Yes, yes!” cried Arian.

  Silva unfolded the piece of paper, and even though she had heard the poem before she frowned as she saw it again, as if remembering she’d been shocked by it.

  “It’s called The Old Embalmers.”

  The old embalmers from the province of Kung Lie

  started out on their way and are still on it.

  On they march to Peking in the biting cold,

  For there it’s said the Chairman is dead.

  Among embalmers they have no equal

  Peerless are they in their time.

  One guts the body, the second empties the brain,

  The third excels at preparing balms and spices.

  They go gladly along the roads

  knowing that the mortal remains

  of the aged and illustrious departed

  have been consigned to their zeal.

  All three were so sad before

  At never being summoned to Peking.

  And now “The day of the immortals is over!” -

  they sigh dejectedly.

  Lin Biao was dead, Zhou Enlai too.

  The bones of the Erst charred under a foreign sky.

  The ashes of the second scattered in the wind.

  And no one had thought of the three little old men.

  “It looks as if we shall die without embalming anyone any more,’

  They sighed as night enfolded them.

  Then one day they saw someone coming:

  A messenger from the distant capital

  So they set out, driven mad by the good news.

  Summer and winter they marched, year after year.

  One guts the body, the second empties the brain.

  The third excels at preparing balms and spices.

  Silva looked up.

  “Strange, isn’t it?” she said,

  “It’s more than strange!” exclaimed Arian. “If I’m not mistaken it says at the end that the embalmers have gone mad.”

  Silva checked,

  “Yes, Here’s the line: ‘So they set out, driven mad by the good news.'"

  She was just going to say something else when they heard the phone ring. It seemed to ring more loudly than usual Silva and Brikena both got up together.

  “Arian — it’s for you,” Silva called from the hall.

  “Who is it?” he asked as he came towards her.

  But she jest shrugged as she handed him the receiver.

  As he was speaking, everyone left in the room fell silent. When the women looked outside they could see it was dark. It was as if the ringing of the telephone had suddenly made night fall.

  Arian was on the phone for a very long time. When he came back into the room his face looked drawn.

  “What was it?” asked Sonia.

  “Nothing. Just a notification to go somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  He looked round at all of them, and perhaps he would have told them what it was all about if he hadn’t seen how anxious they were to know.

  “Somewhere,” he said, going back into the hall for his coat.

  “What’s going on?” asked Sonia, looking at Silva. “Can it be as urgent as all that?”

  Silva got up to see her brother to the door. She looked at him imploringly.

  “Arian, why…Can’t you just…?”

  He stared back at her.

  “I can’t understand you all,” he said, “You’re all acting so strangely. I’m not a baby! I don’t need to be wrapped in cotton-wool!”

  “It’s not that…But you might…”

  “You want to know where I'm going? All right, I'll tell you. I’m going to see my ex-minister!”

  “Going to see your ex-minister?” faltered Silva, not trying to hide her bewilderment.

  What did he mean by “ex-minister”? The man was a minister still If he’d been sacked they’d have heard about it. In any case, it was too ridiculous…A sacked minister didn’t summon people like that…The words must mean something else… But of course! Why hadn’t she thought of it before? As Arian wasn’t under the orders of the minister any more, he could refer to him as his “former” minister …Still, all that was of no importance. What mattered was that he’d been summoned.

  “I expect it’s some good news,” she said. For a moment she imagined him being reinstated in the army and the Party, and the party they’d give to celebrate. “But what’s the matter - you don’t look very pleased?”

  He smiled sardonically.

  “Arian, you’re keeping something from me! Such an urgent summons, at this time of day…”

  He laughed aloud.

  “I swear I’m not keeping anything from you at all! I haven’t the faintest idea myself what he wants to see me for. ! know as much about it as you do. Only I’m not very hopeful…”

  Silva would have liked to ask how anyone knew he was at her place, who it was that had phoned, and so on. But he already had his coat on, and his massive frame seemed already on its way. As she opened the door for him she just had time to say:

  “Anyhow, don’t forget that he’s still a minister…”

  As he ran down the stairs she called after him:

  “And come back here as soon as it’s over! Do you hear, Arian? Well be waiting for you!”

  Strangely enough, the question of why he’d been sent for was not uppermost in Arian Krasniqi’s mind as he strode towards Government Square. Stranger still, what did often occur to him were bits of Skënder Bermema’s poem about the embalmers who went mad. The more he tried to dismiss them, the more obstinately they echoed, more or less accurately, through his brain: “Ail three were so sad at never being summoned by the minister…”

  Hell, he exclaimed inwardly. He didn’t really expect anything from this interview, which he regarded merely as a chore. As for the poem, it was just crazy, like the person who’d written it, and his own sister, who took such pleasure in reciting it. Like himself too, if it came to that, for not being able to get the wretched thing out of his head. Bet after a moment he felt he’d been unfair to all concerned. After all, there was something about the lines, with their memorable rhythms, rhythms that reminded you of walking, of a journey on foot, even of a long march. And most important of all, the poem had mysterious undertones that hinted at the confused and inexplicable series of events he himself had lived through here in the last few months, against a background of even more enigmatic events in China. But perhaps he’d better forget about all that now and concentrate on why he’d been summoned. As he came to that decision he found he’d arrived at the entrance to the ministry. The large baroque building was almost entirely in darkness. Only a few windows overlooking the inner courtyard had lights in them.

  Arian followed an orderly along an endless corridor where it was obvious the radiators had been turned off long ago. The first thing he noticed on entering the minister’s office was the minister’s face. It had got thin, but not in the way that’s associated
with illness. The minister’s throat seemed to have wasted away around the Adam’s apple, where it sagged more than before yet at the same time looked tense with anxiety.

  “Dear me,” said the minister almost jovially, getting up from his desk to greet the visitor, “whom have we here? If it isn’t the rebel, the offender against military discipline! But I’m only joking — come in and shake hands!”

  I’d have done better not to seed for him, thought the minister, gazing at the door for some time after it closed behind the former tank officer. He had wanted to see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears one of the men who’d been making his life such a misery. Even if it didn’t get him anywhere much, he had hoped to get his visitor to admit that when he and his fellow tank officers refused to obey his order they hadn’t been able to explain the reasons for their insubordination, or at least hadn’t been able to explain it clearly.

  But the other had denied him this relief. On the contrary he had stubbornly maintained that while they had indeed taken no notice of his order, they had given a clear explanation of their motives.

  The spacious office seemed to echo with scraps of their conversation - mostly, with the minister’s own words, for the visitor had spoken very little. The phrases that now came back to the minister ranged from the solemn to the familiar, the flippant to the philosophical, but he had the feeling that despite all his efforts not only had he got nothing useful out of his interlocutor but he’d also given himself away.

  After his opening words, the minister had gone on:

  “It’s officers like you the Party needs! And that’s my attitude too, even though I admit you make things difficult for me at times! But that’s precisely why I like you — not only because you make life difficult for me when you think it necessary, but also because you criticize me, and criticize me severely sometimes, if I make a mistake, as in this business with the tanks …It was you, comrades, who were right, and I who, even though unwittingly, was wrong. But the stuff we communists are made of is something special, isn’t it? We don’t mind acknowledging our errors. It can happen that we get caught up in routine, rules and regulations and the arts of war, so that we forget that above all there is the Party, and that the greatest art of all consists in being a good communist! That’s why we call ourselves comrades — because we want to help one another, correct one another, prevent one another from persisting in error. You, for example, were quite right not to carry out an order that wasn’t justified…But, to be realistic, you might have been clearer about it…more what shall I say?…a little more trusting. When you refused - quite rightly, quite rightly - to obey the order, you might have supplied a little explanation, don’t you think? I don’t mean you ought to have made a speech about the primacy of the Party or dialectical materialism or whatever, but you might have given me just a tiny, weeny little explanation of your refusal…”

  At which point the other had interrupted.

  “We did explain our refusal, and we did so quite clearly,”

  This reply seemed even colder and more momentous now than it had done at the time. The minister felt his innards going taut. He’d summoned this man to get him to admit that while he and his colleagues had seen the minister’s order as subordinating the Party to the army — something which was wrong under any régime, but even more so under a socialist one — they hadn’t actually formulated their opinion. And the extent to which the minister was wrong to punish them depended on whether or not he knew the reason for their disobedience. If he did know it, he could be held responsible, because then the order to encircle the Party committee ceased to be a chance decision - “If it had ever occurred to me to see the order from that point of view, I’d never have issued it” — and became a premeditated act. If he didn’t know it, his guilt was less and his anger more excusable, for there isn’t a military man in the world who doesn’t go off the deep end when an order of his is challenged, especially if that military man happens to be a minister.

  He’d hoped the interview would establish the fact that the officers hadn’t explained their insubordination. But they weren’t even conceding that much!

  The ex-officer just sat there, expressionless. The minister made another desperate effort. Could it have been, by any chance, that as the officers themselves saw the question quite clearly, they took it for granted that no explanation was called for, since they had great confidence in their leaders — too much confidence perhaps, for people forget that leaders in general, and a minister in particular, may have weaknesses, may get angry, may be arrogant and brutal, may fail to study properly the documents issued by the Party and the classics of Marxism…er, where was he? Oh yes, had the tank officers, and Arian Krasniqi himself, considered it unnecessary to provide long explanations, and thought it quite enough to say, “it just isn’t done to encircle a Party committee”?

  Even before the minister had finished speaking, the officer had started shaking his head. No, not at all They had explained the reasons for their disobedience briefly but quite clearly. If the comrade minister wanted more details, he could supply them. As soon as he received the order he had asked: “Encircle the Party committee? But why?” The order had thee been repeated. Then he and two other officers he’d got in touch with had asked: “Is there an enemy commando about, or the threat of some commando raid?” The answer they got was cert: “It’s nothing to do with you! Just obey orders!” The officers had repeated their question, and this time the reply was: “No, there is no enemy commando. Obey the order!” It was then that they’d said: “The order is unacceptable. Tanks cannot encircle a Party committee, or any other legally constituted body - if they do so, it’s tantamount to trying to establish a dictatorship…” There had been some more terse exchanges, during which the tank officers had repeated that if there was no enemy commando invoked, the surrounding of the Party committee couldn’t be justified. When one of the signals people let out an oath, Arian Krasniqi had shouted, “We’re not living in Shanghai, are we?’

  The minister flinched at this. Then he went on:

  “That was all quite right and in the spirit of the Party, and I’m sure that’s what you said. But the point is, did the others hear you properly? Perhaps not, because of bad weather or technical conditions. If I remember rightly, it was very stormy at the time, with lots of thunder and lightning…”

  The officer just repeated what he’d said before.

  “We explained quite clearly why we were disobeying orders.”

  “Ah …I didn’t know that. In that case…That alters every-thing. Of course you and your colleagues are not guilty. But perhaps the signals people were responsible for all this business, or members of my owe staff left things out of their reports. Unless they’re not to blame either: there’s no denying that the weather was awful, and there was a lot of thunder and lightning…”

  But he realized that whatever he said it would be in vain. He began to falter. All he wanted now was for the fellow to go. He’d have told him, “All right - that’s enough! The interview is over!” if he hadn’t been afraid of putting his back up even further. I ought never to have sent for him, thought the minister as he went on protesting about how glad he was to see him, and how much he appreciated people who stood up to him…in the end he didn’t really know what he was saying, and when the officer turned and left he heaved a sigh of relief.

  The confrontation had exhausted him. And he hadn’t even got anything out of it. On the contrary, his visitor had almost certainly guessed how worried he was. And if so, he had only himself to blame for making things worse! All he needed now was for everyone to know his real state of mind.

  The minister stared at the notes he’d scribbled in preparation for his autocritique.

  He was going to have to confront the plenum of the Central Committee, and there was no doubt he would be expected to carry out a thorough autocritique. Day after day he’d scribbled, crossed out and scribbled again, without ever arriving at a satisfactory result. Go deeper! — the wor
ds with which he’d tormented so many other people at other meetings were now terrifying the minister himself. He’d noticed that every time the phrase was addressed to someone performing an autocritique, the victim literally seemed to sink into the ground. Now he was going to be on the receiving end.

  He tried to push the thought away. He looked round his desk, at the array of telephones and red and green buttons marked “Alarm No.1”, “Alarm No.2”, “Army Headquarters”, “Admiralty”, “Air Force”…He kept thinking how any Latin American colonel, with only half all these means at his disposal, could, But, like a drug to which a patient has grown accustomed, the thought no longer did him any good. “That’s no consolation!” he exclaimed. For it was plain that no one gave him any credit for doing right when he had at his fingertips so much power for doing wrong.

  His hands went on toying instinctively with the draft of his autocritique. That’s right, he told himself, forget about those buttons. Your fate depends on these notes.

  He already had a wad of them, but he knew he’d have to write more. He scrabbled for the passage that referred vaguely to the tanks. Since Enver Hoxha had mentioned the business specifically, he would have to explain it in full to the plenum. He skimmed quickly through what he’d written. It was too flimsy. He’d dealt with the aftermath of the affair and his anger against the tank officers (which he’d presented as unjustified, the result of his own presumptuousness and lack of contact with the masses), but he hadn’t yet said anything about the beginnings of the episode — the mental processes that had led him to give such an order, his underlying motives. He could already hear a voice calling out to him: “The causes! - go deeper into the causes!”

  No, he would never go that far! He’d never tell this plenum, or the next one, or the hundredth or the thousandth plenum after that, about that cursed dinner with Zhou Enlai! He’d take the knowledge with him to the grave. They could yell at him to “go deeper” until they were blue in the face, but he would never dig all that up again. Zhou Enlai was no longer of this world, so he wouldn’t care one way or the other…But somehow or other he, the minister, was going to have to justify himself.