The File on H.

7

IN FACT, THE INNKEEPER’S PREDICTION was borne out, and the rhapsode did return. It happened on a muffled, darkly overcast day. Everything seemed to be frozen still and the singing forgotten forever. The man looked so worn out that the Irishmen wondered what could have happened to him, but they did not dare ask. They did not even hope to hear the man sing again; they asked the innkeeper not to remind the traveler of his promise, but Shtjefen shook his head in disagreements the rhapsode would sing without fail; he had given his word. And he did indeed keep his promise. Without saying anything, as if fulfilling a duty, he took his place in a wooden chair in front of the microphone and began to chant first the one, then the other of the two ballads.

As soon as the rhapsode had left, Bill and Max started to compare the new recording with their transcription of the original performance, and they went on until late in the evening and again on the next day. They had thought that with his ashen face, the exhausted bard would have modified the words quite a lot. As a heading to the tape, Max recorded himself saying in English: “Ballad sung two weeks later by the same rhapsode, who appears to have suffered a psychological shock or deep distress in the meantime.“

However, to their acute astonishment they discovered that the two texts were to all intents and purposes identical In one thousand lines of verse, there were only two omissions; and in the scene where Muj is chained up, the line

The remains of the burnt pinewood

blackened Muj’s chin

was reformulated as

The burnt remains of the pinewood mingled

with the foam from his mouth

The two of them discussed the reasons for this change at some length. On the one hand, it seemed that this tiny alteration and the omission of two lines out of a thousand were the very least of the losses that might be expected; on the other hand, the change could be accounted for by the singer’s low spirits adding to the bitterness of his song.

Then they set that explanation aside, feeling it to be quite secondary, and looked more closely at the altered line. It was amazing. They had before their eyes their first, long-awaited free variant! There it was, not as a theoretical construct but as a real and living thing. The omission of two lines, that tiny void in the text, was the first example of forgetting that they had pinned down alive. They were fascinated and did not tire of examining both the variant and the absent lines, and suddenly everything seemed possible. They had in their hands one of the main threads of the Homeric tangle: what happened with a single rhapsode in a fortnight. Over several years or a century, or five hundred years, how many instances of forgetting would there be, and not just in a single rhapsode’s performances but in a whole series of them, over a generation and from one generation to the next? The device of forgetting suddenly grew to huge and striking size, and they could feel their pulses throbbing in their temples as they tried to get their brains to cope with such vast dimensions.

They were completely buried in their work when they got an invitation to a ball to be given by the governor and his wife. At first they did not really understand what it was about, since the approach seemed so peculiar out of place, irrelevant, so pointless and absurd. Both said “No!” instinctively. What use is that to us? It must be a mistake,”Unable to get used to the idea that they had indeed been invited to a dance, they persuaded themselves that it must be a mix-up and that the invitation cards were really intended for someone else. However their own names were handwritten on the invitation cards. Moreover the governor’s long-nosed limousine was parked right there in front of the inn. Not only had they been invited to a ball; they had been assigned a car to take them there! They were about to reiterate their refusal, when they vaguely remembered that there had been some talk of a ball at the soiree they attended on their first night in N-- and that in addition this whole area and maybe the inns and some of the itinerant singers came under the governor’s jurisdiction….

Half an hour later; dressed up in their dark suits, they were being chauffeured in an antiquated jalopy across a darkening, frosted plain that seemed strewn with enigmas. Here and there ghostly haystacks tried to duck under the headlights. Now and again Bill muttered under his breath, "Oh Lord, where are we going?" He needed to think hard to remind himself that they were on their way to the local governor’s ball, but no sooner had he come to his senses than his imagination raced again, inventing a thousand hidden dangers all around, long smothered by the ice but now reluctantly, and all the more distressingly, awakening from their slumbers.

He heard Max whisper into his ear: "I've never seen such a sunset!”

It was indeed a unique sunset, spread across an ink-black sky swept clean of every speck of Stardust, every source of light, all hint of softness. A fine night to be kidnapped! thought Bill The governor’s wife — or her husband — with a torch between her or his teeth (depending on which rhapsode’s version you listened to)… oh, those epics could set your nerves on edge!

Bill sighed with relief when he could make out the twinkling lights of the little town in the distance. Lanterns burned brightly at the door of the governor’s house. In the salon they found the same guests as on their first visit, and some new faces as well, presumably representing local high society.

“We are delighted to see you among us once again,” said the governor as he introduced them to the other guests. “The local gynecologist…The lawyer and his wife … Mr. Rrok — but you know him already, don’t you … And the postmaster too. It is really a great pleasure to have you back. The head of the regional recruitment office … And this is my wife."

The scholars felt just as foreign after an hour in the place as they had on first arriving. Like everyone else, they had glasses in their hands, they had even had a dance (just one), but they could not feel part of anything in that environment. It all seemed made of cardboard, as false as it was ridiculous. They realized how impossible it was to tear oneself away from the world of epic poetry and behave as one should at a ball Women whispering in corners kept looking at them sideways, presumably gossiping about them, but that didn’t matten The two foreigners felt miles away; they were still at the inn, where the people, and their clothes, and their gestures, and their code of conduct, were so different,…

Leaning against the marble mantelpiece, Bill cast his mind back to the travelers who had stayed at the inn, their costumes decorated with designs suggestive of snow or frost, decorations that seemed to have been put on by a machine able to embroider the pattern of lightning.

As for the folk sitting around the governor’s salon, the alleged elite of the town of N—, well, they were just straw men, ridiculous bureaucrats. They made you want to laugh, or be sick.

The hostess sidled up to Bill and said, “You don’t look as though you’re quite at your ease. Of course you’re bored. This is the end of the world, so what can you expect?”

“But of course not, madam,” Bill said, not really knowing how to respond.

To tell the truth, she was the only person in the whole pantomime who seemed to be different, and he did not want to offend her.

Her bright, submissive, and liquid eyes came close, appearing to bear the mark of the last weeks separation. Even the ring that sparkled on the hand that held the glass seemed to have acquired some of its mistress’s yearning.

Bill could smell her perfume, and he suddenly felt like blurting out the question: How could two Albanias coexist, in the same place, in the same period, when they were so completely different — eternal Albania, bearing its tragic destiny with dignity, as he had come to know it not only from its epic poetry but also at the inn up there, beside the main road; and the other Albania, the one he could see here and (he was sorry, but he had to be blunt) that struck him as nothing more than a dumb show.

“You’re dreaming …,” she said. “You say nothing and you dream. But I have a weakness for people like that.…”

“I am a little perplexed,” Bill replied. “In fact, I was about to ask you a question."

He thought he saw the ring on her finger quiver. Maybe she would not understand what he meant. It was quite possible that she knew absolutely nothing of the other Albania. Actually, anyone could well doubt its existence. Was old Albania really the way he saw it, or was his vision of it only a poet’s reverie?

He picked up the glass he had left on the mantelpiece, took a sip, and put it down again. A piece he had read by a young Albanian writer claimed that the high-landers who appeared to be so valiant and rebellious, were capable of giving in overnight and of crawling before the power of the state. Seen from a greater distance, however, things looked very different. There was nothing really surprising about it. Did people of the Homeric period behave in epic fashion? And what about Homer himself…? A horrible vision (as when you see yourself sleeping with your own mother) had seized upon his mind and would not go away: Homer, having just finished chanting the second or the seventh book of the Iliad, completely obsessed with counting out his pay … He had been delivered from this agonizing vision only when he learned that the Albanian rhapsodes would accept no form of reward. Please God, that had only been a suspicion!

“Did you want to say something to me?” Daisy whispered.

He looked her in the eye for a long moment. He would have to be quite mad to tell her what was in his mind, her especially, the first lady of N—.

He talked about his concerns to Max as soon as they were in the car on the way back to the inn. It was a safe bet that the governor’s other guests, as they walked home, were having a good gossip about the foreigners, calling them antisocial, uncivilized, pretentious, or just plain mad.

While he spoke. Bill could not take his eyes off a solitary light blinking in the distance, which only underscored the atmosphere of fright and doom that the black night aroused.

He waited for Max to answer. But Max was silent. He must have gone to sleep.