Ismaíl Kadaré - The Accident

“How amazing…” She said no more as she opened the curtains to look at the pine trees and the sea behind them, now dim in the dusk. He leant against the bedhead watching her wander about the room like a shadow.

“Shall I get ready?”

He nodded. He felt a compression in his chest, as he lay in a trance of happiness. How would she “get ready” this time? Differently from before, he was sure… The lamps glowed softly. His heartbeat slowed as he imagined her undressing. Of course it would be different from before, and she would take longer to prepare herself.

He thought that she would never come out. How long she’s taking, he thought. He could no longer hear the slight noises to which his ears had been accustomed for years.

He got up from the bed and slowly moved to the bathroom, as if sleepwalking. The door was half open. He pushed it and entered. “Rovena,” he said aloud. She was not there.

Her toiletries, comb, perfume bottle, lipstick were all there, beneath the mirror. A pair of silk panties lay beside the bath, delicate, pale blue, as if part of the porcelain decoration. “Rovena,” he said again, faintly now. How could she have vanished like this? Unnoticed, without even a creak of the door.

He looked at her things again in the mirror, and at his own face, now grown unfamiliar. She was yours and you lost her, he said to himself reproachfully. You let her slip though your fingers.

He turned abruptly, thinking she had suddenly appeared. But it was not Rovena herself. It was her image. One of the figures on the bas-relief strangely resembled her. How had he failed to notice this? So there’s the plaster you wanted, he said to himself. It was no mere simulacrum. This was Rovena herself. Apparently, she had found her form and taken shelter in it. That was her very neck, her breasts, her marble belly, all distant, on the other side, just as in his folly he had dreamed. Crazy, he said to himself. Lunatic.

He sat on the side of the bath and held his head in his hands. He wanted to weep. Nothing like this had ever happened before. He thought he would sit there for ever, until he felt a hand touch his hair. He didn’t open his eyes, terrified of seeing the marble arm stretching out from the bas-relief and stroking him. He heard her voice, “Besfort, are you asleep?” and he shivered.

She was standing beside the bed, with the white hotel bathrobe half open about her.

“I don’t know what happened to me,” he said. “I dozed off.”

Here were the same breasts, the same marble waist that he had seen a few moments ago as he slept.

He drew her to him hurriedly and eagerly, as if to prove that this was warm flesh and blood, and she responded. Her neck and armpits were warm and soft, but her lips were still imprisoned in the marble. Fiercely, like a storm accompanied by claps of thunder, their lips brushed against each other, but without daring to violate the eternal pact between a whore and her client: no kissing.

He kissed her belly and groaned as he moved lower, to the dark cavern, where the rules were different and so was the pact.

As his panting subsided, without waiting for the usual question, how was it?, she said softly into his ear, “Heavenly.”

He stroked her hair.

Outside, darkness must have fallen.

He suggested a walk beside the sea before dinner. The darkness was sinister. The iron railings round the villas stood black and forlorn.

She leant against his shoulder, their conversation barely audible against the booming of the waves. She asked if those pale lights in the distance were from King Zog’s villa. Besfort thought they might be. The heir to the throne and his court had recently returned to Albania, along with Queen Geraldine. The newspapers reported that she was close to death.

“Incredible,” she said after a pause. He wanted to know what she found incredible, and she tried to answer, but her words were partly obliterated by the sound of the sea. The restaurants along the road with their Hollywood names were incredible, and so were the villas with their private swimming pools, the former communists turning into oligarchs, the former middle classes turning into God knows what and the glimmering lights of the Royal Court with their tug of nostalgia.

For some reason she wanted to burst into tears. Besfort and his madness were stranger than all these things – and so was she herself as she followed him through that darkness.

They could hardly find their way back. Don’t turn down your coat collar, he said, when they were close to the motel. She wanted to ask why, but remembered the false names and said nothing. They ordered supper in their room. There were all kinds of specialities and expensive wines on the menu. The proprietor recommended game, just delivered, and Italian Gaja wine, the prime minister’s favourite. A likely story, said Besfort. But he made no objection.

When they were left alone, their eyes met tenderly. Usually after a glance of this sort, she would say, “How happy I am with you!” He waited to hear the words, but saw her hesitate. He bowed his head.

Really, nothing was the same as before.

She said something else he could not catch, as if it were in a strange language. “What?” he asked softly. She asked him if she should get changed, wear something more, you know, stylish, for supper.

“Of course,” he replied. Just like a call girl, he thought.

Her black velvet dress accentuated the unbearable whiteness of her décolletage and the exposed sides of her breasts that drove him to distraction. He could not believe that he had slept with her hundreds of times. Or just two hours before.

“Just now, when we were by the sea, we saw the lights of Zog’s villa and I remembered what you told me last time about the bogus conspirators.”

“Really?”

“Don’t be so surprised. I never forget anything you tell me.”

She touched her forehead, as people do when making fun of themselves. “I kept thinking of what you said during those three weeks when I was writing the part of my dissertation about the conspiracies against King Zog.”

“And what were those conspiracies like?”

Finally she laughed. There were pale crimson patches on her cheeks and neck from the wine.

“At least they were real.”

“I’m sure they were. But you’ll tell me later, won’t you.”

From the way they looked at each other, they seemed to be thinking the same thing. That at least the hour after midnight would be the same as before.

“You’ll tell me about the plots against the king, and I’ll tell you something else.”

“Really?” she said. “What fun!”

“Goddess, tell me about the plots against the king, the real ones.”

“We didn’t give real names at the reception,” said Rovena teasingly.

He did not reply. His expression was stony.

She cast playful glances at him, but his face in profile became even more rigid.

“Do you remember the first time we went to the Loreley?” he asked suddenly, coming round.

“The singles club? What made you think of that now?” said Rovena. “That must be four or five years ago.”

He laughed.

“More like four or five centuries.”

With a relaxed smile, she waited for him to sit down beside her again. He held in his hand a small book bound in burgundy.

“Four or five centuries? Did you really mean that?”

“That’s what I said.” Besfort took a deep breath. “Do you remember when we opened the door to the Loreley. I don’t think we were the first couple to feel shocked. It was the fear of breaking a taboo.”

He would never forget that late afternoon when, both hiding their nervousness, they got ready to go there. As they moved round the room, they lowered their voices.