The Concert (63 page)

That is so.

And the bad weather, and the lightning, which have so often been mentioned recently, didn't prevent
you
from hearing quite clearly what they said?

No.

So what did you conclude from what they said?

That they had absolutely nothing to reproach themselves with.

Is that all?

Yes. What else could I have concluded? The purity of their intentions was as plain as could be. Their motives were clear as crystal. And to think I agreed to cover them with obloquy! I haven't been able to sleep for months!

Is that all?

I don't know what else you want of me,

Notes by delegate:
Neither the head of personnel nor the head of military intelligence is being sincere, They're both hiding something. I think the head of personnel is prevaricating when he says he thought that when his superiors asked him to investigate the tank officers” backgrounds they were acting out of a desire for revenge. I think he knew they were motivated first and foremost by fear. As for the head of military intelligence, he's lying even more outrageously, because he knew, even better than the head of personnel, about the fears to which the tank officers' attitude had given rise. The officers under surveillance had very probably often used such phrases as “It's not done to encircle a Party committee…” “We've explained it to them, but they wouldn't listen…” “We're not living in China!”…“If we want to prove it, we can ask the Central Committee…”

If neither of these two witnesses has mentioned fear, it's because that explanation would make them conscious accomplices in the wrongdoing in question.

As regards the bringing forward of the parachute landing, that was obviously motivated by a desire to justify the encircling of the Party committee by the tanks. They could say afterwards that they hadn't ordered the Party committee to be encircled; they'd ordered it to be defended, but apparently this was rejected as too crude. Moreover the commando leader's protestations about the bringing forward of the jump, and especially about the failure of the operation, prevented it from being used as justification for the encircling of the Party committee: that might have run the risk of exposing the whole machination. The most superficial inquiry would have revealed that the order for the parachute jump was given
an hour after
the tank officers refused to encircle the Party committee.

Supplementary note by the delegate:
For information, we append a copy of the text entitled
Forgetting a Woman
, by Skënder Bermema, This is an exact copy of the manuscript deposited in the safe in the office of the head of personnel, motorized units.

FORGETTING A WOMAN

And what am I going to do now? I thought, looking at the closed shutters, warped by the rain; at the carpet; at the door by which she'd gone out a few moments ago; at the china ashtray with “Tourist Hotel” written round the edge,

I wandered round the room until my pacings brought me close to the door, I stood on the exact spot where she'd kissed me goodbye, a gesture that neither emphasized our parting nor held out any promise. Such a farewell, at the end of a stormy afternoon, is usually seen as a gesture of affection, of regret for angry exchanges; the meeting of lips often leads to the meeting of minds again, to complete forgiveness and reconciliation. But it wasn't like that at ail I had kept my hands in my pockets - I'd even thrust them in deeper. I stood stiff as a ramrod as I felt her brash her lips against my neck and run her hand through my hair. Î felt just the faintest impulse to put my arms round her in the age-old ritual for ending a quarrel, but I seemed somehow to have turned to stone, and couldn't move.

And now I didn't feel any remorse. I just felt tired.

The ashtray was full of cigarette ends, like corpses on a battlefield (hers wore red round their heads to show what side they had fought on). This array bore witness to the sequence of events this afternoon: the outburst of anger, the painful explanations, the mutual accusations, her unquenchable tears. If a museum of sadness existed, I'd have taken the ashtray and offered it to the curator,

I was exhausted, I had a bitter taste in my mouth. All I wanted to do was rest, sleep. I looked doubtfully at the bed — the blanket, the pillow. Did I really think I was going to be able to sleep? I felt like laughing, the idea was so ridiculous.

The soothing sound of rain wafted in from outside. I absolutely must forget this woman, root her out of my life. But above all I had to repossess this evening — that was my most urgent necessity.

I had to do all this because the pleasure she gave me was always less than the pain.

I found myself walking over every square metre of the room we'd both paced round in the course of that senseless afternoon. The overflowing ashtray brought me to a halt. I emptied the cigarette butts into the palm of my hand. They were quite cold now. And such a short time ago they had been so warm, so close to us - to our words, our sighs, our regrets, our sobs.

I went over to the window, half-opened the shutters and threw the cigarette ends out into the darkness. Like scattering someone's ashes, I thought. I
must
forget her. Use all my mental resources to denigrate her, so that when I was finally able to let her image go, it would vanish completely into oblivion, Destroyed.

I couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret at this prospect, but I was sure it was the only way. I would soon lie down — I'd noticed

my most destructive thoughts came to me in that position - and thee Pd begin…Would she hear the sound of the bulldozers, lying in
her
bed?

Suddenly I had an idea. What if I put all this on paper? Perhaps, written down, this evening would be expelled from my life more easily? I would give it form in order to kill it more easily.

Yes, that's what Pd do.

The thought of writing soothed me, as it always did, strangely enough, in such circumstances. Like a pilot flying his plane out of a storm, it bore me out of my turbulence into more tranquil skies.

The charm worked more quickly than I expected. I was soon fast asleep…

I recognized the South Pole from a long way off. (It was slightly flattened, as Pd learned in my geography lessons in primary school) I could hear the dell thud of hammering. As I got nearer I could see the noise was being produced by three squat little men trying to correct the earth's axis. To adjust the speed at which it revolved, apparently. Henceforward, days would last thirty-eight hours, eights twenty-two. After much research and many surveys, it had been decided this would be a great improvement. I seemed to have read something to this effect in a paper or magazine.

I wanted to ask them when the new calendar began, but for some reason I asked quite a different question: “Seeing you're experts at this sort of thing, I suppose you could remove bits of time?”

Of course they could, they replied. Child's play!

Good Lord! So what had seemed so impossible to me — getting rid of all that sadness — was really quite easy!

I tried to explain to them that I wanted to lose a day, or rather a particularly painful evening.

They started to roar with laughter.

“An evening? Bet we only do things wholesale! Half-centuries, decades, years at the very least, But still,”
-
they looked at their tools — “perhaps if we used our most delicate equipment we might be able to manage days too…”

“Where is it?” asked one of them.

“What?”

“The day you want to get rid of, if I understand you correctly. You want to remove it, and then close up the gap, is that right?”

“Yes, that's it.”

“So where is it?”

My God, ! couldn't remember anything! I was drenched in sweat and my head was in a whirl.

“Maybe you can remember the year, or the decade?”

But I couldn't. I only knew the day itself was sad, mortally sad…

“What happened in the world that day? What empire was overturned? Was there an earthquake?”

As I didn't reply, they looked at one another. Thee they cast their weary eyes around, to where in the distance a maelstrom of fallen empires slowly revoked, together with plinths brought down by earthquakes, the skeletons of the ages. They all whirled around in the darkness, lit up by cold flashes of lightning.

I still couldn't remember anything. All that remained was the bitter taste in my mouth. Nothing could remove or lessen that.

Then I suddenly thought I could see something that reminded me of a dress, floating sadly in the wind.

“A woman,” I told them. “A woman was there that day…”

They laughed, but coldly. Then looked at their equipment again.

“In that case it's impossible. These instruments aren't any good for that kind of work."

“Please! Please deliver me from that evening, and from that woman!” I started to howl…

… And woke myself up.

It was the sound of the rain that told me where Î was.

The hotel Outside, the fallen leaves and the little cigarette corpses, one army distinguished from the other by their red headbands…

She was there, only a few yards away. She'd be feeling uneasy, because somehow or other she must have sensed that I was trying to bury her.

* * *

Meeting followed meeting. What had been written or thought during the night was said there, sometimes so changed that, as he sat down, the person who'd read it out was amazed and told himself: “Good heavens, I thought I'd said something quite different!” Minister D—'s autocritique was due to be heard at a meeting at the ministry of defence. The tank officers, whose case was now the talk of the town, were also asked to be there.

“I suppose you're going to speak,” said an officer —' his badges showed him to be a sapper — who was sitting next to Arian Krasniqi He seemed to have recognized Arian, and was gazing at him with admiration. “Dash it all, if anyone ought to speak, it's you. Don't miss the chance of making these scoundrels shake in their shoes! I only wish I were you!”

Arian smiled mechanically. And what would you do if you
were
me? he asked the other inwardly. Wave a flag and win another stripe?

Other people had indirectly given him the same advice. They were openly disappointed to find him so reserved. They were no doubt saying to themselves, “What a drip! He's not up to the situation!”

These others were in a state of permanent euphoria. They were firmly expecting to take the places of those about to be ousted, and could scarcely conceal their delight when they saw that the latter included some enemy with whom they had a score to settle, whether because of personal rivalry, or a grudge, or - this was very frequent — some trouble over a woman.

Despite their efforts to mask it with slogans or other empty phrases, their hostility was so obvious that at one meeting the person delivering his autocritique, taken aback by his interrogator's spite and well aware of the real reason for it, ignored his questions and shouted wildly: “It wasn't my fault at all! It was hers, Margarita's, because she told me she loved me!”

“What do you mean - Margarita?” the other yelled back. “We're talking about matters of importance here, matters of principle! And you go picking petals off a daisy!…”

“Could I help it if she wouldn't marry you?…”

The chairman of the meeting then intervened to say that either the man in the dock had gone out of his mind, or else, as people in his position often did, he was pretending to have done so to try to avoid receiving his just deserts.

Sometimes at other meetings, still more embarrassing and unanswerable questions were asked, such as, “Why did you trample underfoot the blood of the martyrs?”

Arian found all this utterly pathetic. Once or twice he felt like playing the hero, but he easily resisted the temptation. “You don't look in a very good temper,” someone said to him one day. “Have you got something on your mind?” “Do you think Î like what's going on?” he answered. “What do you mean: the exposing of all these dirty tricks?” “That and all the rest.” “It all depends on the way you look at things.”

This was on the day Arian found out that Ana's name had been mentioned at one of the meetings. He could have borne any accusation against himself better than an aspersion on his dead sister. He was almost blind with fury. But his anger was followed by bitterness. Would these people stop at nothing, digging up that name,bringing it back from the void to scatter it over the pages of their sordid confessions?

The mere thought of it filled him with disgust. Those responsible were probably here in this very room, perhaps they'd just delivered their autocritiques, perhaps they were going to take the stand again. If he'd wanted to, he could quite easily have found out their names, but he refused to do so. He knew that if he did, and then came up against one of them, it would be difficult to remain impartial And at a meeting like this, where people's fates were at stake, and heads were in danger of rolling, he simply must remain unprejudiced.

The silence in the room grew deeper and deeper as minister D—'s autocritique proceeded. By the time it was over, his voice had almost faded away, and his eyes seemed to have sunk right into his head.

“Any questions?” asked the army officer who was chairing the meeting.

A lot of hands shot up. The minister answered their queries wearily. After about a quarter of an hour, someone mentioned “the affair of the tanks”. Arian's neighbour clutched at his arm.

The minister was saying, “Of course, it was a bad mistake …The more you examine it the worse…”

“Are any of the tank officers here?” asked the chairman. “Many of us would like to hear from one of them,”

People started to crane their necks and whisper.

“Stand up,” whispered Arian's neighbour. “What are you waiting for?”