The Concert (34 page)

That cursed conversation! He'd never have dreamed a chat could cost so dear. Why on earth hadn't he owned up to it at the time, directly after the break with Yugoslavia, when all members of the Party were asked to report what they'd talked to the Yugoslavs about? “One day, comrades, I too, fool that I was, impelled by jealousy, that survival from the world of the bourgeoisie, told them how frustrated I felt when X was appointed instead of me to post Y…” That would have done it…

“You seem very thoughtful,” said Zhou. “The play seems to have made a great impression on you. I see it's not only Shakespeare who can set your head in a whirl!”

And they'd gone on talking about surrounding a Party committee, about the Party in general, and about how urgently necessary it was to overhaul it.

Later on, when he was back home from his trip to China, what Zhou had said still remained on his mind — though he didn't know whether to call it a piece of advice, a suggestion or an order. He didn't ha^e a word for it in Albanian. In his imagination it was like a snake coiled up inside him, which stirred whenever he got a phone call from the Central Committee, especially one that summoned him to a meeting. What did they think he was, a minister or a bus driver, ringing for him every time it suited them?

Even so, he would never have followed up his talk with Zhou, never have dared to do anything, symbolic or otherwise, if, some time later, the Chinese prime minister hadn't sent him greetings through a member of a government delegation.

Relations with China were not so warm as they had been. One evening, at an official dinner at the Brigades Palace, the Chinaman sitting next to him, and to whom he'd so far paid no attention started to talk to him in broken Albanian.

“Comrade Zhou Enlai sends you his best wishes. Comrade Zhou Enlai still thinks of you. You went to the theatre, magnificent. wasn't it?” said the Chinaman, with a high-pitched laugh that had nothing to do with what he was saying. He went on, more and more openly, his words sounding now like a message and now more like a menace.

“The moment comrade Zhou Enlai spoke about is coming. The test, hee-hee! Everyone must do somethings. Can't just wait for it to fall in lap, hee-hee! Difficult times ahead, hee-hee!”

The minister's fork was suspended in mid-air. He had lost his appetite. So nothing had been forgotten! The day of reckoning was apparently at hand, and they were explicitly letting him know what was expected of him. He looked round at the faces of the other guests, trying to guess which of them had been given a similar message. At one point he had the impression that all the tables were full of giggling Chinamen. I must act before it's too late, he thought — do something, even if it's only symbolic, to keep them quiet. A sort of consideration, the price of their silence about the Soviets and the Yugoslavs. Something symbolic: the Party secretary dragged across the stage, tanks surrounding a district Party committee…Afterwards, if there really was an upheaval, as Zhou Enlai had said…Bet for the moment, the symbolic act would do…They
were
on the eve of some manoeuvres…

“How is comrade Enver?” asked the Chinaman. “Not too well, eh?”

The minister's mouth was full of dust and ashes. If only the blasted dinner would end! But his anxiety lasted several more weeks, until the cold afternoon when he finally gave the order to encircle the Party committee.

All the rest of that afternoon he'd felt completely disorientated, pacing back and forth in his tent, peering out now and then and scanning the plain for a messenger. The messenger arrived at nightfall The order hadn't been carried out. He didn't let anyone see how shocked he was, stepping back into the tent to conceal his dismay. He wouldn't listen to any explanations of this act of disobedience - he just pretended not to understand, and kept shouting, “Arrest them! Arrest them!” As he did so he told himself the best thing would be to settle the matter there and then so that no one would know about it, so that the fact that the order was given would be forgotten, today, tomorrow and until the end of time. But it was too late. All he could do now was simulate an anger he didn't feel, because fear left no room for wrath. So whenever anyone opened his mouth to try to offer some explanation of how the officers accounted for their behaviour, he cut them short, shouting, “I don't want to know! I don't want to know!”

And he didn't want to know, either. His only desire was for the matter to be buried in oblivion as fast as possible. That blasted suggestion of Zhou's! Why had he let him pour that poison in his ear? What he had done struck him sometimes as fatal, sometimes as merely premature. His days became full of chill terror. He realized the affair wasn't going to die of its own accord. The officers themselves had talked to various people. If they weren't punished they'd probably talk to some more. By some means or other they had to be silenced. One way of intimidating them was to have them expelled from the Party; and he managed that without any difficulty.'But apparently, after they were expelled, they wrote a letter to Enver Hoxha. That was what the phone call had been about, the evening of the dinner. The minister hadn't slept a wink all that night. He was obviously going to have to explain himself to the Central Committee. But one of his staff convinced him that what the officers had said about him might easily be interpreted as subversion, as propaganda against authority. So in his report to the Committee he maintained that the officers' behaviour infringed the laws of the Republic, A fortnight later, at the Central Committee, when someone asked what measures were going to be taken against the officers, the reply was brief: “If they've broken the law, let the usual measures be taken.” The minister rubbed his hands. So the Central Committee wouldn't get drawn into details about the officers' fate? Well,
he
knew very well what to do with them! He slept soundly that night, the first time for ages. Then he began to wonder: should he send the officers to prison, or leave them unpunished? To tell the truth, he would have swallowed his resentment and let the matter drop if he hadn't been afraid they'd start talking again. No, prison was safest. His aides agreed with him. One of them suggested it would be best if they were dismissed from the army first, so that their arrest would seem purely political.

The minister had imagined that after the tank officers were arrested his peace of mind would be restored once and for all But on the contrary. It was then that he started to notice the long silences of the telephone and the lack of visitors. Sometimes he put all this down to the current cooling off of relations with China, which was a general preoccupation then. The very name of China sent a chill down his spine. Great' changes were in the offing, though there was nothing definite yet. Perhaps it would start with economic retaliation?

The silences of the telephone seemed to get longer every day. What's going on? he wondered. I'm still a minister. No one has criticized me. What have I got to worry about? He dismissed the situation as absurd, grotesque. But after a while the clouds of uncertainty gathered again. Rumour spreads by word of mouth, Zhou Enlai had said: it was as influential in a country's affairs as the newspapers. If Zhou had encouraged the episode of the encirclement just in order to start such a rumour, it must be because he believed in it. And if he was right to do so, if rumour really was as strong as all that, the lack of phone calls and the absence of visitors was only too comprehensible. The rumour would have told how the minister had ordered the Party committee to be surrounded, how the tanks had refused to obey the order and been thrown in jail for insubordination - and would have ended by asking, Was the order justified? That was quite enough to make people shun him like the plague. No need to arrange for critical articles to appear in the papers, or to dismiss him from his post, and so on, Rumour - curse it! - was more powerful than all of these. He'd sent for the head of army intelligence and asked what he knew about the rumour. The answer took him aback. “We know nothing about anything of the kind, comrade minister.” He'd started to laugh with relief, there and thee, in front of the head of intelligence. Then his laughter changed to a grim smile at his own gullibility. No, what was causing his anxiety was not a rumour in the ordinary sense of the word, but something more subtle, nameless, and all the more pernicious because it was imperceptible. Something that seeped into everything, everywhere, like the air.

Where had it started? Whose mouths had uttered it first? And in what office, institution or mysterious ante-chamber? The most depressing possibilities occurred to him.

The minister had spent the last two months in this state. Meanwhile the Chinese had done nothing. Everything seemed to be paralysed, I did what I could, he explained in an imaginary conversation with Zhou Enlai. I tried to encircle a Party committee with tanks, but it turned out to be impossible. I was lucky to escape with my life. We don't go in for that sort of thing here, you know. We don't harm the Party even symbolically, as you suggested - so you can imagine how feasible it is in reality! They'd smash you to smithereens! Smithereens! Ask me to do the most horrible thing you can think of, but not that! Not that, ever!

The television- news on Thursday had reassured him somewhat. It'll pass, he thought. The phones will ring again, the door-bell will be heard once more. That was what he was thinking when the phone actually rang. It was the clerk. No guest was ever awaited so eagerly. The minister had tried to take an afternoon nap, but he couldn't sleep. As soon as he got up, his wife asked him:

“Would you like a cup of coffee?''

At first he thought he'd wait and have one with the visitor, then he said yes please. If the visitor came, he could always have another with him…
If
the visitor came? How could he doubt it? It was unthinkable that he shouldn't turn up.

The doubt lingered until Simon Dersha appeared. But then Simon Dersha vanished again beyond the railings.

The minister stood at one of the drawing-room windows. The trees stood outside — massive, dark, indifferent. Once or twice he imagined himself hastily ringing for his bodyguard and his chauffeur, diving into his car as it emerged from the garage, and hurtling along the street after his quarry. The man would try to get away, but he would stop him, clutch him by the sleeve and say tearfully, “What came over you, going away like that? Why are you tormenting me too, as if all my other troubles weren't enough?”

That is what he imagined, staring out at the garden, with the drops of rain from this afternoon's downpour still hanging from the branches and reflecting some invisible source of light. Thee he reached out and rang the bell, and did all the other things he'd imagined. But slowly.

As the car was driving out through the gate and the chauffeur asked where he was to go, the minister said:

“Just drive around."

They were soon in a main street where the pavements were crowded with people. To the minister they looked at once hostile and unpredictable. Who knew what was inside those heads? What thoughts did they emit? What terrifying rumours?

As he gazed at the anonymous faces he began to be afraid. They were probably thinking of China, and of him. What would become of him? What verdict would they pronounce?

Somewhere amongst them must be his guest. He wanted to find him and whisper, “Oh ghost, oh phantom, why did you disappear?”

He sighed and looked again at the passers-by. Some of them stared at his car with a grim expression that seemed to him tinged with irony. What if the Chinese had betrayed him? he thought suddenly. What if they'd sacrificed him to some temporary arrangement? But this thought was pushed aside by the crowds in the street: he felt somehow that they held his fate in their hands, and that if only the sound they made, the rumour they spread, were to stop, he would be saved. Otherwise it would gradually rise to the highest authorities, and that would be the end of him. So he was dependent on their silence. But was that asking too much? After all, what had he done wrong, for heaven's sake? He'd tried to organize some manoeuvres, a mock military operation …A surge of hatred for this merciless mob swept over him, together with the self-pity and resentment generated by humiliation. He felt like getting out of the car, kneeling down in front of the crowd, beating his breast and crying: “Don't be angry with me - I swear ! wasn't trying to do anything real! It was just an exercise, pure make-believe! Don't soldiers themselves talk of the war game?”

At the same moment, Simon Dersha was walking along amid the crowds on the pavement. Now he'd left the district where the minister lived he felt calmer, though whenever he glimpsed a black limousine he dodged behind the nearest passers-by in case it had the minister inside, scanning the street to find him: “Hi, Simon - where are you off to? You're supposed to be coming to see me - you phoned up yourself! Jump in and 111 drive you home with me!”

When Simon reached his flat he found the family as he had left them. Waiting to see how he'd got on. They could tell at once that he'd failed.

“Well,” said his wife, breaking the silence, “Wasn't it any good?… What happened?”

He shrugged as if to say, That's the way it is. If only they didn't badger him for explanations

“Oh God, what a mess we're in!” groaned his brother, burying his head in his hands.

Simon glanced at him. He felt like saying: You should talk - it was you who sowed this doubt in my mind!

“But what happened?” repeated his wife, “Didn't he listen to you at all? isn't there any hope?”

Simon shook his head,

“I never heard of such a thing!” his wife exclaimed angrily. “Everybody gets their friends to put in a good word — one hears of cases all the time — but when
you
try to do it it doesn't work!”

“I couldn't help it …It didn't just depend on me!”