Dimiter (3 page)

EXCERPT FROM THE QUESTIONING OF THE BLIND MAN,
LIGENI SHIRQI, TAKEN AT QUELLEZA 12 OCTOBER

Q.
Your door was unlocked?

A.
Yes, it was. I heard the knocking and I called out, “Come in, you are welcome.”

Q.
You didn’t think it dangerous?

A.
Danger is irrelevant. Things are different here. It’s not like below. Had he killed my own children, I had to make him welcome. “I live in the house,” goes the saying, “but the house belongs to the guest and to God.”

Q.
There is no God.

A.
No, not in the city, perhaps, Colonel Vlora, but right now we are up in the mountains and our general impression here is that he exists.

Q.
Do maintain the proprieties, Uncle.

A.
Does that help?

Q.
Only facing reality helps.

A.
I would face it,
effendum
, but where is it? As you know, in my world I must be turned.

Q.
You were saying . . .

A.
I called out, “You are welcome,” and I heard him come in. A torrent of rain gusted in, a great blow, and as it thundered I could feel the flash of lightning on my skin. It came suddenly, this storm, like an unexpected grief. I got up and I greeted the stranger as I should: I said, “God may have—”

Q.
Never mind all that. You said something that triggered his arrest: “He is alien.” What did you mean by that statement?

A.
Well, he wasn’t a mountain man, not a Geg.

Q.
That is surely innocuous.

A.
Ah, but he’d
told
me that he was a Geg.

Q.
You say he
told
you?

A.
That’s right.

Q.
He
spoke
?

A.
In the mountains this is common,
effendum
.

Q.
Don’t be cheeky, old man. Tell me everything he said.

A.
From what point?

Q.
From the beginning.

A.
Well, now, as I told you—or tried to tell you—I greeted him properly. “God may have brought you here,” I told him. And “How are you?” “I am happy to find you well,” he said. These are formulas of grace that we observe.

Q.
Yes, I know. What happened next?

A.
Well, I asked him to sit at the table, of course, and I set out some food, a great deal of it. He saw that I was blind, I suppose, for he said not to labor overmuch on his account. I said, “Thanks be to God we have food for the guest. Not to have it is the greatest shame of all.” He said nothing to that and I kept putting out the food and the
raki
.

Q.
Why so much food?

A.
Well, his size. He was big. Or rather, dense. Very powerfully built.

Q.
How could you tell that?

A.
Just as I knew you’re from the north. From his step. He got up and put a log on the fire. That was rude. I thought perhaps he was a city dweller, then.

Q.
Just go on.

A.
Well, I asked where he was from and he answered, “From Theti,” and then he explained he was a seller of cheese. Well, I already knew that, of course, from the aroma.

Q.
Which, of course, you promptly told him.

A.
What was that?

Q.
Never mind. What happened next?

A.
Well, then I learned he was a Christian, you see, and I took away the
raki
I’d set out and in its place I gave him wine.

Q.
How did you learn that he was Christian?

A.
His skull cap. I heard him slip it off and set it down on the table. The hard little button at the top makes a sound. But he wasn’t from Theti and he wasn’t a Geg. We plant the heel firmly up here,
effendum
. It’s from walking up and down the sides of mountains. When he first came in the door, that’s how he walked. But then his steps became different. They grew softer, more relaxed. It’s when he saw that I was blind, I would guess.

Q.
You mean he let down his guard?

A.
Yes, that could be.

Q.
Where was he from, then, do you think? From the south?

A.
I don’t know

Q.
From outside?

A.
What do you mean?

Q.
When he spoke was there an accent? Something foreign?

A.
No, no accent. That’s what’s puzzling: perfect northern, even down to the little inflections that are special just to Theti.

Q.
And what else did he say to you?

A.
Not very much. Not in words.

Q.
Please explain that.

A.
Well, I asked him his name and he told me. After that he—

Q.
What name did he give? Do you remember?

A.
Yes, he said that his name was Selca Decani. That, too, was odd. Not the name, my reaction. I had once been acquainted with a Selca Decani, and now when he told me that name I thought, “Yes! Yes, of course! How on earth could I have failed to know that voice right away!” So I said, “Please
forgive me, old friend, I’ve grown senile.” Then I suddenly remembered.

Q.
That Selca Decani had died years before?

A.
How did you know that?

Q.
Never mind.

A.
Yes, he’d died.

Q.
Yet the voice was Decani’s?

A.
No, not really. Not at all. Just at first.

Q.
And what then?

A.
Well, I urged him to eat. But he didn’t. I could tell. He was quiet and still. Yet I sensed a great turmoil churning within him, some terrible emotions conflicting. At war. But then soon these grew quiet and I felt a new energy flowing from his being, as something comforting and warm, almost loving, washed over me. At first I didn’t know what it was. Then he spoke and he asked me a very strange question. He asked if I had ever seen God and, if I had, was it this that had caused my blindness.

Q.
This is fanciful.

A
That is what he said.

Q.
Well, alright. Did you ask him what he meant by it?

A.
No. Nor would I ask you when you came to the city from the mountains. Either question would be rude.

Q.
Your ears are dangerous.

A.
They hear. They heard your step.

Q.
What did you say to him?

A.
Nothing at first. I was startled. Then I asked if he was warm enough.

Q.
And what was his answer?

A.
Silence. But again I was aware of this force he emitted. And then suddenly I realized what it was: it was pity, a pity
so thick that you could squeeze it, almost physical. It wasn’t the pity you resent, that you hate. It was the other kind: the pity that comforts, that heals. One more thing: for a moment I was sure that I could see him. He was young, a strong face with an archangel’s smile. Does this sound like an illusion? Some things aren’t.

Q.
You are mad. Are you finished?

A.
Yes, I’m finished. That was all, that’s when your men broke in. They checked his papers. They seemed to be satisfied. As they were leaving, I spoke up and stopped them.

Q.
You said you felt pity from him.

A.
Yes.

Q.
And so why did you betray him?

A.
I am loyal to the state.

Q.
Try again.

A.
I couldn’t stand to be near him any longer.

Q.
Why was that?

A.
It was something that I felt from him.

Q.
The pity?

A.
Something else: a brutal, terrifying energy. It burned.

Q.
That was surely in your mind.

A.
No, it was real.

Q.
Then what was it?

A.
At the time I felt certain it was goodness.

D
ecani was a dead man roaming the hills seeking momentary life in mistaken recollections. This had been the actual and secret belief of both the commissar and the chief of police at Quelleza (and later of Security people in Shkoder, though none had dared utter so dangerous a view), and the reason
they’d disposed of the Prisoner with haste, for who knew what might happen to an ordinary soul when it brushed against the host of a resurrected mist. But then who was the Prisoner?

Some felt unease.

In Shkoder they followed the uses of sense, and so the Prisoner was tested in the scientific way, which pretended that matter was real and could be measured. Their further assumption was far less speculative, namely that their captive was an enemy agent and bent on a mission that was therefore unguessable, for only wide China was Albania’s friend, and who could hope to keep track of the shifts and purposes of every other nation on the face of earth? There was simply no time, their hearts complained; but they plodded on listlessly, testing for signs that the stranger had been air-dropped: wax from his ears, a sample of his stool, and dirt scraped from under his fingernails were analyzed minutely in search of traces of food or flora foreign to the land; his clothing was scanned underneath black light, for this would make visible a dry-cleaning mark. But these arcane wisdoms yielded nothing. Further, a check of the Prisoner’s teeth showed only an “oversized facial amalgam” fashioned from poorly polished silver, and “two swedged chrome-cobalt alloy crowns” that were “overcontoured and extremely ill-fitting around the edges, resulting in penetration of the gum”: Albanian dentistry, without question. Yet how could this be? How could
any
of it be? Every person was known, counted, and followed; every citizen’s name was on endless lists that were checked each day at each change of location: to market and work and then back to one’s home; to the “cultural” meetings that were held after dinner and the one-hour readings of the news before, where the mind took flight behind etherized eyes. Here no one went anywhere. They were taken.
How could the Prisoner be of this land, moving soundless and alone with the papers of a ghost? In a basement of the Shkoder Security Building the Prisoner was stripped naked and then beaten and interrogated in shifts by female security agents from the morning of Friday, 1 October, until just before noon of the following day, by which time the inquisitors’ mechanical blows had evoked the emotions that normally cause them, stoking the agents to genuine fury and the shouting of wild imprecations of blood. Even worse was done. And still the Prisoner would not speak. Thus, on the evening of 2 October, entangled in anger and mystification, the agents at Shkoder had shipped him to the capital, Tirana, and the faceless State Security Building, for here there were specialists. Horrors. Means.