It would be quite normal for this to happen right there at the table with the cups of Vietnamese coffee at the Café Flora, Durrës Street No. 6. There would be no escaping that final moment which he had eluded for years.
He set down his coffee cup,
The policeman said, ‘Your time is up.’
Rudian really believed the moment had come. This was the only explanation for the investigator’s sympathetic look and his insistence that he should have one more coffee and then another. It was his last chance to drink coffee in this world and the investigator felt sorry for him.
As far as he could tell, the case was being closed. The line of investigation had totally changed. This suicide, once a message designed for royalist émigrés, was now linked to a personal matter of which he was better left ignorant.
Since when was it better for the culprit to be unaware of his own guilt?
You must know, he thought, as if he were looking down at himself in handcuffs. If you don’t know, find out. Only you can find out.
Something like a fork of lightning, resembling a thought but faster, shot through his brain. It involved guilt and innocence, his own and the state’s, and both were mixed with a sense of fate, in which kindness and cruelty were still undifferentiated and all these things were like sparks scattered from an invisible core beneath a volcanic fissure.
He failed to grasp what this meant, because the crack had barely opened before it closed again and the sparks paled to ash, as if compressing the cooling of years into an instant.
Yet he felt he knew this thing that he could not see, whose obscure outline lay beneath that crack. Something had emerged, and he wanted to say that this case was still not closed. They had given up, but he hadn’t. There was an enigma, as the investigator had admitted at the beginning, and had now apparently forgotten.
It was that filthy coffee that had caused all this confusion in his mind. If they thought he was better off not knowing, this meant that he was the very person who should know.
Find out, he said to himself again. Even if they didn’t want to go on, he mustn’t give up.
His own lack of inner response frightened him. It was up to him, more than them, to discover the truth.
Now he addressed himself not as before, but more gently, as if to persuade himself with kindness.
Why did it have to be my book that was sent to her with my signature? Quietly, without fuss, one day in early summer. That’s a Phantom, his guide had said, just before the evening air raid in Vietnam. It flew silently, like a ghost. Hence its name.
Thousands of girls were interned all over Albania, but his Phantom had sought out this one.
Be careful, his Vietnamese guide had said to him that same night as they got ready for bed in a remote province; there might be cobras.
Oh hell, he thought, and then reflected that it didn’t matter. It was this Vietnamese coffee that had brought it all back.
A stray Phantom flying into Albania’s Barren Mountain. That’s enough, he said to himself.
‘There’s something that doesn’t fit,’ he said aloud.
He would not have been surprised to find that the investigator had since left, but he was still there.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said that there is a mystery here. Nothing can persuade me there isn’t.’
The investigator took a deep breath.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You said so yourself a while back, at the Party Committee.’
‘I know. But later, after the investigation . . .’
Rudian could hardly hear him.
‘Without knowing, I’ve been the cause of a tragedy,’ he said wearily.
‘Better not to think of it that way. Asking too many questions won’t do any good.’
‘I understand. When I was in Vietnam two years ago, we had little air-raid shelters like manholes next to our beds. If the bombers came during the night, we could jump in half-asleep, but my guide, whether seriously or to tease me, said I should be careful. There might be a cobra inside.’
The investigator bit his lower lip. ‘I’m sorry you took it that way,’ he said. ‘And there’s no question of threatening you. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.’
‘I understand. Let’s drop this conversation.’
Again he felt exhausted, dulled. The single name of Caligula filled his brain for a short time.
‘Perhaps it was a mistake for me to phone you,’ he said very softly. ‘I needed a person to talk to, and there was only you.’
‘I understand.’
‘As you may realise, in this story I have lost among other things the only other person I could talk to.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to interfere, but if you mean the girl . . . I mean, your present girlfriend.’
‘That’s exactly who I mean,’ Rudian said. ‘I don’t know what’s happened.’
The investigator’s eyes narrowed with concentration.
‘I’ve simply lost touch with her. Usually she is the one to phone me.’
‘I understand.’
‘You see, I can’t just whistle below the window of her aunt’s apartment, like street kids do. She’s living there temporarily, until school starts.’
‘Of course not.’
You bastard, he chided himself before he opened his mouth again. You rotten bastard. So that was why he had sought out this meeting. He had hidden it so deviously from himself. Air raids in Vietnam, cobras, ersatz coffee, Fidel Castro’s interminable speeches. In fact it was all about Migena’s breasts.
Protest as much as you like, but you’re the biggest bastard in the whole theatre, the whole of Tirana – the Venetian clock tower, mosque and statue of Skanderbeg included. You can’t hide from your shame. You wanted the investigator to track down your lover, and that was all.
Incredible. He had not only thought it, but now he was unashamedly saying it. ‘There’s this one bloody telephone, just one for all the floors in the building, and you can imagine the use it gets. Quarrels, rumours, calls to the hospital, cake recipes.’ The investigator listened thoughtfully. If Rudian wouldn’t interpret it the wrong way, he was ready to help. It would be very simple for him. He would send a couple of his boys. They would know how to find the girl. They would know how to persuade her too. She would come looking for him herself, he’d soon see. As for tittle-tattle, he had no need to worry. These lads were used to keeping their mouths shut. They would think we were asking them to put her on his trail as an informer; you can imagine why.
So, Rudian thought, everything would happen just as he had imagined, when his suspicions were first awoken. An old-fashioned, hackneyed plot from the theatre.
‘In the worst possible case,’ the investigator continued, ‘the lads might envy you a little. But that doesn’t matter. You’re used to that.’
And so they parted. A short time later Rudian wandered as if drunk past the National Bank. The idea struck him with the force of a revelation that this enigma was something bigger, beyond the province of the investigator and even the state.
8
Act Two. The edge of a marsh. On the bank, three feet from the water, the lifeless body of a partisan. To the right, downstage, a desk. Two men sitting on chairs, files in front of them. A third man opposite them, apparently under interrogation.
RUDIAN STEFA LEAFED through the typed pages with irritation. He had been sure that the trouble began in the second half of the act, immediately after the ghost appeared, but it struck him now that the entire act was open to criticism.
Prompted by new rumours emanating from the Artistic Board, Rudian had spent the last two days reviewing the second act to identify what the focus of the criticism might be. He tried to imagine not only what the members of the Board had said but also their facial expressions. His imagination preferred to dwell on the beautiful face of the only actress on the Board. He knew that she was grieved at the way he had been treated, and her distress, about which he had been fully in
formed, was his sole consolation.
How could he make it clear to the audience that two different time frames were represented on the stage? The first was 1943, with the body of the murdered partisan beside the marsh, and the other was five years later, when a Party Commission was investigating covert assassinations. He conceded to his critics that there was a problem here. He and the producer would try to find the clearest solution, such as a sign inscribed in black and white: February 1948. Commission to investigate the crimes of Koçi Xoxe, committed under Yugoslav pressure. If this was thought to be too stark, too epic and Brechtian, they might add another sign with a quotation from the big chief: The Party seeks the truth about these murders.
If only that were all, Rudian sighed. There was sadness in the actress’s eyes. Somebody had once said that sadness gave her eyes the beauty of stars. But this was scant comfort.
He began reading the text aloud to gauge better the impression it might create.
COMMISSION MEMBER 1 (turning to the DEFENDANT): You face charges relating to the murder of the partisan Robert K. in October 1943, at the place known as the Cuckoo’s Field. Explain yourself.
DEFENDANT: It wasn’t murder. I’m not a murderer. I was carrying out the sentence of the partisan court.
COMMISSION MEMBER 2: The reason for this sentence?
DEFENDANT (hesitantly): Inconsistency. Arrogance. Ridiculing his comrades . . .
COMMISSION MEMBERS (almost in chorus): Rather strange grounds.
Then the dialogue flowed smoothly:
You think that’s an unusual accusation?
It didn’t seem so at the time. Besides, he didn’t mend his ways. He continued with his sarcasm.
Even after being sentenced?
Yes. It sounds incredible: a man sentenced to death, still sarcastic.
About what – death?
No, his own comrades.
I see, his own comrades. But what sort of court was this, which he wasn’t scared of? Did he know that it had sentenced him to death?
Of course he knew.
And he still persisted in ridiculing it? But who witnessed his ridicule and how – wasn’t he in a cell, handcuffed?
No, cells and handcuffs were bourgeois methods.
But he must have been confined in some cowshed, tied with rope.
No.
So he was free?
Yes.
And he was in a position to make fun of the court? Was the sentence a real death penalty – rather than symbolic, a moral reprimand?
Of course it was.
So he was going to be executed.
Precisely. First there were two other partisans who were supposed to kill him, but they couldn’t.
Why not? What was stopping them?
He was still behaving in the same way.
So they couldn’t kill him because he was making fun of them?
Evidently.
So he could be killed when he realised that he was going to be killed? In other words, when he stopped ridiculing his comrades and got ready for his own death?
(The DEFENDANT remains silent.)
This entire scene would have seemed beyond belief to Rudian if he hadn’t found it in one of the Commission’s files.
But perhaps the members of the Artistic Board had taken less notice of the scene’s grotesque aspect, because at this moment the ghost appeared.
He had expected some of them to take fright at the ghost. What’s this ghost doing here? Is this socialist realism or Hamlet? Others would have tried to stand up for him: after all, ghosts weren’t Shakespeare’s invention or even Seneca’s. All these things came from the people.
This defence seemed to him a good start, but still he couldn’t rid his mind of the question of the ghost’s presence. The answer flashed through his mind just before midnight as he was preparing for bed. It was a masterstroke of overriding arrogance that rendered insignificant all the events of the last few days: his summons to the Party Committee, his idle mornings, his Vietnamese–Cuban road to Calvary through the cafés of Tirana, and even Migena and her tears.
No dramatist had dared to make such an alteration to the figure of the ghost in thousands of years. It was not a superficial change – like making the ghost half vaporous and half real, or putting him in a dinner jacket and a gas mask – it was an essential reconception. His ghost would be dual-natured, if one could use such a term: a being or device not simply in possession of two minds or programmed in two ways, but with two ways of relating to others. For instance, in the scene where the shooter was interrogated by the commission and the body of the partisan on the bank of the marsh stood up and turned into a ghost, the ghost’s conversation with the commission would be inaudible to the man who had killed him, and the words he exchanged with his killer would not be heard by the commission.
The dual-natured ghost, although present in a single reality, in fact acted in two dimensions, which did not overlap in any way. To make this more obvious on the stage, the ghost would be blue when he communicated with the killer, and another colour, violet or white, when he talked to the commission.
The part of the manuscript where the ghost appeared was covered with annotations. Only the beginning would stand: The partisan’s body slowly stands up from the place where it has been lying and comes forward to testify.
Rudian made a revision: The GHOST, lit in violet or white, comes forward.
COMMISSION MEMBER 1: Robert K., you were killed by a bullet in the back of the head on the twenty-ninth of October 1943 at the place known as the Cuckoo’s Field, on the bank of a marsh that has no name. Why were you sentenced by the partisan court?
GHOST: I was not sentenced by any partisan court. I was murdered by the man before you now, who shot me in the back of the head.
(The DEFENDANT sits motionless, clearly not hearing anything of what is being said. He sees only the heads of the two commission members staring into empty space.)
COMMISSION MEMBER 2: The defendant says you were condemned to death and he was carrying out the sentence of the partisan court. He says that you were sentenced for ridiculing your comrades, and that you continued to do this even after you were sentenced.
GHOST: I knew nothing of a death sentence. It is pure invention. I knew nothing about it. I wasn’t ridiculing anybody. These people only thought I was.
(The GHOST changes colour to blue. Just as he was invisible to the suspected killer when he spoke to the commission, now he is invisible to the commission when he speaks to the DEFENDANT.)
GHOST: What was that tale about a partisan court? You know perfectly well there was no such thing.
DEFENDANT: There was a decision that you had to die.
GHOST: Why? Who said so? What had I done wrong?
DEFENDANT: You don’t need to know.
GHOST: In any court, a defendant at least has the right to know why he’s being sentenced.
DEFENDANT: What difference does it make? Everybody who remembers the case is dead except me. Nobody will listen to you.
GHOST: How can you be so sure?
DEFENDANT: You’re getting above yourself. As always.
GHOST: I should at least know why. I was nineteen years old. Why did I have to die?
DEFENDANT: Better if you don’t know.
(The GHOST steps back towards the edge of the marsh, moves close to the partisan’s body, and bends down to enter it.)
COMMISSION MEMBER 1 (to the DEFENDANT): Then? What happened then?
DEFENDANT: Then we both set off to the town, the condemned man and I.
COMMISSION MEMBER 1: Why?
DEFENDANT: To carry out the sentence.
COMMISSION MEMBER 1: Why not in some clearing nearby? Behind some bushes? Behind a knoll? That’s where people were usually shot.
DEFENDANT: I don’t know. That’s what had been decided.
COMMISSION MEMBER 2: Was the convicted man tied up?
DEFENDANT: No. The comrades trusted me.
COMMISSION MEMBER 1: Where had it
been decided that he would be killed? In other words, who was going to decide on the place, you or him?
DEFENDANT: I was going to.
COMMISSION MEMBER 2: And then? What happened next? Go on.
DEFENDANT: Along the way I began to feel sorry for him. Regardless of what he’d done, we had been comrades-in-arms. I wanted to say to him, Run off, you’re free. But at that very moment he turned his gun on me.
COMMISSION MEMBER 2: What? He was armed? Not only were his hands free, but he had a gun?
DEFENDANT: It was the custom in those days. Nobody’s gun was ever taken away. We’ll die with guns in our hands, that’s what we used to say.
COMMISSION MEMBER 2: How strange . . . And then? Go on.
DEFENDANT: He pressed his gun in my back and marched me on. To the edge of the marsh. Night was falling. You could see the lights of the city, but very far away.
COMMISSION MEMBER 2: And then?
DEFENDANT: These lights confused him. And I took my chance and killed him.
COMMISSION MEMBER 1: Killing in self-defence. That’s what you said before.
DEFENDANT: Yes.
COMMISSION MEMBER 1: Killing in self-defence. In the back of the neck . . .
(At the edge of the marsh, the GHOST rises from the partisan’s body, as if leaving its lair. It stands up and comes closer. It is violet in colour.)
COMMISSION MEMBER 2: When did you realise that you had been sentenced to death?
GHOST: I never did.
COMMISSION MEMBER 2: You must have noticed something. A hostile attitude, some sort of aversion.
GHOST: That’s true. Now and then there was something like that. But it came and went.
COMMISSION MEMBER 2: Did you have arguments, differences of opinion?
GHOST: Yes. They thought I was arrogant, temperamental, a typical city boy. For instance, we had different views about love. They disapproved of it. At least until the liberation. That’s what they said.
A Girl in Exile Page 5