Ismaíl Kadaré - The Accident

One imagined him howling during the night – why had the world accepted Tito but not him? Who was standing in his way? And he would guess who: it was his loyal followers, who clung to his coat-tails and would not let him go. At the very foot of the rainbow, they held him back from making that great leap. (You won’t allow me to live.) They pinned him by the arms, they clung to his buttons, his bloodstained boots: you belong to us, not them. Do not leave us. He wanted to shriek at his contemptible pack of lackeys: ‘It’s you who are in my way. (You have destroyed my sex life.) Wait and see.’ And he would lash out at them. The more they ingratiated themselves, the harder his whip fell. Then, even as they screamed, he thought they were making fun of him, or so he came to believe. In the end, they were the victors.”

Outside, the snowstorm had subsided. Besfort Y. felt tired. He could no longer tell how much of this farrago he had merely rehearsed in his mind, what he had actually told Rovena, and still less how much of it she had listened to.

Towards five o’clock Rovena had stirred in her sleep. Cautiously, he had touched her. “Did something scare you?”

She said something meaningless and whispered drowsily, “Why are you putting me to this test?”

He kept his eyes closed, as if he could answer more easily from behind a mask of sleep.

Why am I doing this? His eyes followed the scattered snowflakes. He would find out why.

He heard the drunk’s familiar voice. You don’t need to know English, sir, to realise what a crap country this is.

Oh God, he thought. This is all I need. Fortunately, the man had buttonholed a tall red-headed passenger. “Believe me, sir. Europe will become Islamic. And in Arab countries, when the oil runs out, when they’re dirt poor, Christianity will take over like two thousand years ago.” No, no, the tall man objected, and tried to turn his back on him. But the drunk would not let him. “Are you going to listen to me? I’ve got something to say. Then Christianity will try to take over Europe, like two thousand years ago, but it will be too late. Understand? Too late! There will be muezzins calling to prayer from the tops of skyscrapers. Too late. Do you understand me? You don’t need to understand English to realise what a disaster that would be.”

Besfort went in search of another window seat. The last flakes of snow, as if torn from a bridal veil, darted away from him in panic.

Why was he doing this? He had come back to this question so often during those two days with Rovena. At times all his explanations turned to a blur and were meaningless, even to himself. So he tried to think of others. Of course, they would be free. Not just Rovena, but himself too. Both of them. Free from suspicions and pointless jibes. Free from routine, the pressure of rituals, jealousies, the futile irritation of long silences on the phone. Free, finally, from that gorgon, the grim hag of separation. Rovena was trying to follow his thread. Like this, won’t you find it easier to leave me? He pretended to laugh. It was not a question of finding it easy or not. They were abolishing separation itself. A call girl and her client, even if they want to, cannot separate. They are already through the looking glass, beyond the reach of so many vanities of this world.

She tried to argue with him, but wearily and without enthusiasm. Was he just trying to rekindle the flame of their desire? So that whenever they met she would be a stranger, more remote and physically more attractive?

He did not know how to respond. He couldn’t deny it. In fact, the possibility, even talking about it, was exciting. She said, “No, no,” in a plaintive voice that sounded less like an objection than an agony of temptation. From then on he was teased by the suspicion that she too subconsciously liked the idea.

Rovena had asked her question again, and still he could not reply.

“You scare me to death,” she had said. “Aren’t you afraid, Besfort? You ask for impossible things…”

He did not know if he was scared or not. He knew it was too late to turn back.

Why was he doing this? It was easy for him to say he didn’t know himself. In fact he did know, but was pretending not to. He had always known. He was trying to hide from the reason. But try to avoid it as he might, it was always there.

They had talked about a lot of things, but had left much unsaid and only partially revealed. Of course there was fear. But not of something impossible. There was his fear of her, and hers of him. The fear in both of them.

He had felt this from the first, when she had lightly walked up to him and sat down on the settee at that unforgettable after-dinner meeting. You are more than I can bear, his entire being had cried.

Rovena was too much for him. He felt beyond the law. What law, he could not identify, but he knew he was beyond some kind of law.

She had said something and he had replied, but his words had no connection with what he was thinking, that no man can ever cope with more than three or four beautiful women in his life. He had already had his share. It was dangerous to hunger after more.

The enigma of beautiful women had fascinated him for years. What were the characteristics which made beautiful women different from pretty ones? Was there a distinction, if only an unstable one, a dividing line like the meniscus on water, or where the two layers of a mirror adhere, which defined their evanescent nature? Whether loyal or unfaithful, they were all the same, always in the clutches of something, someone, caught by some celestial barb of which they themselves were unaware.

In their presence, something still seemed missing. They threw their arms round your neck, spoke loving words, gave themselves to you, but your thirst remained unslaked. He told himself that nothing was missing. He was asking for more than he should. And yet something still percolated across the dividing line, the caresses, the voluptuous tears.

Even when you thought they were defeated by suffering and that they had become like the rest, it was not true. Some protective avatar came to their aid. You thought that she had really been with you, her moans were still in your ears and her tears damp on your cheeks, but meanwhile she had consigned her true self, her indestructible original, to some distant place. And against this you were powerless. And if this drove you to fury, if her lovely neck, her lips, breasts, hips, and the sex which she gave you, were not enough and you sought to extend your dominion over her invisible self, then the only way to do this was through murder.

When he first saw Rovena perched as casually and lightly as a swallow on the sofa, that is how he had pictured her in some dark region of his imagination, like a small bird targeted by a weapon.

Without doubt, she was “one of those”. This expression is usually used of whores. But her case was different. She had all the marks of beautiful women, that elusive dividing line, and everything else, in an astral conjunction. To himself he said, no. He had never been the kind to chase women, still less now, and he was not going to resort to pitiful clichés about his heart still being young although his youth was over. He thought that the opposite was true of some men: not the body, but the heart aged first. He was one of them.

When he thought back to that after-dinner meeting, he could never remember the turning point at which he allowed himself to be lured.

The pounding of the train’s wheels seemed right for long memories. These events called for that sort of rhythm.

The plain lay half-covered in snow. Which country was he in? The blanket of snow had created a united Europe before the statesmen could shade it on their maps.

The train thrummed monotonously. His cheap little game with Rovena, of the sort played billions of times in this world, lasted much longer than he expected. The young woman suddenly became difficult. In any other case, this resistance would have increased her value, but this time it had the opposite effect. This was how ordinary girls behaved, not “that sort”.