Ismaíl Kadaré - The Accident

“A strange story,” said Rovena, with averted eyes. “Do you want to know what happened in the Loreley?” she added.

He paused before replying.

“I didn’t tell you the story with that in mind, believe me.”

“I do believe you. But I want you to know.”

He felt the familiar stab in his heart.

She spoke with her eyes lifted, as if telling her story to the ceiling.

“I wasn’t unfaithful to you in the Loreley,” she said calmly.

Each avoided the other’s eyes. In a steady voice, as if talking about someone else, Rovena described what had happened. Besfort listened with the same detachment, reflecting with sorrow that there is a proper time to ask every question, and he was no longer curious about the Loreley. She had walked to the massage couch, and the masseur was “suitable”, as she and Besfort would have described him, like Camilla and Anselmo long ago… She described the uncertain borderline between massage and fondling, her temptation, her hesitation. With astonishing precision, she described how she cast aside all shame, but finally and unaccountably demurred on the very brink…

“That is all,” she said. “Are you upset?”

He did not reply immediately. He cleared his throat, coughed.

“Upset? Why?”

The silence became awkward.

“Upset at what happened… although in fact nothing happened…”

“Then why should I be upset?”

She felt an emptiness in the pit of her stomach.

“I could ask it differently. Are you upset because nothing happened?”

“No,” he said curtly. “Not for that reason either.”

Suddenly, Rovena felt traduced. The old question of where she had made a mistake surfaced again, accompanied by all the anxieties she thought she had left behind. As people so often do, in trying to repair her blunder she merely made it worse.

“Don’t you even care?” she cried despairingly.

She was on the verge of breaking down in tears.

“Listen, Rovena,” he said calmly. “I don’t know how to talk to you. Until yesterday you were complaining that it was my fault that you aren’t free. And now you say you have too much freedom. But somehow it’s always my fault.”

“I’m sorry,” she butted in. “I know, I know. Please forgive me. We’re different now. We have a pact. You’re the client, I’m the prost… The call girl. I don’t have the right… I…”

“That’s enough,” he said. “There’s no need for a drama. There’s enough of that around.”

Years ago he had shouted “That’s enough” in just the same way. Ashen-faced and with a trembling hand, he had grabbed her by the hair, just by the window, and the appalling thought flashed through her mind, oh my God, here I am being treated like a whore in the middle of Europe.

He did not hit her. With a pale stare, as if he himself had been struck, he sank onto the sofa.

It was all over. The thought came to her, that of the two “enoughs” she would have chosen the first, and she burst into a torrent of tears. Tyrant, she said to herself. You pretend you’ve lost your power, but you’re still the same.

She heard his voice. “It’s three in the morning. Shall we go to sleep?”

“Yes,” she replied faintly.

They said goodnight, and a few moments later Rovena was astonished to hear his breathing deepen.

He had never before been the first to fall asleep. The emptiness of the room became somehow suspicious. This is no use, she thought. You can’t win against him – ever. She had lost her last chance long ago, and now it was too late. She had never resorted to her only superior weapon, her youth, because forbidden arms can never be used.

Now he was out of danger. He had persuaded her that they would come out of it together, leaving behind all their hesitations, their doubts over separating or not separating, and the question of where she had gone wrong or not gone wrong, as if these belonged to another world, like the Cervantes story, or old movies, or Greek tragedy.

Naïve as ever, she had trusted him. Now he was secure, but she was not. Not at all. His steady, pitiless breathing testified to his domination.

Tyrant, she said to herself again. Just before you were overthrown, you voluntarily gave up the crown. “I’m abdicating. I myself am standing down,” you said. “Nobody will ever topple me.”

Do what you want, take power or reject it. There is no way I can escape from you, not even from your shadow, or from your dust as you fall. I have been yours. I accept your rule and I am not ashamed. I don’t want that crown myself, because I want something else – to be a woman. Totally a woman. To suffer, and if I want to dominate, to do so through suffering.

A woman, she repeated to herself.

Sleep eluded her. Slowly she got out of bed and went to his bedside table. There, next to his glass of water, was a small packet of sedatives. Stilnox , she read. Quiet night.

She picked up the packet with a kind of tenderness. Here was his balm. These were what calmed his mind.

As she stretched her hand to the water glass, her eyes fell on a black object. Inside the half-open drawer was a revolver.

She caught her breath. She remembered all at once the secrecy of this journey, the false names at the reception desk and his advice to her to turn up the collar of her coat. What was it all about? But then she recalled him saying that he always travelled armed in Albania, and she calmed down at once.

Without further ado, she detached a tablet from the blister pack and swallowed it.

In bed, she lay back and waited for sleep. How had she been reduced to this? She didn’t even have the right to call him “darling”.

She tried not to think any more. Perhaps she was demanding more of this world than she should. A woman like her didn’t need much.

Sleep would come soon. She was curious to know what kind of oblivion his sedative would bring, as if the nature of his sleep would reveal more of his secrets.

But perhaps she didn’t even need to know his secrets. A woman like her needed to know only one thing, that there had been nights when Besfort Y. had taken these sleeping pills because of her… That was sufficient.

As she listened to his deep breathing, she thought that this sedative had finally helped her enter his brain. Now, however clever he was, he could not hide.

His breathing was changing, but she would stay vigilant. Now it was her turn to trick him by pretending to be asleep.

Apparently Besfort had been waiting for this moment. He moved slowly, not to waken her. Then he reached out to the drawer beside the bed. Is he in his right mind? she thought.

It was obvious what he was doing. She had no reason to pretend she didn’t understand. She heard the scrape of the drawer and the movement of his hand as he took out the gun. Oh God, she prayed. She had feared being killed in a motel, and now it was happening. But instead of acting to save herself, she remembered a whores’ song:

If she doesn’t end up in a ditch,

In a Golem motel you’ll find this bitch.

The cold barrel of the gun touched her ribs just below the right breast. In spite of the silencer, she heard the trigger and felt the bullet enter her flesh.

So this is what he wanted, she thought.

She saw his arm make the same circular motion to replace the weapon. Then there was silence. How incredible, she thought. He had fallen asleep straight after the crime, in the same position, lying on his side.

Rovena pressed her hand to the wound to staunch the blood. Besfort was breathing deeply again. Had this struggle worn him out so much? thought Rovena, as if treating him with indulgence for the last time.

She stood up and moved silently to the bathroom. The wound held no terror for her. It looked clean, almost as if drawn by hand. Among her cosmetics under the mirror she found a sticking plaster of the kind she usually kept with her. She fixed it to the wound and felt reassured at once. At least she would not give up the ghost like some motel whore.