The Concert

18

PROBLEMS WERE ARISING EVERYWHERE, A Sudden drop in the temperature followed by two earthquakes in succession in central Albania seemed designed to complete the picture. The first green shoots of March and the open-air cafés opening up by the artificial lake outside Tirana — all the things suggesting holidays and the pleasures of the beach seemed shocking and incongruous, like a grin at a funeral.

The docks were cluttered up with heaps of chrome ore which the Chinese had deliberately omitted to load. As if the slump in oil production wasn’t enough, the sudden fall in prices on the world market invoked the country in considerable financial loss. But chrome and oil weren’t the only sectors affected. The entire structure of foreign trade was shaken. Export agents hastened abroad in search of new markets, but European companies weren’t in any hurry to oblige. The sound of telex machines was rarely heard these days.

Such representatives of European firms as did arrive at Tirana airport all had long hair and extravagant beards — some real, but some false, according to two or three Albanian sales reps who’d met their owners a couple of months before, since when there would not have been time for such beards to come into being naturally. This was confirmed by a brief report specially prepared by the Central Institute of Hygiene, which said that even in extreme circumstances a human hair cannot grow by more than one and a half centimetres per month,

There had already been grotesque scenes in the past between foreign visitors and Albanian officials, ever since Tirana airport had been equipped with a barber’s shop. Newcomers were promptly taken there if their hair or beards “were an affront to the honour of the country of arrival.” This gave rise to much resentment and sometimes to angry outbursts: one visitor took one look in the glass after his unruly mop had been shorn off, and burst into tears, sobbing “What have they done to my Sylvana?” But on the whole such disagreeable incidents were either avoided or hushed up.

Now, however, it was different. Both sides seemed to have decided to stick to their guns. The visiting sales reps refused to sit meekly down in the barber’s chair, and the Albanian officials declined to make any concessions. The former protested loudly and threatened to go home on the planes they’d just arrived by, contracts or no contracts.

Some of them actually did so.

But only to return a fortnight later decked out even more extravagantly, their locks and whiskers longer than before (some even went in for “punk” — unheard-of!). Then the same scenes unfolded as before, with the same protests and the same refusals, and back the visitors marched to their plane, whose pilot already had the engines running, it was at this point that one of the foreigners, going up the steps to the aircraft, uttered the fateful words, “You see — the same as ever!” In this phrase lies the explanation of what followed.

This “The same as ever!”, relayed to high places, together with all that it implied (“You’re just as pigheaded as you were before,’ “You won’t learn, will you?” “That’s right — turn your backs on the outside world!”), soon brought a riposte, which duly made its way down again and exhorted the lower echelons: “Don’t yield an inch!”

“You really are cracked!” exclaimed the agent of yet another foreign firm the next day. “You’re the crazy ones!” replied the Albanian official who was dealing with him. What the official meant was: “You envoys from the capitalist world surely don’t still expect us to change our policy and open up to the outside world?” etc. Meanwhile the barber had appeared in the doorway of his shop, brandishing his scissors menacingly.

The same as ever…Sempre gli stessi …So the visitors’ behaviour was a stratagem, aimed at testing Albania and assessing the scale of its present difficulties. The news of what was happening soon spread by word of mouth all over the capital. One young literary lecturer who’d spent half his sabbatical rummaging through the archives found what he said was a parallel incident in a medieval chronicle. In the fifteenth century a certain Albanian fortress, which had been besieged by the Turks for so long that its supplies were almost exhausted and its inmates beginning to go hungry, gave a mêle a huge feed of corn and threw it over the ramparts. When the Turks opened up the mule and found all the undigested corn, they thought the people in the fortress must have plenty of food to spare, and gave up all hope of starving them into surrender. So they abandoned the siege and went away,

This tale gave rise to great controversy in literary circles. The analogy was considered very doubtful. The situation of present-day Albania bore no resemblance to that of the ancient fortress, which was suffering from a genuine famine, and the sending away of the sales reps was nothing like the throwing of the mule over the ramparts. But in the meanwhile the literary review which had published the text had come to the attention of foreign secret services, and though no one knew how they had interpreted it, the incident ie question was repeated a week later. The same reps as before reappeared at Tirana airport — as obstinate as any mules!

Again they were asked to visit the barber’s shop. Again they refused, turned on their heels, and made for the waiting plane.

Then for some days there was practically no traffic at the airport. Very few planes landed or took off, and if one did, the airport staff waited in vain for any hairy reps to disembark.

One rainy day an elderly customs official who’d been suffering for some time from high blood pressure looked out and saw a kind of black cloud hovering over the landing strip. Now the official had seen the Chinese prime minister arrive here and appear in the doorway of his plane no fewer than four times. And since the cloud was hovering at about that level; and perhaps because the customs man had heard about the Chinese prime minister’s ashes being scattered from a plane; and perhaps also because he’d been having dizzy spells lately — well, for some or all of these reasons, he thought the wandering black cloud was the tormented spirit of Zhou Enlai.

It was a boundless ocean, a galaxy of plots, secret machinations and bloody putsches. It was full of the names of monosyllabic victims, whose heads plunged down into the depths and then bobbed up again in a slow dance of death. Some were still red from the burning breath of the present, some dull, cold and covered by the dust of oblivion. They came and went as in a spiritualist séance, scarcely knowing themselves whether they sought revenge, victims or a return to the void.

Enver Hoxha turned the pages of his political journal one by one. He’d been keeping it for years, and it contained thousands of pages about China. A few hours ago he’d had it brought to the house on the coast where he was speeding the weekend. He pushed the small globe away to make room on his desk for the journal. Through the window he could see the deserted coast, with its sand hardened by the winter. His glance came to rest now on one page, now on another, now on a date, now on a heading: Tuesday, 6 October 1964 — bad signs; Thursday, 10 November 1966 — explanations of Kan Cheng…

He’d known some of the people mentioned in these pages personally. Others, long swept away by the changes and chances of the age, were represented by words, intrigues or thoughts that had reached him through reports or radio messages. All this ought to be made available to the world at large, he thought.

His fingers went on turning the pages: Wednesday, 17 February 1971 — Chen Potah sentenced to death for treason; Monday, 15 November 1971 — Reflections on China; Dürres, Saturday, 28 July 1972 — The Lin Biao “plot”.

He paused at this entry. He’d devoted several pages to the various versions of the marshal’s death, and the doubts he’d had about it at the time…The plane had crashed…Caught fire…That’s all anyone knew. According to an Ottawa paper, Kissinger had told the Canadian prime minister that ballistics experts had found bullet marks in the wreckage of the plane…Why should shots have been fired inside the cabin? Who had done it, and why?

He shook his head. An endless series of infamies, that was the only way to describe it.

He looked for his pen among the scattered pages, then underlined the words “Reflections on China”. That was what he’d call his book. It was right that the world should have access to this testimony — it could only be of use to it. He underlined “Reflections on China. again: it would be hard, he thought, to find another country and another people who’d known China as closely as his own country and his own people.

From the corner of the table the small globe cast its shadow over the papers. Sometimes he’d harboured dark thoughts about that globe. Such terrible thoughts they might almost have made it fall out of its trajectory. But this hadn’t happened.

Zhou Enlai,… Tcheng…Tchang…They kept appearing and reappearing, as to the summons of a gong echoing through time.

He looked up from his desk and gazed out again at the deserted coast. A telephone rang somewhere in the depths of the villa. When, after a short while, someone knocked at the door and told him the blast furnace at the steel complex had been unblocked by means of an explosion, he could still hear the echo of the telephone ringing in his ears. The messenger was hovering in the doorway,

“Anything else?”

The man’s expression foreshadowed his answer.

“One man was killed in the explosion. Another was blinded. There were some other casualties.”

Enver Hoxha sat motionless. The explosion had left one person dead and several injured. He looked at the journal as if the incident were already written there. He had a fleeting vision of war casual-ties, old comrades of his who had probably died of their wounds. They’d met their deaths during a period he’d described as “The Age of the Party”, whereas the victims of the blast furnace, forty years later, were probably young, the same age as the earlier victims’ sons. Their injuries would be different too — wounds caused not by bullets or shells, but by molten metal, the raw material of death…But it all came to the same thing in the end…

Yes, in taking up the torch, they all took upon their vulnerable shoulders the burden of sacrifice.

He looked out at the beach again to rid himself of the negative part of the news he’d just heard. The millennium was approaching its end, and his country was going to have to settle its accounts with a world it had never loved. He had done all he could to ensure that Albania should embark on the third millennium in the form he had imparted to it. Bet he still had to see to it that this form lasted for ever, that no one else ever altered it.

He looked back at his papers again, so fixedly that some of the Chinese names seemed to merge with some of the Albanian ones he’d just been thinking about.

Jest as at the time of the break with the Soviets, many people would see the rupture with China as a farewell to communism — or to the East, as it was called in some parts of the world. These same people would expect to see the churches reopened and ordinary life liberalized — a general “opening up”.

But they would rub their hands too soon, as before. And as before he would strike them down without mercy.

He reached for his pen to write these thoughts down. He thought them over for a while, in order to phrase them with suitable solemnity. When he’d set them down in black and white, he smiled.

Twenty-four hours before the unblocking of the furnace, at about two in the morning, a telegram arrived on the desk of the duty officer at Central Committee headquarters. It reported the discovery of oil in the area where test-drilling had been in progress for some months. But even before the good news had been transmitted by phone to all the government offices in Tirana, it had already been brought to the capital by the passengers on the early-morning train, who, looking out of the windows as they rolled across the plain, saw flames from the burning oil-well leaping up into the dawn sky. The engine-driver had tooted the whistle several times, and the passengers stood glued to the icy windows gazing spellbound at the column of fire on the horizon.

Ex-minister D—, handcuffed in his cell in Tirana, awaiting trial, heard those whistle blasts as a series of howls. O God, he sighed. What was the source of all his troubles? The examining magistrate had mentioned the “agitation” he’d felt during the famous telephone call that ill-fated evening — an agitation which he’d never mentioned to anyone, and which he was sure no one had suspected at the time. Apparently that was what it all started from …God, why hadn’t he thought of it before? It was staring him in the face now…It must have been that visitor who never turned up, that minor civil servant whose name he couldn’t even remember — he must be the one who told! Did he come back and lurk around his house like a ghost?. Judas! he groaned. Why didn’t you choose someone else? Why did you have to pick on me?

Another whistle, longer this time, died away in the distance.

That same morning, at about a quarter past six, on a stretch of waste ground in the north-west suburbs of Tirana, not far from the railway line, where a week before the former factory owner, Lucas Alarupi, had been found hanging from an old telegraph pole (with newspaper cuttings, pages of statistics and all sorts of other papers scattered around over a radius of about twenty yards) — at this exact spot some municipal workers unloaded several crates from a van. On the crates, beneath some big Chinese characters, was written the word, “Fireworks”,

The men had been instructed to attract as little attention as possible when destroying all these firecrackers and rockets, but when they’d selected this remote spot they’d forgotten that the railway line ran along beside it.

In the growing light of dawn they saw the waste lot was typical of those you get near big cities. The muddy ground, the scattered rubbish, the old tin cans, the dew as viscous as rain at night on a rubber cape — all combined to create a kind of lunar landscape. Not a real one, like what we see on our friendly old moon, but one of the sinister kind transmitted by cameras on space flights.

“Come on, let’s get to work,” said the man who appeared to be in charge, levering open one of the crates. “And mind it doesn’t all blow up in your faces!”

He took a rocket out of the crate and carefully applied his cigarette lighter,

“Hell, it must be damp!” he growled. “Pass me another one.”

The rocket suddenly started to sputter, then, to the shouts of the workmen, flew up into the air and landed a few yards away. It gave out a little flame, and a few sparks, then started to whirl round on its own axis with a stifled hiss. Another leap, and then it exploded, shedding a lurid glow all over the waste lot.

“Apparently they make all sorts of patterns — dragons and snakes — if you can get them to go high enough,” said one of the men.

“That’s why they decided to destroy them,’ said another.

“That’s enough philosophizing,’ shouted the boss. “Get on with the job — we’re already behind time. Only be careful not to get burnt!”

Cautiously at first, then more and more recklessly, the workmen let off the crackers and rockets, directed now by a couple of experts, The hitherto dreary waste lot began to glow with all kinds of wild and peculiar illuminations,

Just then the train whose passengers had seen the oil strike Earning in the distance was slowly approaching the central station. The workmen turned to look at it. The passengers all looked back out of the windows,

“What are you doing?” called a girl traveller gaily. The fireworks were reflected in her fair hair, streaming in the wind.

“We’re destroying the Chinese fireworks,” answered one of the younger workmen, forgetting they’d been told not to tell anyone what they were doing,

“What?”

He repeated his reply, but the train had moved on and the girl couldn’t hear. Someone else waved at them from another coach. From the last coach but one a voice shouted:

“Have you heard? They’ve struck oil!”

The workmen stood discussing the good news for a while after the train had gone,

“I thought they might tell us something about the blast furnace,” said one of them, “I’ve got a brother working there.”

Then they returned to their labours, reflecting that the news of the oil strike ought to be celebrated with something less sinister than Chinese fireworks.

Meanwhile the train reached Tirana, at the same time as the news of the joyful column of flame,

The early part of the day was very tense. Rumours had reached the capital about the unblocking of the blast furnace and the finding of a new oil-field — perhaps the same train had brought both stories — bet these mingled with the latest rumours about a plot said to have been discovered by Enver Hoxha in person. He was supposed to have surprised the putschists conspiring in a villa, or in the cellar of a villa, and they’d all flung themselves down on their knees and begged for mercy.

Far-fetched as all this was, one fact was corroborated by more or less reliable sources: the plot really had been discovered by Enver Hoxha. It was even said that at a meeting of the Politbureau he’d asked the Minister of the Interior why conspiracies were always uncovered by the Party and never by the state security services. The minister had turned pale,

By the beginning of the afternoon, everyone was talking about the plot, although the situation still wasn’t clear. In the bar at the Dajti Hotel the foreign diplomats, who’d got wind of something, exchanged the latest news, vague and incoherent though it was. Even vaguer and more incoherent was the form in which the various embassies transmitted it by radio. Then, faster even than in the days when the ancient gods had their own messengers, the news spread far and wide through celestial space via spy satellites, some of which indeed bore the names of Greek gods.

What’s happening? It seems very odd. Intelligence experts everywhere kept taking off their headsets and putting them back on again, just as perplexed as their superiors by seeing a national hullabaloo being made about such relatively trivial incidents as the discovery of a new oil-field and the unblocking of a blast furnace. Bet if you looked at it more closely — wasn’t it really perhaps another plot? No, no, there was no possibility of confusion of that kind. It was really a question of property. What? What kind of property? Private property was consigned to the dustbin a long time ago…But I’m talking about public property, collective property…Oh, you still believe in that, do you? And so it went on, the satellites exchanging their strange cheepings and twitterings, like the cries of some prehistoric bird that had got stranded in time and was struggling to get back into the world.

The boss had been summoned to see the vice-minister. Silva and Linda had been looking forward to having a private chat. Yet they sat at their desks and said nothing. The more Silva tried to find a way to start a conversation, the more foolish she felt, which made her annoyed first with herself and then with her colleague… I can’t talk to her as I used to since I saw the two of them together like that, she thought. But what’s the matter with her? She might at least jest behave as usual… Anything would be better than this…

But she found she couldn’t be angry with Linda. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her profile — expectant, touching. And touching in a rare way: not because it was sad, but because it was happy, Silva decided she herself must take the responsibility for the present awkwardness. She had guessed Linda’s secret, and must have given out waves which the other girl, anxious as she was, had interpreted as negative. In any case, the fact that Linda found she couldn’t go on as if nothing had happened proved that she didn’t want to be deceitful Poor kid, it’s not her fault, thought Silva. It’s quite understandable that she shouldn’t have told me about her affair, if that’s what it really is. Any woman in her position would have felt embarrassed about it.

If only she knew I don’t mind at all! On the contrary, it would be the ideal solution for Besnik It had occurred to Silva more than once that perhaps she ought to broach the subject herself, quite plainly and straightforwardly. But she hadn’t liked to.

In similar circumstances, before, she would have got out of such difficulties by some sort of polite evasion^ like pretending she hadn’t seen them that afternoon. She was just considering this, glancing occasionally at the door in the hope that someone would come in and help break the ice, when the silence was interrupted by the telephone. It sounded so loud she almost cried out. When she picked up the receiver and heard Besnik Strega’s voice, she nearly exclaimed, “What a coincidence!” She would indeed have done so, if Linda hadn’t been there …But there was something odd about his voice…

“Listen,’ he said. “The Bermemas are in trouble. One of the family, a young engineer called Max — perhaps you’ve met him — was killed this morning at the steel complex.“

“What?” gasped Silva. “How…?

“And that’s not all Victor Hila… “What, him too?”

“He’s still alive, but he’s been blinded.”

“Oh, how dreadful!” Silva cried.

The words were so flat, so inexorable, like the woes that prompted them. Death, blindness — things that stretched back to ancient tragedy,

“Silva,’ Besnik went on, “it’s rather awkward for me to go and see the Bermemas, as you know, but I must. Max was Ben’s closest friend…”

“Yes, Î met them together at the complex, just as they were preparing to … How is Ben?”

“Just superficial burns. Several other people were injured too. Listen, this is why I’m calling you: are you going to go over? I know it’s difficult for you too, because of Skender Bermema, bet…”

“Yes, but of course US go! If…”

“Victor’s still there, in the local hospital I’ll tell you more about how he is later on.’

“All right…”

“Ill call you at home, then, at about four o’clock^ so that we can go together. I think they’re bringing the body back around midday, and the funeral’s due to take place late this afternoon.”

Silva replaced the phone. She was shattered.

“Has something happened?” asked Linda, looking frightened. Silva nodded,

“Someone we know… died this morning at the steel complex.”

“How awful,’ Linda murmured.

“And that isn’t all” Silva paused, as Besnik had. “Victor Hila — you remember him, I’m sure — has been blinded.”

Linda turned terribly pale.

“How dreadful!” she whispered, almost inaudibly.

“All those jokes about the Chinaman and his foot,” said Silva, as if to herself. “Who’d have thought it would all end like this!”

“Oh yes, I remember!” said Linda. “He said it was all very well to laugh, but…It’s as if he had a presentiment.”

“Yes, it was that stupid story that started it all,” said Silva, “if he hadn’t had to leave his factory, he’d still be alive now.”

It didn’t shock Linda to hear Silva unconsciously equate blindness with death.

She sighed. Almost moaned.

“It was Beseik Struga I was talking to,” said Silva. She didn’t look at Linda as she spoke, thinking to spare her blushes. “His brother’s one of the injured.”

She thought of the stricken Bermema family. In the present circumstances, no awkwardness about past relationships ought to stop her going to see them. Besides, now that Ana was dead, the tension that once existed between the Bermemas, the Strugas and the Krasniqis had necessarily faded. And perhaps it would disappear altogether if …Silva turned towards Linda, and found Linda gazing back at her,

“Silva,” she said faintly. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

Silva could imagine how hard it was for her to speak: she sounded as if she might break down at any moment.

“I know, Linda,” she said. Linda stared back out of beautiful, wide grey eyes, “I saw you out in the street together.”

Linda flushed.

“I kept meaning to …but you see …I was so embarrassed …”

“I understand. But these things happen, and there’s absolutely no need for you to feel uncomfortable as far as I’m concerned. It’s perfectly natural, and as long as there are men and women …”

The words sounded so platitudinous, Silva changed the subject back to the accident, and what had happened to Max and Victor, It occurred to her that Linda, like everyone with a fixed idea, might still have preferred to go on talking about Besnik. But in fact she was listening intently to everything Silva said about the Bermemas. So much so that Silva, by intuition rather than logic, found herself asking if Linda would like to go with her to see them,

Linda shrugged.

“Yes, I'd like that very much, if you really think …”

“If you want to come, come,” said Silva, “It’s not like an ordinary death. When there’s a disaster of this kind, everyone comes to offer condolences, not only immediate family.”

Then it struck Silva that Linda oughtn’t to go if she regarded her relationship with Besnik as just a passing affair. Her decision as to what to do this afternoon might almost be regarded as a test…

“I wonder what Besnik …” stammered Linda,

“I think he’d want you to go,” said Silva. “After all, his younger brother was injured…”

“Yes, so you said…”

And at this point their conversation ended, because the boss had just walked in.

To Linda’s distress they didn’t get another chance to talk all the rest of the morning, and so didn’t finish their discussion about the afternoon. Even when she and Silva left the office, they weren’t alone: a group of colleagues- insisted in walking along with them. One called out, “I say, has anyone seen anything of Simon Dersha? I haven’t set eyes on him for days,” “Nor have I,” someone answered. Yes, thought Silva, he does seem to have vanished without our noticing. But she didn’t have time to pursue the subject, for Linda came up and whispered shyly: “So what are we doing about this afternoon, then?”

“I think it’ll be all right for you to come,” Silva reassured her. Then, after they’d walked on a few paces:

“It won’t seem out of the way. Well all be there.“

Linda nodded a rueful goodbye to her colleagues and turned towards home. “Well all be there…” What did that mean? Who were “we”? Why hadn’t Silva suggested their meeting and going together?

Linda felt hurt. The others still regarded her as an intruder. They were jealously protecting their own little circle. “Well all be there …” But she’d have to make her way there alone. Even Besnik hadn’t said anything to her: he’d talked to Sika on the phone as if she, Linda, had never set foot in the office. Yes, for all of them she was still an outsider…

But as she walked slowly along, her bitterness gradually waned. I’m just being childish, she thought How was Besnik to know she’d want to go to the funeral? From his point of view it was something she’d be glad to be spared… Linda sighed. How were any of them to know that if she wanted to go it wasn’t to please anybody, still less out of morbid curiosity (ugh I she could hardly bear to think of it!), but simply because she was fascinated by them and their world. She longed to be close to everything that concerned them, whether joy or sorrow. No, they could never understand that! let Silva’s feminine intuition must have given her an inkling, otherwise she wouldn’t have suggested…

As Linda was helping her mother lay the table for lunch, the phone rang. It was Silva.

“Hallo,” she said hurriedly. “Look, we didn’t get a chance to arrange things properly. I didn’t have time to tell you Besnik is going to ring me at four: you could come with us if you like…”

“Oh no,” said Linda inadvertently. “Not with him!”

“Why not? But just as you like. You may be right. In any case, I’m sure it will be all right for you to come on your own. There’ll be so many people no one will notice you… Do yoe know the address?”

“No,” said Linda faintly.

Silva gave it to her. And she sat pensively down to lunch.

As Linda made her way to the Bermema’s apartment, she told herself she could always have a look round when she got there, and then decide whether to go in or not.

She could see the crowd from some way off. It was larger than she’d expected: the pavement outside the apartment block was packed, and so was the pavement opposite. There was an ambulance among the cars parked all along the street. The nearer she got, the more slowly Linda went. When she got to the door she realized she could go upstairs without being noticed: two continuous streams of visitors were passing up and down. She started up without looking at anyone, reflecting that if she so decided she could turn round and come down again without setting foot inside the apartment itself.

Both the doors on the second-floor landing were open, and without knowing which was the Bermema’s apartment, Linda went in through one of them. Fortunately the hall was crowded. She tried to make out which room had, ie accordance with custom, been set aside for the men to deliver their condolences, and which for the women. Then she realized there was eo such arrangement here.

She looked for some quiet corner from which she could look on without attracting notice. Her courage was ebbing away. In the end she decided she might as well stay in the hall; there were so many comings and goings, and one seemed to be standing on ceremony. As Silva had suggested, in the case of a calamity like this, the usual forms were abandoned.

So far Linda hadn’t seen anyone she knew. At one point she thought she glimpsed Suva’s husband, but she couldn’t be sure. And where was the coffin? she wondered.

About a quarter of an hour went by, and she might have stayed there indefinitely, but suddenly she saw Silva come into the hall

“Oh, there you are!” Silva whispered.

“Have you jest arrived?” asked Linda.

“No, we’ve been here some time. Have you presented your condolences to the family?”

Silva looked rather distraught, too.

“No,” said Linda.

“Neither have I. Come on, let’s go together — it’s not easy for me, either…”

Lînda gave her a grateful look, and clung to her arm as they made for the door, She longed to ask where Besnik was, but only said, “I’m so glad I found you!”

The room Silva led her into was spacious and heavily furnished,with chairs placed round all the walls. They chose a couple of seats in the row on one side, and sat down, Linda still clutching Suva’s arm. The silence was broken only by murmurs too faint to be heard all the way across the room.

“Is that him?” Linda whispered, nodding towards a large photograph on the opposite wall.

Silva nodded.

Linda gazed absently at a big bronze clock with a statue of Skanderbeg on top. Inscribed on its base were the words: “Albania’s hour has come.” She remembered learning it at school — the six-hendred-year-old maxim that could be applied as easily to national victory as to national disaster.

A new wave of visitors arrived, and a few of those already there, Silva and Linda included, stood up to make room for them and thee went back into the hall. Some continued across into the other apartment, bet:

“Let’s stay here,’’ said Silva.

Linda wanted to ask about Besnik, but didn’t like to. It was as if Silva had forgotten their conversation that morning.

People kept passing in and out of the hall. One man with a very sad expression came up and greeted Silva. Linda thought she recognized him.

“A friend of mine,” said Silva, nodding towards her. “This is Skënder Bermema — Ï think you know him.”

“Oh, it’s you!” said Linda, holding out her hand.

His response was friendly, but his sad expression didn’t change. For a moment he looked at Silva without saying anything, as if he had been angry with her, bet now was angry no longer.

“I was so shocked,” said Silva. “I met him only a few days ago, at the complex, just as he was working to prepare the explosion. Just before …”

You could see him gritting his teeth.

“Who’d have credited it?” he murmured. “We thought that scourge would go away of its own accord. Who could have imagined it would take Max with it?”

“A scourge indeed.” echoed Silva.

“We split our sides laughing at their deceit, but it turned out to be more deadly than we thought.”

Their laughter…Silva thought of Victor Hila. She couldn’t imagine him blind. Laughter starts in the eyes…And that was where it had ended.

“Oh, here’s Ben,” said Silva, moving towards a tall young man whose face was partially covered with dressings held in place with sticking plaster.

He must be Besnik’s brother thought Linda. She’d have liked to go over, joie in the conversation, perhaps even kiss him, but she was too shy. She was here, wasn’t she? She mustn’t ask for more. There were traces of tears on the young man’s bandages, and again she felt like kissing him tenderly. My brother-in-law…God, was it possible?

“That was Besnik’s brother,” Silva said, coining back to her.

“Yes, so I guessed.”

She suddenly felt she had to see Besnik himself. This was no mere wish arising from a fleeting passion, but something stronger, derived from the real affection that can only come into being gradually, maturing slowly like wine,

A stir of activity suggested that the journey to the cemetery was imminent.

“That’s the dead boy’s mother,” said Silva, showing Linda a woman in deep mourning who’d just come into the hall “Her husband was a minister just after the Liberation,”

Linda was clinging to Silva once more, drinking in all she said.

“The man over there in the dark grey suit is the present husband of Besnik’s first fiancée.”

Linda looked at him until he seemed to notice he was being scrutinized. “Where’s she?” she asked,

“I can’t see her, but she must be here somewhere.” Silva looked round. “Yes, I should think she is here.”

The crowd in the hall and on the landing was getting denser. Besnik’s brother went by again, with his tear-stained, black-streaked bandages. Then Linda felt Suva’s hand on her arm,

“Look, there she is!” she whispered, “Zana…”

Linda trembled.

“Where?”

She was over by the door, in a black dress, with another woman who couldn’t stop weeping.

“The one who’s crying is the dead boy’s sister. Her name’s Diana…”

Silva went on talking, but Linda was scarcely listening now. She couldn’t take her eyes off the first woman, Zana. That was more or less how she’d imagined her, except… The weight and coldness of the big silver comb in her hair seemed to be echoed in her eyes — but the coldness there, it seemed to Linda, was the kind men like. She felt a pang. Yes, she’d imagined her rather like that, except for the comb…Besnik had told her very briefly about their break-up. Perhaps it was really just a misunderstanding, he’d said after a moment’s reflection. She had been sorry to hear it. People who split up over a mere misunderstanding can come to love one another again. She would have been consumed with anxiety if it hadn’t been for Ana. It was Ana who must have interposed between her, Linda, and Besnik’s first fiancée, confronting Zana’s power and neutralizing it. Linda, seeing Zana for the first time, with her seductiveness concentrated in that silver comb, marvelled at the thought of Ana and her saving power. Who was she, this dead woman who left behind her nothing but peace and light? How had she performed that miracle?

The crowd on the landing was parting. They were bringing out the coffin. Linda caught a glimpse of it, an oblong draped in red, being carried head-high. Then, further off, she saw Besnik, and Linda’s husband. Ail the pall-bearers were gathered together now: Skënder Bermema, sad as ever; Besnik’s brother, with his tear-stained cheeks; together with many more, A long, lugubrious procession. To Silva it suddenly looked like a whole generation moving along mournfully to the strains of a hymn.

It was quite dark when Max’s funeral was over, and some people who were there, and who had departed friends and relations of their own buried nearby, took the opportunity to visit their graves.

Silva and Linda were standing by Ana’s tombstone when they saw Besnik approaching, followed at some distance by Skënder Bermema. The two women moved away a little. After a while, Beseik, who hadn’t noticed them, left Ana’s grave and walked over to the middle of the cemetery, where his father and aunt were buried. As they waited for him to be out of range — it was Linda who had asked Silva not to let him see them — Linda noticed the name of another Ana, on another tombstone, sumptuous and made of marble: “Ana Vuksaei, aged 21, taken from her loving family and friends by an incurable illness…”

Then the two women moved back to the first Ana, their Ana. Skënder Bermema had stopped in an alley nearby to smoke a cigarette. Silva spent a little while arranging the flowers on the grave; she and Linda both stood for a moment in prayer; then she whispered, “Let’s go now.” Skënder was waiting for them at the end of the alley — unless he was there by chance — and all three walked back together to the bus stop.

Before reaching the city, the bus passed by a kind of dump oe some marshy ground, and a lot of the passengers craned forward to see what was going on there. Bright streaks of light were shooting hither and thither in the gathering darkness, pursued by a little group not of urchins but of grown men.

“What is it?” Linda asked. But neither Silva nor Skëeder Bermema replied.

Other passengers were curious too. The driver stopped the bus and stuck his head out of his window to ask what was up.

A passing pedestrian answered perkily, and the driver, winding up his window again, passed on what he’d said.

“They’re destroying the Chinks’ bangers!”

This produced some jokes and laughter, but all were drowned in the roar of the bus starting up again,

On the waste land the work of destruction went on. The men had hoped to finish before midday, but just as they were getting ready to leave they were told more stocks of fireworks had been found in a warehouse. They had to wait more than two hours for this batch of crates to arrive.

They were the same as those the workmen had dealt with in the morning, except that two of the cases had got very damp, and the rockets were difficult to ignite. But when they finally did go off, the men started emptying all the crates one after the other with the same mixture of resentment and jubilation as earlier in the day. As darkness fell, the waste lot was lit up with shafts of brilliance darting everywhere.

But where the rockets had once shot high into the sky, accompanied by the shouts of the populace, to celebrate grand and joyful occasions, they now fell back like wounded snakes, and after a few convulsive leaps, fizzled out miserably on the ground.

The destruction went on late into the night. An acrid smell of burned rubbish and sieged cardboard hung over the whole neighbourhood. Sometimes a rocket, after squirming around for a while, would make a furious effort to lift off into the air, but then one of the workmen, carried away with excitement like all his comrades, would run after it, catch it, and grind it out underfoot, shouting “Snake, horrible snake!”

Some electricians working a few kilometres away, in open country, noticed, as it got dark, some many-coloured gleams and Hashes in the distance. They were perched high up in the air, dismantling the superstructure of the radio station that until recently had transmitted news to Europe from the Hsin-hua news agency.

“What are those flashes?” asked one. “Perhaps we ought to climb down…”

“No, it’s not lightning,” said another, some way underneath him. “The sky’s dark enough, but there hasn’t been any thunder.”

After turning to look again several times, they eventually got absorbed in their work once more and paid no attention to the distant lights. Expert as they were, they weren’t too sure exactly what they were supposed to be doing. They’d thought when the job was first mooted that they were to take down the entire system, and had bragged to their friends that they were going to destroy the whole mass of wires and metal which had filled the world with Chinese, That’s right, root up the lot! their friends had urged. Bet when they reached the site they were told they were only to disconnect certain parts of the system. To ensure that they weren’t making any mistakes, they checked every so often against the diagrams they’d been supplied with, peering at them by the light of a lamp fixed to a girder.

“This must be it!” said the oldest engineer jest arrived from the northern provinces. He was a native of Doomed Heights, and although he hadn’t actually lived there for a long time, he still had the typical local mentality. In his view, the part they had to remove was a particular piece of steel that understood Chinese. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised if, by undoing the relevant nuts and bolts, he’d released a lot of hyperactive ideograms,

“Careful!” called the fitter who was working at the other end. “There’s only a couple of bolts left at this end. What about you?”

“Same here! Hi, you down below — watch out!”

Ten minutes later the great mass of wires and metal collapsed with a deafening crash. The engineers climbed down and shone their torches to see where the wreckage had fallen. Only thee did they realize how wet and muddy the ground was thereabouts. The fallen equipment had almost disappeared into it.

But it was late now. They collected up their tools and got ready to leave. No one said anything — a sure sign they each had something on their mind, Although they’d spent their whole lives erecting and dismantling this kind of equipment, they couldn’t stop thinking about what they’d just seen by the-light of their torches. Perhaps that bit of steel which could speak Chinese would lurk there in the mud, together with its drowned ideograms, thee crop up every spring, until the new grass strangled it to death. Just as in people’s minds the memory would fade of their friendship with China.

By the time she got home, Silva was exhausted. Gjergj wasn’t back yet. Veriana had dropped in, and she and Brikena were chattering away in Brikena’s bedroom. As she kissed her niece, Silva remembered Linda. Who could say? — perhaps she and Besnik really were in love?

Ten minutes later Gjergj came in. He was tired too.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Silva asked him.

“I certainly would!” he replied.

They sat down in the living room, and although it was getting dark, neither switched on the light.

Out in the hall the two girls could be heard busy with something, and suddenly Brikena appeared in the doorway.

“Mother — do you know what? The lemon tree has produced a lemon! It’s absolutely lovely!”

“Really?”

“Come and look! It’s only small still, but.”

“I’ll come and see later on.”

“Can’t you come now?” said Brikena, disappointed at her mother’s lack of enthusiasm.

Silva didn’t like to let her down, so she followed the two girls out on to the balcony. It was all cluttered up, as such places tend to be during the winter: there was a deckchair that needed mending, lying around from last summer; some plastic containers; a pile of empty floor-polish tins.

“There!” exclaimed the girls, pointing to a tiny little lump, hardly distinguishable among the leaves.

“My goodness — yes!” cried Silva,

“Poor little thing!’’ said Veriana.

Silva did her best to smile. She remembered the day when the lemon tree had been delivered — on Birkena’s birthday. Then that night, and the icy moonlight, and her fears about Gjergj on his way to China, How much had happened since then! Could so much have taken place in the time it took the lemon tree to produce a fruit?

She looked at the little plant tenderly. The world was full of political meetings, plots, commotions and tragedies, while here in its little corner on the balcony, careless of everything else, the lemon tree devoted itself to its own raison d’être — bringing forth fruit. Compared with the tumult going on in the world as a whole, it seemed so frail, so lonely you couldn’t help pitying it.

Silva smiled thoughtfully. Perhaps the lemon tree, if it had been able to think, would have pitied the rest of the world.

As she shut the door on to the balcony behind her, Silva for some reason thought of what old Aunt Hasiyé had said: “The Chinese? There have never been any Chinese here. You must have dreamt it.”

Tirana, 1978-1988