The Concert (24 page)

Even before they'd reached the nearest café, Silva had told Besnik what had happened to her brother. They sat down in a corner of the Riviera, and Silva scanned her companion's face. He looked thoughtful

“Strange!” he said at last. “Very strange indeed!” She began to recount in detail her conversation with her brother, when she heard for the first time that he was probably going to be expelled from the Party. But Besnik, instead of asking for further explanations, just exclaimed again, “Very strange!” Nor did he comment on Gjergj's hope that the arrest was nothing more than an ordinary detention following some disciplinary offence. But he did convey that he didn't really agree with this interpretation. Silva felt despondent, almost offended. Besnik's mind seemed to be on something else. She was almost sorry she'd phoned him. But she didn't say anything - just looked at him curiously. Was he taking the same sort of line as her boss? She began thinking of how she would apologize for bothering him: she'd adopt an extremely sardonic tone, implying that this was the last time she'd ask him any favours…Meanwhile he spoke, in a low voice, as if to himself.

“A group of tank officers…I think I
did
hear something about that…”

“Really?” Silva almost shouted.

She was ready to burst out: “In that case, what are you waiting for? What was it you heard, and what are they going to do to them?” But she restrained herself.

“Yes, I did hear about it,” Besnik went on, “but I didn't think Arian was involved. And anyway …”

She didn't want to interrupt, but the pause grew so long she was afraid he'd forgotten what he was going to say. Unless he'd deliberately decided not to go on…

“Anyway…?” she prompted.

Besnik swallowed.

“Anyway, it's a very complicated affair,” he said, “No one knows much about it, really.”

Always the same! she thought. Incorrigible. The flash of exasperation in her eye didn't escape him.

“Silva, I'm not trying to hide anything from you,” he said. “I did hear something by chance, but I don't know anything definite. It's a very mysterious affair.”

“Mysterious?”

“I might have been able to find out more, but unfortunately I'm due to go abroad on a mission. As you can imagine, what's happening in China is turning the international communist movement upside down.”

He looked at Silva for a moment.

“When are you leaving?” she asked.

“In three days' time. Not long enough to find anything out — you can imagine all the things I have to do before I go,”

“Yes.”

“But as soon as I get back — and I shouldn't think I'll be away long - 111 do all I can.”

“Thank you,” said Silva.

“It's really incredible,' he went on, still rather abstractedly. “Especially to think that Arian might be mixed up in it…”

“That's what we all thought.”

“As I said, I did hear of something of the sort And at the time, without dreaming Arian might be invoked, I thought…But just in passing, as you might about anything you heard about by chance …If I'd known he was mixed up in it, of course I'd have tried to find out more…”

The more Silva tried to puzzle it out, the more she felt she was missing the drift of what Besnik was saying. She was right: he'd just finished a long sentence, and she realized with horror that its meaning had entirely escaped her.

“Look, Silva,” he said earnestly. “I'm not saying this just to reassure you, but I have a feeling — well, it's more than a feeling, but… forgive me …I can't tell you any more about it now - a feeling that it's all a misunderstanding and that it'll eventually be cleared up.”

Silva suddenly felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The look in his eye told her she could believe him.

“Thank you, Besnik. To tell you the truth, knowing Arian as I do, I find his imprisonment so inconceivable I expect him to be released at any moment, in a few days' time at the worst…But meanwhile he's
there
, and you can imagine how painful it is for all of us.”

“I do understand, Silva,” he said. “I understand perfectly.”

After a little while they stood up, and he saw her back to her ministry. On the way there she felt reassured, but as soon as he left her, anguish closed in on her again. She seemed to have every reason to worry rather than to calm down. All Besnik had really told her was what anyone with the least consideration would say to a friend: he was sure it would all turn out all right, he had a feeling…But what else could he say, after all? The opposite?

Silva opened the door into the office. Linda and the boss were both there. They watched her as she went and sat down, the boss with a rather shifty eye, Linda inquiringly, but quite ready to smile. Silva, pretending not to notice, opened her drawer and took out a file. Neither of the others addressed a word to her for the rest of the morning.

When Silva got home, neither Gjergj nor Brikena were back yet. She put the lunch on to cook and got vegetables out of the refrigerator, but just as she was about to start preparing a salad she put the knife down and went over to the phone. Luckily, Skënder Bermema was at home. She said she needed to see him urgently.

“Whenever you want,” he said. “Now, if you like.”

“This afternoon would be better. Are you free?”

“Yes, of course. What time would you like to come?”

Silva hesitated.

“You want me to come to your place?” she said.

She could hear him breathing at the other end of the line. He knew she was avoiding his wife because of the business with Ana.

“As you like,” he said. “We could just as easily go somewhere else, but I'll be on my own here this afternoon."

“I'll come at five, then.”

She put the receiver down slowly, as if she were afraid it might break.

As soon as she entered Skënder's study, Silva was submerged in a wave of nostalgia. How many years was it since she'd set foot here? How long since the days when she and Ana used to come and see him? The curtains were different, and so were some of the books on the shelves, but the chair where Ana liked to sit leafing through a book or a magazine was still in its old place, and the pictures on the walls were the same. Silva stood there for a moment, forgetting why she was there. Skënder too seemed absent, perhaps for the same reason: the memories they had in common.

“Sit down, Silva,” he said at last. He sounded tired.

She took a chair. She'd hesitated about coming, even after she'd phoned. Should she really go to his place or not? Two or three times she decided to do nothing, to avoid giving the impression that it was only when she had problems that she thought of him. She wasn't the kind to go round begging favours. But, apart from Gjergj, Besnik Struga and Skënder Bermema were the people closest to her. If she didn't unburden herself to them, to whom could she speak? She'd said this to herself over and over again. Yet when she left her own apartment at a quarter to five, she didn't tell Gjergj where she was going.

“What's it all about?” Skënder asked eventually. “You sounded rather upset when you rang.”

She felt her eyes starting to fill with tears.

“To tell you the truth, I
am
upset.”

She set about telling him what had happened, and to her own astonishment — perhaps because
he
was listening to
her
so quietly - managed to express herself quite calmly. As she spoke he kept glancing impatiently, and more and more frequently, at the telephone.

“Very strange.” he said as soon as she'd finished.

And this brief epilogue convinced her that her story must indeed be out of the ordinary.

He bounded up and pounced on the phone as if it might try to escape. He grabbed the receiver with one hand and dialled feverishly with the other. The ringing at the other end of the line seemed to reverberate in Suva's heart. No one answered.

Skënder hung up, then lifted the receiver and dialled again -whether the same number as before or another, Silva had no means of knowing. Then there was a click, and he said, “Hallo — Skënder Bermema here.”

She'd have liked to shut her eyes and have a rest after all that tension. At first she didn't take in what was being said over the phone. It was comfort enough to know that someone was taking an interest in her brother, and someone else again was supplying relevant information. At least the general silence, the shrugs, the inability of anyone to explain anything, were over! How right she'd been to come here! She watched his lips gratefully as he spoke.

The conversation continued. Now she wanted to know what they were saying. Her agitation returned stronger than ever. How could she be so thoughtless as to be lulled by a mere exchange of words? What mattered was what was being said.

Chewing her lip, she tried to piece together the conversation, guessing at the part she couldn't hear.

“What?” Skënder almost yelled down the phone. He seemed as frantic as she was. “What?”

“What's up?” she wondered. He was frowning more and more heavily. The person at the other end must be telling him something terrible. She seemed to feel her pulse slacken.

“What?” he bellowed again, waving his free hand impatiently. “Frankly, I don't understand…No, really …If you're supposed to be in charge…What? …No! …No offence meant, but I'm sorry I bothered you…”

Silva felt a bit better again. If Skënder was ready to lose his temper the situation couldn't be all that bad. He was now holding the receiver away from his ear. And soon he hung up, looking at Silva with a distant smile.

“Very odd,” he said. “This chap starts by giving me an earful of tittle-tattle, then tries to tell me we have to approach the matter theoretically! And to think he's an old friend of mine!”

“Didn't he know anything?”

Skënder shrugged.

“Who knows? I couldn't make him out any better than you could, and you didn't even hear what he said! He wriggled like an eel!”

Silva would have liked to ask him who it was, but by now he was flicking nervously through the telephone directory. Eventually he found the number he was looking for.

Silva didn't understand any more of the second phone conversation than she had of the first. Then Skënder rang someone else, who was out, but the person who answered gave him another number.

“Hallo - is that the Political Office?”

Silva felt she would never escape from this maelstrom of calls. Was she going to have to listen to them for hours without being any the wiser?

“How are you?” he was now asking someone. “You know why I'm calling…”

Silva held her breath as she listened to his brief preamble. The silence that followed at the other end was almost tangible. Then the other person spoke. Skënder listened, gazing abstractedly at the little table on which the phone stood.

“Why get into a state about them?” he said, obviously echoing what he'd just heard. “I don't know about anyone else, but I'm interested in him because he's a friend of mine. A very close friend, do you get me? These things happen in the army? What do you mean by that?…We civilians attach too much importance to them?…No, I don't think that's true…Anyhow, I get the message. You don't know much about it either…No, no — don't bother…Goodbye!”

He put the phone down and smiled at Silva as before.

“Funny they're all so vague,” he said, as if to himself. “I'd almost say they're worried. Why are we civilians taking such an interest? …Yes, very odd … One can't help thinking …It's almost as if…”

“Perhaps it's got something to do with China?” Silva said gently, to help him finish his sentence.

“China? No, no …I was thinking of something else…Ah well,… Just theories…maybe they're all nonsense.”

He lit a cigarette and started pacing round the studio. He seemed to be staring into space. The same as ever, thought Silva. But perhaps it was because they never changed, he and Besnik Struga, that they were still her friends.

As she watched him going over to the bookcase, his back now turned, she suddenly felt that an exactly similar scene had probably taken place before, here in this studio, in the silent dusk — between him and Ana.

Forgetting a Woman
… She knew that story of his almost by heart. Frédéric had asked for it to be read out during the divorce proceedings. Everyone said Skënder had dedicated it to Ana. Although it was set in a hotel room, Silva was convinced the scene it depicted had taken place here in this studio.

Skënder turned and walked over to his desk as if looking for something, but gave up and came and stood in front of Silva with his hands in his pockets.

“What a pity I've got to go abroad, I'm sere I'd have been able to solve the mystery.”

“You're going away?” she said, not sure she'd heard right, “Where to?”

He smiled almost guiltily.

“Can't you guess? To China?”

“China!” exclaimed Silva. “Really?”

“Really and truly. Apparently this is the last delegation. The last swallow of summer.”

Silva stared at the fringe on the rug at her feet. The last swallow of summer, she repeated to herself as he went on about the make-up of the delegation. They're all flying away, she thought sadly. And heaved a sigh.

Almost as soon as she got to the office next morning, her boss told her she had to go on a mission to the north of the country. She concluded at once that this was the first act of reprisal against her, after the business about her brother. With a haste she was ashamed of whenever she thought of it later, she assumed it was the prelude to a transfer, or else to out-and-out dismissal.

“Me?… I've got to go to the north?” she stammered, frowning, as if to say, Why, what have I done?