The Concert

15

EVERY EVENING SINCE Gjergj had gone away, Silva waited impatiently for the television news to see what was happening in China. But it was all very confused. They usually began with various speculations about what was going to be done with Mao’s remains. Some people said the body was going to be embalmed, others disagreed, and the commentators tried to link what was going to happen to the corpse with whether or not the Maoist line was still going to be followed in China. But it was obvious that all these generalities represented merely a transition to less important items of news, so when Silva heard the presenter talk of a “confused situation” and a “state of uncertainty”, she stopped listening for a while and used the interval to ask Brikena:

“Did anyone call from the foreign ministry?”

“No,” said her daughter.

Never had any of Gjergj’s absences seemed so long. Reason told Silva not to worry. As a foreigner he wouldn’t be involved, whatever might be happening in China. But Silva couldn’t help remembering his description of the charred walls of the British embassy in Peking, just opposite the Albanian embassy.

After they’d discussed every possible theory about developments in China, the television pundits would come back to the less ephemeral subject of the embalming.

In everyday life, conversation tended to concentrate on much the same topics. People started referring to ancient Egyptian mummies, even citing names like Ramses II and Tutankhamen, though in the past the dates of the Pharaohs had made them fail their history tests. The talk would then move on to schoolboy japes and anecdotes about examinations, and this would lead them back to Mao’s corpse again. There was always some worshipper of the past to maintain that the skills of our distant ancestors had never been surpassed in certain fields, and that there certainly wasn’t anyone today to rival them in the art of embalming.

“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 words 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.

He absolutely must find something to say. It wasn’t enough just to explain what he’d done as due to lack of political foresight on the part of a technocrat who hadn’t gone into Marxism-Leninism properly. If he wanted to be credible he would have to make a greater sacrifice than that. Perhaps the best thing would be to admit a bit, just a tiny little bit, of the truth? People always said the most plausible lies were those that contained something of the truth. For example, he could say that the idea of encircling a Party committee had probably been suggested by the events of the Cultural Revolution in China — an incorrect interpretation of the struggle against Party bureaucracy or the anarchist slogans of Mao. Also, admittedly, by his own imperfect acquaintance with the classics of Marxism-Leninism. All this would hp exposing himself to criticism, but he had to take some risks to avoid complete disaster. Let them think what they liked of him. Let them call him a Sinophile, a half-wit. Let the Party mete out some punishment or other. He was prepared to put up with anything so long as the real truth never came out.

At least he didn’t have to worry about Zhou Enlai. He was as dead as a doornail — and he didn’t even have a grave! Sometimes the minister felt a surge of resentment: if all Zhou wanted to do was end up as a handful of ashes scattered into the sky, why had he bothered to get him, the minister, into such a scrape? But on the whole Zhou’s death could be regarded as a blessing.

Perhaps after all the situation wasn’t as bad as he’d thought. He’d certainly have to go before the plenum of the Central Commit-tee, but the meeting was supposed to be chiefly concerned with the economic situation. And everyone knew the economy was in a bad way. Moreover, he wasn’t the only person who was in trouble, and when old colleagues found themselves all in the same boat they could always be counted on to help one another. They did it instinctively, without being asked, like a pack of wolves-each looking chiefly to his own interests.

Yes, the economic situation would probably distract attention from his case. When the economy goes wrong people forget everything else. Material concerns soon bring everyone to their senses. They take everyone by the sleeve and say, Just look at these statistics — never mind about the encircling of Party committees, and all that other symbolic carry-on…

And after all, leaving aside the evidence of the man he’d just interviewed, the fact that the tank officers had explained their disobedience couldn’t be laid directly at his door. The signals people had come into it long before he did, and they could be held responsible. And then there were his owe “aides, and the bad weather, the wind, the thunder and lightning! Oh, they weren’t going to get him as easily as that!

He turned his head. Something had banged against a window-pane. Probably a dead leaf. The wind was howling outside. The minister returned to his meditations, still concentrating on those that were most reassuring…

Mao’s death and the troubles that had broken out in Peking would come in useful…He looked at his watch. Time for the television news. There was alarming news from China every day,and that could only help to distract attention from him.

He stood up, stuffed his autocritique into his pocket, and went out of the office. Outside, the wind had almost emptied the streets. His car seemed to waft him home more swiftly than usual As he alighted, a column of black dust appeared before him, and he let out a shriek of terror.

Arian Krasniqi wrapped his scarf round the lower part of his face to keep out the dust. He regretted having stopped off at a bar for a cup of coffee after coming out of the ministry, instead of going straight back to Suva’s place. He hadn’t expected such a nasty wind to spring up. It made him feel depressed and light-headed.

But, going into the building where his sister lived, he breathed more easily and felt better.

“Well?” said Silva, opening the door. “How did it go?”

He smiled noncommittally.

“Is Sonia still here?”

“Of course — we’ve been waiting for you. What happened?”

“Nothing,” he said, taking his coat off.

The voice of the television newscaster could be heard in the living room,

“Don’t worry about me,” said Arian, smiling again.

Silva felt as if a load had been lifted off her shoulders: he looked quite serene.

“Have you heard what’s happened?” she said. “Great upheavals in Peking!”

“Really?”

“Yes — Mao’s wife and some of her cronies have been arrested. They’ve jest announced it on the news.”

“How strange,” he murmured, looking at the TV screen, though the images no longer had anything to do with China.

Like Silva a few minutes ago, Sonia now looked at Arian’s placid face and heaved a sigh of relief.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” said Silva.

“What? Jiang Qing’s arrest?”

“Of course. I can hardly believe it,”

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said Arian,

“Why not?”

But Silva couldn’t catch his eye.

She’d have liked to ask him why nothing surprised him any more. She was more worried by his present indifference than she had been by his previous agitation.

“I'm worried about Gjergj,” she said. “What bad leek to be over there just now!”

“Father ought to have been back the day before yesterday,” said Brikena, who had slipped into the room unnoticed.

“Yes — all the plane timetables have been upset because of what’s going on.”

Silva went over to the television and changed the channel The Italian TV was showing the same thing: the arrest of Mao’s widow. Then came shots of the Cultural Evolution — meetings, chanting crowds, people running in all directions, Commentators put forward various theories about what was going to happen next. Silva was getting nervous.

“Don’t go,” she ‘said when her brother and his wife got up to leave. “Stay a bit longer — please!”

They exchanged glances, Silva made no attempt to conceal her anxiety.

“You’ve no need to worry,” Arian told her, still looking at archive “shots of the British embassy burning.

“Father says our embassy is only a few yards away,” said Brikena.

Arian tried to say something to distract them from what was going on on the screen, but they were mesmerized.

“Hell!” he murmured.

“What?” said Silva.

“Nothing…What a business!” he improvised, pointing at the screen.

He’s all right for the moment, thought Silva, but he nearly got it in the neck before because of China. Hadn’t his reference to Shanghai made things worse for him? She couldn’t help feeling that her nearest and dearest were still in danger.

The longer she thought about it the more impossible it seemed that her brother’s fate could have anything to do with what was happening now. But she couldn’t make out whether this was a good thing or not.

“Do stay,” she pleaded. She didn’t want herself and Brikena to have to spend the evening alone.

So the visitors took their coats off and sat down again. They tried to talk about other things, but kept coming back to the events they’d just seen depicted on the screen, and the interpretations put on them by the various commentators.

The phone rang. It was Skënder Bermema, “Is Gjergj back?” he asked, “No,” said Silva. “When’s he arriving?” “I don’t know — why do you ask?” “Eh?” “I meant, what made you suddenly think of him?” “Oh, I see.” “I suppose you watched the news?” “Of course.” “So you didn’t just phone by chance…”

They could all hear him laughing at the other end.

“Why don’t you come round for a coffee?”

“What, now?”

“Yes!”

A moment’s silence.

“All right, I’m on my way.”

Silva came back into the room, delighted. She obviously wanted to be surrounded by as many people as possible.

“It was Skënder Bermema …I think! introduced you to one another, Arian…”

“Yes. But he probably doesn’t remember me.”

There was an unmistakeable note of reluctance in his joke.

When Skënder came in about twenty minutes later Silva noticed that her brother still looked rather put out. He wouldn’t scowl like that, she thought, if he knew the trouble Skënder went to on his behalf when he was in jail. But she soon forgave him: what brother would be at ease in the presence of a man whose alleged affair with his sister had been the talk of the town?

“Were you worried because I asked if Gjergj was back?” the newcomer asked Silva, laughing. “I soon guessed why! But though it was the latest news that made me think of him, it wasn’t for any sinister reason.! just wanted to see him. Do you know the first thing that came into my head when I heard that Jiang Qing had been arrested? I thought, well, as in the case of Lin Biao’s death, Gjergj will bring us back at least a dozen different versions of what happened!”

They all laughed, including Arian.

“Are his versions useful, then?” asked Silva.

“I should think so! And I can prove it!”

He reached for his briefcase and got out a large envelope.

“Here’s something based on what he told me. I’ll leave it for you to give to him when he gets back. You can read it yourself if you like, and if you have time.”

“I certainly shall!” she said.

“Twelve Versions of the Arrest of Jiang Qing!” someone quipped.

But Skënder Bermema wasn’t so cheerful now. A hidden preoccupation of his had risen to the surface again. He’d do better to concentrate on the different versions of his own death, he told himself. Three days before he’d received an anonymous letter full of threats. The second in a month.

“What would you like to drink?” Silva asked him,

“Anything!”

They talked for a while about the mysteries of China in general, then discussed what was going to happen to Jiang Qing and the likely repercussions of current events on relations between China and Albania. Silva said she couldn’t believe Mao’s widow was in prison; Skënder said he couldn’t believe she was still alive.

“You always go to extremes!” Silva told him,

“Gjergj will satisfy our curiosity when he gets back,” said Sonia.

“I don’t think anyone could satisfy my curiosity about China,” said Skëeder, looking at his watch. “Don’t let’s miss the late-night news, There’s bound to be something new.”

But though Silva tried all the channels, none of them was showing any news.

Arian Krasniqi woke with a start, as if someone had shaken him. For a moment or so he didn’t know where he was. Then he heard his wife breathing ie and out beside him. It must have struck midnight long ago. He had the feeling that something he couldn’t identify had been weighing down on him in his sleep, something he’d tried to thrust away, only to find his hands pinned down by it. They were still quite stiff and cramped. He even had difficulty separating them from one another. It was as if he’d emerged from the horrible sensation of being handcuffed.

It wasn’t the first time he’d had this sensation while he was asleep. The shrill whistle of a train was fading away in the distance, it must have been that which suggested the feeling of handcuffs: he’d heard the whistle of a train when he’d first had to wear them, the night after his arrest.

He turned over in bed, but he couldn’t get back to sleep. Fragmentary memories of the past evening kept coming back to him. Dinner at Suva’s; people talking about the arrest of Jiang Qing…Sonia had asked bluntly if these new developments could mean more trouble for her husband. If her question hadn’t been addressed to Skënder Bermema, Arian would have insisted on changing the subject, He didn’t want to hear any more about China. If my life is going to depend on what happens there, he thought, then God help me!

As a matter of fact it did sometimes seem to him, especially at night, that his fate depended on the vagaries of a political mechanism that now affected more than a single country — a terrifying international juggernaut! Chained to those chariot wheels, how could you tell which direction misfortune would strike from? The chains you were bound with might come from as far away as the forges of Normandy — or from even further: from those of the Golden Horde. “Will you sleep with me, floozie? — you won’t get even a walk-on part unless youdo!” These words, spoken backstage in some theatre in Shanghai, far away in time and space, might one day influence his own destiny. For didn’t people say that it was the memory of some such ancient insult that had made Jiang Qing pursue the Cultural Revolution so ferociously, especially in Shanghai?

“Do you think we’re living in Shanghai?” The weary eyes of the examining magistrate bored into his. Why had he shouted such a thing on the telephone, during the famous manoeuvres? What had Shanghai got to do with it? Why had he been thinking about Shanghai?

Arian turned over again in bed, and again he felt the weight of handcuffs. They felt so real that once more he flung his arms about to try to throw them off.

The telegram announcing Gjergfs retern reached Silva the next day, just before people left their offices, it left her in some confusion, as it didn’t give the number of the iight or the time of arrival She phoned the foreign ministry, but the people who should have been able to give her the information she needed were not available. The airport was not much better: they weren’t expecting any direct flights from China today — so the passenger she was interested in might come either via Belgrade or on the flight from East Berlin.

Fearing Gjergj might arrive just as she was wasting time on the phone, she got her boss’s permission to leave early and rushed downstairs and out through the rain to the taxi rank in front of the State Bank. She was lucky: there was a taxi free.

“To the airport,’ she told the driver. “As fast as you can, please!”

On the way, she scanned the telegram to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. But no, Gjergj couldn’t have known himself what plane he was coming by.

The airport building was half empty. There was practically no heating in the arrivals hall The sound of the rain streaming down the windows added to the sense of desolation.

The plane from Yugoslavia had landed some time ago; no one knew when the flight from East Berlin would arrive. Why? Because of the bad weather? Silva asked. Perhaps, said a woman at the information desk.

Silva sat in a corner and ordered a coffee. The rain went on pouring down. She clasped her arms round her knees and sat there thinking, staring at the windows. She was cold. Her thoughts were growing numb, and as they did so her impatience and alarm also faded. Was this because of the monotonous patter of the rain on the windows, or because she herself was so tired? It occurred to her that, to anyone outside looking in, she must look as vague and inaccessible as the landscape looked to her, inside looking out. It was an apt image for her, sitting here alone on this dreary day in this draughty airport, scanning the sky as she waited for a plane to emerge from the clouds, bringing back her husband by an unknown route from a far-off country racked by plots and shrouded in mystery.

She didn’t know how long she sat there. At one point she came out of her reverie and saw that her coffee was cold and untouched. She hadn’t noticed the waiter bringing it.

She went home very demoralized. The plane from East Germany had been cancelled, and no one knew if it would be coming the next day or the day after.

She wandered round the kitchen for a while, but hadn’t the heart to do anything. As she was sitting down on the settee, she suddenly remembered the envelope Skënder Bermema had given her, and got up again to fetch it. She’d left it on Gjergj’s bedside table, for a surprise when he got home.

As soon as she’d read the first few lines, she realized these notes might have been written specially for such a day as this.

Peking… Winter’s day. Some international airlines have suspended their flights because of Mao’s death, I'll have to wait a week, perhaps a fortnight, for them to start up again. You can imagine how fed up I am. Shut up in my hotel. Alone. Surrounded by people in mourning.

I looked again at the notes for my novel, half hoping that it would come to life again. But no…my hope was still-born.

Notes written in a state of boredom …I don’t know where! read that. The author was probably some Japanese monk who lived in the early Middle Ages.

I spent all day, in spite of myself, thinking about the death of Lin Biao. Probably because of the new rumour going around about the circumstances of his death.

I went over and over what Gj— D— told me about it, It’s quite interesting to compare what was said thee with what is being said now. According to what we’ve heard so far, it’s generally admitted, both in China and abroad, that Lin Biao really did foment a plot aimed at assassinating Mao. So in a way Mao’s riposte was quite justified. What we don’t know is whether the marshal’s plot to kill Mao was the same as Mao’s plot to kill the marshal

If Mao knew about the existence of Lin Biao’s plot, he may also have found out how it was to operate, and being thus in possession of a ready-made scenario, he may have turned it back on its originator. But why? Did he do so to save himself trouble; for the unique delight, the excitement tinged with irony, of having his victim entirely in his power; out of sadism; or out of a superstitious sense of poetic justice? No one knows that, either.

I was dying to get back so that I could tell you all about it, Gj— D— said to me on his return from China. And now! feel the same, I’ve noticed that when one is abroad, and especially when one’s alone, one enjoys imagining that kind of conversation.

“Do you know the real truth about Lin Biao’s death? It’s finally been brought to light. In some ways it resembles and in other ways it differs from the versions you brought back to us. Today everyone knows Lin Biao wasn’t shot, or stabbed, or poisoned. He was shot down by a rocket,”

“A rocket? But that was the theory everyone agreed to exclude from the outset!”

“So it was. Nevertheless, he was eliminated by the method that seemed the most unlikely …”

That’s how I imagined the beginning of the conversation between myself and Gj— D— in the Café Riviera,

“He wasn’t killed in the sky over China, nor in the Mongolian desert, nor at home, nor in a hangar at the disused airport. He was killed at a dinner party, or rather after it.”

As soon as I started thinking of the circumstances of the murder, I found myself so fascinated by that dinner party of Mao’s that I soon forgot all about the Café Riviera. The old, already time-worn story itself, with its faded, sometimes almost illegible characters, appealed much more strongly to my imagination, perhaps because

its origins reached back so far into the past,

It was all to happen, then, at a banquet, as in a play by Shakespeare (Lin Biao and Mao Zedong had both been passionate advocates of the banning of Shakespeare’s works — was it because they were both hatching a plot based on treachery at a banquet?).

In other words, both Mao and his marshal based their plots on the plot of Macbeth. The only thing was, in this case, Macbeth wasn’t able to commit his crime because Duncan stole a march on him.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEATH OF LIN BIAO. SYNOPSIS.

A

Lin Biao was liquidated in a way that both corresponds with and differs from the theories put forward on the subject. In a nutshell, one might say he was killed by all those methods put together but by none of them in particular.

Many factors were invoked in his murder: the sky, the earth, the words “Let him go,” the launching of a rocket, the burning of the bodies, the plane, the crash in the middle of the desert, the words “Welcome to the banquet,” the words “And now I’ll wait for you at my place,” and the after-thought, “Perhaps we’ll meet again in a world where invitation cards have other things written on them …”

It was ten o’clock in the evening when Mao, his wife, and Zhou Enlai saw their guests to the door. “Goodnight, see you soon,” “We hope you’ll come and see us one evening!” “Certainly, certainly!”

The marshal’s bullet-proof car glided away along the dark street. The little group at the door stood there for a while, watching their guests disappear. No one said anything until the sound of an explosion was heard in the distance.

Mao heaved a deep sigh. He turned to his wife and Zhou Enlai, You see to the details,” he told them. Then he led the way back into the house.

He knew he would sleep deeply. Just as his brain had recently reflected the anxiety of the living Lin Biao, so now, he knew, h§ would learn something from the mortal slumbers of his dead enemy.

B

On the main road, at the bend near kilometre 19, the soldiers who had just fired the rocket came out of their look-out post.

After the blinding explosion everything seemed darker and quieter than it really was. On legs still cramped with waiting (they had been lurking there for a good two hours), they walked over to the remains of the car. They’d only seen it, or rather its headlights,for a second, as it slowed down to take the bend. It had looked large and black then. Now there was nothing in the débris to suggest any shape at all. It would be difficult, too, to identify the corpses in this mass of shattered metal

They didn’t know who they’d hit. They didn’t know what they were supposed to do now. Fire at the car and then wait, they’d been told.

After a quarter of an hour they saw another set of headlights approaching. They were astounded when the car stopped and they saw Zhou Enlai and the head of Mao’s personal bodyguard get out. The dead man must be very important for the prime minister himself to take an interest in him.

The new arrivals went over and began to inspect the débris by the light of an electric torch. No doubt they were looking for the corpses. The prime minister’s face was very pale,

The soldiers heard someone behind them calling out, “Quick! Quick!” but they were still so numbed they didn’t understand what it. meant. Anyhow, now that their work was done, haste seemed irrelevant. Unless there was some damage to the road that needed to be repaired? Or it could jest be pointless — some officers had got into the habit of shouting “Quick!” at the mere sight of a few ordinary soldiers.

C

So he was killed by a rocket. But grotesquely, in a car — not in the sky, aboard a plane, as you might expect. Those responsible did their best to suppress all knowledge of the car’s existence. After that they tried to suppress all reference to the rocket itself, bet when that proved impossible they branded the propagators of any such rumours as traitors.

And thee there was the treason perpetrated by one of the marshal’s children — by his daughter and future son-in-law, to be precise. Though they were unaware of what they were doing.

The bugging devices apparently proved their worth. On the strength of a recorded conversation between the girl and her fiancé, Zhou had them detained separately and thee questioned them himself.

It had been a long day. The marshal didn’t know what was going on. He was just due back after a vacation.

Zhou Enlai had no difficulty in getting at the truth. The girl and her fiancé had been summoned urgently that morning. A black official car was waiting outside: “Comrade Zhoe Eelai would be glad…” The two young people complied apprehensively. As they were driven along they probably wondered why they’d been sent for. Perhaps they whispered, “Could it be for that?” lven if they dide’t, even if they only exchanged glances and gestures, everything was recorded by a microphone installed inside the black limousine.

When they reached the Forbidden City they” were left to cool their heels for an hour or two, then separated and sent to different rooms. The reason was obvious: when Zhou Enlai interrogated them one at a time, he could tell each that the other had confessed, so what was the point of denials?

Mao had had his suspicions for some time. All he needed was final confirmation before giving orders for the axe to fall.

Meanwhile Lin liao himself was on his way back to Peking, The closer the train got to the capital the more his apprehension increased. What had happened while he was away? His wife couldn’t hide the fact that she was worried too. She and their son were the only members of Lin’s family who knew about his plot, but he suspected that his son had told his daughter. Lie Biao had always been very touched by the closeness between the two, but now it had its drawbacks. He consoled himself with the thought that daughters are usually more attached to their parents than sons are, and he could be sere she wouldn’t do anything to harm him.

When he got home he found Mao’s invitation to dinner awaiting him. They usually did meet like that after either of them had been away on holiday. The marshal heaved a sigh of relief. Everything was the same as before. In his euphoria he forgot to ask where his daughter was. Someone had said something about her — she would be late home, she was out somewhere with her fiancé…But he’d been too preoccupied with the invitation to take much notice…

D

So there was an invitation. But not to Peking. Merely to dinner.

And the words “Where are we going?” were uttered, bet not by the marshal, and not in his car. They were spoken first in a small van, then on a plane, by someone whose name remained unknown. But that was later.

Meanwhile the bullet-proof car drove on in silence towards Mao’s house. Night was falling, It was still only early autumn, but the turning leaves had already lost some of their brightness. In a way that made the landscape more beautiful.

The marshal looked out at it as they went along. This part of the outskirts of the capital was particularly appealing at this time of year. Probably that was why Mao had invited him out here, rather than, as he usually did, to his house in Peking.

The lamps by the entrance to the villa came into view, it wasn’t quite dark yet, and the light they shed looked chilly.

E

Ten hours later, at dawn, the plane comes into the story.

Where from? Was it a hoax, a figment of the imagination?

That was what people thought at first when they heard the truth, i.e. the current version of the marshal’s death. When it was given out that he had been struck down on the ground, in his car, at kilometre 19 on the road to Mao’s house, it followed automatically that the story about his — or his corpse’s — attempted escape by air, together with the details about his being in a hurry, the shots, the suggestion that the plane be brought down by means of a rocket, the words “Let him go,” the charred corpses in Mongolia, and so on, were only inventions designed to camouflage the truth.

But if that was the first reaction, the voice of reason whispered, “But a plane really did crash in Mongolia! Here, inside China, we can dress things up in any way we like, but when they happen on the other side of the frontier they’re beyond our control.”

So a plane really did go up in flames. Shot down on Mongolian territory. With Chinese corpses on board. Was it a mere coincidence, exploited to make people think this was the plane on which Lin Biao had tried to flee? This didn’t seem very likely, as even the most inexperienced investigator would have had no difficulty in seeing that the charred bodies weren’t those of the marshal and his wife.

So the business of the plane couldn’t have been accidental It really did have something to do with Lin Biao, whether in reality or in some fictional account of it. Was the plane necessary as the only way of proving that Lin Biao had tried to escape to the Soviet Union? That would have been rather expensive. A more plausible explanation was that the plane journey was part of some previous plot that for some reason was abandoned. But rather than waste it — after all, this was in the middle of an economy drive, when every-thing possible was being recycled — the people concerned pressed it into service as a smokescreen.

The discarded scenario was probably also the source of the rocket, the invitation, and Mao’s “Let him go.” But such details were modified to fit into the new plan: the urgent invitation to Peking became an invitation to dinner, and the rocket was fired at a car instead of a plane. As for the words, “Let him go,” they seem really to have been spoken, bet in different circumstances. Something like this? One of Mao’s personal bodyguards suggested, “Let me kill him after dinner, in the hall,” but Mao said, “Let him go, knowing there was a nice big rocket waiting for him at kilometre 19."

Thus the rocket and the words “Let him go” figured together both in the reality and in the rumour, though in a different order.

And the plane still had its place in the story. Whether as an empty shell or a delusion, it was still too early to say. For a good billion Chinese it carried Lin Biao, still alive bet pale with terror, on his attempted escape. For the inner circle around Mao, it carried only his corpse,

“It was Zhou who saw to the details of this business,” Mao had said the following morning, drinking tea while the plane was still m Chinese airspace. “We shall all be called on some time to say what happened, but I don’t think there’s any cause for alarm., I have good reason to believe he is dead by now.”

The others didn’t dare ask questions, especially as Mao told them bluntly he himself didn’t know the ins and outs. They just sipped their tea, imagining what had happened. They all saw it differently except for one thing: a bloody corpse in a seat on a plane, with someone trying to fasten the seat-belt to keep it from slipping about.

But was that what really happened?

Silence. As they went on drinking tea, each one in his mind’s eye went up the aluminium steps to the plane, stepped inside, and then drew back…

F

In the First Rumour about the death of Lin Biao there was always a reference to a drawing back. The marshal felt a sudden chill run down his spine before he stepped into the plane, and then drew back.

It was never explained. Some said Lin Biao was so frightened he scarcely had the strength to climb up to the door of the plane and had to be practically dragged inside. Later, when it was suggested that the murderers might already have been on board, Lin Biao’s drawing back was explained as a recoil from the sight of those unknown faces. In any case, it was too late. The plane door closed upon him.

When, in due course, the theory that the killers were already on board the plane collapsed, like so many others, the idea that Lin Biao drew back became absurd. Even so, people still referred to it, whether as some kind of clue or as a sign that the marshal had a mysterious presentiment.

But the whole thing was incongruous, and those who studied the question could easily guess that it wasn’t the victim who had shrunk back, but the people concerned with his fate, who projected their own reaction on to him. First, thinking he had been alive when on the plane, they’d been shocked at the image of his corpse. Then they’d received a second shock on contemplating the body itself. And then they attributed their recoil to Lin Biao himself, lending him their eyes and making him look at his own image and draw back from that.

As in all eightmares, these imaginings involved inversions in time and space, and other unnatural concatenations.

So Lin Biao hurries over to the plane on which he is to escape (in accordance with his own plans, or someone else’s, or merely in somebody’s dream?). Once on board he finds his own bloody corpse sitting there. He recoils in terror; turns away in the hope that it’s only a hallucination; and thee sees his own corpse again, in a different form…

G

To understand what really happened you have to go back to kilometre 19 on the main road, jest after the car was hit by the rocket.

A voice went on calling “Quick! Quick!” and it didn’t take the soldiers long to realize that these were no empty words. But they weren’t being asked to mend the road. Nor to repair the kilometre-marker, which had been so battered and singed that the “I9” was hardly legible any more. The soldiers weren’t being exhorted to clear away the débris, either, No, it was the charred bodies they were to do something about. Someone pointed first at the corpses,then at a small van that had driven up unobserved.

“Quick, quick — remove the bodies!”

Zhou Enlai and the chief bodyguard stood at a distance, watching what was going on.

The soldiers approached the blackened heap, which was still giving off a smell of ashes and burning rubber. A couple of headlights lit up the scene. The remains of the car were all tangled up with bits of the missile and with the arms and legs of the dead. Some of the metal was charred, some — perhaps parts of the rocket — was still shiny. At first sight the heap of débris could have been the remains of a traffic accident or of a plane crash.

The soldiers extricated the corpses and carried them over to the van. The smell, combined with that of the burnt tyres, was revolting.

“And now get in the van yourselves!”

Inside the van the smell was even worse.

“Where are we going?” asked one of the soldiers.

No one answered. At their feet lay two formless black masses. Who were these unfortunate wretches?

The van drove on and on until it came to a lonely landing strip. Dawn was jest breaking. In the distance you could just make out the shape of an aircraft.

“Quick! Quick!” said a voice again.

The soldiers dragged the bodies — they left black trails behind them — on to the landing strip. Then on to the plane. Not into the hold. Into the cabin, where they were placed on a couple of seats.

“Now get on yourselves.”

The two soldiers climbed on board. The door closed.

“Where are we going?” one of them asked as the plane rose above the clouds.

As before, there was no answer.

The soldiers, who had been up all night, occasionally drowsed off. Their hands and faces bore black traces from where they had handled the corpses^ but they were so worried they didn’t notice.

“Where are we?”

Down below there was a flat expanse that looked like the Mongolian desert.

… The plane was found soon after it crashed^ about midday. The Soviet frontier guards examined the débris and the charred bodies with interest. No one, however expert, could have told the difference between one and another. Except for two of them. They had been burned to a cinder twice.

H

The likeness between the remains of the car destroyed the previous day and those of the crashed plane was probably the source of the subsequent duplication.

The plane appeared to have come into being during the night, after everyone had gone to bed. One might say that Mao, Zhou and the burned-out car all created it in their sleep.

It was as if, after the group of watchers had melted away in the silence of the night near kilometre 19, the blackened mass of metal, rising ep like a Balkan ghost from the grave, re-assembled itself in a shape that suggested an aircraft.

Perhaps that is how the story will be told two hundred years from now, three hundred, a thousand. If it’s remembered at all.

After the nightmare, then, the débris awakened. Silent and black as ever, but now thousands of kilometres away.

That was how the dream mechanism worked, with all its discontinuities, illogicalities and inversions of time and space.

Much later on, simplified by time, the sad story of the marshal will probably be told as follows: Lin Biao was invited by the Chairman to a dinner at which he was murdered. That night his corpse rose up and went away, far away to the Mongolian desert.

I

But what about the bullets in the charred body? And the firing of shots in the plane?

Oh well, it’s impossible to get to the whole truth in this business.

You’d have to be inside the heads of each of the two protagonists, Mao and the marshal — preferably both at once — to find out what really happened. And even then…

MACBETH’S LAST WINTER. SYNOPSIS FOR ANOTHER VERSION OF THE TRAGEDY

It’s not true that I killed Duncan for his throne. The murder I'm accused of is a typical case of an act the law condones as being committed in self-defence.

Unfortunately people have got the story all wrong. I don’t deny that those (if there still are any) who think Duncan was killed by his own guards are completely mistaken. Bet anyone who thinks I myself killed the king because I was greedy for power are even farther from the mark.

Fifteen years have gone by since it happened. And rumour about Duncan’s death has grown more and more rife all the time, until this winter it has reached epidemic proportions.

I myself am responsible for the confusion. It would probably have been better if I'd explained at the outset exactly how it happened, instead of kidding myself I could conceal at least half of the truth. No doubt I should have said from the very beginning that Duncan dug his own grave (tyrants often do), and I merely toppled him in.

As a matter of fact, having known the ins and outs of the horrible business all along, I was sure I was telling the truth when I said Duncan had been killed by himself — in other words, by his own servants.

But my own certainty wasn’t enough to exonerate me. Not that common talk and gossip in streets and taverns were to blame for that, still less the ham actor, Billy Hampston, who wrote a play based on such rumours (and had his manuscript confiscated by my secret police for his pains).

No, it was someone else’s fault, and that someone was, surprising as it may seem, none other than Duncan himself.

This is how it happened.

For a long time he had looked on me with suspicion. This was the result of the mania which most rulers suffer from, and which makes them doubt anyone on the basis of mere slander or calumny. Or perhaps he cultivated the suspicion himself, in order to justify his hatred of me and the hostile schemes that followed from it. It’s not unusual for people to hide from themselves, as too shameful, their real reason for disliking-someone, and to try to justify their aversion by explanations even they themselves don’t really believe in.

I had observed some time before how jealous Duncan was of me, though in fact it was my wife who had noticed it first. To begin with she’d detected it not in him but in his wife. “I can see something malevolent in her eye,” she would say, as we were coming home from some court reception. I used to contradict her: “I don’t get that impression at all! The queen seems very friendly to both of us…” But she persisted, and in the end she convinced me. This didn’t in the least affect my esteem for Duncan himself. Too bad if the queen’s like that, I thought. What matters is what he thinks himself.

But my wife, my beautiful and intelligent lady, would listen angrily and say, “If a wife is jealous, sooner or later the husband will be jealous too.”

And that’s what happened. Duncan’s looks grew cold, and thee grew colder. Gradually other people began to notice it. For my wife and me, this was the beginning of days of anxiety. I did all I could, regardless of expense, to win over some member of the king’s entourage, so as not to be taken unawares.

When Duncan told me he was coming to stay for three days as a guest in my castle, most of the people who had detected a coolness between us thought this visit would bring it to an end. Needless to say, my enemies were appalled and my friends were delighted.

“Why do you both look so gloomy?” the latter asked us. “Aren’t you glad that difficult situation will soon be a thing of the past?”

We pretended to cheer up at this, but our hearts were still heavy. For we knew what all the rest did not: namely, that Duncan was coming not to end our falling-out but to bring about my destruction.

His plan (which I learned of through my spy) was both diabolical and extremely simple: during the third night of his visit there was to be a noisy incident outside his bedroom door which would wake him up. Then he and his suite would rush from the castle, and before the sun had risen the rumour would have spread everywhere that Macbeth had tried to murder his guest, the king, in his sleep.

For my wife and me the days and nights leading up to the visit were agonizing. We kept asking ourselves what misfortune it really was that was hanging over us. And then again, if Duncan had decided to destroy me, why had he chosen this way of doing it? There were many other questions, but what they all came down to was, what were we going to do?

It wasn’t too difficult to find the reason for the king’s deviousness. His position had become somewhat uncertain lately, and I had a lot of influence over the country noblemen, especially those whose seats were on the borders, A direct and unprepared attack on me might have been very dangerous for him. So it seemed to him — rightly, alas — that it would be best to damage my reputation before attacking me. It wasn’t the first time he had used this method. He had done the same thing, details of implementation apart, to the thanes of Cawdor and Garnis.

But our main preoccupation was what to do. Every hour that went by made the question more urgent. How were we to meet the approaching calamity? Just give in and resign ourselves to our fate? Hope the tyrant might change his mind? Run away?

As time went by our mood changed from agitation to apathy, i often found my wife scanning the horizon anxiously from the part of the terrace that overlooked the road. I could tell she too was hoping to see a messenger coming to cancel the king’s visit.

That messenger never came. On the contrary, four days before the fateful date, part of the king’s bodyguard appeared, riding towards the castle. Were they the ones who were supposed to provoke the incident?

My wife was the first to see them. She called me.

“Come and look!”

We stood together on the terrace and watched them approach. It was cold. My wife’s face was white as chalk. My earlier hesitations came back to me: should we yield to fate, try to escape, or hope for clemency?

No, none of those. I was going to choose another way; I myself would adopt Duncan’s wicked scheme. He had planned to put on a charade in my castle. Then he should die there himself, also as in a play.

Even before the approaching horsemen had ridden through the first gate, i had told my wife of my decision.

She didn’t answer. Only went paler still Her shoulders started to shake convulsively. “I’m wicked,” she kept repeating. “I’m a sinner…”

“Neither of us has the soul of a murderer,” I told her. “But if that’s what’s worrying you, I thought of it first.”

“No,” she answered faintly. “I did!”

I insisted that, even if I hadn’t spoken of it straight away,! had been brooding over the idea for days. It was quite true.

But instead of consoling her, this only made her smile sadly.

“You have been thinking of it for days. I’ve been thinking of it for weeks. Ever since…”

I hastily interrupted to assure her that the thought of murdering the tyrant had occurred to me thee too, and even before that.

But it was no good, and we vied with one another in a macabre attempt to go further and further back in time to claim the honour of being the first to conceive the crime.

It was at the banquet given by Lady K…The reception held by the Scandinavian ambassadors…The day it first snowed…

We propelled ourselves blindly backward, not noticing how close we were getting to the limiting point — the day when I was told about Duncan’s plan to destroy me. If we went back any further we’d be unable to plead self-defence. On the contrary, we’d reveal ourselves as having always harboured the idea of killing him. My wife realized the danger just in time.

“Stop!” she cried. “If we go on like this we’ll go mad!”

I leaned my head on her shoulder,

“You’re right,” I said. “We’re not murderers. It’s he who started this terrible thing. This murderous fever began in his brain, and he infected us …But enough of all that. As you say, if we go on talking about it we really shall go crazy. Let’s turn our minds to something else — to preparing for the ‘incident’.”

Until the deed was done, and even afterwards, we always referred to it as the “incident”. I suppose it was a way of trying to convince our consciences that we were only carrying out something that had been initiated by someone else. We were actors in a play written by another. Only, on our stage, the bloodshed, the wounds, the groans and death itself would be real

This parallel so stuck in my mind that I actually suspected some of the king’s escort of being not guards but actors hired for the occasion. I could have sworn they had even rehearsed their scene before they came; perhaps Duncan himself had taken part in the rehearsal

1 was so taken up with preparations for the royal visit that I had no time to be nervous, and by the time Duncan arrived I was perfectly composed.

As usual he wore the humble and penitent expression that, more than his army, his prisons, his money and his secret police, had helped him confound his enemies. It was this appearance of his that always divided conspirators, or made them hesitate and weaken at the critical moment. It was the most difficult thing imaginable to attack so crafty a tyrant.

“Are there any ghosts in this castle?” he asked, laughing, as he mounted the stairs into the great hall

Fortunately, my wife was talking to the queen, and didn’t hear Duncan’s question. It raised some general hilarity, and when this died down she asked, and was told, what the king had said. But hearing It like that was less of a shock than hearing it directly. I myself was able to go on guffawing like the rest without batting an eyelid, but I did wonder what Duncan was driving at. Was his question premeditated, the sort of things rulers say in such circumstances to Impress people? Had he had a sudden premonition? Or was It an omen, one of those messages from on high which men usually fall to read correctly?

“What was all that talk about ghosts?” my wife asked late that night, when we were In bed.

“Just nonsense.”

“It made me think of…”

“Go to sleep.”

But I doubted if I myself would be able to sleep. I lay there turning the details of my plan over and over in my head. There were still a few points I hadn’t settled. The chief of these was when to act. Should I stick to Duncan’s scenario and wait till the third night? Or would it be better to take the initiative and go into action sooner, before he took it into his head to make some change in his plan that might undo my own?

Then there was the question of the guards. Did they already know of the part they were supposed to play, or would they be incited to it at the last minute by force, or guile, or wine and wassail? And, most important of all, what was to become of them afterwards? Did Duncan mean them to be slain there and then outside his door, or spared to give evidence against me?

Duncan must have pondered over their fate just as deeply as I myself was pondering now. I couldn’t make up my mind. Should I have them slain outside my guest’s door as irrefutable proof of their guilt, or let them live and get them to say what! told them to say when the matter came to trial?

What would I not have given to know what Duncan had decided to do!! was fascinated by his plan, and if I'd had it in my hand I would have followed it to the letter. The most idiotic ideas occur to you when you’re under great strain: I found myself wondering whether to get up in the middle of the night, go and knock on Duncan’s door, and say: “Your Majesty, just let me have a look at your plan and you’ll see how good I am at carrying it out… The only difference will be that you’re the victim!”

Dawn duly broke, and the second day took its course towards evening. I was still a prey to various uncertainties. Of these the chief was the one that had tormented me from the start: should I act tonight, or wait until the third night? I was ready to bet that Duncan too was tempted to change his timetable. Then there was the question of the guards, the intended provocateurs. What did thanking mean to do with them after the “incident”? What was I going to do with them? Moreover, I had to decide how to deal with my own servants, those who were going to help me do the deed. Should I reward them, as I had promised? H’mm… Keep them in reserve in case there was some sort of trial? Or just kill them outright?

Duncan had probably chosen the last option for his accomplices — murderers always talk in the end. So there was no point in my going out of my way to be original. In any case, I couldn’t have departed from his plan even if I’d wanted to. I was hypnotized by it. Sometimes I even felt his mind giving me orders, as it had done all my life.

During dinner on that second evening he invited me to visit him at his castle a couple of months later. This took me aback. Had he changed his mind, abandoned his plan, decided it would be easier to slaughter me like a lamb under his own roof? Or was his invitation just a trick designed to lull my suspicions?

My mind reeled. Try as! might, I couldn’t cope with the swirling images his suggestion had suddenly conjured up. Myself, at night, in Duncan’s castle, as his guest Duncan performing my role. What would he do with the murderers…?

“Perhaps he’s decided not to commit the crime?” my wife said that night in bed.

“Don’t you believe it!”

She sighed.

“Well…If you’re going to act, do it tonight. Something tells me tomorrow will be too late.”

And so the deed was done. On the stroke of two in the morning,in accordance with Duncan’s (and my) plan. The only difference was that at the last moment, when I saw his body covered with blood (who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?). I felt faint, and ordered one of my men to remove the corpse from the castle.

“Where to?” he asked.

I remembered a swift-flowing irrigation canal with peat-lined banks, a few miles away.

In the small hours it took some of the weight off my mind to think the body was out of the castle, with the blood being washed off it by the current.

Then something happened which gave rise to a lot of chat in the taverns, and which that fool of a Billy Hampston stuck in his play. In the morning, even though the corpse wasn’t there, the news of the murder spread like wildfire. (Strange that the lack of a body didn’t suggest to anyone that the king might still be alive, skulking in some corner.) Everyone hung round the bloodstained sheets, gaping in horror. It struck me that a missing body terrified people even more than a murdered corpse…

The finding of the body in the canal late that afternoon didn’t change anything. And there had Ï been, pinning such hopes to my disposal of the remains! Fifteen years have gone by since then, but I can still remember every hour, every minute of what happened: the arrival of the cart carrying the king’s body, dripping with water and mud; the shrieks of the guards under torture; the candies cast. ing shadows on the walls.

Î kept out of the way, gnawing my fingers with anxiety. I’d been right to send the body away, but! should have sent it further. Â hundred, a thousand, two thousand miles… But how? There wasn’t a desert in Scotland, curse it.

My lady and I still hoped the moving of the body by night would help to conceal the truth. But we didn’t breathe a word about it.

Later on, we often talked about what happened, she and I, on cold afternoons, sitting by a fire that warmed us less and less. And now she is no more I go over it all on my own, scarcely bothering whether or not the servants hear me.

Ever since my wife passed on my life has been very lonely, and this last year I have missed her worse than ever: my beautiful, intelligent lady, whom that ne’er-do-well Billy Hampston put in a play, depicting her as chief instigator of the murder. Is there no limit to the lies of these vile poetasters?

But now I wish I hadn’t, in my rage, torn the wretched play to pieces with my own hands. I’d have liked to read it again, especially for some of the strangest passages… And I oughtn’t to have had the author of it executed. If I’d been satisfied with putting him in prison I could have gone down one night to his cell and told him to re-write his horrible play.

Some parts of it really were strange, but I can’t remember them very clearly. Partly because it’s so many years since the manuscript was confiscated; partly because I read it at one go, without a pause, almost blind with fury,

I remember one scene in which the ghost of Banquo appeared to me. It’s true that at two or three official banquets I did suffer from hallucinations of that kind — but! never told anyone about them,not even my wife. How could that charlatan Billy Hampston have got to know about something which I virtually concealed from myself?

“You shouldn’t judge him so harshly,” my wife said sometimes. She was always noble and generous. She might easily have hated the man for defaming her so. “You shouldn’t speak ill of him — his play is quite sympathetic to you, throughout.”

“Do you think so?”

“I’m sure of it. That was my main reason for telling you not to tear up the manuscript much less have its author’s head cut off. But you were so furious when you’d read it you wouldn’t listen to reason,”

And so on through all those long autumn afternoons. More and more often we would find ourselves — she more than I — discussing passages from the no longer existent tragedy. One of the scenes that astonished us most was that which depicts the witches. Billy Hampston must have been out of his mind to entertain such visions. We had never seen anything so terrifying in any theatre. How could he have imagined such a nightmare, and what did it mean? I conjured them up in my memory oee by one, time after time, but could never decide whether their sinister predictions lessened the weight on my conscience or added to it.

One day we were talking about it when I suddenly struck myself on the forehead.

“Of course!” I cried. “There we were racking our brains, and all the time it’s quite plain, Those witches in rags and tatters…Didn’t John Tendier, my spy at Duncan’s court, send me a messenger disguised as a beggar woman two or three times?”

“Did he? You never told me…”

“It was of no importance…And the news he brought me was so worrying I paid no attention to anything else …”

As she listened, she looked at me with her piercing gaze as if she knew there was more to come.

“John Teedler’s messenger…” I went on. “Disguised as a beggar woman dressed in rags…I can even remember where we met…It was a deserted fields beyond the old priest’s house…That’s where I heard for the first time about the plot Duncan was hatching against me…All that’s as clear as day…What I don’t understand is how Billy Hampston got hold of it…I always kept it a secret…You can bear me out on that, can’t you?”

“Perhaps John Tendier or his agent confessed…”

“Do you think so?”

“They must have done. It can only have been one of them.”

“I suppose so. Admittedly, I didn’t follow what happened very closely after the fuss died down…But anyhow, it was Duncan who was chiefly implicated while he was still alive …Whereas now…If John Tendier were still alive today, I wouldn’t mind if

he did talk…It might even be to my advantage if he told what

he knew…But of course, he is no longer with us!”

“Perhaps his messenger is still alive?”

“The one he sent disguised as a beggar woman? Bet who can say who he was? John Tendier was the only one who knew…And that messenger was so horribly disguised I wouldn’t be able to recognize him myself…”

“I see…”

After that, I noticed that whenever the subject of the witches cropped up she looked very sad. One day she asked me gently,almost tenderly:

“Michael, are you sure the man you met on that heath really was John Tendler’s agent?”

“What do you mean?”

She stroked my hand before she went on.

“Did it really happen, or might it have been a vision?”

As she told me later, I suddenly went pale, I could hardly speak.

“It was as real as can be,” I managed to answer, through clenched teeth. “And if you don’t believe me, your Majesty, come with me and 111 show you the very field.”

“No, no — I believe you,”

“Let’s go at once!”

“Michael, please!”

“You’ve got to come, do you hear? You and ail the others who still have doubts. Let them all get ready — guards, courtiers, and priests!”

“Don’t shout so loud — the servants will hear.”

“Let them! Let everyone know Macbeth’s wife no longer trusts him!”

She began to weep silently.

Even now, after all these years, it hurts me to think of it. I don’t know why, but ever since she died, of all the things we used to talk about’ it’s the witches I think of most often.

One day (cold and gloomy, like today),1 mounted my horse and rode out in the direction of the heath. As we drew near I told my guards to come no further. The heath where I had met John Tendler’s tattered messenger looked more derelict than ever. A chilly drizzle fell on the stony scrub, I stood for a long while looking at the place where the woman in rags had appeared to me, I felt expectant, somehow. At one point i even thought! heard footsteps behind me. Î swung round. But apparently it was only the sound of a bird dropping a twig.

Standing there in the rain, I remembered my lady’s words. “Might it have been just a vision?” And for the first time î found myself wondering if! really had met John Tendler’s emissary in this fallow field, or if it had all been a figment of my imagination.

God Almighty, î cried, deliver me from these ridiculous doubts! Over there were the two bushes growing together. And there was the third, a little way off. There was the splinter of rock, sticking into the ground at a slant. And to the right of it, the dead tree-trunk. I remembered it all quite plainly,

I intended all this to reassure me, but a voice inside me said, yes,you’ve been here before, not once bet several times, but what does that prove? The question is, did John Tendler’s messenger ask you to meet him here, and if so, did he really say those things to you. Or…?

If Tendier had still been alive, I’d have gone and found him straight away, to gather from his own lips the proofs of Duncan’s perfidy. Unfortunately I was reduced to going over and over everything in my own weary mind.

Back home I tried to recall my meetings with John Tendier. Or rather my one meeting, because after that, for security reasons, Ï avoided any further direct contacts.

“Duncan obviously dislikes you.”

“Why?”

“Oh, it’s easy to understand. As with all tyrants, his ruling passion is jealousy. Suspicion only comes afterwards, to justify the crime…What should you do? Keep your eyes open, my lord. That’s the only advice I can give you now. Ill warn you if anything looks like happening. One of my men will come to see you disguised as an old beggar woman, muttering verses or some other mumbo-jumbo …”

Just before Duncan’s visit John Tendier managed to send me a message: “My lord — beware of your guest. Another warning follows,’

For days I waited anxiously for his messenger, longing to find out what Duncan intended to do while he was staying with me. I was haunted by the most terrifying possibilities. As if deliberately to reduce my nerves to shreds, the emissary still didn’t come. My wife was as anxious as I was, if not more so. I didn’t want to add to her anxiety, so Î didn’t tell her I’d decided to ride out to the old priest’s house where all the rogues and vagabonds gathered on Sundays…I certainly heard plenty of mumbo-jumbo there…I spoke to one of the beggar women, but try as I might I couldn’t make head or tail of what she said… Nor was Î very lucid myself, after so much worry and so many sleepless nights… I took the old woman aside and whispered to her, twice: “Now we’re alone, speak clearly!” But she only started raving worse than before…Apparently that was what she’d been instructed to do…She talked about a black cauldron, boiling something…It was very difficult to make her out, but she seemed to be going on about some imminent trick, some trap, someone being murdered in his sleep, an act of treachery…In the hope that she might thee speak more clearly, I arranged to meet her again two days later on a patch of waste land behind the priest’s house…And there, distraught, I waited for her for hours, on a day just like this…

“That’s enough!” i shouted at last to my astonished guards, and set my horse off at a gallop. “I don’t want to think about it any more. To hell with the shades of the past!”

Age was bringing me close to the kingdom of the shades myself, and I had no reason to fear it. Soon it would be I who frightened others, not as a king but as a ghost. Strangely enough, î found this thought soothing. There was no reason why! should cudgel my brains about something that had happened fifteen years ago. The only thing that mattered was that Duncan had plotted my death, and I had circumvented him. That was the heart of the matter. The rest was insignificant detail

Feeling better, I went out on to the terrace and started to look through the regular report on the day’s main events, and the account from the secret police on the rumours circulating among the people. I’d always taken a particular interest in the latter, especially in recent years, since gossip about the murder of B— had risen to the surface again. Noticing my interest, the chief of police was always adding extra material — whole conversations recorded by his spies, intercepted letters, prisoners’ confessions, anonymous denunciations, and so on.

The strange thing was that some of the rumours coincided with what Billy Hampston had written in his play. All the gossip, from that which could be traced back to the Duchess of M— or the Bridge Tavern to the mauederings of the drunken Cheavor, mentioned Duncan’s ghost. But there was frequent mention, too, of the bloodstains my late wife was supposed to have seen on her hands, ï remember that was mentioned in Hampston’s play too — I can even remember the first reference:

I: Take the body to the canal at Berverhill!

SHE: Will the waters of the canal wash away the blood?

And in a later scene (one of the most melancholy, I recall: when my beloved lady read it she went terribly pale), she was shown trying to wash her hands, thinking she could see those cursed stains on them.

All the rumours more or less agreed on that point: during a meal, or a dance, or while she was busy at her embroidery, my wife suddenly saw her hands grow covered with bloodstains that no soap could ever remove.

Ugh! How deep can man’s morbid imagination sink? The truth is that a year before her death she developed a skin disease on her hands. Her doctor tried every possible remedy, but couldn’t cure her. My heart bled at the sight of those beautiful hands covered with ointments and bandages. In the course of a reception the shrewish Duchess of M— stared at my wife’s arms and asked, “How are your hands, your Majesty? I’m told there’s something wrong with them…”

My wife was dumbstruck. That night — or perhaps it was another night — trying to console her for her suffering,! started to kiss her bandages and to move them aside a little to kiss the skin beneath. But she pushed me away roughly, and in a toneless voice I’d never heard before, said:

“Perhaps you think it’s Duncan’s blood, too!”

My poor lady…It was apparently from then on that the rumours started about stains of Duncan’s blood. Perhaps she confided her anguish to some trusted woman friend, thus becoming the source of her own misfortune?

How often have I asked myself, in vain, if those rumours really did start then, and if Billy Hampston, more skilful than my secret police, managed to hear of them and put them in his play. Or was it his play itself that exploded into a thousand rumours? Learned men say that it’s like that, by means of particles coming into being, disappearing, and coming into being again in an endless cycle, that the celestial bodies are created.

I was sure there must be a copy somewhere of that wretched play, but though! did my best to get my hands on it, my efforts were in vain. My spies went through every nook and cranny with a fine-tooth comb, searched secret drawers, inspected cellars and the remotest priests’ houses, to no avail. What didn’t they find in the course of their researches? The most lurid manuscripts, descriptions of disgusting orgies, vile letters revealing the existence of immoral liaisons and abject vices, not to mention other aberrations too horrible to mention. Some of these were frankly ridiculous, others excruciatingly boring. But none of them remotely resembled Billy Hampstoe’s play.

But I can’t get rid of the idea that it’s lurking somewhere^ waiting for a more propitious moment to reappear. Or if not it, some variation of it, or else some other source for that damned rumour that will not die away. If so, I’d have to be mad not to admit that it’s beyond my power to stand in its way. If the rumour of all mankind insists on turning me into a tragic character, no power on earth,let alone my own, can ever stop it. The only thing left for me to do is pray that if the play in question is ever produced, the posters announcing it will replace the name of the playwright, whatever that may be, with the name of Duncan, because he is its real author.