The File on H.

by Ismail Kadare

  The trip into the mountains would be the crowning event of their project. They now knew exactly where to find the usual dwellings of eleven rhapsodes, whom they would record, some of them for the second and others for the third time.

  Furthermore, they had not abandoned a faint hope, against all reason that they would stumble upon the very last stammerings of the epic machine — that is, lines of verse dealing with some event later than 1913. Since the epic had produced twelve lines for the year 1878 and, thirty-five years later, another five lines for 1913, surely it was possible that twenty years further on it could have secreted another two or three? In fact, given the antiquity of the epic, these decades that seemed so long to contemporaries were just crumbs of time, a few minutes more or less in the time scale of tradition.

  They were perfectly aware that their hope was without foundation. The epic awoke from its long slumber in 1913, that was true, but only because a terrible calamity — the dismemberment of the country — had prodded it into a final burst of life. The following period of Albanian history had been utterly uneventful. There was perhaps no imaginable period more appropriate for the final death of an oral epic.

  Max and Bill had gone over this in discussion, but they realized with some surprise that, for all that, they had not stopped hoping to find an epivent, the world they had coined for a contemporary event transformed into epic verse.

  Whereas they had previously despaired at the dispersion of the Albanian epic tradition, they now felt reassured that the entire corpus was in good order. What had seemed, to begin with, like shards scattered through space and time, as ungraspable as a mane of rainbows, as wind and burnt dust, quite impossible to collect, was now locked in numbered metal reel cases. Sometimes it seemed hard to credit that they had managed to tame all that hatred and all that passion.

  Daisy had never watched the path from the front gate to the front door with such concentration. It was raining, and the flagstones gleamed with a strange and disturbing light. She knew the flags intimately, each individual one, and remembered which of them, wobbling slightly, was likely to splash her stockings on rainy days, never forgetting to step around it. But this was the first time that she had studied them from above, from the second-floor window. And on this occasion she could not easily have brought to mind which flagstone might tip and muddy the trouser leg of the man who was on his way.

  The English-speaking informer was due to call in a quarter of an hour. A man she did not know calling on her at 11:00 A.M., without her husband's knowledge... But the shudder of the illicit lasted only a few seconds. With some bitterness, she went over the scenario in her mind: The man was coming at her invitation, for a quite specific reason, related to his professional responsibilities. She had not found it easy to draft the brief note that said: "I wish to meet you on an important matter. I beseech you, please ensure that this remains strictly confidential."

  She had made her resolution a week earlier, after having tried and failed to meet the Irishmen at the Buffalo Inn. The trip in the horse-drawn carriage on the main north road, supposedly to see a fresco at the church of Saint Mary, the stop at the inn, her going in allegedly for a glass of water, the few words she exchanged with the inkeeper, then the return journey in the carriage— all these episodes came back to her in a haze, as if they had not happened at all but were only figments of her daydreams.

  Since her attempt to meet the foreigners had unfortunately failed, she had racked her brains for days to find another way of getting a message to them. Another trip by carriage would undoubtedly have aroused the suspicions of the innkeeper; and she did not have the courage to take the postmaster's wife along with her. She had thought of having her maidservant— the only person in the household whom she trusted entirely — take them a short note. While exploring this possibility in her mind, she suddenly thought of the new informer. What if she should speak to him directly? After all, wasn't the English-speaking spy the key to the whole affair, the alpha and omega of the business? It was a bold idea, and an attractive one. There was no doubt about it: the informer was the key to it all. His ear was the direct connection with them. Who else could tell her whether Bill and Max had in fact spoken about her in their magical English? My lord, my love... Even without admitting it to herself, she was not unaware that the main reason for each of her actions and her final decision to write that note to the spy was her desire to reestablish contact with the Irishmen. Of course, she said to herself in her infrequent moments of lucidity, they are citizens of another country and are not taking any real risks. But she would quickly put that thought aside: most of the time, as now, when she waited for the garden gate to swing open momentarily, she liked to believe that she, Daisy, was saving them both from danger.

  It was nearly eleven, and the spy could arrive at any moment.

  In her later recollections of the episode, there would be two versions of the man's arrival:

  In the first version, the spy came in slowly, and Daisy, watching from the window, followed each of his steps as if the whole thing were happening in slow motion: the gate opening, the steps on the wet flagstones, the ring of the doorbell, his climbing the stairs, then his words: "Madam, I am delighted to be able to be of some use to you."

  In the second version, the visitor had seemed to fly from the garden gate to the second-floor sitting room without touching the ground, until he was there, staring at her with eyes incandescent with curiosity, attraction— and something else, halfway between self-confidence and sheer cheek. Good God, exactly what a spy's eyes should be! she thought. Then the same words: "I am delighted to be able to be of some use to you."

  He was exactly as she had expected him to be and at the same time not at all what she had imagined. His oiled, black hair was fearfully shiny, as if made of the same stuff as his eyes. She had never seen anyone with eyes and hair in such perfect accord. A spy's eyes, blended with the glance of a courtier. Judging by the way he studied her face, she reckoned that he had indeed overheard the Irishmen chatting about her. Yes, yes, his eyes were full of tacit messages, of the sort that pass between people who have shared a secret. Her desire to know at once what the foreigners had said was overwhelming. Had she not been a rather timid woman, she would have beseeched the spy there and then: I beg you, tell me quickly, just as you heard it, in English (you can translate it later), tell me everything, absolutely everything, they said about me!

  But she had some self-control. She began by beating about the bush. In her later recollection, this part of the conversation would be even more of a muddle than the rest of it. In fact, she wouldn't be able to recall anything very precise about it, apart from the fact that while she was speaking, his eyes sparkled like two burning coals constantly fanned, and that she imagined he knew a great deal more about her than she could guess.

  "I know the two foreigners who passed through here," she said at long last, in a muted voice. "You would be amazed to know the circumstances.... All the same..."

  The spy interrupted in a whisper, as if he was concerned not to wake anyone in the house:

  "Madam, I can see that you are embarrassed, but you must realize that I have a great deal of experience in situations of this kind...."

  "Of course," Daisy replied, raising her eyes to meet his.

  His face was now quite close to hers, and the various stories Daisy had heard about the spy's exploits crossed her mind vaguely. Just as you would expect, she thought, as she smiled limply at the man. Courteously and respectfully, he took her hand in his.

  "How beautiful you are!"

  "How can you dare to say such a thing!" Daisy's eyes brimmed with outrage.

  The spy did not let go of her hand but sought to look straight into her eyes.

  "Madam, my professional calling gives me so many opportunities to..."

  "I know, I know, I've heard all about you and your..."

  He smiled, and continued in an even more conspiratorial whisper:

  "...so many opportunities to cast my ey
es on ladies in bathrooms and bedrooms — society ladies that other men only dream of greeting from a distance.... Including you, perhaps, when you visited the capital and stayed at the Continental Hotel..."

  "Good God!" Daisy screamed inwardly. She had indeed stayed at that hotel. The very thought made part of her brain go numb. What if he had seen her entirely naked? What would that mean? She heard a small voice cry out inside her. If he really had seen her naked, then it would be the same as...

  He put his head on hers and tasted the perfume of her hair, and Daisy's mind clouded over. She needed something to support her, and yet all her thoughts converged on a single point: if what he said had already happened, then all the rest was just a technicality.

  She felt his hands take hold of her by the waist, and instead of pushing him off, as she had intended to right up to that moment, she let herself go.

  He's gone, then, Daisy thought as she heard the garden gate screech on its hinges. She slipped a dressing gown over her bare shoulders and went to the window, pulling back the curtain. It was still raining outside, as if nothing had happened. He could at least have told her what the Irishmen had said about her, she mused, as she stood there still dazed. She hadn't managed to ask the question. Besides, she wasn't that interested anymore. Something had entered her whole being, and she didn't want to thing about anything else. She stepped slowly toward her bathroom, turned on the hot water tap, and got into the bath.

  She was still soaking in the water when her husband came home for lunch.

  Shortly after, as she laid the table for the midday meal, the governor reported rumors that were making the rounds about the king getting engages to a Hungarian countess.

  "Is something the matter?" he asked, realizing with surprise that she was not taking any interest in gossip about the royals. "Have you got a headache?"

  "Yes," she answered. "I've had a headache all morning."

  He bowed his head over his plate, feeling guilty as he always did when Daisy's headaches were mentioned. He was well aware that the main cause of his wife's migraines was the fact that she had never had a child.

  Lunch proceeded in that vein, with sparse remarks from the one to the other, then Daisy declared that she was going to lie down for a while. After a short rest, her husband went back to the office.

  It was the same routine in the evening, the only difference being that the governor, instead of going back to the office after dinner, shut himself in his study; Daisy, for her part, went back to her bedroom.

  She tried to sleep but could not manage it. She was now sure that she would have to face a sleepless night marked by the resonating, lonely chimes of the bronze clock. She could not understand why she had insomnia. It was the first time that she had deceived her husband, but she felt no remorse. No, there was something else, an unbearable emptiness, along with the feeling of having cheapened herself completely. Where did that feeling come from? She could have laughed at herself sourly: of course she knew where it came from! She had been dreaming of something altogether different — of an affair with a foreign Homeric scholar, of his speaking English, etc., etc. — and she had ended up in the arms of a mere informer. And not just any informer! She had slept with the spy who was eavesdropping on the man of her dream. Such irony...

  As if that were not enough, she could already imagine the scene with the bleary-eyed gynecologist, animated by sheer inquisitiveness: "With whom?..." No, no, no, she screamed inside herself, she would never tell him the truth. She would make up stories, fabricate a novelette, or an accident (she was a bit tipsy, at a dance, and what's more, it was a complete coincidence that...), but she would never let out what had really happened. That thought calmed her somewhat. The throbbing in her forehead eased off. Perhaps I am not pregnant, she thought; and she became quite serene. She hadn't needed to get so worried. In the end, she was neither the first nor the last woman to whom such things happened. Half of the films that were made contained episodes of this kind, and when you think of books — Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and so many others whose titles she couldn't remember... Oh, if only she could go to sleep! Her migraine had subsided in fact, and everything was getting better, apart from her forehead.... Where was that cruel noise coming from — a hammer beating time, a thudding bell, quite outside her head?... She buried her head under the pillow in the hope that she would manage to muffle the reverberations, and at that moment she felt her husband turning over in bed, as if he had guessed what was going on in his wife's mind. Could he possibly have seen through it all, or was the noise really coming from outside, just to increase her distress? Her skull was still hurting when she heard her husband say:

  "Someone's knocking at the door!"

  "What!" She sat up with a start; she did not understand what was going on at all.

  She saw his arm move and stretch out to switch on the bedside lamp. His voice made an entirely different sound in the illuminated bedroom:

  "Someone is knocking at the front door!"

  The knocks could now be made out distinctly, and over the rattle, you could hear someone pleading:

  "Mr. Governor, sir! Mr. Governor, sir!"

  It was his voice, she realized with horror. She shook her head from side to side as if to get rid of such an absurd idea. Her husband leaped out of bed and went to the window.

  "Mr. Governor, Mr. Governor!" came the cry from outside, but now it was firmer and clearer.

  "The English-speaking informer!" the governor said aloud, quite taken aback. "Something must have happened...."

  She stared wide-eyed at her husband as he blundered around the bedroom, looking for his shirt, then his trousers, then his jacket.

  "No!" she croaked, in a sob that sounded so different than her usual voice that despite his agitation, the governor stopped momentarily and looked hard at her, as if he could not quite believe that the sound had come from her. "Don't go!"

  Several possible explanations for their being disturbed like this at such an hour were thundering around in her brain. Good news could not have brought the spy to hammer and yell at the door. My God, she moaned to herself, what can this new misfortune be? Maybe he had gone half crazy and was coming to take her away, to tell her husband about their relationship and to persuade him to let her go, or else he was there to humiliate him, or to mock them both, or simply to kill her husband, or perhaps to apologize. At that point, all these surmises seemed equally plausible, and just as incredible. Perhaps he had repented of what he had done, or worse still, maybe he had had a stupid crisis of conscience and, as the committed servant of the state that she had supposed he must be, was on his way to confess to his boss that he had broken a cardinal rule of conduct by revealing state secrets in exchange for a moment of pleasure.... But I did not ask him anything, I didn't even get so far as to tell him why I had asked him to come here! she protested to herself, painfully trying to justify herself. All these ideas whirled, around in her head as she stared hard at her husband, getting dressed.

  "Don't go!" she pleaded a second time.

  Containing his own excitement, which was no less acute than his wife's, though of quite a different order, the governor at long last replied:

  "Daisy, something has obviously happened, but there is no reason for panic."

  She did not have time to ask him a third time not to go out as he was already tumbling down the staircase. It's all over, she though. There was no way of stopping things now.

  She jumped out of bed and went to the window. She heard the knocker at the door once again, then the voice, now growing hoarse with the shouting: "Mr. Governor, sir! Sir!" She opened the window, and the cold, rain-soaked air chilled her through the nightdress. She could hear her husband's footsteps, and then the metallic screech of the bolts being drawn, which made her spine tingle. She held on to the sill so as not to fall, and listened to the men's voices overlapping each other. She could not make out what they were saying: their words were punctuated by groans and exclamations of anger and indignation.


  They drew closer to the front door, and it would hardly have surprised her to hear the shots of dueling pistols. She was still glued to the window, like a trial defendant waiting to hear the guilty verdict. The wooden stairs creaked beneath the men's footsteps. Any minute now and they'll push through the door of this bedroom... but they went into the governor's study. She heard the noise of the telephone dial, and then her husband saying: "Hello? Is that the police?"

  What! she almost screamed out loud. The police for such a matter? How did they come to an accord so quickly? It was just not possible!

  She heard her husband speaking again in his study: "It's urgent — I need ten of your best men, right away!"

  Her mind went completely blank. The bedroom door swung open at last, and she stood there stock-still, bewildered at finding the bed empty. Then he must have caught sight of her silhouette at the window, and he said:

  "Something awful has happened, and I must leave at once."

  "But what is it? What's happened?"

  "Up there, at the inn... The Irishmen have been assaulted."

  "Were they killed?"

  "No, but they may be hurt.... I'm off. Get back in the bed and go to sleep."

  He closed the door, and Daisy returned to the window. Though she was shivering from head to toe, she stayed there until the sound of the men's voices and the noise of the motorcars had faded into the far distance.

  "What a crazy night!" She sighed, putting her hand to her forehead and closing her eyes. Then she muttered a correction: "As if the day was sane..."

  When the governor returned, in the small hours, he gave an extremely vague account of events to his wife. Instead of casting any light on matters, his words extinguished the very last glimmer of her understanding.

  Twice or three times, she was on the point of asking questions to get him to go over it all again, but her persuaded her to let him be.