Ismail Kadare - The Fall of the Stone City

“Is that all?”

Dr Gurameto said nothing. The other investigator bent down by his shoulder and murmured softly in an almost caressing voice, “What you have told us is accurate. But we know these things. We want the rest of the story. What we don’t know. The mystery.”

Gurameto froze. The investigators watched him, but their expectations were dashed. With a jerk of his head, as if to banish all inner uncertainty of his own, he said, “There’s no mystery.”

Shaqo Mezini straightened his back against the metal chair. “Doctor, I’m sorry to have to say this, but you’re not telling the truth.”

Gurameto gave the investigator a cold look.

“I know something different,” the investigator said, shaking his head as if to convey that saying this gave him a kind of pleasure that went beyond an investigator’s professional satisfaction.

Big Dr Gurameto’s eyes conceded defeat.

An intoxicating thrill swept through Shaqo Mezini. He had not realised how eagerly he had been waiting for this moment. At times of weakness, when he lost faith in the investigation’s prospects of success, he was more scared that the doctor would not give in than of his superiors’ displeasure. From the first day when he had learned that the doctor was part of this case, all his thoughts, obscurely, inexplicably, had focused obsessively on the figure of the prisoner. He had seen him dozens of times on Varosh Street, setting off for the hospital, an aloof, imposing figure. The investigator’s secret dream was to become a person like this, held in regard by everybody but not regarding anybody himself. He knew that he was not the only person to revere the doctor like this and was aware that his aura came from his reputation as a surgeon, from having studied in Germany, and the many stories told about him.

Later, when he returned from the academy in Moscow to find this provincial city shorn of all its glamour, he was startled to discover that Big Dr Gurameto’s aura, and that of his little counterpart, had survived undiminished. The young investigator was now conscious of this attraction, and that it was mixed with an element of anxiety. The big doctor was still unapproachable but now also seemed opposed to him. Shaqo Mezini found it hard to grasp the idea that he felt men like Big Dr Gurameto were in fact a block to him. It wasn’t even that they stood in the way of new ideas, the construction of socialism and the like; their opposition, though Shaqo Mezini could not know it, resulted from something deeper. It was intrinsic to men of Shaqo Mezini’s kind, something infinitely ruthless, like every kind of male rivalry.

Dr Gurameto was in Shaqo Mezini’s way. With his scalpels in his hand and wearing his white mask, he had acquired a stature that nobody could diminish. Moreover, he was a gynaecologist. To Shaqo Mezini’s mind, this meant having power over women, especially beautiful women, who submitted to him. A master of women! This was precisely what Shaqo Mezini was not. He was not ugly but neither was he sufficiently handsome to attract beautiful women. He had had a few ordinary exploits but never with women of real beauty, and there was never a question of having them in his power. But Gurameto ruled them, without possessing them. They came to him of their own accord, the investigator was sure, and he had no need to visit them. Perhaps his hand had even gone below the belly of Shaqo’s own mother.

All these thoughts rolled through his mind like lowering storm clouds, and on the day when he was summoned and told that Big Dr Gurameto would be under his investigation, these clouds suddenly burst. He had never felt so excited. His elation was mixed with a kind of savagery. The stark thought now came to his mind that Big Gurameto had been a general impediment, an impediment to Shaqo Mezini in particular, and that he still stood in his way. In every sense.

Shaqo Mezini’s thirst for revenge was inseparably bound to a feeling of fear. Of course he had the doctor before him in handcuffs but still he did not feel safe. For some reason he felt that these handcuffs might make the doctor all the more dangerous. Shaqo Mezini could not persuade himself that Big Dr Gurameto too might feel frightened. He cast sidelong glances at the instruments of torture, kept in an alcove since the time of Sanisha, but not even these offered reassurance. This doctor had terrified thousands of patients with his surgical tools. How could he feel fear?

The investigator was convinced not only that Dr Gurameto was fearless but that he could not lie. Fear and lying were connected. When Shaqo Mezini came face to face with the surgeon for the first time, a sudden onset of terror drove out any emotion of anger against his enemy. The surgeon was shackled and his face was drawn and despairing, but still he showed no fear.

Shaqo Mezini was ashamed to realise that deep down he wanted to rouse not his enemy’s hostility but his sympathy, and this he tried to convey to him in an almost subliminal message. “I’m sorry for you, but I can’t do anything about it. Talk, put an end to your suffering. Save us all.”

And then, as if responding to this covert appeal, the miracle-working surgeon, a legend in the city, caved in. At the critical moment he committed an act of suicide: he uttered a lie. Throughout that endless day the two investigators and their superiors had liaised with their superiors in Tirana, and these superiors had liaised with the other leaders of the great Communist Bloc, perhaps with Stalin himself. An aircraft had already reached Tirana and was expected to continue its flight to the airport of Gjirokastër. Now there was no room for doubt; the first crack had finally appeared in the doctor’s story.

The investigators could hardly contain their joy.

Shaqo Mezini’s first impulse was to leap to his feet, fill his lungs with air and shout in triumph. At last everything had fallen into place. Dr Gurameto had given in and Shaqo Mezini, not only a young investigator but also a young male, had gained the upper hand.

How grateful he felt to the Communist party that had worked this miracle.

His glance slid again to the antiquated instruments of torture that were now to be used on the manacled prisoner.

“Dr Gurameto,” he announced in a firm voice of command. “Big Dr Gurameto, as they call you, isn’t what you have just told us rather hard to believe? You have described an emotional reunion with an old college friend after many years. This close friend, by an amazing coincidence, turned out to be the commander of the German troops invading Albania. Isn’t it a bit like of one of those old fairy tales we learned at school? Quite apart from the dinner with music and champagne, the release of the hostages and the salvation of the city, doesn’t it look a bit like a game? Why not stop this charade and tell us what was really behind it?”

“I’m not playing a game,” Gurameto said, looking him straight in the eye. “This isn’t a charade. I don’t behave like that.”

The investigators now stared at him in outright mockery. Shaqo Mezini’s only anxiety was that Dr Gurameto, having fallen into this morass, might find a way to climb out of it. But fortunately he was only sinking deeper.

“And if it turns out that it was a game? If we prove it?”

Gurameto shook his head again, this time in contempt.

The investigators were clearly waiting for something. They looked at their wristwatches and whispered to each other, but none of this made any impression on Gurameto. They repeated in flat, weary voices more or less what they had already asked. Had there been an ulterior purpose, or not, to the dinner on the night of 16 September? The investigators were now obviously impatient, and mentioned an aircraft. The plane from Tirana was delayed but it would certainly arrive, if only just before dawn.