The Concert (55 page)

It wasn't the first time he'd had this sensation while he was asleep. The shrill whistle of a train was fading away in the distance, it must have been that which suggested the feeling of handcuffs: he'd heard the whistle of a train when he'd first had to wear them, the night after his arrest.

He turned over in bed, but he couldn't get back to sleep. Fragmentary memories of the past evening kept coming back to him. Dinner at Suva's; people talking about the arrest of Jiang Qing…Sonia had asked bluntly if these new developments could mean more trouble for her husband. If her question hadn't been addressed to Skënder Bermema, Arian would have insisted on changing the subject, He didn't want to hear any more about China. If my life is going to depend on what happens there, he thought, then God help me!

As a matter of fact it did sometimes seem to him, especially at night, that his fate depended on the vagaries of a political mechanism that now affected more than a single country - a terrifying international juggernaut! Chained to those chariot wheels, how could you tell which direction misfortune would strike from? The chains you were bound with might come from as far away as the forges of Normandy — or from even further: from those of the Golden Horde. “Will you sleep with me, floozie? - you won't get even a walk-on part unless youdo!” These words, spoken backstage in some theatre in Shanghai, far away in time and space, might one day influence his own destiny. For didn't people say that it was the memory of some such ancient insult that had made Jiang Qing pursue the Cultural Revolution so ferociously, especially in Shanghai?

“Do you think we're living in Shanghai?” The weary eyes of the examining magistrate bored into his. Why had he shouted such a thing on the telephone, during the famous manoeuvres? What had Shanghai got to do with it? Why had he been thinking about Shanghai?

Arian turned over again in bed, and again he felt the weight of handcuffs. They felt so real that once more he flung his arms about to try to throw them off.

The telegram announcing Gjergfs retern reached Silva the next day, just before people left their offices, it left her in some confusion, as it didn't give the number of the iight or the time of arrival She phoned the foreign ministry, but the people who should have been able to give her the information she needed were not available. The airport was not much better: they weren't expecting any direct flights from China today - so the passenger she was interested in might come either via Belgrade or on the flight from East Berlin.

Fearing Gjergj might arrive just as she was wasting time on the phone, she got her boss's permission to leave early and rushed downstairs and out through the rain to the taxi rank in front of the State Bank. She was lucky: there was a taxi free.

“To the airport,' she told the driver. “As fast as you can, please!”

On the way, she scanned the telegram to make sure she hadn't missed anything. But no, Gjergj couldn't have known himself what plane he was coming by.

The airport building was half empty. There was practically no heating in the arrivals hall The sound of the rain streaming down the windows added to the sense of desolation.

The plane from Yugoslavia had landed some time ago; no one knew when the flight from East Berlin would arrive. Why? Because of the bad weather? Silva asked. Perhaps, said a woman at the information desk.

Silva sat in a corner and ordered a coffee. The rain went on pouring down. She clasped her arms round her knees and sat there thinking, staring at the windows. She was cold. Her thoughts were growing numb, and as they did so her impatience and alarm also faded. Was this because of the monotonous patter of the rain on the windows, or because she herself was so tired? It occurred to her that, to anyone outside looking in, she must look as vague and inaccessible as the landscape looked to her, inside looking out. It was an apt image for her, sitting here alone on this dreary day in this draughty airport, scanning the sky as she waited for a plane to emerge from the clouds, bringing back her husband by an unknown route from a far-off country racked by plots and shrouded in mystery.

She didn't know how long she sat there. At one point she came out of her reverie and saw that her coffee was cold and untouched. She hadn't noticed the waiter bringing it.

She went home very demoralized. The plane from East Germany had been cancelled, and no one knew if it would be coming the next day or the day after.

She wandered round the kitchen for a while, but hadn't the heart to do anything. As she was sitting down on the settee, she suddenly remembered the envelope Skënder Bermema had given her, and got up again to fetch it. She'd left it on Gjergj's bedside table, for a surprise when he got home.

As soon as she'd read the first few lines, she realized these notes might have been written specially for such a day as this.

Peking… Winter's day. Some international airlines have suspended their flights because of Mao's death, I'll have to wait a week, perhaps a fortnight, for them to start up again. You can imagine how fed up I am. Shut up in my hotel. Alone. Surrounded by people in mourning.

I looked again at the notes for my novel, half hoping that it would come to life again. But no…my hope was still-born.

Notes written in a state of boredom
…I don't know where ! read that. The author was probably some Japanese monk who lived in the early Middle Ages.

I spent all day, in spite of myself, thinking about the death of Lin Biao. Probably because of the new rumour going around about the circumstances of his death.

I went over and over what Gj— D— told me about it, It's quite interesting to compare what was said thee with what is being said now. According to what we've heard so far, it's generally admitted, both in China and abroad, that Lin Biao really did foment a plot aimed at assassinating Mao. So in a way Mao's riposte was quite justified. What we don't know is whether the marshal's plot to kill Mao was the same as Mao's plot to kill the marshal

If Mao knew about the existence of Lin Biao's plot, he may also have found out how it was to operate, and being thus in possession of a ready-made scenario, he may have turned it back on its originator. But why? Did he do so to save himself trouble; for the unique delight, the excitement tinged with irony, of having his victim entirely in his power; out of sadism; or out of a superstitious sense of poetic justice? No one knows that, either.

I was dying to get back so that I could tell you all about it, Gj— D— said to me on his return from China. And now ! feel the same, I've noticed that when one is abroad, and especially when one's alone, one enjoys imagining that kind of conversation.

“Do you know the real truth about Lin Biao's death? It's finally been brought to light. In some ways it resembles and in other ways it differs from the versions you brought back to us. Today everyone knows Lin Biao wasn't shot, or stabbed, or poisoned. He was shot down by a rocket,”

“A rocket? But that was the theory everyone agreed to exclude from the outset!”

“So it was. Nevertheless, he was eliminated by the method that seemed the most unlikely …”

That's how I imagined the beginning of the conversation between myself and Gj— D— in the Café Riviera,

“He wasn't killed in the sky over China, nor in the Mongolian desert, nor at home, nor in a hangar at the disused airport. He was killed at a dinner party, or rather after it.”

As soon as I started thinking of the circumstances of the murder, I found myself so fascinated by that dinner party of Mao's that I soon forgot all about the Café Riviera. The old, already time-worn story itself, with its faded, sometimes almost illegible characters, appealed much more strongly to my imagination, perhaps because

its origins reached back so far into the past,

It was all to happen, then, at a banquet, as in a play by Shakespeare (Lin Biao and Mao Zedong had both been passionate advocates of the banning of Shakespeare's works — was it because they were both hatching a plot based on treachery at a banquet?).

In other words, both Mao and his marshal based their plots on the plot of
Macbeth
. The only thing was, in this case, Macbeth wasn't able to commit his crime because Duncan stole a march on him.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEATH OF LIN BIAO. SYNOPSIS.

A

Lin Biao was liquidated in a way that both corresponds with and differs from the theories put forward on the subject. In a nutshell, one might say he was killed by all those methods put together but by none of them in particular.

Many factors were invoked in his murder: the sky, the earth, the words “Let him go,” the launching of a rocket, the burning of the bodies, the plane, the crash in the middle of the desert, the words “Welcome to the banquet,” the words “And now I'll wait for you at my place,” and the after-thought, “Perhaps we'll meet again in a world where invitation cards have other things written on them …”

It was ten o'clock in the evening when Mao, his wife, and Zhou Enlai saw their guests to the door. “Goodnight, see you soon,” “We hope you'll come and see
us
one evening!” “Certainly, certainly!”

The marshal's bullet-proof car glided away along the dark street. The little group at the door stood there for a while, watching their guests disappear. No one said anything until the sound of an explosion was heard in the distance.

Mao heaved a deep sigh. He turned to his wife and Zhou Enlai, You see to the details,” he told them. Then he led the way back into the house.

He knew he would sleep deeply. Just as his brain had recently reflected the anxiety of the living Lin Biao, so now, he knew, h§ would learn something from the mortal slumbers of his dead enemy.

B

On the main road, at the bend near kilometre 19, the soldiers who had just fired the rocket came out of their look-out post.

After the blinding explosion everything seemed darker and quieter than it really was. On legs still cramped with waiting (they had been lurking there for a good two hours), they walked over to the remains of the car. They'd only seen it, or rather its headlights,for a second, as it slowed down to take the bend. It had looked large and black then. Now there was nothing in the débris to suggest any shape at all. It would be difficult, too, to identify the corpses in this mass of shattered metal

They didn't know who they'd hit. They didn't know what they were supposed to do now. Fire at the car and then wait, they'd been told.

After a quarter of an hour they saw another set of headlights approaching. They were astounded when the car stopped and they saw Zhou Enlai and the head of Mao's personal bodyguard get out. The dead man must be very important for the prime minister himself to take an interest in him.

The new arrivals went over and began to inspect the débris by the light of an electric torch. No doubt they were looking for the corpses. The prime minister's face was very pale,

The soldiers heard someone behind them calling out, “Quick! Quick!” but they were still so numbed they didn't understand what it. meant. Anyhow, now that their work was done, haste seemed irrelevant. Unless there was some damage to the road that needed to be repaired? Or it could jest be pointless - some officers had got into the habit of shouting “Quick!” at the mere sight of a few ordinary soldiers.

C

So he was killed by a rocket. But grotesquely, in a car - not in the sky, aboard a plane, as you might expect. Those responsible did their best to suppress all knowledge of the car's existence. After that they tried to suppress all reference to the rocket itself, bet when that proved impossible they branded the propagators of any such rumours as traitors.

And thee there was the treason perpetrated by one of the marshal's children — by his daughter and future son-in-law, to be precise. Though they were unaware of what they were doing.

The bugging devices apparently proved their worth. On the strength of a recorded conversation between the girl and her fiancé, Zhou had them detained separately and thee questioned them himself.

It had been a long day. The marshal didn't know what was going on. He was just due back after a vacation.

Zhou Enlai had no difficulty in getting at the truth. The girl and her fiancé had been summoned urgently that morning. A black official car was waiting outside: “Comrade Zhoe Eelai would be glad…” The two young people complied apprehensively. As they were driven along they probably wondered why they'd been sent for. Perhaps they whispered, “Could it be for that?” lven if they dide't, even if they only exchanged glances and gestures, everything was recorded by a microphone installed inside the black limousine.

When they reached the Forbidden City they” were left to cool their heels for an hour or two, then separated and sent to different rooms. The reason was obvious: when Zhou Enlai interrogated them one at a time, he could tell each that the other had confessed, so what was the point of denials?

Mao had had his suspicions for some time. All he needed was final confirmation before giving orders for the axe to fall.

Meanwhile Lin liao himself was on his way back to Peking, The closer the train got to the capital the more his apprehension increased. What had happened while he was away? His wife couldn't hide the fact that she was worried too. She and their son were the only members of Lin's family who knew about his plot, but he suspected that his son had told his daughter. Lie Biao had always been very touched by the closeness between the two, but now it had its drawbacks. He consoled himself with the thought that daughters are usually more attached to their parents than sons are, and he could be sere she wouldn't do anything to harm him.

When he got home he found Mao's invitation to dinner awaiting him. They usually did meet like that after either of them had been away on holiday. The marshal heaved a sigh of relief. Everything was the same as before. In his euphoria he forgot to ask where his daughter was. Someone had said something about her - she would be late home, she was out somewhere with her fiancé…But he'd been too preoccupied with the invitation to take much notice…