The Concert

13

IN ANOTHER HOUR (by which time Skënder Bermema had shaved again and chosen a shirt and tie, while in a nearby room C–V—, with whom he hadn’t been in touch, had done the same), all eleven hundred invitations to the official concert had been delivered to various addresses in Peking, and most of the recipients were in their rooms getting ready for the evening.

Some of them — mostly women — were still lying luxuriously in the bath, the shapes of their bodies blurred by the warm water, while in the distance their husbands were on the phone, asking other diplomats what they knew about this impromptu concert to which everyone was invited at scarcely three hours’ notice. Was it just the way the Chinese did these things, or did it have some special significance? It was very odd…Was it a concert being brought forward from a later date, and if so why? It had been rumoured for some time that Mao was ill…Or was it Zhou Enlai? Who could say? Anyhow, the concert was not to be missed. It would provide all kinds of hints as to what was going on: what you had to watch out for was the order in which the Chinese leaders arrived, who was seated with whom in the boxes, whether Jiang Qing was there or not…

Skënder looked in the mirror and put the finishing touch to his tie, thee felt the little cut he’d made on his right cheek while shaving. At that moment each of the eleven hundred guests was doing something connected with the concert: putting something on or taking something off, adjusting a collar or combing his hair. Ambassadors kept hurrying from their mirrors to their phones, which rang more and more often, while their wives got out of their baths at last, the gurgle of the water going down the drain — half a sob and half a cry of pleasure — carrying with it a hundred little mysteries the ladies couldn’t have explained even if they’d wanted to. Warm and naked still, they selected their jewels for the evening, while out in the hall their husbands were still on the phone, discussing the same theories as before: “Do you think it’s something to do with Mao? Or with Zhoe Enlai? It’s not impossible, now we know that he’s ill too…”

Unusually for him, Zhou Enlai was also looking at himself in the glass. His swarthy face looked greenish and chill. He tried to imagine what he’d look like when he appeared in his box. The men who for years had been hoping to take his place, men like Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao and Hua Guofeng, would probably heave a sigh of relief. All things come to him who waits. Zhou Enlai smiled bitterly. He couldn’t do anything now to deprive them of their satisfaction: as soon as he appeared in public everyone would think the same thing — he was attending his last concert. And it was true.

He wanted to turn away from the mirror, but he couldn’t. He felt his face slowly with his hand, as if it were a mask.

Every time he had to go to a political meeting, an official gathering, a session of the Politbureau or a government reception, he glanced briefly in the mirror before he left home, to make sure he hadn’t forgotten to assume the necessary mask. The idea of a mask had been suggested to him either by the descriptions of his face in the foreign press, or else by the rumours about all the top leaders that the Zhongnanhai picked up all over the country. Zhou couldn’t remember which. But it didn’t matter. He was now so familiar with the idea that he wouldn’t have been surprised if, as they were going out, Dan Yingchao, his wife, had asked, “Zhou, are you wearing your mask?’’, just as you might ask someone if they’d remembered to take their gloves or their handbag.

People had been talking about this for a long time, but Zhou took no notice. He had three masks: the mask of a leader, the mask of one who obeys, and the mask as cold as ice. The first two he usually wore to government and Politbureau meetings or committees. The third he kept for occasions when he had to appear in public.

The clock on the wall behind him struck six. This was the first time he had gone out without one of his three masks. They were all out of date now. Instead he now wore a fourth. A death mask.

On the chest of drawers below the mirror lay the envelope containing his will, which he intended to send to Mao that evening. How many people would have given anything to know its contents! Especially those who were waiting to step into his shoes. But it was not what they expected. It set out only a few general observations, followed by a request that his ashes be scattered in the sky over China.

A handful of dust, he thought — that’s how everything will end. Other people would have liked his will to contain a list of names suggesting his successor, together with accusations and settlings of old scores. But he had left all that far behind. He had no connection with the world any more. All he had to do was go to the concert, and wait for the curtain to fall. Then nothingness.

The invitation card lay just beside the will Perhaps I’ve already ceased to exist, he thought. Perhaps it’s only my ghost that’s going to the concert…

Yes, perhaps so. The concert was other people’s affair — he was merely a visitor, a visitant, half living and half dead. It was his first and last concert. The last of his life, the first of his after-life.

He would scarcely be any more present at tonight’s event than at future ones that might be attended by his ghost. There, that’s where he used to sit, people would say afterwards, looking at his empty box. (Would it really be empty?) Actually, he rather relished his present detachment. He would listen to this concert as if from a box in the beyond, set free at last from the passions and rivalries of the power struggle.

The clock struck again. Sometimes the ghost, sometimes the real man seemed to prevail within him. Why don’t I go for one last walk round Peking before the concert, he thought, before dismissing the idea. He felt as if he could do anything he liked. As if he had only to wish himself in his box and he would be there without any need for a car or a journey or an escort.

It was natural enough. A ghost had no use for such things. But still, he thought at last, I’d better get there somehow or other, or someone else might go and sit in my box. The box is occupied … Where had he heard that before?

Juan Maria Krams took out his invitation again to check that he hadn’t made a mistake about the time of the concert. No, he still had plenty of time, he thought, settling back in his chair by the window. But he didn’t stay there long. He suddenly realized he hadn’t noticed any other figures but 19.30 on the card. He checked. Yes, it didn’t say the number of the seat, and as far as he could tell, with his meagre knowledge of Chinese, it didn’t say whether it was in a box or in the stalls. This seemed very odd, for an official concert.

Juan Maria hurried out of the room and ran downstairs. As usual, one of his guides was waiting for him in the lounge on the ground floor of the villa. Juan Maria showed him the invitation and pointed out that the seat number wasn’t specified. To his surprise, the guide didn’t react.

“Don’t worry, comrade Jean,” he said with a smile. “I know the numbers of the seats.“

“You mean…?”

“Yes, everything’s as it should be.”

Krams went upstairs again, more slowly. It seemed very strange. His guide, though he hadn’t stopped smiling, had nevertheless refrained from telling him the number of his seat. This was obviously something to do with the security measures taken for an event at which top leaders were to be present, but still Krams was rather offended. Why were they showing so little confidence in him, Chairman Mao’s “European godson”, as friends and enemies alike called him, half-joking, half-serious? He’d learned to forgive the Chinese their little unpleasant surprises, but this time he thought they were going too far. But then, he reflected, this mystification probably applies to everyone. And in the present tense situation, extreme. precautions might really be necessary.

Yes, that would be it. He mustn’t be too touchy. There were much more serious things than the number of his seat to worry about in connection with the concert. It gave him an opportunity to guess which of the two factions in the struggle for power had the best chance of getting the upper hand — which, for the moment, enjoyed to however small an extent the favour of Mao. It was upon the outcome of this confrontation that his attitude to China depended, together with that of his group.

The Chinese guests were also getting ready to go to the concert. There were about seven hundred of them, all official figures — senior civil servants for the most part, ministers, members of the Central Committee, representatives of different nationalities, veterans of the Long March, members of the mysterious Zhongnanhai or General Bureau, and so on.

The member of the Politbureau who always wore a towel wound round his head like a turban looked at his invitation, and sighed. His seat was in box number y. He wondered where his rival would be sitting — “Double-Barrel”-as he was called, the man who claimed to live on two barrels of chick-peas. It was some comfort to know that as all the top leaders took their places in the concert hall, dozens of others would be straining their eyes to find out the answer to this question.

But it was only one preoccupation, and a small one it that, among the many that would be engaging the guests. The pulses of the Chinese would be beating fast over much more serious mysteries as they entered the hall. As most of them belonged to one or other of the various rival factions, secret or otherwise, such questions were a matter of life and death. They knew that all those rows of heads rising above the red plush seats were seething with plots, coups, putsches and massacres. All these projects depended on different eventualities: the death of Mao, the death of Zhou Enlai, or both, a seizure of power by Deng Xiaoping, or by Jiang Qing and her gang. Three deaths together, a single night of slaughter, or a blood-bath lasting for years?…There were other factors, too, that might trigger off a plot or coup — developments at home or abroad, natural phenomena. These categories might include provocative acts on the part of the United States or the U.S.S.R., a reversal of the situation in Vietnam, a famine decimating the population of India, a drought in northern China, floods, earthquakes, epidemics of cholera or smallpox, a plague of rats or locusts…

Many of the guests “at the concert would be seeking signs that evening as to how they should take advantage of such events. They would look for symbols in the movements and gestures of the dancers, the dark red of the prima ballerina’s cloak, the white of the cloak worn by the dancer next in seniority, the undulations of the dragon’s tail, the antics of the little monkey, the horses sweeping through the dreadful desert and finally exiting covered in gore.

But these signs wouldn’t be at all easy to decipher. You might easily get it wrong.

* * *

Ail the lights were on in the guest-houses for important foreign visitors built in the western part of a large park. Two kings, four sheikhs, a sick imam, two regents living in exile and a widowed queen were all getting ready for the concert, together with their guides and bodyguards and concubines, Powerful whiffs of perfume floated out towards the cars that waited outside with their engines already turning over.

In the last and most modest of the villas, set slightly apart from the others, Pol Pot, the master of Cambodia, was poring over a hefty volume about symbols, leafing through the pages impatiently. In the course of the last few days he’d been secretly thinking up a new massacre, greater in scope than anything that had gone before,not only in his own country but also in the whole of Asia, if not the world itself. He hadn’t told anyone about the scale of this project; this evenings at the concert, he would try to make out if the time was ripe for it. He’d started consulting this venerable tome as soon as he received his invitation, but there wasn’t much time, and the subject was extremely complex. He had a feeling that the answer to his question was to be found in the movements made and the colours worn by the second woman dancer, as these related to the figure of the ancient serpent; but he wasn’t quite sure. And if his interpretation was wrong it might cost him dear a few days later when he asked for Chinese backing for his plan.

It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t at all easy, he thought, his fingers trembling nervously. His eyes hurt, he was tired, and felt rather sorry for himself. Instead of being able to look forward to the concert in peace, like everyone else, he had to go on working right up to the last minute.

Behind the scenes in the theatre where the concert was to be held,there was the usual bustle before the show. People ran to and fro, Male and female dancers vanished into the make-up rooms, dressed as magicians, princesses, eunuchs, or priests preparing for human sacrifice. Not to mention those merely swathed in long strips of silk, who were to represent parts of the serpent or of the dragon’s tail. Former stars of the company, directors and the various technicians appeared and disappeared, looking worried. Some of their anxiety transmitted itself to the faces of their colleagues, even those of the dancers, which were covered with such thick layers of cosmetics you wouldn’t have thought they could reject any expression bet those that had been painted on them.

It wasn’t surprising if they were worried, Like all official concerts this was a great event: in theory all the top executives of Party and state were coming, and so was the diplomatic corps. Moreover, rehearsals had been punctuated by visits from mysterious officials not usually seen in artistic circles. Some people said they were there on the orders of Jiang Qing, and even that she herself might come to the dress rehearsal Others suggested that the visitors were from the Zhongnanhai, and this really scared everyone. But no one had been able to find out for sure who the visitors were. What was certain was that changes had been made right up to the last minute — even at the dress rehearsal the night before — changes affecting certain scenes, the lighting, the movements of the principal dancers and the colours of their costumes. Most of the company had been told something of the significance of these changes; in any case, they already knew how important a part symbols played in the theatre, especially on an occasion like this, But they didn’t really understand much, and if the organizers themselves were somewhat better informed, even their notions on what was going on were very hazy. Not that there had been any shortage of rumours on this subject in recent years! Some anti-Party theatre companies, such as the Three Villages group, were said to have used their productions to exchange messages about sinister possibilities like the overthrow of Mao, or events like Peng Dehuai’s plea for mercy from his judges. But even after the plot had been unmasked and many of the company’s artists and administrators arrested, no one ever found out exactly how their messages were sent.

And now it was being whispered that at the end of the first scene, and somewhere around the middle of the second, and also at the yellow stork’s exit just before the interval, something of the highest importance was concealed in the movements of the second woman dancer and in the lilac tints of her costume. It might have something to do (“Not so loud! Put your mouth closer to my earl”) — it might have something to do with Mao’s approaching death and the question of who was to succeed him. Just to hear such things made your blood run cold. What was more, there might be world-wide repercussions; the messages might have to do with terrorism in general, or with massacres in various parts of the globe, or with heaven knew what! It was more like a calamity than a concert!

The second woman dancer leaned against a pillar in the wings, gazing at the agitation all around her. Because of her heavy make-up, her face looked as if were set in plaster. The only sign of life was the worried expression in her eyes, all the more striking because of her impassive mask.

She looks terribly anxious, thought one of the make-up men as he went by. Perhaps she’d found out the meaning of the symbol she was being made to convey. The make-up man himself didn’t know much about it. He watched her surreptitiously, wondering what feature of her performance would act as a signal for the massacre of the intelligentsia that some people were predicting^ always supposing it wasn’t a delusion.

“Are you worried?” one of the oldest dancers in the company asked her younger colleague. “There’s no need. You’ve nothing to reproach yourself with…A few years ago I myself was accused of driving two ministers to commit suicide, bet it wasn’t my fault at all …I know it’s different in your case — people are talking about wholesale massacres — bet that’s no reason why yoe should fret. It’s not your fault, is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about," the girl replied, “You’re the second person who’s spoken to me like that, and I still don’t understand what it’s all about.”

“I thought you were worrying about…”

“Not at all! I was thinking of something quite different. Do you know what?…If I tell you, Lin Min, you must promise not to breathe a word to anyone else.”

“You can count on me!”

The girl looked at her for a moment, hesitating, then made up her mind.

“I don’t even want to know what you were talking about, Lin Min. I don’t understand such things. All I can think of is when the show is over and the foreign members of the audience come up on the stage to congratulate us… Perhaps I’ll be lucky and one of them will kiss me …You see, Lin Min, at the last concert, in October, there was a fair-haired man who smelled so delicious …I shall never forget him…”

As the young ballerina was speaking, her colleague looked at her with an expression that might have been either envy or pity.

Then the older woman went away, and the young dancer was alone again. She tiptoed over to the heavy velvet curtain, pulled it aside a little, and looked through the gap into the auditorium, where the seats ail looked weighed ‘down under the same red plush. The audience weren’t there yet. An oppressive silence seemed to rise up from the great empty space. The girl sighed and let the curtain fall back into place.

To Hua Guofeng the chiming of the clock on the wall sounded different from usual For some reason he paused with the comb and scissors in his hand, waiting for the seventh stroke. I’ve only got fifteen minutes left, he thought. As he lifted the comb and scissors to his head again he noticed that his hands were trembling. He was nervous — he should have started getting ready sooner. It wasn’t his fault though…The idea that his resemblance to Mao might be increased had suddenly occurred to him that afternoon. The notion excited him, though he was sorry he hadn’t thought of it sooner. The fact that he looked like Chairman Mao hadn’t gone unnoticed among his friends, who sometimes made rather risqué jokes about it, but it hadn’t occurred to anyone that the likeness could be improved, cultivated like species of fruit. The thought had taken a long while to come to the surface in Hua Guofeng’s own mind, wandering first along devious and mysterious ways, as most ideas do. He’d wondered for some time about Mao’s possible successors, and had occasionally thought of the Kagemushas, the doubles whom medieval Japanese war-lords used to send to replace them in battles and at celebrations. If I were just a little bit more like him, he reflected, I could be Mao’s Kagemusha. Then, as it became more and more difficult for Mao to preside over ceremonies and receive distinguished foreign visitors, and especially when the Politbureau first deliberated over whether he ought to give up appearing in public, Hua thought about the Kagemusha more and more But it wasn’t until the meeting of the Politbureau this afternoon that everything around him seemed to freeze, and the idea of the double suddenly emerged from the depths of his brain, hitting him like a cosmic ray. The meeting had ostensibly been discussing something quite different, but, as usual lately, it was clear everyone was thinking about the succession. The problems involved were well-known; Zhou ill with cancer; Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife; her band of supporters; the Deng Xiaoping faction…People said Zhou would soon be sending Mao his will…Everyone let his thoughts run riot. And it was then that an inner voice cried out to Hua: “Why not you? Why do you stand modestly aside? The others are no closer to him than you are. You have a definite advantage in your face and physical appearance. As for the soul, no one can see that” Then a host of chaotic thoughts crowded into his mind: a case of mass psychosis, a people yearning for its lost leader, their longing to see his face on the rostrum again…

“This very evening!” shrieked the inner voice. “Appear as him this evening, and you will triumph!”

Back home again, he had wandered around the rooms aimlessly until he realized what it was he was looking for. A mirror. He stood for a long time gazing at his own reflection. He couldn’t send for a hairdresser or a make-up man from the theatre — no one must be let into the secret. Everyone had been suspicious and on the alert lately. He’d manage by himself.

As if afraid of being overheard, he tiptoed over to a cupboard and got out a comb and a pair of scissors. Why were his hands shaking? Other people had used poison or a dagger…

That thought calmed him a little. But when the first tuft of hair fell down beside the mirror, he was almost surprised it wasn’t spattered with blood, it was past five when he started on his task: at seven o’clock he still hadn’t finished. As he plied comb and scissors alternately, his thoughts wandered to the still empty theatre, the envelope containing Zhou Enlai’s will, and other more trivial things, His hands went on shaking. Sometimes he thought the resemblance was increasing, sometimes it seemed to have disappeared altogether. Once he suddenly turned and looked at the portrait of Mao up on the wall: he appeared to be looking back at him sardonically. The scissors in Hua’s hand flashed as if with menace.

At a quarter past seven there was a knock at the door. It must be one of his bodyguards. The time has come, he thought, and tiptoed back to the cupboard, put the comb and scissors back in their drawer and covered them up with a towel. Then he walked towards the door. But just as he was reaching out for the door-knob, he remembered in time and went back to the mirror and the tufts of hair still lying around it. He gathered them up in his handkerchief; rubbed the top of the dressing-table to make sure there was no trace left behind; then he went over and opened the door.

* * *

The car taking Skënder Bermema and C–V— to the concert drew up outside the theatre. As they alighted they saw other groups of guest, Chinese and foreign, making for the lighted entrance as their limousines glided quietly away like empty shells.

As he entered the auditorium, Skënder was dazzled by the bright red velvet. The stalls were starting to fill up, but there was practically no one in the boxes yet.

Skënder and C–V— followed their guide as he located the seats assigned to them. They settled down. The theatre was quieter than Skënder had expected, but when he looked around he saw that the stalls were now almost full, except for a few latecomers picking their way to their places. The boxes too were filling up, and Skënder noticed that the people round him were looking at them as he was, but without actually turning their heads. It was twenty-five past seven. Skënder, like all the rest, went on watching the highest dignitaries arrive. He saw the Albanian ambassador and almost waved to him; but of course the other wouldn’t have noticed. Thee he spotted the Politbureau member with the turban: he was in the same box as “Double-Barrel”, whom he recognized from seeing him on television. But this wasn’t the moment for laughter.

At seven-twenty-eight Jiang Qing and Wang Hongwen took their places in their boxes. There were only two boxes vacant now. At first glance it was as if the whole power of the state was embodied in those present, and the two empty boxes didn’t count. But a few seconds later, by some mysterious process, the opposite came to be true: for the thought of those who were absent sent a chill down everyone’s spine. They might make their appearance at any moment, with their pallid faces and the mocking smiles that seemed to say, “You rejoiced too soon at our not being here!”

There wasn’t a murmur. On the contrary, the silence deepened, and only a mute kind of stir ran through the theatre when Hua Guofeng appeared in one of the last two empty boxes. “What’s this? What’s this?” hundreds of people silently chorused. Skënder watched their guide’s profile: his pale face had gone red, as if it were bathed in a sulphurous light; he wore an expression of mingled terror and hope, like someone pleading for mercy, “Hua Guofeng’s face!” Skënder exclaimed inwardly, “What’s happened to it?” But he didn’t expect to get an answer here, in this place inhabited by ghosts. His own mind, that mechanism so apt to produce the strangest associations of ideas, soon supplied him with a number of possibilities. Hua Guofeng’s face was the spitting image of Mao’s. He might have taken the skin off Mao’s face and stuck it on his own. Many others must have been revolving the same horrible thoughts as Skënder, for the whole theatre seemed to have suffered an electric shock.

It was exactly seven-thirty when the house-lights began to fade. And it was at that precise moment, between the house-lights going out and the foot-lights coming on, that Zhou Enlai appeared in the one remaining empty box.

So now the boxes are full, thought Skënder Bermema.

Zhou Enlai seemed to hover between being a human being and a phantom. The curtain slowly rose. “God!” exclaimed Berraema, astonished to find himself using a word that had been obsolete for so long.

The concert had been going on for an hour, and it was evident there wasn’t going to be an interval Hundreds of motionless heads gazed at what was going on on the stage. Although everything seemed so cold and stiff, one was instinctively conscious of something, some thrill of apprehension, passing from the stage to the auditorium and vice versa. When the second woman dancer, rustling her lilac-coloured skirts, went over and almost brushed against the yellow stork, the whole audience held its breath, Pooh, thought Skënder, what has it got to do with me? But try as he might he couldn’t help sharing in the general feeling of dread.

The second woman dancer twirled more and more slowly near the stork. The audience was mesmerized. Suddenly, as if by mistake, a red spotlight swept briefly over the boxes, so that their velvet walls seemed to be streaming with blood. Skënder thought he saw a pair of eyes rolling in ecstasy. What face was this that he thought he recognized? He’d seen it somewhere before, in a book or perhaps in a newspaper article about Cambodia, Again- he told himself all this was nothing to do with him, but the more he said it the more involved he became, as the music went on throbbing through the theatre. He thought he was going to faint. Once or twice he almost stood up and shouted: “Stop these celebrations! I’ve got a novel that’s dying!”

He glanced at C–V—, whose profile showed he was watching the show with a mixture of interest and exasperation, Skënder leaned closer and whispered in his ear, so quietly he couldn’t hear himself: “My novel’s giving up the ghost”

The other didn’t react, but Skënder thought he saw a brief grin show briefly on C— v—’s lips. “I certainly chose the right person to confide in!” thought Skënder angrily. But was his colleague’s smug smile caused by what he himself had just whispered, or by something that was happening on the stage?

A gong sounded, the audience started, a light suddenly illuminated the second woman dancer’s face. At the sight of that livid mask, Skënder was filled with horror: it expressed at once distress, accusation and an icy, unearthly anger. If only this nightmare would end, he thought. God, let it end soon!

A few minutes before the show finished, a vague stir in the auditorium — perhaps a member — of the public had happened to turn his head — made Skënder look up at the boxes. What he saw took him aback. Some of the boxes were already emptying. Not until a few moments later did the whole audience seem to register the no doubt unprecedented fact that part of the political leadership, the most important figures in the government, were leaving before the curtain had come down.

“What does it mean? What does it mean?” everyone seemed to be shouting as if through the most powerful loudspeakers, though no one actually uttered the words. Had they disliked the show? Had the symbols they’d seen triggered off anticipation of some disaster? For a moment Skënder imagined carnage must already be raging outside…

At last the curtain fell and the lights revived as if after a long swoon. As the spectators stood up to leave, they now looked openly at the empty boxes. Jiang Qing, Wang Hongwen and Zhou Enlai had vanished. And though most of the leaders had chosen to stay, they seemed colourless and uninteresting compared to those baleful absences.

“What does it mean? What’s going on?” Skënder asked the Albanian ambassador when he finally found him on the way out

The diplomat’s expression was surprisingly enigmatic. If Skënder thought he caught a gleam of some kind, it came from the ambassador’s spectacles rather than from his eyes.

“I don’t know what to tell you,’ he said. “Perhaps Mao …As you know, he took to his bed a long time ago …”

“Yes, But! got the impression it was something else.”

“Your theory could be right,”

“How do you know what it is?”

“Oh, it’s easy enough to guess,’ said the ambassador, smiling.

They said goodnight and went in search of their cars. Only then did Skënder remember C–V—, who was some way off, trying to attract his attention.

They drove back to their hotel without exchanging a single word. Their guides sat scowling too.

As he got out of the car, Skënder could feel almost physically the pain in his side, in the place from which he imagined his novel had been removed. He was afraid he mightn’t be able to walk. The guides said goodnight to them in the hall

Back in his room, he knew he wouldn’t be able. to sleep. After walking up and down for some time, he went and stood by the window. Through the cold panes he could see a part of the street, with some neon ideograms that looked as though they were suspended in the darkness. “Just look what the Chinese language has come to,” he thought “In the past people wrote magnificent works of literature and science in it, but now those characters are used only for insults, incitement to hatred, empty phrases, all the things that C–V— delights in.” He glanced at the wall that separated their rooms. That was how C–V— regarded language …as a vehicle for poison! Such people were plague-carrying microbes. It was they who had killed his novel! Skënder seethed with rage. He must have a talk with his travelling companion — tell him exactly what he thought of him!

“A talk!” he said to himself, grimacing. “I’ll show you what I'm made of! How would you like to have a little discussion?” He still wasn’t sure how he was going to handle it, but thoughts of something rather more violent than mere debate were flashing through his mind.

He was still grinning when he went out into the corridor After glancing to left and right he went and knocked on C— v—’s door. “Who is it?” asked the other, after a pause.

“It’s me!” Skënder imagined himself saying softly. “Let me in!” But he didn’t really say anything. He was imagining, as he stood there, the scene that might follow…

In his mind’s eye he saw himself pushing the door open, However much he tried he couldn’t restrain himself. C–V—, in pyjamas and bedroom slippers, seemed to recoil. Perhaps because of Skënder’s sudden irruption, perhaps because of his increasingly menacing smile, C–V— took a step or two back. His expression seemed to say, “What is all this? Have you gone mad?”

He had come to a standstill in the middle of the room, waiting to hear what the intruder had to say, when Skënder, instead of saying anything, clenched his fist and punched him on the nose, like a character in a silent film.

C–V— staggered and caught hold of the bed-post to stop himself from falling.

“What’s got into you? You must be out of your mind!” he cried incredulously. Skënder himself was even more amazed at what he’d done, but that didn’t stop him raising his fist again.

C–V— managed to dodge the second blow. He even attempted to feed Skënder off, but seeing that his visitor was too furious to desist, he launched a few blows of his own. But either because he’d been taken by surprise, or for want of experience, his arms only flailed about in an ineffective and effeminate manner.

“Rat! Vermin! Not C–V—… W.C!” roared Skënder.

He hit him again, but the blow glanced off the other man’s jaw. This, together with the allusion to water closets — it wasn’t the first time he’d heard this pleasantry — finally got to C–V—.

“Swine!” he bawled, “Savage!” And kicked Skënder right in the groin.

Bermema let out a howl of pain. The pain was atrocious — if C–V— had been wearing shoes instead of slippers, he would probably have been writhing on the floor, He turned pale, his mind went blank for a second, then started to race again. He vaguely associated the attack on his genitals with C–V—’s jealousy about his love-life, with reviews by C–V— criticizing the plots of his novels, with the women he, Skënder, had known, and even with the memory of Ana Krasniqi and her marble belly, now consigned to the shades…

“So that’s how it is, is it?” Skënder growled through clenched teeth, hurling himself on his adversary once more. “Is it?” he repeated, trying to drive the other into a corner.

Blind with rage, he rained blows on his opponent, who was caught between the window and the radiator.

“Take this for the two truths…and this for the four errors…and this for the three demons of the city…”

Then he heard himself mocking: “Here we are in the midst of a battle of ideograms — when are they going to come to your aid?”

Bet the other man didn’t answer. Their hoarse breathing was all there was to be heard. Outside, because of their own exertions, the ideograms were jigging about as if they had St Vitus' dance.

“It’s just what you deserve — to be beaten up in the middle of China, with your billion Chinese comrades unable to come to the rescue!”

…But Skënder Bermema was really still out in the corridor, leaning his head against C–V—’s door. He’d imagined the previous scene so vividly that his fists hurt from being clenched so tightly. But no, he mustn’t act so disgracefully here in China. He mustn’t sink so low.

“Who is it?” said the voice from inside the room again.

Skënder felt like answering, “It’s shame!”

How shameful it would have been. Everyone would have known they’d gone for one another like two fighting cocks while on an official visit to China. A visit that coincided with the Day of the Birds!

Skënder turned away from the door and began to wander up and down the still-empty corridor. He glanced both ways: not a soul. He concluded that no one could have heard them: the scene he’d imagined was still so clear in his mind that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see someone rush up to see what the noise was all about. He hesitated for a moment at his own door, uncertain whether to go in or not. At the end of the corridor, sitting in a little glass box, there ought to be an attendant, a combination of guard and floor-waiter, who saw everything. He’d certainly have noticed Skënder’s comings and goings, Skënder tiptoed towards the glass cage. Yes, the man was there. Skënder thought he should make sure he was wearing the necessary smile, but when he caught sight of his reflection in the glass of the cage he saw that his expression, such as it was, would do: after all the man was a Chinese, and Skënder didn’t know him from Adam, The man looked back at him vacantly: he obviously hadn’t noticed anything,

Skënder nodded affably. Unusually, the man didn’t return his smile.

“Ho,” said Skënder, using the only word of Chinese he knew, “Everything all right?”

“Ho,” replied the other, still not smiling.

Hell! thought Skënder. He must have noticed something.

“Quiet, isn’t it?” he said.

The Chinese leaned nearer to the glass, and spoke. He was probably saying, “What?”

Skënder tried scraps of all the languages he knew in order to try to communicate, bot it was no good. Then he remembered that these attendants had to pretend they didn’t know any foreign languages, even if it wasn’t true. He waved to the man by way of goodnight, thee turned and began to walk away. He was amazed to hear a voice behind him call out in English:

“Comrade!”

The Chinese had stepped out of his cage and was obviously trying to tell him something. He’s seen my comings and goings in the corridor, thought Bermema, and the scoundrel means to concoct some slanderous report about me. He started to go towards him: after all, if the man was prepared to talk to him, perhaps he wasn’t going to write a report, merely give him a friendly warning.

“Eh?” said Skënder. Then, in English: “Do you speak English?”

The Chinese nodded, rather guiltily. Skënder smiled, and told himself to keep cool.

“Can’t you sleep?” said the Chinese. “I can’t, either.”

Skënder’s jaw dropped. A Chinaman talking about sleep like an ordinary human being? Their usual way of referring to the subject of repose was: “Imperialists and revisionists sleep with one eye open,” or “Revolutionaries mustn’t rest on their laurels.”

“Why not?” asked Skënder, though it was rather a ridiculous question: the man was on duty — he was supposed to stay awake.

“The Chairman in dying,” said the Chinaman.

Skënder leaned nearer. His breath misted the glass of the cage and made a sort of screen between him and the other.

“Mao dying?” he repeated. It was hard to believe a Chinese could bring himself to say such a thing.

The man nodded. His eyes were red and mournful.

“I’m sorry,” said Skënder, nonplussed.

Through the mist on the glass the man looked grief-stricken.

Skënder muttered some words of sympathy, and found he couldn’t just walk away. As the Chinaman’s almond eyes looked blankly back at him, it struck Skënder that these people’s slanting orbs were made to express suffering. Why hadn’t he noticed it before?

He’d have liked to offer the man some consolation, to show sincere fellow-feeling. It seemed barbaric just to leave him alone in his cage with his sorrow.

What’s happening to me? Skënder wondered. Why was he feeling so overcome with pity when he least expected it? Was it just a passing reaction, due to the fact that the word “dying” evoked for him the phrase “giving up the ghost”, and thence an image of the soul? Or was it some other association, deriving from the thought of that placid round face, which seemed a million miles away from hatred; of his words, now those of a rather senile old man — “I am only a wandering monk with holes in my umbrella;” of the children he had lost, the wife who had died too, and the poem he’d written for her — “Perhaps we’ll meet again amongst the stars;” and of how he now lived in a cave like a kind of deranged hermit. But the important thing was that whether you liked it or not, he was the creator of the new China…

But think of all his misdeeds too! Skënder reminded himself. It’s true that he made modern China, but then, after that, his disturbed mind led him to create a frightful chaos, unprecedented in the annals of mankind. He mowed down the intelligentsia ruthlessly; he had the fate of Cambodia on his conscience …No, how could one feel any sorrow for him? It was other people who ought to be pitied!

Still, when a billion human beings grieved, you couldn’t help being affected, just as on a damp autumn evening you feel something of the chill of the sea.

Yet what was strange about it was not so much the thing itself as the process by which it came about — the mysterious paths along which the contagion of pity moved. Pity, and repentance, and remorse.

But all this was unimportant compared with what he was about to witness: probably the greatest grief there had ever been.

The man in the cage was sobbing now. Apparently the consternation he’d seen on the foreigner’s face had unleashed his tears. Skënder tapped on the glass to wish him goodnight. But the man stood up and came out into the corridor.

"My sincere condolences,” said Skënder, holding out his hand.

The other stretched out both of his, bending forward stiffly like someone unused to demonstrations of feeling.

Skëeder, embracing him, felt his tears on his owe cheek.

“May he rest in peace!” he murmured. It seemed to him this venerable expression was the phrase best suited to the occasion, existing as it did on a plane above truth and untruth, above all human passions.

He walked slowly back to his room. Before going to bed he went over to the window again and looked out at the ideograms shining here and there in the darkness. “The Chairman is dying,” he repeated. There were no doubt plenty of signs out there that meant “chairman”, but probably none that meant “death”. Bet tomorrow, he thought, or the next day, or in a week at the latest, it will be there.

He put his hand to his face, where there must still have been traces of the Chinaman’s tears. How strange: he hadn’t embraced any Chinese when it would have been natural to do so; but he had embraced one now, unexpectedly and at the moment of parting. Was it an omen? If so, of what?

He paced up and down for a while as if to clear his head of his swirling thoughts before trying to sleep. It was the moment of parting from evil, certainly. The omens foretold a farewell to suffering. The pain which history had inflicted on Albania at the end of the present millennium was about to end.

He felt like shouting for joy.

“Let the bells ring out!” he cried aloud. “There has been a sign from heaven, and we have come to the parting of the ways!”

He looked in the mirror at his cheek, at the place where Asia had bestowed a final kiss.

Outside, the unintelligible ideograms hung in the sky like words in a dream. He turned away from them and went to bed, bet before he fell asleep they crept back into his mind, a vast galaxy in which, somewhere, an invisible hand prepared to switch on another, paler light: the ideogram of death.