The Concert

2

THE SKY WAS UNIMAGINABLY EMPTY that late October eight, A few hundred planes landing at or taking off from airports, some millions of birds, three forlorn meteorites falling unnoticed into the immensity of the ocean, a few spy satellites orbiting at a respectful distance from one another — all these put together were as nothing compared with the infinite space of the sky. It was void and desolate. No doubt if ail the birds had been rolled into one they’d have weighed more than the planes and taken up more room, but even if every plane, meteorite and satellite were added to those birds, the result still wouldn’t have filled even a tiny corner of the firmament. It was to all intents and purposes empty. No comet’s tail, seen by men as an omen of misfortune, blazed across it this autumn night. And even if it had, the history of the sky, rich as it was not — only with the lives of birds, planes, satellites and comets but also with the thunder and lightning of all the ages, would still have been a poor one compared with the history of the earth.

Against such immense vacuity the signals sent out by a certain spy satellite seemed desolate indeed. It was relaying in their most recent order, as drawn up for some official ceremony, the names of the members of the Politbureau of the Chinese Communist Party: Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Wang Hoegwen, Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Zhang Chunqiao, Wei Guoqing, Liu Bocheng, Jiang Qing, Xu Shiyou, Hua Guofeng, Ji Dengkui, Gu Mu, Wang Dongxieg, Chan Yonggui, Chen Xilian, Li Xiannian, Li Desheeg, Yao Wenyuan, Wu Guixian, Su Zheehua, Ni Zhifu, Saifudin and Song Qingling. In comparison with the size of the sky through which they were travelling, these names, despite their attempts to ape the names of gods, were just a wretched handful of dust, and those on the complete list of senior officials which wafted with them through space were no better. Nevertheless, hundreds of people in scores of ultra-secret offices studied the list as carefully as the world used to scan fiery comets, double stars and other celestial signs, trying to penetrate their mystery. As the experts pored over the handful of ideograms which had just dropped out of the chilly darkness, they compared them with the previous list, seeking portents concerning the future of a large part of the human race, if not the whole of it. Meanwhile the Earth and all the bodies gravitating around it rolled on regardless. Two or three meteorites plunged, as if trying to escape pursuit, into a remote stretch of sea, leaving no trace behind. In different parts of the sky, hundreds of lightning flashes discharged their electricity. Birds dropped down exhausted. And through it all sped a letter addressed by a small country to a large one.

The letter was in the briefcase belonging to Gjergj Dibra, a diplomatic envoy travelling on the night plane from Paris to Peking. For some time now he had been flying over the Arabian desert. If it had been so dark that you couldn’t see anything, Gjergj would have found the resulting sense of isolation quite bearable. But it was a clear night, and the moon revealed not only the empty sky stretching out beneath the plane but also the equally arid expanse of barren sands below.

Every so often Gjergj would turn away from the window, resisting the lure of all that emptiness, but after a few moments he couldn’t help turning back again. Thousands of feet below, the moon seemed to be wandering over the surface of the desert like a lifeless eye — a coldly mocking eye holding the image of the sky prisoner, just as the retina of a dead man is said to retain the image of his murderer. And indeed, thought Gjergj, the sky had killed this part of the earth, turning it into a wilderness.

He drew sharply away from the window, and for want of anything better to do asked the stewardess to bring him a coffee. It was his fourth, but what did it matter? He had no intention of trying to sleep.

When he’d finished his coffee he had to make an effort to prevent himself from turning back to the window again. But even without actually looking down at it, he could feel the pull of the desert. For the umpteenth time he tried to distract himself by imagining himself back in his apartment, among the guests at the little party his wife was giving for their daughter’s birthday. He looked at his watch. They must have left the table by now, he thought. But he could still conjure up the various phases of the dinner itself: the comings and goings from room to room of Silva and Brikena, the vase of flowers on the table, the cheerful bustle of the guests arrival, the clinking of glasses. They’d certainly have thought about him. He tried to imagine what they’d said, but that was difficult — it was easier to imagine their smiles and laughter. He reviewed the probable list of guests: his sisters, their husbands, the children, Suva’s brother, his owe mother, his niece Veriana, and either Beseik Strega or Skëeder Bermema. He spent some time wondering which of the two had been there. It didn’t seem possible that either should be absent. Perhaps they’d both come, he thought — and before he could stop himself he found he was looking out of the window again. The empty darkness gaped beneath him, wanly lit by the moon, like an X-ray photograph. Yes, Besnik and Skënder probably both went to the party, he thought dully. All human passions seemed small and trivial compared with that great void.

He sat for a while with his eyes closed. Every so often his hand brushed against the metal lock of his briefcase, reinforced by the red seal of the foreign ministry. Throughout this whole dreary journey he hadn’t let the briefcase out of his sight for a second. He knew it contained an official document of the utmost importance, though he hadn’t the faintest idea what it was about.

Drowsy though he was, he made another attempt at summoning up his daughter’s birthday party in his mind’s eye, but something prevented him from actually entering the flat. Every time he tried, he found himself lingering wistfully outside the door, like a stranger. At the thought of suddenly appearing in the doorway with all those people eating and drinking and talking; of all the familiar gestures he’d have to go through to ring the bell, kiss Silva and their daughter, and then greet the guests, his fingers grew numb and powerless. He realized this was because he was still gripping his briefcase. What is it, Gjergj? their eyes all seemed to be asking. What have you got in that briefcase?

He shook his head and opened his eyes. He must have dozed off, and his hand, clutching on to the handle, had gone to sleep too. He sat on for a while without moving, trying not to look out at the void, then briefly nodded off again, though more lightly now than before. The same sequence of images as before, but swifter this time, led him back to his daughter’s birthday party.

Once again the briefcase prevented him from going in and mixing with the guests. I shouldn’t have kept it on my lap, he thought — thee remembered the iron rule decreeing that he must always have it with him wherever he went. It had been decreed that there was nowhere else in the whole world for the briefcase to be except with him.

Opening his eyes again, he saw a kind of break in the sky, ahead of the plane and on the same level, but far away in the distance, perhaps over central Asia. The dawn.

He asked the stewardess where they were, and she told him they were already over China. The sun was rising. Below them, hidden by a layer of mist, lay the largest and most ancient country in the world. Gjergj gazed out of the window. The sun, a ruddy patch strangely resembling the wax seal on his briefcase, seemed to be struggling over the horizon. Two or three times he thought he glimpsed the earth, but he couldn’t be sure. The engines of the plane throbbed as if with great effort. Still staring out of the window, Gjergj asked himself how was one supposed to deliver a letter to a country like this? Surprised by his own question, he felt like some mythical envoy of antiquity, charged with delivering a message to an empire that was deaf. He went on trying to catch a glimpse of the earth, but in vain: he almost doubted if it still existed.

More than a thousand metres below the belly of the plane lay the land of China, with its population of nearly a billion. Other billions lay beneath the land itself, most of them changed long ago into handfuls of mud. But that autumn morning, out of the billions of Chinese still alive, one had chosen for his own peculiar reasons to be under the earth already, hidden away in a cave. This one was Mao Zedong, Chairman of the People’s Republic of China.

He had gone back to his underground isolation some days before. He knew very well that every time he did so the people always found out about it eventually, and that they wouldn’t rest until they found out why he was there. His enemies said it was because he was in a blue funk, as he had been when he hid here during the Cultural Revolution. That was understandable enough at the time, others argued, but why was he down there again, now that things had settled down? Perhaps in order to get used to the idea of death, suggested a third group: hadn’t he sensed its approach a long time ago? Others shrugged their shoulders:, that might be the correct explanation, but then again there might be some other reason known only to Chairman Mao himself…

One thing was certain: for some time he had resumed this old habit: perhaps he himself didn’t quite know why. He scoured reports on the rumours circulating about it so eagerly you might have thought he’d forgotten why he’d gone down there, and felly expected to read the explanation in the reports. In fact, he’d come to believe that a head of state’s most useful actions were those which remained incomprehensible not only to others but also to himself. They lent themselves to such a vast range of different explanations. There were always people ready to suggest a meaning for some enigmatic piece of behaviour, while others sprang forward to contradict them and offer another interpretation. Then came another group who thought they were the ones who knew best. And so on and so forth ad infinitum. Meanwhile the action in question was kept alive precisely because it was veiled in obscurity, while hundreds of others, clearer, more logical and more useful, were consigned to oblivion.

The reports informed Mao that many of the rumours put forward religious or mythological reasons for his retreat. One view was that as he already knew all that was said about him on earth, he wanted to find out what was whispered about him underground, where his supporters were no longer in the majority. On the whole he preferred the mythological theories to those that stuck to fact. He liked to think of himself sleeping under the earth for a while and then, like some ancient god, reawakening with the lush new grass of spring.

To tell the truth, the half-death he seemed to experience down in that cave struck him as the state that suited him best. The strange days he spent there, divided between existence and non-existence, enjoying the advantages of the one and avoiding the traps of the other, partook of both heaven and hell. His thoughts became clear and strove to pierce to the uttermost depths of consciousness. He was surrounded by nothing but mud and stones; the only things present were the earth and himself — the leader of the biggest country in the world in direct contact with the terrestrial globe, without any intermediaries, theories, books or officials between them. Where else could the expression “Middle Kingdom” be better understood? As time went by, mornings and evenings merged into one, whole days were reduced to a single afternoon, and a eight might vanish altogether, or else consist only of midnight itself, like a dish containing only the choicest parts of the most delicious fruits. He slept and woke, drowsed and dropped off again. There were times when he felt as if he were dead; others when he felt as if he’d been resurrected, drugged, or made into a saint or a god.

He had given orders that he was not to be disturbed on any account, but now through his half-sleep he became aware of a kind of whispering coming from the entrance to the cave. The guards must want to tell him something. What could have happened? he wondered. War? An earthquake? The murmur came nearer. It must be something important for anyone to dare to come and spoil his peace and quiet.

“What is it?” he asked, without opening his eyes.

He heard them mumbling something about a letter. Didn’t they know he didn’t receive mail down there in his Cave? But they went on muttering, and he eventually distinguished the name of Jiang Qing. So the message was from her.

“Leave the letter with me, then,” he said. Or rather thought he said. ln fact he’d formed the words only in his head.

A letter from out there, thought he, as if it were a missive from another world. What are they up to? Aren’t they tired of it all yet?

There in the depths of the earth, amid the rocks of the cave, the letter seemed like some alien object, charged with hostility. If it hadn’t been from his wife he’d never have opened it: as it was, it was some time before he made up his mind. The message was brief, informing him of the latest events in the capital and of Zhou Enlai’s illness, and ending up with the information that the president of Albania had written to him…

Featherbrain, he thought to himself, averting his eyes from his wife’s writing. Who ever heard of anyone sending letters underground?

Letters go to every corner of the Universe,

But nobody ever saw one go underground…

He wasn’t sure if he’d read these lines somewhere or if he’d just made them up.

“How often have I told you the thing I hate most when I’m down here is getting letters! And now, not content with writing yourself, you have to tell me about another letter from someone else! … The world must be going mad up there!”

The rustle of the paper in his hand made him look at it again.

So the president of Albania had written to him, had he? An official letter, it seemed, but without any of the usual pleasantries. On the contrary, the whole thing was downright disagreeable. Outrageous, even.

The concluding phrases were the most caustic, Albania objected to the U.S. president’s forthcoming visit to China, and was more or less openly asking for it to be cancelled.

Mao Zedong fumed. Why hadn’t the stupid woman told him that to begin with? The anger which in other circumstances would have filled him by now seemed merely to hover around him like some chilly breath, not knowing how to gain admittance. The earth and the rocky cave had done their work.

A letter from Albania, eh? It must have taken some time to get here. H’mm…He realized it would take him at least thirty-six hours to get really angry. That would give him time to think about it. So — he said to himself yet again, trying to get his thoughts in order — this is a letter from Albania. He must consider things as simply as possible, Not that he could have done otherwise down here, even if he’d wanted to. Sometimes he would speak his thoughts aloud as if to explain them to the earth and the rocks. That was one of the reasons he liked coming here: being able to expound things in the most elementary fashion to the cave, making it understand the affairs of the world…So this letter came from a long way away. From Albania. A little country on a contemptible continent called Europe, inhabited for the most part by white men-who dislike us as much as we dislike them. The one exception is Albania, our ally. Our only ally on that evil continent. And now Albania, a mere one-thousandth of the size of China, has the cheek to write me a letter. Not an ordinary letter — a positively belligerent one, in which that tiny country not merely refuses to obey but actually tries to impose its will on me. Albania is asking for punishment, and I shan’t fail to oblige.

Mao Zedong was getting a headache. All this thinking, after several days of virtual unconsciousness, seemed to have exhausted him, I ought to have read the letter more slowly, he said to himself. He tried to be detached, to transport himself mentally to the plateau of Tibet, which seemed to him all the more uninhabited because he himself had never been there. “You really ought to pay a visit to the Roof of the World,” his wife had suggested several times. “It would be really appropriate.” He had joked about it and accused her of vanity, but deep down inside he did consider making such a visit. So much so that he’d spent some time reading the works of the Tibetan hermit Milarepa. And now Milarepa’s poems, full of the terror inspired by the Himakyas, began to come back to him, together with the names of the caves the hermit lived in. He even remembered some of the phrases he’d learned in preparation for the journey: shos-dbying, for example, the Tibetan name for that primal state, beyond being and non.beieg, which had always fascinated him; dje-be, the ten goods, and mi-dge-beu, the tee evils, the first of which he’d later made use of in his instructions to Communist youth, while the second were included in army regulations.

Shi-gnas, he said aloud. But he realized that the more he tried to follow the hermit’s teachings and strive for serenity, the more the letter preyed on his mind, Shi-gnas, he said again, and then repeated the same thing in Sanskrit: samatha. But still to no effect. It was the same as with sleeping pills: either they put you out like a light or else they kept you awake indefinitely.

It was all of no use: in the end he just gave in and lost his temper. The letter seemed more and more monstrous. Relations with Albania had been deteriorating for years through that country’s owe fault, but hitherto he had turned a blind eye. His colleagues had grown increasingly irritated: how long, they said, are we going to put up with their whims and fancies? But Mao had been patient, ignoring Albania’s coldness during the Cultural Revolution, their attitude about Shakespeare, and lots of other nonsense. When the Sino-Soviet frontier crisis blew up, his colleagues had come to see him, blue in the face with rage at the Albanians’ intolerable attitude: instead of coming out directly and unequivocally in support of us, their allies, they’d actually said there were faults on both sides, and that China’s territorial claims smacked of nationalism. That crowned all! They were setting themselves up as knights errant, nobly committed to their principles, like characters out of the Chanson de Roland! Ugh, what cheek! “Now do you see?” they had demanded. But again Mao had turned a blind eye. “Just wait,” he’d said. “I’m saving it all up. One of these days they’ll get into a row with Yugoslavia over, what’s it’s name?…Kosovo, and then well pay them out.”

He’d known Albania would go on being restive — but that it would actually get to the point of giving him orders …! It was inconceivable. Yet it had happened, unless his wife had gone out of her mind and what she’d written was just a figment of her imagination. But that was highly unlikely. There was little doubt that the letter had come: the thing had happened, and if the Chinese people got to know of it he’d be reduced to grovelling humiliation. Mao realized he was getting angry more quickly than he’d expected. I’ll show them! he thought. I’ll teach Albania a lesson it’ll tremble to remember for a thousand years! I’ll play with it like a cat with a mouse!

He hadn’t yet decided exactly how. For the moment only one word whirled around in his head: economy. He dimly felt that was the beginning and end of everything, but the vagueness only increased his vexation. As a matter of fact he had given orders during previous periods of dissension for policy to be angled on economic considerations, but the idiotic officials whose business it was had evidently misunderstood his instructions. Their way of doing things was obvious, their tricks stuck out a mile. They thought there was only one way of going about it: by slowing down ships carrying machinery and cutting off aid. How often had they come to him and said: “We oughtn’t to deliver that steel works — let’s leave them to stew in their own juice!” But he would always say: “Really? So they can get what they want from Sweden instead, and thumb their noses at us? …No, we’ll send them the goods, but it’ll be the sort of stuff that’ll make them curse the day they took delivery of it!”

When he explained what he meant they ail had a good laugh. That steel works would be more like a blacksmith’s forge! Then he explained that such measures needed to be accompanied by others in different sectors. The idea was to drive the Albanians crazy little by little. It was in such terms, many years ago, that Mao had defined the policy to be adopted towards Albania. He had gone into it in the minutest detail But obviously the idiots in charge of carrying it out hadn’t understood a word. And now, instead of China having atrophied Albania’s whole brain-centre, Albania was trying to tell China what to do. How horrible! he cried. Now he really did feel angry. Memories about the relations between the two countries were beginning to come back to him; conversations with his colleagues; plans. Not long ago he, Jiang Qing and Lin Biao had studied a letter from a middle-ranking Chinese official who had spent some time in Albania. His account was full of bitterness and repining. Their standard of living was much higher than ours, he said. The people lived in apartments; the shops sold lipstick, armchairs, and all kinds of other degenerate objects; young women and girls frequented cafés and drank whatever they liked; there were no curtains at the windows; the women reeked of perfume; you could buy novels, and as much bread as you liked. The question was bound to suggest itself: why should Albania still be receiving aid from poor old China? To help it wallow even deeper in luxury and extravagance? Cut off ail aid, dear Chairman Mao, said the official, ending his letter, or else find some other way of putting an end to this scandal.

Samatha, he muttered to his unknown correspondent: calm down. But he didn’t feel at all calm himself. The first letter from the irate official, which he hadn’t answered, had been followed by a second that painted an even more sombre picture. Punish me if I’ve done wrong, wrote the official. Denounce me as an agent provocateur, an agitator, drag me through the mud, gouge my eyes out — but reply! He must have realized his first letter had been completely ignored: Chinese aid to Albania, far from being reduced, had actually increased. In his second letter he tried to express himself more calmly, attempting a description of the Albanian national psychology. It was a tiny little country, he wrote, and there was nothing more horrible than seeing a place like that in the grip of a mania for expansion. According to him the Albanians, in the past, enable to wrest a single inch of territory from their neighbours, who were just as tough as they were, had hit on a novel way of extending their influence: by flirting with the countries that occupied them, offering their services as allies. After they’d been beaten by the Turks, or rather when they finally admitted defeat, they offered their help to the victorious Ottoman Empire, acting just as their lllyrian ancestors had done towards Rome. (These forebears too were not only rough and excitable but also feeble-minded, and had taken about a hundred and fifty years to accept that they’d been conquered by the Romans.)

These potty little countries! thought Mao. He’d often wondered how he’d have seen things, how he’d have judged events, even what his reaction would have been to the depression that sometimes swept over him, if China had been smaller, or if it had been an archipelago, like Japan, Once, in Tchangsha, he’d been afflicted by a really deathly fit of dejection, a boredom so monstrous it would have overflowed the boundaries not only of any little European country but of half the whole continent! Yes, he sighed, he really was made to measure for China, just as China was specially created for him!

He remembered a dream in which Mongolia had been transformed into a lake. His officials had all run hither and thither in such agitation, telephoning and transmitting his latest decisions, that he’d grown impatient: what are you getting so worked up about? he’d asked. They’d been abashed. It’s not easy, you know, Chairman Mao: there are all sorts of problems, and all the files and archives need to be altered. For example, that business of Lin Biao’s plane going up in smoke in the Mongolian desert…Oh yes, he’d said — I remember. But all you have to do is change “bursting into flames” to “sinking into the waves” — no need to make such a fuss! But it isn’t as easy as that, the others insisted. It’s common knowledge that Lin Biao was ill and what’s more had a horror of water, And what were they supposed to do about the burned wreckage of the plane and the bullet-marks on its fuselage? That’ll do! he’d snapped. It’s up to you to take care of the details. And then he’d turned his back on them.

His thoughts returned to the letter from the official. For some obscure reason, the man had said, the Turks accepted the Albanians’ services, and this resulted in one of the strangest phenomena in the whole history of the Ottoman Empire: in 1656 an Albanian was made prime minister, and five of his compatriots succeeded one another in the post. And you can easily imagine the long string of ministers and generals and admirals that went with them. They’d converted to Islam, blithely exchanging Christianity for influential posts without the slightest trace of remorse. Their possessions extended from Hungary to the Sea of Azov; they controlled provinces and cities, armies, governments, whole nations. Some of them became so powerful they had the impertinence to set themselves up as rivals to the Sultan, to disobey him and sabotage his foreign policy; some of them even founded dynasties of their owe, in Egypt for example.

What chaos! thought Mao, though not without a tinge of envy. He made a face every time he heard the word mentioned. “Chaos in Cambodia, in Chile, in Ireland…” Pooh, he’d sneer: what sort of chaos could you get in those petty little countries no bigger than the palm of his hand? Genuine chaos could only occur in states of some size, and super-chaos only in China itself.

Shos-dbying … He’d always been fascinated by great upheavals. What he liked best in the works of the ancient poets were the descriptions of chaotic political convulsions. Li Po or Du Fu — he couldn’t quite remember which — had written passages like that. The Mongol armies sweeping over the country. The imperial armies put to flight. Couriers’ steeds roving about without their riders. Wolves and jackals with tufts of human hair between their teeth…But the biggest upheaval ever had been the one produced by him: the first state of chaos in which the opposing sides both acclaimed the same name. His. They vied with one another in adoration of him at the same time as they set about one another, slaughtering and reducing one another to ashes for him, while he stayed aloof down in his cave, listening to the sound of the tumult above. All he had to do now was get them used to the idea of his death…

Shos-dbying…Oh yes, the famous letter! God, what a screed! Was he remembering it in slow motion or was it really as long as that? The Albanians could easily have broken away from the Ottoman Empire, wrote the official, but after a certain point they themselves didn’t want to any more: they didn’t want to lose the enormous state which they’d partly transformed into their own. The ruled were acting as rulers: they’d acquired a taste for power, a power wielded not over the mere square inch of territory that was their owe country but over great expanses of Europe and Asia. Needless to say, all this, together with their pride in their illyrian origins, produced an arrogance as ill-founded as it was extreme.

Pooh! said Mao. The end of the letter was what he remembered most clearly. Early in the twentieth century the Albanians actually had won their independence, though the country they found themselves confined to seemed as small as a baby’s cradle. The dream was over. So this horde of tattered and deluded Don Quixotes set out in search of another occupying power, or at least of some new and powerful ally they might lead up the garden path, pretending to submit only in order to exploit him more easily. And that was how these dreamers, whose pride the Germans had exacerbated by proclaiming them a master race, had, after ogling the countries in their immediate vicinity and coming to grief first over the Yugoslavs and then over the Soviets, turned their attention to us, to China. And it must be admitted their cunning plot is meeting with great success. The whole world regards Albania as a satellite of China, and perhaps even we ourselves feel flattered to hear such a thing said about a country in Europe. Meanwhile the Albanians have every reason to laugh up their sleeves at us. Our ships queue up in their ports to unload their cargoes. Our standard of living is low in comparison with theirs. We go on calling Albania a satellite and its people the lackeys of China, but since when did lackeys live better than their masters? Wasn’t it all just a tragic farce?

Mao Zedong, his eyes half closed, remembered almost word for word not only the end of the letter but also the note that Zhou Enlai had written underneath: “What he says about relations between Albania and the Ottoman Empire is factually true, but that’s only one side of the case — the side concerning their pride. However his interpretation of the facts in general is quite naive and misleading. The analogy between us and the Soviet Union doesn’t hold water. As for the standard of living in Albania, I don’t believe it’s so enviable as our provincial correspondent supposes. Things are much more complicated than that. Still, the letter does contain some small points worthy of notice.”

“‘Some small points’!” exclaimed Mao. Zhou was brilliantly clever, but sometimes he failed to spot certain aspects of a situation. That letter was nothing short of prophetic! Not content with having exploited China as if it were their own back yard, the Albanians were now openly trying to lay down the law. Incredible as it might seem, the Albanian president’s letter had actually been dispatched. Unless Jiang Qing had gone crazy and made the whole thing up. According to her, the Albanian president not only commented on the American president’s visit — he went so far as to ask for it to be cancelled! How abominable! thought Mao to himself. The Albanian leader telling him what to do! The leader of Russia himself had never dared try that on. Just wait, fumed Mao. I’ll soon show you who’s boss!

He tried to laugh through his wrath, but it was too soon for that. You’ll see what the old man’s still capable of! he muttered stoutly. Don’t imagine I didn’t foresee this when I made you a present of all those factories and industrial complexes. Comrades were always coming to me and complaining, The things we’re sending those Albanians, whereas they …! Just wait and have patience, I told them. I knew they were very annoyed; perhaps the letters purporting to come from the official were really written by my assistants, or by Lie Biao, or even by Jiang Qieg — they’ve always been impatient, that lot. I, on the other hand, have always bided my time, in accordance with the old Chinese proverb, “Don’t worry: wait by the bank of the river, and it will bring you the head of your enemy.” And now the time has come. We couldn’t really teach the Albanians a lesson a few years ago, before they’d started laying the foundations of their chemical factories, their steel complex and their big hydroelectric plants. No — now’s the time to twist their arm, when they’re in the middle of building them. But the comrades couldn’t wait: every time we sent Albania a new turbine or the equipment for a new factory they sweated blood, their eyes flashed. “What are we going to ask for in return?” they kept demanding. “Wait till they really get started building and then we’ll see,” I told them. This exasperated them, though of course they didn’t show it. Perhaps they muttered among themselves that the old man was getting past it, or even that I was frittering away our country’s heritage. While I was just thinking: Wait a bit longer…

Finally the laughter broke through, Mao propped himself with one hand against the wall of the cave and nodded. The moment has come, he thought. The building work is in progress, and all the sites are as vulnerable as open wounds. A half-finished steel complex or an abandoned hydro-electric dam are no better than ruins. When everything’s left high and dry, that’s the time to start thinking about dictating terms. Now I can torment them just as I like. For every factory I shall demand a sacrificial victim. For every chimney, for every turbine, for the smallest bit of funding. You’re going to have to pay back something in return for everything you’ve had, I’ll say. You’re going to have to strip away your insufferable pride, your history, your art, your intelligentsia …I know you quail at the thought of an impoverished intelligentsia, of writers abolished by — a stroke of the pen. Perhaps you don’t feel you can wipe out your literature as we have wiped out ours? Perhaps you shrink from seeding pen-pushers to prison, or out into the rice-fields, or forcing them to clean the latrines? I’m such a kind old gentleman I’ll show you how to manage by a completely different method, apparently diametrically opposite from ours. Have a vast renaissance! Create hundreds of novelists a year, and thousands of poets, by calling any report containing a bit of dialogue a novel and any rhymed petition a poem, and you’ll see that after a few years your literature will have vanished without trace. No one will accuse you of doing anything wrong. On the contrary, you’ll always find admirers ready to acclaim you for nurturing all those writers. What an unprecedented flowering!..And you must do the same with all the rest: give and it shall be given unto you. For every turbine, every credit, give something: for every electronic brain, give part of your own brain. But wait — that’s nothing compared with what I’ll ask you for next. For you’ll have to give your Party too! I know how unacceptable that may sound to you; how barbarous and sinister, I realize it’s your dearest, most inviolable and undisputed possession, and that you’ve based all your security, your present and your future upon it. I know all that. But wait: I may be an old man, but I’m not so stupid as to ask you to violate the inviolable or question the unquestionable. No, not at all Far be it from me to do such a thing! Besides, what good would it do me? Without your Party your whole country would go down the drain and I’d lose you for ever. You’d move away, you’d drift off. So I wouldn’t dream of entertaining such an idea. We must act with the Party, always with the Party, my pets — but with a Party that’s slightly more…what shall I say?… more open! Wait — hear me out! It’s not as bad as it may sound. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve got a flag with a two-headed eagle on it, haven’t you? So why should the idea of a Party with two lines strike you as so terrible? It’s unacceptable and barbarous, you say? Very well, let’s say no more about it — well think of something else. We’re not short of symbols, thank God.

He’d discussed it with Zhou Enlai. He himself had made a few suggestions, and Zhou had met one of their ministers, a general, and was preparing to get in touch with various important elements in the Albanian economy. Zhou had come round to his own way of thinking: you couldn’t do anything in Albania without the Party, In fact, you had to start with it. And if you managed to mould it, to manipulate it a bit, everything else would follow. Things would take a new course, the ramparts of the citadel, as they liked to call their country, would be no more than camouflage, and their pride would turn into its opposite, their disobedience into docility. And from then on out they would never again dream of writing a letter to oppose an invitation to an American president.

For a few seconds Mao lost the thread of his thoughts, but then he managed to find it again. All right, keep your Party thee, he said aloud, but on one condition: make a few alterations, I’m not asking anything very difficult — just a bit of a change, a little mutation, as the scientists say. You refuse? In that case the factories will stop going up, the blast furnaces will go out, the dams will crumble, everything will shrivel up into a skeleton. Usually, when a country is reduced to rubble, it’s because of a war, but in your case it will be the débris of peace, than which nothing is more horrible: bodies unburied, souls on the scrap-heap, epidemics, death itself…And Tartar hordes, wolves and jackals with scraps of fur and women’s finery in their jaws…

Mao Zedong let himself burst out laughing at last, and went on stroking the wall of the cave as if he was trying to wheedle it. The time was now ripe for blackmail Our people on the spot could exploit the situation. According to reliable sources, China had open or covert supporters inside the Albanian government, on the Central Committee even. The “sleepers” could finally emerge from their slumbers. The real game was about to begin. Now you’re going to pay all your outstanding debts. I’m going to tighten the screw — slowly, week after week, month after month, season after season. Sometimes I’ll pretend to slacken off for a bit, so that it’ll hurt all the more when I tighten up again. And so it will go on until you’re at your last gasp, and you yourselves offer me more than I’ve ever asked of you. Ha ha!

Unhurriedly, as if savouring a good wine which one keeps in one’s mouth as long as possible to enjoy the bouquet, Mao imagined the future Sinization of Albania. First the abolition of the intelligentsia and the downgrading of education, then the erosion’ of history, the consigning of heroes to oblivion, and the emergence of the first new men, the Albanian Lei Fens (what were the first new tractors in comparison?) Rumour had it that they’d already introduced some Chinese elements into the choreography of their ballets. Such portents were still as rare as the first spring flowers, but they would gradually multiply. After the deeds would come the words, and after the words the thoughts. Their reservations about being European would slowly dry up, like water in a citadel under siege. Then one last onslaught and Albania would surrender …It was inevitable…Asia first set its heart on Albania some seven centuries ago. And having acquired it, kept it for five hundred years. Early in the twentieth century, though, Albania, the cunning lynx, managed to escape. But that was the last time it did so, and now there was nowhere for it to go. Little by little, quietly, without any clash of swords, it would come back to Asia, this time for ever. It would be a magnificent moment in the age-old history of China. The first country in Europe to be “Sinified”. And like a patch of leprosy, “Sinification” would gradually spread northward, first to central Europe and then still further. It would be the first victory of Asia over Europe — a victory fraught with consequence. An epoch. making revenge. Therein lay the real significance of Mao’s owe achievement. Unfortunately very few eyes were capable of perceiving it. But great achievements are never seen from close to: only from a distance of years or even centuries can they be appraised justly. So moan away, you benighted fools, and write your anonymous letters: your sight is still as dim as that of a month-old baby. Whereas I am about to enter my eightieth year!

Once again Mao lost the thread; once again, after some time, he found it again. He pondered about how long the process of “Sinification” would take. Perhaps the first results wouldn’t be apparent until he was ninety years old, or a hundred and forty; but that didn’t matter. Even if the change wasn’t complete until he was a hundred and eighty or three hundred and twenty years old, it still didn’t matter. He’d started seeing life and death as indistinguishable long ago. In his opinion there was only a trifling difference between the two: until a certain year he would go on breathing and moving about. Afterwards…But this was of no more importance to him than moving to a new house or a new job was in the life of an ordinary individual. He saw his life, or perhaps rather his life-and-death, as one and indivisible. Perhaps that was the main reason why every so often he buried himself underground.

Again his mind wandered, and when he collected his thoughts it was the letter from Albania that came to mind. His anger seemed to be concentrated in his extremities, especially his hands. The one still leaning against the wall plucked at the stone as if to pull it down. Every time he did this he thought how earthquakes were caused. How silly of the Greeks’ god Zeus to think he could bring them about from a distance, from up in the clouds. The globe had to be shaken from below, from down among its foundations.

Mao’s hand was still on the rock, as if he had no doubt that the earth had begun to tremble and that a cataclysm was about to take place up above.

That’s the whole difference between you and me, said he, looking in the direction where he supposed Europe, the ancient Greeks, and the whole of white humanity to be.