The Concert

16

THE SUDDEN INFLUX of students back from China changed the look of the capital The first to return were those concerned with the human sciences, and they were followed by the natural scientists and the various kinds of student teacher. They all began to fill the streets, cafés and restaurants of Tirana with an unwonted atmosphere of good humour. The fact that they’d been sent back at the express request of the Chinese government, in a note which gave as the main reason for their expulsion their allegedly improper behaviour towards Chinese girls, conferred on the newcomers a certain aura. People saw them as a seductive combination of Don Jean and Don Quixote, the heroes of countless adventures as mysterious as they were fantastic.

Stories of their exploits, preposterous enough without the inevitable exaggerations and accretions due to distance, circulated by word of mouth. Every day a new star emerged, each one a possible instigator of the famous note. Some, with a wink or similar gesture addressed to some Chinese damsel, had caused the Albanian ambassador to be summoned to the Chinese foreign ministry. The names of others were said to have figured on a list of complaints delivered by Zhou Enlai to an Albanian government delegation on an official visit to Peking. Not to mention the interesting condition in which some Chinese young women found themselves and of which some Albanian young men were already aware, though luckily it wouldn’t come to the knowledge of the Peking authorities until four or five months later, when relations with China would certainly have deteriorated completely…

People listened to these tales with a smile. Especially those who had been students in the sixties in the Soviet Union or other countries then in the socialist bloc, and who had had to interrupt their studies because of the break between Albania and the various host countries. “It wasn’t like that in my day!’’ these would comment pensively. Of course, even thee there had been plenty of comical incidents. One Albanian student in Sofia had chucked his lectures and managed to get himself made vice-chairman of a cooperative in a little Bulgarian town, while his family fondly believed he was still at the university and the ambassador had search parties out after him. But on the whole the stories dating from this period were rather sad — dull and lacklustre as an old pewter jug, As those who’d been students in the sixties started, with a certain modest pride, to recount their own memories, those jest back from China waited impatiently for their stories to come up with something amusing. “But don’t you see?” said their elders, “there wasn’t anything funny about our experiences. We didn’t feel at all like laughing when we had to part from our pretty Russian girls.” The younger ones, the “Chinese” as they were called, couldn’t understand how the others could have been wretched in such circumstances: they couldn’t help bringing out the entertaining aspects of their own tribulations. At all events, the students of both these generations regaled everyone else with so many stories that a few old show-offs who’d studied in Europe half a century ago started to bring forth their own reminiscences — mostly insipid, old-fashioned romances with prim little, dim little fraüleins tinkling away at sheet music on hired pianos.

The new arrivals split their sides with laughter. They themselves had been delighted to break off their deadly boring studies, In the-general euphoria, some of them got engaged within a fortnight of their return to girls they used to know before, but who seemed prettier and more desirable after their own stay in China. Others took up with Albanian girls who were so fascinated by these new-style Lotharios that they promptly ditched their previous boyfriends.

These goings-on lent a humorous touch to a situation mainly determined by the deterioration of Sino-Albaeian relations after Mao’s death and the arrest of his widow. But this time the Albanians bade an ‘old friendship farewell with a smile, as one foreign correspondent noted, with an allusion to Marx. Bet he who laughs last laughs longest, he added. And who was going to have the last laugh here?

* * *

Silva opened her eyes for a few seconds, but, reassured by the sight of her husband’s head on the pillow next to her, went back to sleep again. It had been light for some time, but she went oe waking up and dozing off again as if to savour the joy of Gjergj’s return as often as possible.

I think I’ll lie in for a bit, she thought when she finally awoke properly. She tried to remember a dream: it was about some frozen snakes emerging from the snow… But no, it wasn’t part of a nightmare — it arose from something Gjergj had said in the pauses between their caresses. The frozen snakes had come to the surface just before the big earthquake. And now all China hinted that the tremor was a harbinger of Mao’s death, and Jiang Qing’s arrest in the middle of the night.

Silva looked at Gjergj’s brow: she thought it showed signs of fatigue. As a child she had believed_ people’s thoughts were concentrated there. She kissed him on the forehead — lightly, so as not to wake him — then got out of bed.

Their daughter had already gone to school Silva made tea for the two of them, but as Gjergj was still asleep she decided not to disturb him. She left him a note: “Tea on the stove. See you at lunch-time. Love.”

It was eleven o’clock by the time she left the house. Her boss had told her not to come in that day until she felt like it, but she didn’t dawdle. All the government offices were working overtime because of the problems caused by the Chinese.

She thought of Gjergj’s hair on the pillow and of how glad she’d be to find him there again at lunch-time. And she was filled with happiness.

When she got to the office, Linda and the boss looked unusually serious. She’d have preferred even the teasing they subjected her to the last time she saw them, about Gjergj’s homecoming.

She soon learned the reason for their glumness. A meeting was due to be held in the minister’s office at any moment, and as usual the boss, resenting it, was taking his annoyance out on Linda.

He came back after about half an hour, looking downcast. It was at short meetings like this that the severest criticisms were usually meted out. But today’s gathering had been different.

“Well,” he said, sitting down at his desk, “you already suspected that the economic situation was very serious. But it’s much worse than you thought.”

In a low, weary voice he told them what the minister had said, When all the data were taken into account, it emerged that the defection of the Chinese had done much more damage than expected. It was no passing misunderstandings causing only minor problems, as some officials and economists had thought, but a coldly premeditated rupture, calculated to do as much harm as possible. Whole sectors of activity that were dependent on one another were grinding irrevocably to a halt, in a chain reaction that eventually affected institutions which appeared to have no connection with China — for example, the State lank. There was no end to the complications, Because the big dam in the north was near the frontier, and the Chinese had warned that it might burst if there was an earthquake, Yugoslavia was showing signs of alarm. And it was no accident that acts of sabotage had been perpetrated in the oil-fields. According to a report received by the Politbureau, some wells looked as if they had been bombed. Dozens of them had been abandoned, with machinery and pipelines left lying around to rust in the middle of the muddy plain,

“They’re sending teams out to all the places where the Chinese have been or still are working,’ the boss went on. “The minister himself is leaving at any moment,’’ Then, turning to Silva: “I know you haven’t had much time with your husband since he got back, but I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done — you and I both have to go to the steel complex.”

Silva shrugged, as if to agree that there was nothing they could do about it.

“When?” she said faintly.

“Tomorrow. We might be able to put it off till the day after tomorrow at the latest, Linda — you’ll have to hold the fort while we’re away,”

The two women exchanged a wan smile. Silva was thinking already about what she’d have to do this afternoon so that Gjergj and Brikena weren’t too much put out by her absence. She must go and collect a suit of Gjergj’s from the cleaner’s. She must call in to collect a coat for herself and a dress for Brikena from the dressmaker. Oh, but that meant getting four hundred new leks out of the savings bank to pay the dressmaker what she still owed her for work done over the last few months. Perhaps she was spending too much money on clothes? This worry was soon replaced by another: what should she cook for Gjergj and Brikena that would last them for a couple of days? The best solution would be for them to eat out while she was away. It was more expensive, but as Gjergj was no good in the kitchen and Brikena had her homework to do …Sika still had no end of other things to do, but by now she realized that thinking about them was almost as tiring as doing then, so she tried to dismiss them from her mind…Oh yes, and she mustn’t forget to remind Gjergj about the texts Skënder Bermema had left for him. There couldn’t be a more appropriate moment than now for him to read them.

Her second cup of coffee in the workers’ canteen did nothing to relieve the hollow she felt inside her. It had something to do with the dell day, and the way the smoke from the blast furnace seemed to pervade the whole complex. The same tension spread from one person to another by a kind of osmosis. Apparently the furnace had become partially blocked with slag almost as soon as it first came on stream. There were even more ominous rumours, though no one knew who had started them, or why. Some people said there was a danger that the furnace might go out altogether, and all the molten metal solidify. If that happened, the whole plant, built with such effort and expense, would be virtually useless, The only thing to do then would be to blow it up. Trying to melt its contents down again would be like trying to resuscitate a corpse. The fire of the furnace is its soul, said one of the workers. If it goes out, all you can do is go into mourning,

“The Chinese,” said the boss to Silva, nodding towards the window in some awe, “Apparently they’re getting ready to go.”

She followed his glance. A group of Chinamen were picking their way across the clinker-strewn yard. They looked different from usual Distant as ever, but with the peculiar self-satisfaction of those who, if they are leaving, are taking a valuable secret with them.

As a matter of fact it was widely said that they knew very well how the furnace could be unblocked, but they refused to reveal the method. But, to her own surprise, Silva felt eo resentment against them, Perhaps because she couldn’t help feeling grateful to them for going. They’d seemed fated to stay for ever. So long as they really do go, she thought, everything will sort itself out…

Coming out of the canteen she ran into Victor Hila.

“Victor!” she cried. “I’ve inquired after you several times. How are you?”

“Quite well,” he said.

But his eyes were red with fatigue.

“I saw your famous Chinaman one day at the airport. He was catching a plane.”

“Really?” he answered indifferently. Silva realized that he didn’t feel like laughing any more about the business of the squashed foot. Nor did she, for that matter, even though it was she who’d broached the subject.

“What are you working on?” she asked.

“I’m in a mixed team trying to unblock the furnace.”

“Is it true it might go out?”

Victor smiled,

“That’s what everyone asks. They all talk about the accumulation of slag and the furnace going out as if one had to follow from the other. But never mind that. The fact is that the furnace really is in a bad way.”

Silva noted his sunken eyes.

“Anyhow,” he said, “we’re going to do all we can to get it unblocked. Even if…”

Even if what? she wanted to ask. But he was already holding out his hand.

“I must go, Silva. See you soon.”

“So long, Victor.”

Hurrying to catch up with her colleagues, Silva noticed that the hollow feeling which had haunted her for the last few days was suddenly worse now she’d met Victor Hila. She soon realized why. Neither of them had laughed when the subject of the Chinaman with the squashed foot had come up. And this was connected with what was going on, and going wrong, in the world at large.

The hollow feeling was still there when Silva got back to her hotel room late that afternoon. She sat for some time with her hands clasped in her lap. Her thoughts moved slowly. Then it struck her that Gjergj’s hotel bedroom in China must have been much like this one. Ugh! In her present mood, anything to do with China depressed her. What was she doing here? What were the Chinese to her, or she to them?…And suddenly, as if she’d been on the other side of the world instead of just a short journey away, a wave of homesickness swept over her, for her apartment, for the street she walked along every day, and even for her office at the ministry.

The first morning Linda entered the office after Silva and the boss went away, she shivered. She went over and felt the radiator, but it was quite warm. And she herself felt even colder as the morning wore on, as well as distinctly agitated inside. As soon as the phone started to ring her heart missed a beat, and she realized she was all worked up, Her state of mind was reflected in her voice: “Hallo …No, the boss isn’t here …Yes, away on a mission. He’ll be back in a few days’ time.”

She couldn’t wait to get rid of the caller, and when she’d put the receiver down she checked that she’d done so properly. That was what she always did, she reflected, when she was expecting a call Stop it! she told herself. She was behaving like a little girl, expecting “him” to telephone. Even if he did, what difference would it make?

Linda hadn’t seen Besnik Struga again since Silva had introduced her to him. She hadn’t even spoken to him, except once or twice, briefly, when he’d rung up and asked to speak to Silva. But she couldn’t hide it from herself that she liked him; she liked him very much. So she hadn’t been surprised to find herself thinking about him; her thoughts were only light and fleeting, easily conjured up and easily dismissed. She’d told herself everything would remain as airy as a watercolour, tranquilly pleasing as a fantasy of happiness. They lived in the same city — they were bound to meet again some time… And that was as far as her thoughts went, drifting back and forth without casting anchor. Still free.

But now, one fine morning, when she opened the door on an empty office, things had changed.

She’d had a premonition the day before, when she realized she was going to be alone in the office while her colleagues were away. That evening she’d imagined herself pulling the legs of people who rang up to speak to the boss: “Comrade Defrin? Yes, I’m comrade De-freeze… What can I do for you?” and so on. Yes, the phone would ring — but what if were “him”, asking for Silva? So what? she’d thought, trying to kid herself. But in vain.

And now, this morning, she thought she actually heard the phone ring. And even though she soon had to conclude that it was a trick of her imagination, the shock was enough to turn dream into potential reality. Her feminine intuition told her he liked her. If he rang to talk to Silva and was told she was away, mightn’t he go on talking to Linda herself? Mightn’t he even ask, in passing, what she did with herself in the afternoon?

She shivered again. Now she realized it was because “he” hadn’t rang up.

She went over to the window, and looked out at Government Square, humming sadly and tunelessly to herself.

It was still too soon to talk of suffering in connection with this new mood of hers. The feeling wasn’t yet fully formed. It was still malleable, like the bones of an infant. But before long it would find its permanent shape.

There was a knock at the door. Linda didn’t need to look round: she knew it was Simon Dersha.

“Telephone still not working?” she said, with her back still to him.

He looked at her for a while without answering. He was still wearing his navy-blue suit, and normally Linda would have teased him about it. Perhaps because she hadn’t done so, Simon, as she now saw, went on gazing at her. She suddenly realized how worried he looked. Why hadn’t she noticed before?

“What’s wrong, Simon?” she asked guiltily.

He shook his head wearily, as if he’d been waiting for her to ask that.

“I’m not at all well,” he mumbled.

Linda moved away from the window and came towards him,

“What is it? What’s the matter?” She was about to add, “Do tell me if there’s anything I can do for you,” but as if trying to anticipate and avoid her question, he shook his head twice and went out, closing the door behind him.

How odd, Linda thought. She felt ashamed of using the word suffering, even in thought, about her own frame of mind, which she was now inclined to put down to caprice. She walked briskly back to her desk, her lethargy gone, and got down to work at once, so as not to relapse. At the same moment Simon Dersha was sitting down at his desk in the next room, muttering, “Oh, what a mess I'm in, what an awful mess!” Then he bent over a mass of pages covered with his slanting scrawl

For the last week he’d been writing his own autocritique. No one had asked him to, and he hadn’t even asked himself where and to whom he was going to read it. Was he going to deliver it in court, or send it through the post? He hadn’t bothered with any of that. The main thing for him was to write it. Whether he would read it to the minister, the union, in court, at a fair, or anywhere else, was neither here nor there.

That was why the style in which it was written kept changing. One part was very academic, with digressions on general, ideological and sociological problems; another took the form of a psychological analysis; yet another section was in dialogue form, with questions and answers as in a police interrogation. He had also peppered his text with quotations, especially in a kind of profession of faith where he described his origins and social status: here he quoted twice on one page from Engels’s Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. Further on, in a passage describing how he came to meet the vice-minister responsible for ail his woes (every time he re-read this section he wondered what woes he meant — but he didn’t know the answer), the autocritique became a kind of detailed narrative, relating all their conversations and telephone calls, and dwelling particularly on the invitation to the fateful dinner. But even this section strayed into digressions on general principles: in one he considered the significance of banquets and dinners, relating them to tradition and popular philosophy…And so on.

The evening at Minister D—’s was described in exhaustive detail, starting with his meeting with the vice-minister who was to take him there, and who turned up five minutes late, going on to their walk to the minister’s residence, and thence to the dinner itself. The guests were described, together with their conversation, which was much less weighty and interesting than he had expected. Then, in the middle of the evening, came the phone call from the leader of the Party, and the perturbation, he thought he saw on the minister’s face after he had hung up.

"And what about the rest of you? And you yourself — weren’t you at all affected?"

"Well Yes, to start with. He was, certainly. He had Enver Hoxha at the other end of the line. That was no joke! We all ought to have been thrilled."

"Ought to have been? Weren’t you all really thrilled?"

That’s what I was just going to explain. As I said, the minister himself, despite all his efforts to disguise it, was terribly downcast. It was only natural that his anxiety should communicate itself to us. Everything suddenly wilted away, and everybody, beginning with our host himself, wanted the dinner to come to an end as soon as possible.

Oh, so you wanted the dinner to end as soon as possible, just after a phone call that would have added life and zest to any other gathering? But you lot…! Delve into your conscience, Simon Dersha, and dig out the real reason for your anxiety. Well? Or is your mind full of foreign propaganda, and the calumnies our enemies perpetrate against our leader? While all of you were banqueting, he was going without sleep to work for the people. And instead of being happy to hear his voice, you were all terrified. I suppose you all told yourselves: “He’s going to put me in jail, liquidate me.” Isn’t that the truth?

I don’t know what to say. Yes, I'm a miserable wretch.

Did you discuss it amongst yourselves?

No.

Not even when you first started hearing rumours about minister D—?

No, not then either. I tried to get in touch with the vice-minister, but I couldn’t reach him on the telephone…

In spite of its exhaustiveness, this part of the autocritique was shorter than that devoted to Simon’s second visit to the minister or rather his abortive attempt to go and see him about his brother’s posting. Like the previous section, this one digressed: there were remarks on the principles of postings in general, based on quotations from the decisions handed down by two plenums; this led to consideration of a popular misconception on the matter — a misconception apparently shared by his brother and sister-in-law, and by himself. Before giving a detailed account of his route to the minister’s villa (not forgetting the coldness of the weather and the emptiness of the streets), he spent a few lines expatiating on his own petty-bourgeois psychology, his bourgeois-revisionist views on personal happiness, and other old-fashioned survivals due to his lack of contact with social reality.

When I got to the entrance to the minister’s house my conscience started to reproach me, and I felt a sort of compunction about what I was intending to do.

Compunction? Or fear?

Well, both, I suppose. Yes, it must have been both.

But which predominated?

Fear, I suppose.

Perhaps fear was really the only thing you felt?

Yes, I expect you’re right.

“I don’t feel well, I don’t feel well at all,” Simon Dersha kept muttering as he re-read his autocritique. He felt caught between the pages, as if he were in the jaws of a trap. It didn’t cross his mind that it was a trap of his own making, and that, to break free, all he had to do was screw the whole thing up into a ball and burn it, or throw it in the wastepaper basket. But even if it had occurred to him, he wouldn’t really have been able to do it. For days these pages had been the reflection of his entire existence — his image, his identity card, his medical record, everything that made up the truth about him.

What sort of thing did you hear people say about Minister D—?

Delicate things. Very…tricky.

Are you sure you heard them? Couldn’t they have been figments of your guilty conscience?

I don’t know …It could have been both.

Both, eh? Of course it was you and your brother, your whole typically petty-bourgeois family, who made them all up. All very well for them, but you — an official in a government office — how could you indulge in such vile slander? But let’s get down to the rumours themselves. You say they were about delicate matters. What sort of delicate matters?

Well…Some complicated affair about tanks. They were supposed to encircle some kind of committee…

A Party committee?

That’s right!

Was there anything about the Chinese?

In connection with the minister? No, never.

Delve into your memory. Dig deeper.

What?

Despite her self-reproaches after Simon Dersha’s departure, Linda soon found herself staring round at the empty room and the silent telephone, and beginning to fall back into her former state. She would have relapsed completely but for the fact that it was nearly the end of the working day, and there wasn’t time for her to sink into what she now didn’t scruple to think of as pain,

At half-past two, partly with relief, partly with regret at the end of another of the few bitter-sweet days when she would be alone with the telephone, she locked up the office and made her way slowly down the broad staircase.

All that afternoon and evening she kept herself busy with trivial things, so that she almost forget the agitations of the morning. If she did think of them, she put them down to a passing weakness induced by spending so much time all alone in the office. But as soon as she got in to work the next day, she was overcome by exactly the same feelings as before. Could one really be affected like this, all of a sudden, without even being able to see the object of one’s obsession? Was this love? If so, what kind of love? Her second, or the first real one in her life? In any case, how could it come out of nowhere?

But the more she thought of it the more she realized that it had been coming on for a long time, slowly, invisibly, like a stream flowing secretly under snow. Everything remotely to do with him had become engraved on her mind — not only all Silva had told her, but all aspects of public events, past and present, that he was connected with. Anything relating to the Soviets or the Chinese had become associated for her with something about his looks or words or gestures. Even before she met him she had longed to know the mystery man whose life had included both Moscow and Ana Krasniqi. And after she’d met him, she longed more and more to meet him again. Whenever the television news showed an international conference, or she read something in a book or paper about the Moscow Congress, she thought of him: he became a kind of myth. The person she had actually met was merely one facet, a superficial^ everyday aspect of an infinitely complex and inaccessible personality. He’d become so closely identified with the age he lived in that she’d failed to notice that she herself belonged to another era. Only now did she realize that there was something rather cold and artificial in her feeling for him so far.

She had made inquiries about his former fiancée: the reason why he had broken off the engagement — like many other things about him — had never been clear. Linda had heard that a month ago, at some engagement party where the conversation turned to the break with China, Besnik’s ex-fiancée had stopped her ears and shouted almost hysterically, practically in tears, “Stop it! I can’t bear to hear any more about it! Please, please, stop!” The person who told Linda about this incident treated it a§ a mere anecdote, but Linda guessed at once what lay behind it. The mention of the Chinese must have reminded the young woman of the break with the Soviets, and the days when her hoped-for happiness had been destroyed.

Now that, as she though^ she was seeing things more clearly, Linda decided to let matters take their course. He was bound to ring up one of these days. She imagined some variations on the ensuing conversation. “Hallo — is that you, Silva?” “No, if s her colleague, Linda.” “Oh yes — haven’t we met?” “Yes.” “How are you?…is Silva there?” “I’m afraid not.” — Linda pulled a face at her owe hypocrisy — “She’s away on a mission.” “Oh.” This was the critical moment. The pause that seemed to cut the world in two. “Can I be of any use?’’ “Well…I wanted to speak to her…I don’t know if…” “I’m at your service!” “Well, could I see you,thee?”

Oh no! That wasn’t it at all! Far too banal Neither of them could be so tedious as that. They mustn’t be! And that awful, coy “At your service!” Absolutely not!

As if winding back a tape recorder, she made a fresh start. “Suva’s away on a mission.“ “Oh,” A pause. Fragile; precarious; they could hear one another’s breathing. “So how are you managing, all alone in the office?” “Oh, working as best I can. Getting bored,” Yes, that was much better. “And what do you get up to in the afternoon?” “What?” “I asked what you did in the afternoon.” “I heard what you said, bet I don’t quite know what to answer.”

Linda’s imagination then leaped forward a few hours, and saw them sitting opposite one another having tea in the Café Flora. “To tell you the truth, I’d been wanting to meet you for a long time. I thought you were so interesting…” Ugh! That wouldn’t do at all! Much too direct. It might be better to talk about Silva to begin with. “Silva told me about you — we’ve been working in the same office for a long time, Silva and I…” No — that sounded as if she was one of those timid souls who dragged her friend along to a date to give her courage. “Whenever the break with China comes up, Silva and I talk about you…” That wasn’t too bad, either. It gave him a chance to say something interesting about current events, like a character in a modern novel.

Suddenly it occurred to Linda that the phone hadn’t rung all the morning. Perhaps it was out of order! She flew over and picked up the receiver. No, it was all right — she could hear the dialling tone, She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry.

Four days went by like this. The team that had gone to the steel complex might be back at any moment. Linda felt she would look back with regret on all these lonely, fruitless but in a way thrilling hours. On the fifth day, just before two o’clock, when she had already given up hope, the phone rang. Superstitiously, she let it ring three times, thinking that would turn any call into a call from “him”. When she picked up the receiver she was almost sure of it. Yet strangely enough her hand was quite steady, and her face showed no emotion even after she recognized his voice, But the phone felt as if it weighed a ton, and everything else in the world seemed grey and monotonous.

They exchanged a few words: Silva … I remember meeting you…afternoon…Nothing of what she’d imagined.

She put down the phone as calmly as she had picked it up, thee stood there for a while by the empty desk. It looked preternaterally bare, like something on the eve of great changes.

The hotel lift was out of order, and Silva, late already, ran down the stairs. Her colleagues were waiting for her by the minibus. They looked glum.

“Good morning,” said Silva. “Anything new?”.

“The Chinese have gone,” said Illyrian.

The rest of them just went on smoking. From their expressions they might have been at a funeral.

“When?” Silva asked.

“Perhaps during the night. Perhaps just before dawn. Well soon know,’ said the boss, climbing into the bus.

As it drove along, Silva looked out at the frozen plain. A few sombre-coloured birds swooped low over the landscape. In the distance she was somewhat reassured to see smoke still pouring from the furnaces. Bet one of these days it won’t be there any more, she thought. It’ll be like when someone holds a mirror to a dead man’s lips.

The comings and going at the complex seemed different today, but perhaps that was just because everyone knew what had happened. The Chinese had vanished without warning, like ghosts. Albanian technicians had already taken their places. Everyone seemed to have gone deaf and dumb. But all eyes asked the same question: What are we going to do now? In the head office, a group of engineers gazed blankly at shelves full of files containing the complex’s production plans. They were all in Chinese. The shriek of a passing locomotive expressed the engineers’ anguish better than any human voice could have done.

A vice-minister had just arrived from Tirana: the minister for heavy industry would have come himself, but he was said to be ill. Rumour had it he’d been dismissed.

The panting of the furnace could be heard everywhere. Or perhaps everyone thought they could hear it, because they knew it was ailing. Whenever Silva heard someone say, “The furnace is going out,” she remembered Gjergj’s frozen snakes in the snow.

Back at the hotel, her room seemed more desolate than ever. She felt like writing to Gjergj, and even got her pen and writing pad out of her briefcase, but instead of starting a letter she found herself tracing the words, “winter’s day”. She remembered the snakes again, and realized she was falling into the same trap as Gjergj and Skënder Bermema in their hotel rooms in Peking. Nevertheless her hand still continued with, “It’s not true I killed Duncan for his throne,” She laughed and crossed it all out. Then sat for some time, pen poised, wondering whether to follow “Dear Gjergj” with “I miss you” or “What a pity we didn’t have more time together…”

Forty-eight hours after the Chinese left, the situation was still the same — simultaneously paralysed and nervous.

Concern about the furnace had gradually distracted attention from everything else in the complex, though the other units had their problems too. Even in the town there was only one subject on everybody’s lips: how were they going to get rid of the slag? Would the furnace go out?

A batch of reporters had come from Tirana, followed by a horde of young poets. Red-eyed with lack of sleep, they all roamed round the bars and workshops, showing one another their verses and articles. They often compared the furnace to the medieval citadel in the town, claiming that the “new fortress of steel” was even more impregnable than the old one. Others composed odes entitled “The flames will never go out,” or “We will throw our hearts into the furnace,” or “To Fire…” ln the last, the flames of the furnace were a positive symbol, but in “Back, clinkers!”, slag was used to represent revisionists and every other influence inimical to socialism, including decadent art

Meanwhile, as it was absolutely necessary to consult the production plans in the original Chinese, a group of students just back from China was sent for from Tirana. As they tumbled noisily off the train they told all and sundry they were sure they’d be equal to the task: they’d eaten dishes made up of sharks’ ears and cobras’ innards, among other abominations, and they were familiar with all the tricks of the Chinks and the snares of their language. Some gave themselves nicknames like The Three Scourges of the Country or Look before you Purge.

But after a few hours in head office, the students had to admit they were flummoxed. One was said to have asked his friend, The Seven Demons of the City, “Can you make head or tail of these hieroglyphics?” By way of reply, The Seven Demons swore horribly in both languages. And that was the end of their reputation as translators. The authorities were for sending all the students back, but some of them had already joined up with the young poets, and they all roved round the bars together. Two got engaged to a couple of lab assistants, and so that they shouldn’t be sent away, someone had the bright idea of co-opting them into the workers’ amateur theatricals. The students were cast as Chinese baddies in their current show.

Silva and her colleagues went to see it, and as they came out afterwards, still laughing, she heard someone calling her name. But when she turned round, she didn’t recognize the two youths who had hailed her. Or they might have been men, for their faces were quite black,

“Don’t you know who I am?” said one of them. “Of course, like this, it’s not surprising…I look more like Othello!”

“Ben!” cried Silva, surprised to find it was Besnik Strega’s brother. “No, I really didn’t recognize you! How long have you been here?”

“Several weeks. Let me introduce my friend — Max Bermema, We work together,”

The other young man’s face was even blacker.

“Are you related to Skënder Bermema?” asked Silva.

“I’m his cousin,”

She was going to ask why their faces were so black, but Ben spoke first.

“Max and I work in the blast furnace — that’s why we look like delegates from the Third World!”

They all laughed, but Silva was embarrassed that the two young men had met her coming out of such a low form of entertainment.

“Does an engineer called Victor Hila work with you?” she asked,

“Yes, we’re all on the same shift.”

“And how are you going to deal with the furnace?”

“We’ve put forward a suggestion. Let’s hope it’ll be accepted.”

“So you’re going to unblock it?”

“Yes. With an explosion. We’ve been up several nights working out the figures.”

Silva looked from one to the other.

“Isn’t it dangerous?”

They smiled, but their black faces made their smiles so weird that Silva was quite taken aback. She looked round at them after they’d gone, to reassure herself, but it was too late. Their faces had already vanished into the dark.

Silva walked on and caught up with her colleagues. But for some time she couldn’t get those shadowy smiles out of her mind.