Ismaíl Kadaré: The Accident

The researcher was sure that Lulu Blumb would never talk to him again after her shocking confession. There had been something conclusive about her story, like the closing of a door, that dashed any hopes of a sequel.

The researcher was stabbed by remorse at not having delved deeper into certain dark episodes in her story. He had noticed that whenever Lulu Blumb said that she would not elaborate on certain aspects of her tale, it was precisely these points that were most important, and to which his mind kept reverting.

For instance, he had not properly asked about the second dream. He kicked himself for this, and in self-punishment he mentally replayed this dream again and again, just as he had heard it from the Albanian woman in Switzerland.

She had described Besfort Y. walking across the wasteland towards the funereal building. He stands in front of the mausoleum that is also a motel, with doors that are at the same time not doors. He knows why he is there, and he also doesn’t know. A cold light emanates from the plaster and the marble. He calls out the name of a woman, but without even hearing what name his lips utter. This woman is evidently within the marble, because he calls to her again, but his voice emerges so feebly that he can hardly hear it. A gleam of light that he had not noticed until then comes from inside and he knocks on the painted glass. He hears a slight sound as a door opens, where he thought there was none. The night porter of the motel, or the temple guard, appears. “There’s no such woman here,” he says, and closes the door again.

Meanwhile, a woman indeed appears, descending the winding external stairway which leads perhaps from a terrace. Her tight skirt makes her appear taller. Her face is unfamiliar. Stepping off the final stair, she comes up to him and throws her arm round his neck. He feels an infinite tenderness and sweetness, but he cannot catch her name, which she utters in the faintest of voices. She says something else. Perhaps it is about her long wait inside, or how much she has missed him. But he cannot understand anything of what she says. He realises only that something is missing.

The woman lowers her head to tell him her name, or just to kiss him, but still something is missing and he wakes up.

Over time, this dream expanded in his mind, as if leavened by memory.

It was easy to interpret this as a murderer’s dream. The dreamer comes to a place in which he has been happy, and so the building resembles a motel. But it also resembles a tomb, which shows that at the place where he was happy, he has also killed.

Lulu Blumb insisted on this explanation. The researcher did not dare contradict her, but still looked for another one. Besfort Y. goes to that tract of wasteland looking for whoever is inside the building, frozen or immured. He calls out, summoning her, to thaw her. But it is not easy for her either.

But that’s almost the same, Lulu Blumb would say. There’s no doubt that it is Rovena inside, under all that plaster or marble. Buried, in every sense of the word.

The researcher continued his imaginary dialogue with Lulu Blumb, with a premonition that they would meet again.

Which they did. Her phone call gave him a boyish thrill.

They tried to postpone the subject as long as they could, but the conversation soon came round to their common obsession. Clearly Lulu too had been mentally rehearsing her questions, answers and objections. Try as they might to keep their heads clear, the moment came when each of them confused the other, although they knew very well that they shouldn’t allow themselves to be ensnared by the dream of a third person, reported by a fourth, if not a fifth.

Lulu was the first to dispel the mist. She returned doggedly to the morning of 17 May, when the taxi waited in the rain in front of the hotel. The temperature was 7° Celsius, the wind variable and the rain incessant.

The researcher listened hard, but could not forget the dream. What was Besfort looking for behind that marble, inside that desolate building, after midnight? Rovena, of course, but which one? Rovena murdered, spoiled? And why did she not come out to him where he expected, but by way of the winding stairway? Repentance was there, of course. But who repented? Besfort? Rovena? Both? And for what? He wanted to ask Lulu Blumb, but she was a long way away.

Her voice was very determined. To her credit, she had been the only person not to rest content with the explanations given for the very long interval between the couple’s departure from the hotel and the moment of the accident. She had collected astonishingly precise evidence relating to the morning of 17 May, newspaper articles, weather bulletins and the traffic reports provided by the police for the radio. This precision struck everybody as at least giving her the right to a hearing. Her evidence also recreated with appalling vividness the atmosphere in the lobby of the Miramax Hotel that morning: the chandeliers, whose light grew pale as day dawned, the sleepy night porter, Besfort Y. going to the desk to settle his bill and order a taxi, then returning to the lift, going up to the room and coming back with his girlfriend, whom he held tight as he led her from the door of the lift to the waiting cab. The porter, interrogated dozens of times, always said the same thing: after a sleepless night, twenty minutes before the end of his shift, neither he nor anybody else would be able to clearly recognise a woman, most of whose face was hidden by the raised collar of her raincoat, by her hat and the shoulder of the man to whom she seemed almost bound. Still less could the waiting driver see anything but two vague silhouettes approaching his car through the pelting rain and the wind that changed direction at every moment.

Liza Blumberg insisted that the young woman who entered the taxi was not… the normal Rovena. Asked what she meant by this, she replied that the young woman, even if she were Rovena, could only have been her shape, her replica.

At this point she produced the photos taken immediately after the accident, none of which showed the woman’s face. Besfort’s face was clearly visible, with his eyes immobile and a trickle of blood, as if drawn by a pen, on his right temple. But of the young woman who had fallen on her stomach alongside him, only her chestnut hair and her right arm stretched across his body were visible.

The pianist had repeated this story several times to earlier interviewers. To Lulu’s annoyance, they had listened with more sympathy than attention. Her anger forced them to enter into a discussion with her, but they proceeded without enthusiasm. Let us concede the possibility that the murder took place earlier. How would she then explain Besfort’s behaviour afterwards? Why would he drag a stiffened corpse, or a replica, into a taxi? Where would he take it and how would he get rid of it, with or without the driver’s help?

This took Lulu aback, but only for a moment. Of course the driver might have been involved. But this was a secondary matter. The important thing was to find out what happened to Rovena. Liza Blumberg believed that Rovena was murdered away from the hotel, and that Besfort Y., whether with assistance or not, had disposed of the body. But he needed that body, or something in the shape of Rovena, at the moment of leaving the hotel. They had stayed there two nights, so when the time came to search for the vanished woman, the first person to ask would be her lover or partner, call him what you like. His reply was easy to imagine: he and his girlfriend had both left the hotel early in the morning. She had accompanied him to the airport as usual, and had then disappeared on the way back. Everything would be simple and convincing, except that he needed something: a body, a shape.