Ismail Kadare - The Concert

Gjergj shook his head as if dismissing further examples put forward by his memory.

“Empty words and tedious slogans everywhere. 'Though far apart, our peoples are friends’ — that’s what they say instead of ‘good morning’. One monotonous refrain peppered with endless quotations. Wherever you looked there was nothing but placards with ideograms scrawled all over them…For nights now I’ve been dreaming the world has been invaded by billions of Chinese characters, like ants. How I used to long to hear a human sigh over a cup of coffee. What was the name of that chap who went through the market in the daytime, carrying a lantern and looking for a man? Diogenes, I think …Well, in the middle of that ocean of banners and placards, we were looking for a man…Not that there was any shortage of people, but we didn’t really have any contact with them. We were isolated from them by a cordon sanitaire of guides, officials, and all those wretched slogans. If we ever had a normal conversation with someone on our embassy staff, it was immediately swallowed up in that sloganomania. What I clung to in my mind was our life here, I told myself, as soon as I get back I’ll do this and that, and above all I'll live closer to other people. I was dying, dying to talk to human beings — even if they were surly or exasperating, so long as they were human beings! That was why when I got back I wanted to stay with you as long as possible, with you and with our daughter. Do you remember the first night I was home, when I was half-dead with fatigue and yet I asked you to talk to me a bit longer, and you said, “Don’t be so childish — do you need a fairy-tale to seed you to sleep?’”

Even if she couldn’t quite manage a smile, Silva could feel her face relaxing. It had all happened just as he’d said, and he had dropped off to sleep while she talked to him about something she’d now completely forgotten.

“I expect you remember finding me reading a book of poems the day before yesterday,” said Gjergj, “and the day before that, listening to music. That too was because of my craving for warmth. The cold had penetrated so deep inside me — to my very bones — that I felt nothing could ever warm me up again. So I wanted to build up reserves, just as someone who’s been through a famine hoards bread. That’s more or less how I felt. And then, this morning…”

Gjergj paused for a few seconds, lit a cigarette, and started to describe that morning, his first Sunday since he got back from China. He’d gone to a café, then strolled along the main boulevard as far as the avenue Marcel-Cachin — near the Dajti Hotel and the bridge with a marvellous view of the falling leaves. Thee he suddenly felt an urge to visit the cemetery. For no reason at all he’d got it into his head that the Chinese had abolished cemeteries! He’d bought a bunch of flowers to pet on Ana’s grave, and thee he’d set out.

“Pink roses,” said Silva.

“Yes,” he answered, with no sign of surprise. “Were you there too, then?”

She nodded,

“There were quite a lot of people at the cemetery,” he went on. “I stood by Ana’s grave for some time, remembering things about her life, and about ours. Thee I came away. When I got back into town it was still early and I felt like having another coffee. But not alone, nor with a mere acquaintance — no, it had to be someone with whom I felt a bond. In China I’d come to think no one ever remembered anything: of course that couldn’t be true, but it was the impression you got from the outside. So I felt like having a coffee with someone who did remember things.”

Silva recalled the old woman in the cemetery, with her cup of coffee.

“I don’t know how to explain it, but that was what was missing from my Sunday, So I did what I haven’t done for a long time — I phoned an old student friend whom I hadn’t seen for years. I tried to explain to her over the phone what had made me call her up, and she somehow managed to understand my ramblings. She was a very nice girl, the girl-friend of one of my fellow students — we’d had a brief romance in our first year. She’s married now. That’s all, Silva — neither more nor less. I just wanted to talk about another part of my life…I was like someone who’s been ill and is on the brink of convalescence…I don’t know if I’ve managed to make you understand at all…I’m afraid I probably haven’t.”

Silva couldn’t take her eyes off his face: it looked suddenly haggard. Her own expression was full of tenderness.

“How awful it must have been for you over there,” she said gently, Then, to herself: “But perhaps the situation that caused his suffering will soon be over?”

Outside, it was getting dark. ln the dusk, everything was growing distant and insubstantial: the balconies of other apartments; the first lights lit inside them and twinkling faintly; the pigeons swooping over the roofs, their grey and white wings merging into the general pallor.

Silva gazed at the man standing there by the window: he was not only her husband but also a mythological messenger raised into immortality, bearer of a missive to a terrifying foreign state. A letter severing relations…She suddenly felt an irresistible desire to comfort him after his journey into that alien universe.

As if he’d read her thoughts, Gjergj left the French window, then came slowly and quietly across the room and sat down beside her on the sofa. She ran her fingers through his hair and down to the nape of his neck. Then started to stroke his hair rhythmically. And so they sat on, side by side, through the end of a day that might well prove to be the beginning of an era.

THAT NIGHT SILVA tossed and turned, her sleep broken by dreams of which, in the morning, she could remember nothing. When she got up, her face looked drawn. Gjergj was up already — the hum of his electric razor could be heard through the half-open bathroom door.

In the kitchen, Silva automatically turned on the tap, then remembered she’d done the washing-up the night before, and turned it off again. The growing brightness in the dark-blue sky, which she could see through the window, made her feel a bit calmer. Things are bound to sort themselves out, she thought dimly — she still wasn’t properly awake. It’ll all come right in the end.

It seemed to her Gjergj had never taken so long to shave. But finally the sound of the razor stopped, and Gjergj appeared in the doorway.

“Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

She shrugged.

“So-so.”

‘Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”

“There’s nothing worse than waking up in the morning with a worry like that on your mind.”

“He was the first thing I thought about, too.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Silva felt relieved, somehow.

“It’s especially awful when you wake up…”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Particularly the first morning.”

She was on the point of asking him when he’d been in a situation like this before, but restrained herself. He might be referring to quite a different kind of ordeal. She’d felt something similar herself during a youthful love affair.

Silva’s hands opened and closed the doors and drawers of the dresser without even thinking about it. As she was cutting the bread she realized Brikena was still asleep, and went to wake her.

The three of them breakfasted in silence. It wasn’t until Brikena had gone off to school that her parents began to talk. But all they could find to say to one another was more or less the same as what they’d said the night before. As she drank her coffee, Silva reflected that people under stress feel a need to keep repeating themselves, like children.