Ismail Kadare - The Fall of the Stone City

The handcuffed prisoner shrugged his shoulders. He had no idea.

The investigator’s voice rose, resonating through the cave. “What was he thinking of? How could he find the time, in such conditions, exposed to so many dangers, to invent this tale of a college friend and come for dinner? Was it his prank, or yours? Or were you both involved? Tell me.”

“I don’t know,” replied the prisoner. “Perhaps it was his game. But not mine.”

“Gurameto. Don’t try to wriggle out of this. It wasn’t a game, but something much deeper. Tell us!”

“I don’t know.”

“You knew you would meet him. You had agreed between yourselves. You had codes, masks, false names. Talk!”

“No.”

“Do you recognise this writing? This name?”

The German investigator had interrupted, producing a short letter in German that ended with the words “Jerusalem, February 1949” and was signed “Dr Jakoel”.

“I know this man,” the prisoner replied. “He was my colleague. He was a pharmacist in the city, a Jew. He left for Palestine in 1946.”

“What else?”

“He was one of the hostages released that night.”

“Aha, a Nazi colonel, a bearer of the Iron Cross, releases the first Jew he captures in Albania. Why? Sprich!”

The prisoner shrugged his shoulders.

“Herr Gurameto, I haven’t flown two thousand kilometres to listen to ravings in a medieval cave. Let me repeat the question. Why?”

“Because I asked him to.”

“Aha. And why did you ask him? And why did he listen to you? Sprich!”

“Because we were, according to him, college friends.”

“College friends or something else? Sprich!”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Herr Gurameto, do you know what the ‘Joint’ is?”

“No. I’ve never heard of it.”

“Let me tell you,” Shaqo Mezini interrupted. “It’s a long-standing Jewish organisation. A murderous sect, whose aim is to establish Jewish rule throughout the world.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“Their next crime, their most horrible crime, was to be the murder of the leaders of world communism, starting with Stalin.”

“I’ve never. . ”

“That’s enough. Don’t interrupt. And now talk!”

“Sprich!”

“Never. . ”

“That’s enough.”

“You’re not letting me speak.”

“Speak!”

The investigators started a crossfire of questions.

“There is a mystery, I admit,” said Gurameto. “But you can work it out yourselves. You have the means. You have the real name of this person who pretended to be a dead man. Perhaps you have the man himself.”

“That’s enough! You’re here to answer questions, not ask them. Speak!”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Then we’ll force you. We have the means to do that.”

The eyes of first the investigators and then the prisoner wandered to the corner with the antique instruments of torture: hooks, knives, pincers to gouge out eyes, pliers to grip testicles. Witnesses had testified that it was the tortures effected by the pliers that Ali Pasha Tepelene particularly liked to watch through a spyhole in the wall.

The investigators whispered again among themselves.

“Dr Gurameto,” said Shaqo Mezini, no longer hiding the fact that he was in charge. “Despite our differences, we hope we will come to an understanding. As you can see, our suspicions relate to a terrible and macabre crime. The State requires us to be suspicious. For its own protection, of course. We don’t believe that you are its enemy; you have worked for it for years. You don’t want to see this State overthrown any more than we do. Is that true? Speak!”

The prisoner shrugged his shoulders again.

“The matter is simple. We want to know what lies behind this story. What was this game from the very start? What really happened at that dinner? Where did the orders come from? What were your secret signals and codes? I hardly need remind you that we’re dealing with a worldwide conspiracy in which you played a part, perhaps unwittingly. Speak!”

The prisoner raised his head. He moved his lips several times as if testing them before he spoke. “You think the German colonel was part of this conspiracy? And me too?

“Why not?

“I had no part in it. I know nothing about it. There’s your answer.”

“Did it cross your mind, even for a moment, that your dinner guest was. . a dead man?”

This question came from the other investigator, who had been silent so far that night.

The prisoner screwed up his eyes. “As I said, I suspected it wasn’t him. And also, but only for a moment, that he was dead. It was a well-known story in the city, passed down by our grandmothers. You couldn’t help thinking of it.”

“Aha, go on.”

“I can prove that I suspected it. I have a living witness.”

“We know,” the investigator interrupted. “Blind Vehip. We know everything.”

“I thought that as soon as you arrested him.”

“Go on! Keep talking!”

Gurameto went on to describe his conversation with the blind man under the pale street lamp at the intersection of Varosh Street and the road to the lycée . As he talked he couldn’t help thinking of the interrogation they must have carried out, their questions and the blind man’s answers. “You’re not telling the truth, old man. Where did you get the idea that Dr Gurameto had invited a dead man to dinner? Speak!” “I don’t know what to say. It just came into my head.” “You’re blind. You’ve never seen either the living or the dead. How can you tell the difference when you have no eyes?” “I don’t know. Perhaps just because. . ” “What? Speak!” “Perhaps it’s just because I’m blind.”

His own questioning of the blind man nine years ago was where this interrogation had started. Now it was being turned against him. The investigators were repeating it word for word.

The prisoner raised his hand to his brow. In a quiet voice he said that he needed to pull himself together.

Of course he had suspected all the time that his guest was not what he claimed to be, and during the dinner especially. There had been moments when the two men had been on the point of admitting it to each other. “My dear unforgotten friend, aren’t you in fact dead?” And the other man’s reply. “Yes, but how could you tell? Of course I am.”

Again the prisoner said he was not trying to hide anything. The secret that eluded him lay in the events themselves.

Strangely, the investigators did not interrupt him.

Ever since he had seen the colonel leaning against the armoured vehicle on the square of the city hall, two contrary thoughts had been at war inside him. Was it him or not? This man resembled his old college friend, but at the same time did not. The doctor thought of the moment when the disciples saw the risen Christ. His body was that of Jesus and yet was not. That was how the scriptures described it, soma pneumatikon , a spiritual or ethereal body.

Gurameto saw in the investigators’ faces that the mention of Christ caused not just irritation but fear. Perhaps this was why they hadn’t interrupted him.

Everything was like that, as if on two planes, the prisoner went on to explain. Sometimes he took the colonel to be a dead man, and indeed at times the colonel had seemed on the point of revealing himself as such. That donning and removal of the mask had probably even been a sign to him, which he had failed to understand.

“A sign,” Shaqo Mezini muttered.

The investigators looked at each other. For the first time, the prisoner had admitted that the conspirator had given him a sign.

It was now past three o’clock in the morning. Gurameto, his voice faint from exhaustion, was saying that the dead man had probably come to him in a shape that was in accordance with the laws of his world and brought signs from it. That was why there was so much mystery and misunderstanding.