The Concert

17

UNDER THE SHOWER, Silva decided she wouldn’t tell Gjergj the news she’d brought back with her in the order in which she’d gone over it in her mind on the journey back.

She had arrived home suddenly by the last train, to her own and her daughter’s delight. As she turned off the shower, she knew that Gjergj, back in their room, would be imagining the water pounding on her skin. She wiped the mist off the bathroom mirror, and saw the rejection of the joy that filled her own body.

This time she was the one back from a journey. She was even bringing as many stories about China as if she’d been to a miniature version of that country itself.

She said as much to Gjergj when she went back into their bedroom and bent over him,

“Did you miss me? Really? Very much?”

She went on murmuring sweet but earthy nothings into his ear until laughs and whispers changed into choking gasps, in accordance with the great paradox of nature that expresses the height of human pleasure by the sounds of suffering.

Only afterwards did Silva get round to telling her husband the other half of her news. Then:

“And what about here?” she said, “Anything new?”

He told her what had been happening while she was away — in particular, about the sacking of high-ranking officials. More dis. missals were expected, even some punishments. Although the last plenum of the Central Committee had taken place quite recently, another was likely to be held quite soon, and the signs were that its decisions would be more severe. Silva was about to ask about the fate of the minister in charge of her own department when Gjergj mentioned the word “plot”.

“What?” she exclaimed. “What do you mean?”

“People say they’ve uncovered a plot, but for the moment it’s top secret”

For some reason, Silva thought of her brother, but she didn’t say so. If anything had happened concerning Arian, Gjergj would have told her.

“They’re holding meetings all over the place,” he said drowsily, Thee, before he dropped off again:

“I’m so glad you’re back.”

That was what she usually said to him.

The meetings went on well into the evening, especially in government offices. Those who had to write their owe autocritiques stayed up later still, sometimes even till dawn. Meanwhile venerable scholars and academicians slept, as did writers, even those who went in for novels and other lengthy genres, and lecturers who’d had to prepare their lectures for the next day, not to mention translators from ancient Greek, lexicographers, graphologists, writers of anonymous letters, people who wanted divorces, and even writers of love letters, though they usually lay awake for a couple of hours at least after putting the last touches to their billets-doux. In short, everyone whose work, feelings or circumstances made them use pen and paper eventually slept, except the people who had to write their autocritiques.

For some it was the first time they’d gone through this ordeal, and their sufferings were particularly horrible. But even the veterans had a hard time. They were used to the traumatic experience of the self-examination itself, but it no longer brought them the relief the novices experienced. They knew how terribly depressing it was to read out a confession you were sure would have moved your audience deeply, only to meet with looks of complete incomprehension, usually followed by the question, “Is that all, comrade X? You don’t think you might have left something out? Dig deeper, dig deeper!” The novices knew nothing of this. They themselves were so moved by their own outpourings they expected their judges to be equally affected, and already saw in their mind’s eye the sympathy and pity that would no doubt earn them clemency and forgiveness. The mere thought of this made some of them actually shed tears in anticipation, weeping over their autocritiques as slighted suitors might weep over their love letters.

A window that still had a light ie it after midnight seemed to radiate an aura of guilt. Some people who had never been criticized or rebuked for anything whatsoever woke up in the eight, rummaged blearily for pencil and paper, and started to write an autocritique that had never even been asked for!

As the meetings went on and all sorts of people made their confessions, a great similarity began to emerge in the autocritiques, even though their authors’ circumstances, professions and offences had nothing in common. So much so that rumour had it that, for a modest sum, certain hacks were ready to churn out autocritiques to order. No one could prove it, but humorists and song-writers found it a very fruitful subject for satire.

In such a context the unfortunates still poring over their own confessions felt more isolated than ever.

As time went by there came to pass what they had striven above all to avoid: they became more and more cut off from ordinary people, and were drawn closer and closer to the world of the guilty. Even when, as was usually the case, they didn’t know one another, their names were more and more frequently quoted together in accounts of what was going on. They’ started to exist in a universe apart where they drifted about together in groups, like ghosts. And it was when they were in this misty, twilight world that memories painfully recurred, or seemed to recur, to them: an official reception at which a Chinaman had reminded them of a conversation they’d had together in China, in the Hotel Peking; a party at the house of an unnamed Albanian minister; a conversation about the abandoning of former oil-fields or the encircling of a Party committee. And so on.

The vagueness and solitude of the realm they inhabited caused their autocritiques, even when written in a perfectly normal style, to be fell of confusion and irrelevance, with answers to anticipated questions, admissions of deeds they’d resolved never to reveal, the most fearsome hypotheses, together with countless suspicions, anxieties, hopes and outbursts of anger. And at the actual meetings, even though they still hoped to be able to keep something back, their interrogators always came quite close to at least part of what they were trying to suppress. Moreover, in their reports to the Central Committee, the people appraising their cases would sometimes add their own comments, even their suppositions about what the speaker was allegedly trying to hide; and while some of these hypotheses were correct, others were not.

Notes designed to supplement the Central Committee records, by a delegate to meetings of various Party organizations in the Army. The question at issue; what is known as AN UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO HAVE THE PARTY COMMITTEE OF THE TOWN OF X— SUEEOUNDED BY DETACHMENT N— OF THE TANIS. Follow-up to previous analyses, which arrived at mo definite conclusions.

N.B. These noies are not set out here in their final order. For further information see accounts of the meeUngs themselves.

Extracts from the autocritique of staff signals officer S—: 1 am guilty, absolutely guilty, e?en though it might be said that I am only a vehicle, a cog in the machinery of command. That’s what it says in army regulations, though I personally think they should be reviewed. In our army, no one can be happy to be a robot. That’s what distinguishes it from the armies of bourgeois and revisionist countries. When I was given- an order that harmed the Party, Î ought, though I’m only a simple soldier, to have blocked the order, sent it back to where it came from, said to the person who sent it: I will not send it, for this, that or the other reason. But, comrades^ I didn’t do that. Like a mindless robot, not thinking that I was unwittingly helping to strike a blow at the Party, I transmitted the order to the tanks. My lack of ideological maturity, my merely superficial study of Marxism-Leninism, and so on,_e,

Second signals officer (P-); I have nothing to add. I am guilty. We’re both guilty.

Questioner: You claim you didn’t know you were doing anything wrong. But did you regard the order as wrong in itself?

S—; Wrong?! don’t know …A bit strange, yes, but not wrong. It came from above, so I thought it couldn’t be wrong. But of course, in the Party there’s neither high nor low …so that’s true of the army too — that’s what makes it different from bourgeois-revisionist armies…

Q: Right, that’ll do. Another question. It was a long way from operation headquarters to the tanks, wasn’t it? Nearly an hour on a motorcycle combination.

S—: Yes, almost an hour. Because of the weather.

Q: And during all that time you and your colleague didn't say anything to one another?

S—; No. The weather was very bad and the road was almost impassable. Even if we’d wanted to talk we couldn’t have made ourselves heard.

Q: But the bad weather didn’t stop you from thinking! What did you think as you were driving along?

S—; Nothing. I was concentrating on driving. There was a lot of mud and the bike might have skidded at any moment,

Q: And what about you, the other one? You were tucked away inside the sidecar, wrapped ep in your raincoat — you had plenty of time to think, didn’t you?

P—; Yes, As far as I remember I thought about a whole lot of things, but they hadn’t got anything to do with the order wë were supposed to be delivering. As a matter of fact… I don’t know if…

Q: Speak out! You’re not supposed to hide anything from the Party.

F—: That’s right…Well, I was thinking about a girl I intend to get engaged to…About certain suspicions her behaviour had inspired in me lately …In short, I was afraid she was deceiving me…

Q: Well, here’s a fine member of the People’s Army! A fine communist, I must say! He can’t think of anything but his own happiness, he’s obsessed by the thought of being deceived by his fiancée, and meanwhile what does he care if he betrays the Party, even unwittingly! And then what happened?

S—; We delivered the order. To an officer whose first name was Arian, if I remember rightly. That’s right — Arian Krasniqi. He listened to the order, asked me to repeat it, then he frowned. He was going to say something, but changed his mind. He just growled, “Very well, you can go back where you came from — we’ll sort things out with H.Q over the radio”…That’s all

Q; And then?

5. —_; We went back through the rain.

Q: Since, as you remember so clearly and so often, it was raining. why didn’t it occur to you that you didn’t have to deliver the order verbally? — that you could have sent it by radio?

S—: I didn’t think of it. But even if Î had I’d still have told myself the order came from H.Q. and,…

Q: And you didn’t think about anything on the way back, either? S—: 1 told you — the road was very bad.

Q: And you, the other one — I suppose you were still thinking about your fiancée, and wondering if she was cheating on you?

P—; Yes.

Extracts from the autocritique of radio operator Dh—: I have nothing to say in my own defence. It was an offence, a grave offence on my part. I can’t think of a worse one. There’s only one thing I’d like to say: you can’t imagine what it’s like in that sort of situation. The confusion, comrades! You think you’re going mad. Your head’s ringing, but everyone wants to be put in touch with everyone else as fast as possible. They’re all huffing and puffing, and you’re in the middle of it all, the one who’s supposed to answer everyone. The buzzing in your ears makes you think you must be in hell! Not to mention that you haven’t had a wink of sleep for three days and nights. And as if that isn’t enough, the weather’s unspeakable, with flashes of lightning all the time. You’ve no idea of the effect lightning has when you’re trying to use the radio — maddening! And then you hear some bloke telling you he’s not going to carry out an order you’ve never even heard of! That’s what it was like that day. A tank officer said he wasn’t going to carry out an order, and proceeded to explain why not. But was I in any position to pass on all the details of his justifications to headquarters? Of course it was wrong of me, of course it was a serious offence on my part, but at the time I didn’t realize it. I just started to transmit the essence of what he’d said to H.Q. But H.Q. interrupted me and said: No need for explanations — just see the order’s carried out! I sent that message back, but the officer at the other end kept on arguing the toss with H.Q. So I lost my temper, too. If he could shout, so could I… Yes, I committed an offence, a very serious offence, when I started shouting and bawling into the mike. I admit it, comrades — I shouted all kinds of wild insults. I told him, “You can stick Shanghai up your mother’s …” I admit I’m guilty, but at that moment I didn’t know what I was doing.

My head was already splitting, and this blessed tank officer starts to talk to me about Shanghai!! ask you! In the middle of all that was going on, all! needed was the Chinese! So that’s how I came to say it. “You can stick Shanghai up your mother’s …‘’ I’m in the wrong, I know. Seriously at fault…

The staff officer at H.Q., in bis autocritique, admitted that he gave the couriers the verbal order to take to the tank group, and it was also he who heard the tank officer refuse, over the radio, to comply with it. In both cases he reported to the chief of staff, who in the first case told him the order had come directly from the minister, and in the second — the tank officer’s refusal to obey — told him to report to him, i.e. the minister. [Marginal note by delegate: Are we sure what this “him really means?!]

When asked if the motives for the refusal were clear, or rather, if he’d managed to explain to the minister why the tanks had refused to obey the order (“It’s not done to- encircle a Party committee,” “This isn’t Shanghai,’ etc.), the staff officer (M—) answered that he wasn’t sure: in the first place because what he’d heard over the radio was intermittent, because of the bad weather (there was a lot of lightning that day); and ie the second place — and this is very important — because the minister hadn’t let him explain himself properly.

Why not?

Because he was shouting at the top of his voice. As soon as I opened my mouth to say the tanks had refused to obey, he started bellowing. He wouldn’t listen to any explanations.

Why not?

It was only natural. He felt outraged. Such a thing had never happened to him before. His own dignity…

And so you didn’t manage to explain to him why the order had been disobeyed?

No. I did get to say something, but I’m not sure he took it in, he was so furious. And on top of that our coenversation took place in the open, outside his tent, and the weather was awful. The wind was blowing great guns.

So that you couldn’t hear yourselves speak?

Not as bad as that, but it made conversation difficult. Especially since, as I said, he was practically foaming at the mouth.

How do you explain that?

I don’t know-,… He’s a minister a member of the government…What’s more, he isn’t at this meeting… But this is a Party meeting, where everyone is equal, and since you ask me I'll tell you frankly what I think. If you ask me, I think his anger was a sign of morbid pride.

There’s another question on which we’d like to have your personal opinion, M—: why, when you had radio transmitters at your disposal, was the order to encircle the Party committee sent to be delivered orally?

M— didn’t answer the question directly. He merely said there were certain orders which by their nature were better delivered orally rather than by radio,

M— didn’t give a clear answer to the last question of all, either — namely, if in the course of this whole business there had been any mention of commandos. He said he had a feeling they had been referred to during his conversation over the radio, but neither at the time, still less now, was he able to say in what connection. At this point he started talking about the bad weather and the lightning again…

Extracts from the explanations provided by Z—, leader of the commando group acting as the enemy during the manoeuvres: If you want me to say what I really think, well, as far as I’m concerned, I can’t make head or tail of this business. According to the plan — approved in detail by staff H.Q — the parachutists were to be dropped over Zone 04VS. But late on the Tuesday evening, the 11th, I was expressly ordered to send in my commandos straight away, not only before the agreed time but also over another zone, i.e. Zone 71T [where the Party committee was — note by delegate]. Try as I might to find out what the hurry was, I couldn’t get any satisfaction. The fact is, radio conditions were very bad because of the weather, especially the lightning. [It was this same evening that the tanks received the order to encircle the Party committee — note by delegate]. I was therefore obliged to go ahead, carry out the order, and parachute my men in. I need hardly say the operation was not successful Apart from the weather, the terrain itself was unsuitable, and hadn’t been reconnoitred. Some of my men got lost, communications got into a horrible muddle, and, as you probably know, three soldiers were drowned. What else could you expect, asking people to grope their way about in the dark?

Didn’t anyone try to find out afterwards why all this happened? Isn’t there anything about it in the records of your unit?

No. The records just say the order was incorrect and the incident was regarded as closed. There was a rumour later on that a group of tank officers were at the root of it all

What does that mean? Can you explain it more clearly?

It isn’t clear to me either. The tank officers were eventually arrested, which made people think they’d deliberately caused the incident. But that was only a guess, and, as you know, the officers were soon set free again. After that no one has bothered about the affair…

Extracts from the autocritique of the head of personnel, motorized division: As regards the inquiries into the backgrounds of the tank officers, they were ordered by higher authorities^ and I wish to make it plain from the start that although the instructions were issued by my superiors, much of the responsibility in this matter is mine. I don’t deserve to be forgiven: I acted spinelessly, and my weakness made possible a deliberate mystification. I suspected from the outset (what head of personnel wouldn’t have smelled a rat?) that the request to investigate the backgrounds of the tank officers was not based on genuine suspicion but on anger and resentment. I realized that the object was not to discover the origins of an offence, but to find a pretext — class origin, for example — for finding the officers guilty. In short, although the request to examine their backgrounds with a microscope was festooned in a lot of revolutionary phraseology (they’d even taken the trouble to include a couple of quotations from the classic texts of Marxism-Leninism), it was obvious that the real motive was revenge. Î admit I never had a moment’s doubt about that. Nevertheless, though I knew I was collaborating indirectly in a procedure inconsistent with communist morality, instead of opposing my superiors and fearlessly expressing my opinion as a good communist should,! not only turned a Mind eye to the falsification of the truth, bet I knowingly helped to make it more plausible, So I agreed to delve into the officers’ pasts, and even though I didn’t find anything of any moment^ the mere fact of having done it in aid of personal vindictiveness is reprehensible …Especially as… Especially as I went so far as to interfere incertain aspects of people’s private lives, aspects I’m ashamed to mention here …

Consider yourself authorized to do so.

Well, for example, as regards the officer called Arian Krasniqi, I tried to cast aspersions on him because of rumours that circulated once about one of his sisters and her relationship with Skënder Bermema, the writer. Î meant to show that Krasniqi’s whole circle was morally “liberal”, obviously in the negative sense in which we usually use the term. I also exploited the fact that Skënder Bermema took an interest in Krasniqi’s case when he was arrested. I tried to cast grave suspicions on Krasniqi. I even…I even…I’m sorry, but I'm very upset…

Go on.

I even went so far ie my search for compromising facts that I bought a prose text by Bermema called Forgetting a Woman. It’s said to have been dedicated to one of Kraseiqi’s sisters. So, as there wasn’t much else to go on, I tried to make use of the book in this sordid affair.

How?

I sent it to a well-known critic —! can evee tell you his name…it was C–V—.! asked him to vet it for ideological errors, and he slammed it so energetically I must admit I could hardly believe my eyes.

Why did you choose C–V—?

He has a brother who works for us, and the brother had asked to be transferred to Tirana…But Pd like to point out that C–V— agreed to denounce Krasniqi without asking for anything ie return. That’s why I was so surprised,…

Anything else?

Eh? No, nothing…No, comrade, except that I don’t deserve to be a member of the Party, and I hope you’ll inflict the harshest possible punishment on me. But if the leadership will give me one last chance of coming back to life again, and do me the honour of letting me be a candidate for readmittance, I promise faithfully to do my utmost to deserve to be allowed back into the Party as one completely regenerated. That’s all I had to say.

Are you sure the officers were sent to jail simply out of personal revenge?

Yes. No principles were involved at all Only the desire for vengeance.

Extracts from the autocritique of the head of military intelligence: 1 admit my guilt. Although I knew perfectly well, because I had access to all personal records^ that there was no real reason for placing the tank officers under surveillance — they were under no genuine suspicion, the only motive was revenge, as the previous witness said — I agreed to get mixed up in this nasty affair. Why? Out of servility, that wretched survival of bourgeois society! I knew what my superiors wanted, so I did what was necessary to please them. Nothing easier than to dig up a few things the tank men had said about staff in moments of anger, and present them as evidence of rebellion against army leadership, if not against authority in general

Is that all?

It’s the main thing. The rest is secondary. I'm ready to accept any punishment you care to impose.

Since you organized the surveillance of the officers, as if they really were suspected of treason, presumably you were in a unique position to find out what their real intentions were, and consequently to say whether they were innocent or not?

That is so.

And the bad weather, and the lightning, which have so often been mentioned recently, didn’t prevent you from hearing quite clearly what they said?

No.

So what did you conclude from what they said?

That they had absolutely nothing to reproach themselves with.

Is that all?

Yes. What else could I have concluded? The purity of their intentions was as plain as could be. Their motives were clear as crystal. And to think I agreed to cover them with obloquy! I haven’t been able to sleep for months!

Is that all?

I don’t know what else you want of me,

Notes by delegate: Neither the head of personnel nor the head of military intelligence is being sincere, They’re both hiding something. I think the head of personnel is prevaricating when he says he thought that when his superiors asked him to investigate the tank officers” backgrounds they were acting out of a desire for revenge. I think he knew they were motivated first and foremost by fear. As for the head of military intelligence, he’s lying even more outrageously, because he knew, even better than the head of personnel, about the fears to which the tank officers’ attitude had given rise. The officers under surveillance had very probably often used such phrases as “It’s not done to encircle a Party committee…” “We’ve explained it to them, but they wouldn’t listen…” “We’re not living in China!”…“If we want to prove it, we can ask the Central Committee…”

If neither of these two witnesses has mentioned fear, it’s because that explanation would make them conscious accomplices in the wrongdoing in question.

As regards the bringing forward of the parachute landing, that was obviously motivated by a desire to justify the encircling of the Party committee by the tanks. They could say afterwards that they hadn’t ordered the Party committee to be encircled; they’d ordered it to be defended, but apparently this was rejected as too crude. Moreover the commando leader’s protestations about the bringing forward of the jump, and especially about the failure of the operation, prevented it from being used as justification for the encircling of the Party committee: that might have run the risk of exposing the whole machination. The most superficial inquiry would have revealed that the order for the parachute jump was given an hour after the tank officers refused to encircle the Party committee.

Supplementary note by the delegate: For information, we append a copy of the text entitled Forgetting a Woman, by Skënder Bermema, This is an exact copy of the manuscript deposited in the safe in the office of the head of personnel, motorized units.

FORGETTING A WOMAN

And what am I going to do now? I thought, looking at the closed shutters, warped by the rain; at the carpet; at the door by which she’d gone out a few moments ago; at the china ashtray with “Tourist Hotel” written round the edge,

I wandered round the room until my pacings brought me close to the door, I stood on the exact spot where she’d kissed me goodbye, a gesture that neither emphasized our parting nor held out any promise. Such a farewell, at the end of a stormy afternoon, is usually seen as a gesture of affection, of regret for angry exchanges; the meeting of lips often leads to the meeting of minds again, to complete forgiveness and reconciliation. But it wasn’t like that at ail I had kept my hands in my pockets — I’d even thrust them in deeper. I stood stiff as a ramrod as I felt her brash her lips against my neck and run her hand through my hair. Î felt just the faintest impulse to put my arms round her in the age-old ritual for ending a quarrel, but I seemed somehow to have turned to stone, and couldn’t move.

And now I didn’t feel any remorse. I just felt tired.

The ashtray was full of cigarette ends, like corpses on a battlefield (hers wore red round their heads to show what side they had fought on). This array bore witness to the sequence of events this afternoon: the outburst of anger, the painful explanations, the mutual accusations, her unquenchable tears. If a museum of sadness existed, I'd have taken the ashtray and offered it to the curator,

I was exhausted, I had a bitter taste in my mouth. All I wanted to do was rest, sleep. I looked doubtfully at the bed — the blanket, the pillow. Did I really think I was going to be able to sleep? I felt like laughing, the idea was so ridiculous.

The soothing sound of rain wafted in from outside. I absolutely must forget this woman, root her out of my life. But above all I had to repossess this evening — that was my most urgent necessity.

I had to do all this because the pleasure she gave me was always less than the pain.

I found myself walking over every square metre of the room we’d both paced round in the course of that senseless afternoon. The overflowing ashtray brought me to a halt. I emptied the cigarette butts into the palm of my hand. They were quite cold now. And such a short time ago they had been so warm, so close to us — to our words, our sighs, our regrets, our sobs.

I went over to the window, half-opened the shutters and threw the cigarette ends out into the darkness. Like scattering someone’s ashes, I thought. I must forget her. Use all my mental resources to denigrate her, so that when I was finally able to let her image go, it would vanish completely into oblivion, Destroyed.

I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of regret at this prospect, but I was sure it was the only way. I would soon lie down — I’d noticed

my most destructive thoughts came to me in that position — and thee Pd begin…Would she hear the sound of the bulldozers, lying in her bed?

Suddenly I had an idea. What if I put all this on paper? Perhaps, written down, this evening would be expelled from my life more easily? I would give it form in order to kill it more easily.

Yes, that’s what Pd do.

The thought of writing soothed me, as it always did, strangely enough, in such circumstances. Like a pilot flying his plane out of a storm, it bore me out of my turbulence into more tranquil skies.

The charm worked more quickly than I expected. I was soon fast asleep…

I recognized the South Pole from a long way off. (It was slightly flattened, as Pd learned in my geography lessons in primary school) I could hear the dell thud of hammering. As I got nearer I could see the noise was being produced by three squat little men trying to correct the earth’s axis. To adjust the speed at which it revolved, apparently. Henceforward, days would last thirty-eight hours, eights twenty-two. After much research and many surveys, it had been decided this would be a great improvement. I seemed to have read something to this effect in a paper or magazine.

I wanted to ask them when the new calendar began, but for some reason I asked quite a different question: “Seeing you’re experts at this sort of thing, I suppose you could remove bits of time?”

Of course they could, they replied. Child’s play!

Good Lord! So what had seemed so impossible to me — getting rid of all that sadness — was really quite easy!

I tried to explain to them that I wanted to lose a day, or rather a particularly painful evening.

They started to roar with laughter.

“An evening? Bet we only do things wholesale! Half-centuries, decades, years at the very least, But still,” — they looked at their tools — “perhaps if we used our most delicate equipment we might be able to manage days too…”

“Where is it?” asked one of them.

“What?”

“The day you want to get rid of, if I understand you correctly. You want to remove it, and then close up the gap, is that right?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“So where is it?”

My God,! couldn’t remember anything! I was drenched in sweat and my head was in a whirl.

“Maybe you can remember the year, or the decade?”

But I couldn’t. I only knew the day itself was sad, mortally sad…

“What happened in the world that day? What empire was overturned? Was there an earthquake?”

As I didn’t reply, they looked at one another. Thee they cast their weary eyes around, to where in the distance a maelstrom of fallen empires slowly revoked, together with plinths brought down by earthquakes, the skeletons of the ages. They all whirled around in the darkness, lit up by cold flashes of lightning.

I still couldn’t remember anything. All that remained was the bitter taste in my mouth. Nothing could remove or lessen that.

Then I suddenly thought I could see something that reminded me of a dress, floating sadly in the wind.

“A woman,” I told them. “A woman was there that day…”

They laughed, but coldly. Then looked at their equipment again.

“In that case it’s impossible. These instruments aren’t any good for that kind of work."

“Please! Please deliver me from that evening, and from that woman!” I started to howl…

… And woke myself up.

It was the sound of the rain that told me where Î was.

The hotel Outside, the fallen leaves and the little cigarette corpses, one army distinguished from the other by their red headbands…

She was there, only a few yards away. She’d be feeling uneasy, because somehow or other she must have sensed that I was trying to bury her.

* * *

Meeting followed meeting. What had been written or thought during the night was said there, sometimes so changed that, as he sat down, the person who’d read it out was amazed and told himself: “Good heavens, I thought I’d said something quite different!” Minister D—’s autocritique was due to be heard at a meeting at the ministry of defence. The tank officers, whose case was now the talk of the town, were also asked to be there.

“I suppose you’re going to speak,” said an officer —’ his badges showed him to be a sapper — who was sitting next to Arian Krasniqi He seemed to have recognized Arian, and was gazing at him with admiration. “Dash it all, if anyone ought to speak, it’s you. Don’t miss the chance of making these scoundrels shake in their shoes! I only wish I were you!”

Arian smiled mechanically. And what would you do if you were me? he asked the other inwardly. Wave a flag and win another stripe?

Other people had indirectly given him the same advice. They were openly disappointed to find him so reserved. They were no doubt saying to themselves, “What a drip! He’s not up to the situation!”

These others were in a state of permanent euphoria. They were firmly expecting to take the places of those about to be ousted, and could scarcely conceal their delight when they saw that the latter included some enemy with whom they had a score to settle, whether because of personal rivalry, or a grudge, or — this was very frequent — some trouble over a woman.

Despite their efforts to mask it with slogans or other empty phrases, their hostility was so obvious that at one meeting the person delivering his autocritique, taken aback by his interrogator’s spite and well aware of the real reason for it, ignored his questions and shouted wildly: “It wasn’t my fault at all! It was hers, Margarita’s, because she told me she loved me!”

“What do you mean — Margarita?” the other yelled back. “We’re talking about matters of importance here, matters of principle! And you go picking petals off a daisy!..”

“Could I help it if she wouldn’t marry you?…”

The chairman of the meeting then intervened to say that either the man in the dock had gone out of his mind, or else, as people in his position often did, he was pretending to have done so to try to avoid receiving his just deserts.

Sometimes at other meetings, still more embarrassing and unanswerable questions were asked, such as, “Why did you trample underfoot the blood of the martyrs?”

Arian found all this utterly pathetic. Once or twice he felt like playing the hero, but he easily resisted the temptation. “You don’t look in a very good temper,” someone said to him one day. “Have you got something on your mind?” “Do you think Î like what’s going on?” he answered. “What do you mean: the exposing of all these dirty tricks?” “That and all the rest.” “It all depends on the way you look at things.”

This was on the day Arian found out that Ana’s name had been mentioned at one of the meetings. He could have borne any accusation against himself better than an aspersion on his dead sister. He was almost blind with fury. But his anger was followed by bitterness. Would these people stop at nothing, digging up that name,bringing it back from the void to scatter it over the pages of their sordid confessions?

The mere thought of it filled him with disgust. Those responsible were probably here in this very room, perhaps they’d just delivered their autocritiques, perhaps they were going to take the stand again. If he’d wanted to, he could quite easily have found out their names, but he refused to do so. He knew that if he did, and then came up against one of them, it would be difficult to remain impartial And at a meeting like this, where people’s fates were at stake, and heads were in danger of rolling, he simply must remain unprejudiced.

The silence in the room grew deeper and deeper as minister D—’s autocritique proceeded. By the time it was over, his voice had almost faded away, and his eyes seemed to have sunk right into his head.

“Any questions?” asked the army officer who was chairing the meeting.

A lot of hands shot up. The minister answered their queries wearily. After about a quarter of an hour, someone mentioned “the affair of the tanks”. Arian’s neighbour clutched at his arm.

The minister was saying, “Of course, it was a bad mistake …The more you examine it the worse…”

“Are any of the tank officers here?” asked the chairman. “Many of us would like to hear from one of them,”

People started to crane their necks and whisper.

“Stand up,” whispered Arian’s neighbour. “What are you waiting for?”

“Is Arian Krasniqi here?” asked the chairman.

Someone said he was.

“Stand up, kid, and throw a scare into them!” his neighbour hissed in his ear.

Arian was in a daze. Afterwards, looking back, he couldn’t remember how he got from his seat to the rostrum. He sometimes thought he must have floated there in a trance.

“Well, Kraseiqi,” said the chairman, “tell us something about this affair of the tanks. You were there when the order arrived, weren’t you?”

Arian nodded, and suddenly, more clearly than ever before, the famous afternoon came back to him — the afternoon when his whole life almost snapped in two: the tanks lined up on the plain, their turrets glistening in the rain, the muzzles of the guns like blind eyes. It all came back so vividly he wouldn’t have been surprised to feel the rain falling on his shoulders. He started to speak, not focusing his eyes on anything inparticular as if he was afraid any distraction might make him lose that inner vision on which the truth, and his honour, depended.

Four days after Suva’s return, the rest of the team from the ministry came back to Tirana.

In Suva’s office, she and Linda swapped news for more than half an hour with the boss and Arian, who had come in that day with his sister. The weather was dull, so they’d switched the lights on, and this, together with their lively conversation, created a cheerful atmosphere.

The recent arrivals had had new stories to tell about the Chinese. Silva asked what was happening about the blast furnace, and was told that in two or three days’ time it was going to be unblocked by means of an explosion — that was the only solution.

“I believe the person in charge is a friend of yours, isn’t he?” said the boss, turning to Silva.

Silva thought she saw Linda avert her eyes on hearing this veiled reference to Besnik Strega’s younger brother, as she had when Silva first told her about the projected explosion, (She had even blushed a little,) After a week’s absence, Silva had noticed a change. Desks, filing cabinets, curtains, telephone — all were just as before. But even though it wasn’t visible, the difference was unmistakably there. For a moment it seemed to Silva that she caught a glimpse of it in Lindaus eyes, which were more beautiful now, even though they wouldn’t meet her own.

“And what about here?’ asked the boss. “Anything new here? We heard there was something, but it was all very vague…”

The other two relayed what people were saying about expulsions from the Party and the sacking of ministers. Every time a name was mentioned, the boss tut-tutted and said, “Dear me! Jolly good!” Then, as if to himself: “Well I never, all these plenums! What a turn-up for the book, eh?”

Scarcely twelve hours after the end of the plenum of the Central Committee, the names of those who had been expelled were announced. For the first time the words “putsch” and “putschist” were used as well as “sabotage” and “saboteur”. The people concerned were said to have been put under house arrest. Some rumours had it that three or four had even been arrested as they came out of the last session, and that when they collected their overcoats from the cloakroom their epaulettes and stripes had already been ripped off.

Everyone now linked these events with the deterioration of relations with China. Some went so far as to hint that although he had been literally reduced to ashes a long time ago, Zhou Enlai had given the conspirators their instructions by means of a tape recording. Most people, however, thought the plot was a domestic matter and that Zhou Enlai’s exhortations were merely ideological That seemed more probable: the Chinese certainly wanted a change in the Albanian Party line, as someone had said at an important high-level meeting, bet it wasn’t in their interests to overthrow the Albanian régime altogether.

One morning at the office, Silva looked out of the window and saw another crowd of Chinese in Government Square. Just as she’d done a few months before, she called to the others to come and see.

Next day, as if the crowd of Chinese in the square had been a sign, all the newspapers published the Peking government’s announcement that China was cutting off all aid to Albania and recalling all its experts.

Brief group meetings were called for nine o’clock, where everyone was informed of the gist of the Chinese declaration and of Albania’s reply. In the middle of the morning, everyone went down to the cafeteria as usual It was hard to believe they’d heard about the Chinese note only this morning. It seemed quite stale already, as if it had been sent months ago, even as if it had existed for ever.

Silva could scarcely help laughing when she thought of what Skender Bermema had said. She’d met him by chance near the National Theatre, and they’d walked together as far as the Street of the Barricades, He’d told her that the Chinese note had been accompanied by all kinds of weird documents, including an X-ray of a foot, which might have been the one Silva had mentioned to him some time ago.

“Of course/. he said, “it may be apocryphal — that sort of thing always flourishes in situations like the one we’re in now. But if they ever publish a white paper on Sino-Albanian relations in the past few years, they couldn’t find a more appropriate symbol to put on the cover than that Chink’s foot!”

Silva started to smile as she thought once again about Skënder’s suggestion, but her laughter died away on her lips. She’d just caught sight of Linda and Besnik Struga on the other side of the street. She stared incredulously. Bet yes, it really was them — it was even pretty obvious that they hadn’t met by chance. He had his hands in his pockets, and she was skipping along lightly by his side. She was smiling, too, but that was no ordinary smile: it radiated out over the world in general, and was clearly rooted in her whole being…Ah, thought Silva, now I see why she didn’t want to meet my eye.

The other two didn’t see her, and she felt a moment’s resentment as they disappeared along the street. But she soon realized that the feeling wasn’t directed against either of them. In fact, after a little, their being together seemed quite natural. They’d probably been seeing each other while she was away, and it was quite understandable that Linda hadn’t said anything about it. It would be mean not to see their point of view, especially as both of them would probably confide in her eventually, if they really…No, her sadness was because of Ana: because Ana wasn’t here any more, couldn’t walk lightly along the street as she used to do, and yet something of her…But was that possible? Could Linda, who had never met Ana, be acting like her in some way, as if under some influence from another world?… Perhaps, after all, that was why Besnik…

Silva quickened her pace to try to control her emotion.

“Mother,” Brikeea whispered as she went in, “Aunt Hasiyé’s here.” As she took off her coat, Silva saw signs of panic in her daughter’s face, but pretended not to notice. She’d told Brikena so often not to lose her head if a visitor turned up while she was alone in the apartment. As she’d told her the last time: it wasn’t as difficult as all that to give whoever it was a cup of coffee and make conversation for a while. But Brikena must have got Mustered again,

“What are you looking at me like that for?” said Silva. “It’s nothing out of the way for Aunt Hasiyé to drop in!”

“But, Mother, she started talking like…like the last time…”

“Oh, Brikena, you know she’s a bit strange ie the head now,” said Silva with a touch of annoyance. “People of her age can’t always remember…”

“But she keeps rambling on, saying ail sorts of odd things,” Brikena answered. “She’s asked me three times who I am — I was getting quite frightened.”

“AM right, all right/. said Silva shortly, making for the living room and putting on a welcoming expression. “How are you, Aunt Hasiyé? How’s everyone at home? Brikena, would you make Aunt Hasiyé a cup of coffee, please? And one for me too, if you will.”

As soon as the old woman started to speak, Silva realized that her state had got worse. She mixed up the living and the dead, and confused time, place and everything else. Brikena, making the coffee, turned round and looked at Silva as if to say, What did I tell you?

“How’s Ana? said Aunt Hasiyé. “I haven’t seen her for a long time.”

Silva bit her lip.

“But Ana’s passed on, Aeet Hasiyé,” she said gently. But the old lady either didn’t understand what she said, or else forgot it immediately.

“You hardly ever see your relations nowadays,’ she went on. “It used to be different in the old days. They used to come and see you of their own accord. But that’s all over now. Fortunately I still see them in my dreams…”

Silva smiled sadly.

“Everybody has such a lot to do now,” the old lady continued, “They’re all involved with politics, too. In my young days, people took an interest in politics, but not as much as now, I remember the time when the Chinese were here — but you’re too young to remember that! They had a very wicked sultan — a very, very wicked man with a name like a cat. Miao Zedong, he was called. But all the same he ended up breaking his neck!”

Brikena stifled a laugh.

“You two didn’t know the Chinese — you can afford to laugh! They had eyes like this…like slits. But Î can only just remember them myself. It’s a long time since they went away — a hundred years perhaps, maybe more, Î remember the day they went …A neighbour of ours, Lucas his name was, hanged himself with a luggage strap. Then the Germans came — I remember them very clearly. But they didn’t like the Russians…I remember the Italians as well — they wore perfume, like women …”

Silva and Brikena both burst out laughing. Brikena handed round the coffee.

“I listen to the radio,” said Aunt Hasiyé, “but I can’t understand a word the modern politicians say. Who was it, now, that they were insulting on the radio yesterday? The Turks?”

“No, Aunt Hasiyé — the Chinese.”

“No, no — not the Chinese, That was in my day. They took themselves off more than a century ago. No one can remember them. Now we’re at daggers drawn with the Turks. You don’t know what the Chinese are like — you’ve only dreamed about them!”

Aunt Hasiyé meandered on for some time, but Silva gradually stopped laughing. The way. the old woman mixed up times and tenses might seem very funny, but if you thought about it, other people’s attitude to time was no less absurd. There was something artistic about Aunt Hasiyé’s way of talking: not only in her mixing up of time, but also in her abolition of the frontiers between reality, dream and imagination. She asked again about Ana, insisting that she’d met her last month in the street, carrying a string bag full of oranges. Silva decided there was no point in trying to explain. Hadn’t she herself remembered her sister today? And was there really ail that difference between the old lady’s account of her meeting with Ana in the street and the description she herself might give of her impressions when she saw Besnik Struga and Linda an hour or so ago, and thought the dead woman had some how lent her colleague her light step?

Meanwhile the phone had rung and Brikena had run to answer it. It was Sonia, wanting to speak to Silva. She asked all three of them to go round that evening if they were free. Silva said it depended on Gjergj, but she’d talk to him when he got home, and call back.

Gjergj came in just as Aunt Hasiyé was getting ready to leave. To the delight of Brikeea, who was watching out for their visitor to produce more eccentricities. Aunt Hasiyé scarcely recognized the newcomer.

By the time all three of them set out for Arian’s place an hour later, it was dark. Two fire-engines were rushing down Pine Street, sirens shrieking.

“The human brain is a very strange thing,” said Gjergj. “We laughed at what Aunt Hasiyé was saying, but do you know, in her ramblings she mentioned something that actually happened today?”

Silva felt like exclaiming, “Telepathy!”

“She mentioned someone called Lucas hanging himself a hundred years ago. Well, he really did hang himself today. They were talking about it in the cafeteria at the ministry when! went in for a coffee.”

“Who was he?”

Gjergj shrugged.

“I couldn’t quite make out, to tell you the truth. One of the old guard,! think.”

Hava Fortuzi reminded her husband for the third time that it was unlucky to go straight home after a funeral

“What are we supposed to do, then? You know! don’t feel like going anywhere.”

“I know, darling, but we must go and see someone. It’ll be better for you too. I know — the Kryekurts! What do you think?”

“All right,” he grumbled. “I might have known we’d end up there. As usual”

“Better the devil you know…”

“Not necessarily…Oh, this suicide! I feel at the end of my tether!”

“Stop thinking about it.”

“I can’t, I can’t!” he moaned, “it’s not just Lucas himself — you know Î didn’t really know him very well But there’s something about his death that does seem close…familiar somehow…”

“You must just try to put it all behind you.”

“It gave me a shock as soon as I heard how he’d died. I asked how he’d done it, and when they said he’d used a luggage strap I nearly yelled out, That was just how I thought I’d do it myself!’“

“Ekrem! You go too far!”

“The parallel is quite natural We were both connected to…

Yesterday, when I read the Chinese note, my heart missed a beat. I expect his did too. It’s all over now. There’s nothing left. It’s the end.”

“Ekrem! Stop it!”

“it’s the end. The last hope… the last gleam of hope…”

“You must be crazy! People will hear you!”

“The one little dream…”

The gate into the Kryekurts’ courtyard was now in sight. Hava Fortuzi hurried towards it as to a haven. Î only hope they’re not talking about that wretch’s death, she thought. But in the Kryekurts’ living room that’s just what they were doing. Apart from Mark and his fiancée, both of whom remained silent, the company included Musabelli, two more of the Kryekurts’ acquaintance whom the Fortuzis hadn’t seen for some time, and the doctor who had cut the unfortunate Lucas Alarupi down. They were all just back from the funeral, and Hava Fortuzi was surprised to see they’d all wiped their shoes so carefully they bore no trace of mud from the cemetery. She suddenly had a feeling that they, and for that matter the whole human race, spent ail their lives going to funerals. So long as the doctor doesn’t regale us with all the details! she thought, looking first at the fellow’s short-cropped hair — a style he’d got the habit of in prison — then at her husband’s tense expression. But of course the doctor — he’d always brought her bad leek — launched straight into a blow-by-blow account of the suicide. Hava Fortuzi listened absently to, his account of the rue-down area where Lucas Alarupi did the deed: a piece of waste ground near the disused railway station, covered with dust, clinker, like most such places. There were also lots of sheets of paper, which the poor wretch had looked at one last time before taking his own life. Everything was there: production diagrams, photographs of star workers, graphs showing the progress of the plan, telegrams congratulating the trade unions for beating deadlines. Hava Fortuzi watched her husband as the doctor spoke. He was listening with bated breath, and she was sure he was imagining his own feet dangling over bits of his translations of economic reports and other official documents, not to mention the poems of Mao Zedong.

As the doctor explained how he’d suspected for some time that Lucas’s delusions would bring him to a sticky end, Hava Fortuzi thought with horror of her own Ekrem’s fantasies: an invitation from Mao himself for the two of them to spend a fortnight at Mount Kunlie; long imaginary conversations in classical Chinese in which he gloated over Guo Moruo: “Tee-hee, now there’s someone who knows more ideograms than you!” And so on.

It looked as though this cursed quack was going to blather on for ever. After trying several times to get a word in, Hava finally just interrupted.

“It may be stale news to everyone else, but I’ve heard rumours about a new rapprochement with the Soviet Union,’ she said.

“I don’t believe it for a moment,’ declared the doctor.

“Neither do I,” said Musabelli after a moment’s reflection.

“What about a rapprochement with the West, then?” gabbled Hava, terrified lest the doctor go back to Lucas’s death. If she hadn’t been so concerned about her husband she would never have said such a thing: she and Ekrem had gone over it so often it made her ill just to think of it.

“Even less likely,” pronounced the doctor.

“I agree,” said Musabelli.

Ekrem Fortuzi sighed. Perhaps it was his sickly looks, perhaps the parallel between his own obsession and that of the departed — at any rate, his sigh seemed so momentous it made everyone else fall silent. He might not have intended to say anything, but as they seemed to be waiting for him to speak, he did so.

“Paradoxical as it may seem,” he said faintly, “if I had to choose between China and the West, I’d choose China. Not because I dislike the West — on the contrary, because I love it, and should like it to exist in as safe a form as possible.”

Looking round at his audience, he saw they hadn’t understood.

“Let me explain,” he said, “A West dressed up in socialist clothes would be safer, in my opinion, than it is in its naked form, as in Europe. Do you see what I mean?” He lowered his voice, “That’s the kind of West we need — one wearing masks and disguises. Otherwise we shall always be in danger …Anyhow, perhaps we don’t need Europe at all any more …We’re older, we’ve changed, Europe isn’t for us any more… That’s the point, you see …Our only chance… our only chance was China. That’s why I wept, I admit, and I’m not ashamed to do so. It’s more shameful not to weep. And so, And so …But what was I saying? …Oh yes, I cried, I cried my eyes out yesterday when I heard them read out China’s announcement on the radio…”

As the others all gazed at each other, Ekrem got up and went out of the room. ln the silence that followed, his wife went out after him. After a few moments she came back, looking relieved,

“He’s in the bathroom,’ she said in a stage whisper. “I’ve been worried about him ever since yesterday. I think he’s on the verge of a breakdown. The wretched Chinese language has driven him mad. They talk about an embargo on oil and chrome and I don’t know what else, but that’s nothing compared with what’s happened to Ekrem. All the Chinese he learned, gone down the drain! What’s chrome or oil beside that? They’ll soon find another market for that sort of thing — but what about all that Chinese? Ekrem’s quite right to be depressed, poor thing. Last night it quite broke my heart to look at him, I’ve already told you how he wept — more than anyone else outside China, I'm sure — when Mao died. Bet Î thought that was all over. And then yesterday evening I heard him start up again!. My poor Mao,’ he was sobbing, ‘they’ve all stopped loving you, they’ve all deserted you before your body is cold. The only one who still thinks about you and loves you is me, an Albanian, an ex-bourgeois. But let the others forget you, or curse you — I shall go on translating you as before…’ And so he went on, poring over his Chinese books. Now you’re dead, the Word is dead,’ he said. Oh, I'm so afraid something might happen to him, if it hasn’t done so already! Alarupi’s suicide was the last straw!”

Mesabelli was about to speak when Ekrem came back into the room. Everyone would have liked to say something, so as not to look as if they’d been talking about him but they were all lost for words. Perhaps they were paralyzed by the way he himself looked from one to the other, as if to say, “Well, you’ve been discussing me. What do you say? Have! gone completely bonkers?”

In the silence, Mark’s fiancée whispered something in her young man’s ear. He’d been staring down at the pattern in the threadbare carpet.

Il fait froid, she said again, even more softly. Her pale blue eyes had darkened. And without waiting for the conversation to start up again, they both got up and went into the other room. Hava Fortuzi watched them enviously.

“Turn your collar up,” Silva told Brikeea, who could hardly keep her eyes open.

It was very damp as they walked back through the city centre just before midnight. A small group of roadsweepers walked along in front of them, talking.

“They’re talking about the Chinese,” said Silva.

“What can roadsweepers have to say about the Chinese?” asked Brikena sleepily.

On the opposite pavement a man dressed like a foreigner had stopped to listen,

“No, no,” laughed one of the roadmen. “As sure as my name is Rem, you won’t catch me again! You can say what you like about Mao Zedong, I shan’t open my lips. I’d rather bite my tongue out than utter his name. I’ve already copped it once that way — I did fifteen years in jug because of Krushchev. And when, I ask you? When everyone was insulting him! Oh no, never again! Everyone else calling him all the names they could lay their tongues to, and me rotting behind bars! just because! started cursing him a couple of hours before everyone else!”

The other roadsweepers laughed.

“You didn’t go to jail for insulting Krushchev,” said one of them. “They put you away for relieving yourself against the tree he planted in the garden opposite the Hôtel Dajti, in honour of Albano-Soviet friendship,”

“So what?” said Rem. “What’s the difference between a tree and the person who planted it? Don’t talk to me about it — it makes me fit to be tied!”

“You mustn’t lose your temper today, Rem — the last day before you retire! Thirty years sweeping the streets for the new man to walk along — isn’t that what the union boss said? I tell you, it brought tears to my eyes.”

“Yes, it quite upset me as well,” said Rem,

“How amusing!” said Brikena. “I’ve never heard roadsweepers talking before. Don’t walk so fast, Mother —! want to listen.”

But by now they’d left the roadmen behind, and could hear only snatches of what they were saying.

“Come on, Rem! Wield your broom for the last time! You’ve swept some things away in your lifetime! Sweep the street clean for the last time! Sweep the whole surface of the earth clean!”

“What are they saying, Father?” asked Brikena, “I thought I heard one of them call out, ‘Sweep the surface of the earth clean of everything to do with the Chinese!’“

“I shouldn’t be surprised!” said Gjergj, slowing down. He looked over at the roadmen, who at present were standing still. The man on the other side of the street, now quite clearly a foreigner, had also stopped to listen. But the roadmen had fallen silent.

“The one who’s retiring really is sweeping the street for the last time,” said Silva.

And in the distance they could see one of the men swishing his broom back and forth along the crown of the road, raising a cloud of dust and shrouding himself in mystery.

It was long past midnight, and messages from Europe were becoming few and far between. The observer at the Pole looked at his log-book: his notes were thinning out too. His superiors had pointed it out to him, but there was nothing he could do about it.

People said it was a kind of professional illness that afflicted everyone who did this job. After the first few months they gradually became indifferent. This aloofness brought about great changes in the way they perceived the universe: space, distance, time and events all assumed different dimensions. Many things that before had seemed important and established now seemed like ephemeral trifles; others arose out of nothingness and night to blaze like new planets. When people talked about the world’s reserves of oil or coal or rock salt, he marvelled that no one ever thought about the world’s reserves of malice, goodness and crime. History was written quite wrongly: a few battles and treaties, but all the most important things left out. Where for example would you find a single word about the twelve thousand girls in Europe who fell in love between five o’clock and a quarter to six on the afternoon of 20 September 1976? — in what annals, what diplomatic documents, historical or geo-strategic maps? And what about the sorrow of eleven generations of bald men between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times? It was that kind of thing that was the real stuff of history, not that other squeaking of rats reeling home from some grotesque evening out, the tedious pastime of Lilliputians!

He realized that if he went on like that he’d end up neglecting his work and probably get sacked; but he’d given up bothering about that a long time ago. He’d find some other, less demanding job, or perhaps write his memoirs — The Solitude of the World Listener. His reminiscences would probably turn out as peculiar as the chattering radio messages, but perhaps they too would be punctuated by quieter passages, about the state of the ice, the temperature of the water, the barometric pressure.

He certainly wouldn’t be writing about the everyday trivia of politics. The international monetary crisis was going to get worse, people said. And the next Pope would be a Pole — dear me, what a scoop! He looked at the time: he would be waking up his colleague in a few minutes. He’d jot down a few more notes, old chronicler of the planet that he was, like some medieval monk working by flickering candlelight; then he’d go to bed. A huge yawn blocked his ears for a moment and prevented him from hearing half of a sentence about China, Heavens, all the things he’d scribbled down on that subject lately!

But wait a minute! What they were saying just now was a bit out of the ordinary, more in the style of his own reflections. He leaned forward, hunching up his shoulders to bring the earpieces closer to his ears…In Albania they think China should he swept off the face of the earth … Good grief, thought the observer, who could have said such a thing? It was all very well for him to think it himself, sitting there on top of the world, but down there in that ridiculous mess, what far-sighted spirit was responsible for such a point of view? He concentrated, trying to hear more: People walking the streets of Tirana at night express the opinion that Mao Zedong’s China ought to be swept off the surface of the earth … This is the first time anyone had formulated in so radical and absurd a manner an idea so. Well, my lad, thought the observer, inwardly addressing the unknown broadcaster, you may see it like that, but I agree with that sentiment entirely! And he suddenly longed to be having a quiet whisky somewhere with that anonymous passer-by from Tirana, peacefully discussing what countries seemed to them superfluous, what centuries they could do without, and how to rid the planet of such things, unfasten them and let them fall into the void. Just like that, he mused, aware he was about to lose the thread of his thoughts…The sadness of eleven generations of bald men hovered sadly, like a great condor, over the globe …I may be going round the bend, he told himself, but that doesn’t matter either…

The headset, which was now dangling from his hand, was emitting poor little twittering noises. Drivel away, he told them — I’m not going to listen any more! He’d been gazing for some time at the wall, at the day’s date on the calendar. There was a blue ring round it, picking it out as marking one of the only two dawns visible from here in the whole year. In six months of polar darkness, he had never once seen the sun rise. He had come there during that polar night, and now for the first time he was going to see the day. Mustn’t miss this! he thought.

He dropped his headset on the floor, put on his anorak and walked over to the door. It did occur to him that he ought to wake his colleague to replace him, but he dismissed this insignificant thought from his mind.

The sen now really was rising. It was incredibly white, stunning as a cry, but constantly shrinking at the edges so as to let you pass. The monitor made his way across the ice in a kind of trance, not looking back. Except once: and when he saw the little building, so small and sombre in the distance, like a witch’s cottage, with all that idiotic chatter inside, he felt like roaring with laughter.

i'm not mad, he told himself. It’s just that my head is full of the light of a thousand mornings rolled into one. Or rather, with the light of a hundred and eighty-two dawns.

He walked on towards the pure expanses of ice far away from the noisy hut. If he’d turned back he’d only hâve heard a lot of ramblings about the two Germanics, the Roman Empire and the seveeteenth century. It wasn’t worth it. Such things weren’t important enough to deserve a backward glance.