Ismail Kadare - The Concert

“A group of tank officers…I think I did hear something about that…”

“Really?” Silva almost shouted.

She was ready to burst out: “In that case, what are you waiting for? What was it you heard, and what are they going to do to them?” But she restrained herself.

“Yes, I did hear about it,” Besnik went on, “but I didn’t think Arian was involved. And anyway …”

She didn’t want to interrupt, but the pause grew so long she was afraid he’d forgotten what he was going to say. Unless he’d deliberately decided not to go on…

“Anyway…?” she prompted.

Besnik swallowed.

“Anyway, it’s a very complicated affair,” he said, “No one knows much about it, really.”

Always the same! she thought. Incorrigible. The flash of exasperation in her eye didn’t escape him.

“Silva, I’m not trying to hide anything from you,” he said. “I did hear something by chance, but I don’t know anything definite. It’s a very mysterious affair.”

“Mysterious?”

“I might have been able to find out more, but unfortunately I’m due to go abroad on a mission. As you can imagine, what’s happening in China is turning the international communist movement upside down.”

He looked at Silva for a moment.

“When are you leaving?” she asked.

“In three days’ time. Not long enough to find anything out — you can imagine all the things I have to do before I go,”

“Yes.”

“But as soon as I get back — and I shouldn’t think I’ll be away long — 111 do all I can.”

“Thank you,” said Silva.

“It’s really incredible,’ he went on, still rather abstractedly. “Especially to think that Arian might be mixed up in it…”

“That’s what we all thought.”

“As I said, I did hear of something of the sort And at the time, without dreaming Arian might be invoked, I thought…But just in passing, as you might about anything you heard about by chance …If I’d known he was mixed up in it, of course I’d have tried to find out more…”

The more Silva tried to puzzle it out, the more she felt she was missing the drift of what Besnik was saying. She was right: he’d just finished a long sentence, and she realized with horror that its meaning had entirely escaped her.

“Look, Silva,” he said earnestly. “I’m not saying this just to reassure you, but I have a feeling — well, it’s more than a feeling, but… forgive me …I can’t tell you any more about it now — a feeling that it’s all a misunderstanding and that it’ll eventually be cleared up.”

Silva suddenly felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The look in his eye told her she could believe him.

“Thank you, Besnik. To tell you the truth, knowing Arian as I do, I find his imprisonment so inconceivable I expect him to be released at any moment, in a few days’ time at the worst…But meanwhile he’s there , and you can imagine how painful it is for all of us.”

“I do understand, Silva,” he said. “I understand perfectly.”

After a little while they stood up, and he saw her back to her ministry. On the way there she felt reassured, but as soon as he left her, anguish closed in on her again. She seemed to have every reason to worry rather than to calm down. All Besnik had really told her was what anyone with the least consideration would say to a friend: he was sure it would all turn out all right, he had a feeling…But what else could he say, after all? The opposite?

Silva opened the door into the office. Linda and the boss were both there. They watched her as she went and sat down, the boss with a rather shifty eye, Linda inquiringly, but quite ready to smile. Silva, pretending not to notice, opened her drawer and took out a file. Neither of the others addressed a word to her for the rest of the morning.

When Silva got home, neither Gjergj nor Brikena were back yet. She put the lunch on to cook and got vegetables out of the refrigerator, but just as she was about to start preparing a salad she put the knife down and went over to the phone. Luckily, Skënder Bermema was at home. She said she needed to see him urgently.

“Whenever you want,” he said. “Now, if you like.”

“This afternoon would be better. Are you free?”

“Yes, of course. What time would you like to come?”

Silva hesitated.

“You want me to come to your place?” she said.

She could hear him breathing at the other end of the line. He knew she was avoiding his wife because of the business with Ana.

“As you like,” he said. “We could just as easily go somewhere else, but I’ll be on my own here this afternoon."

“I’ll come at five, then.”

She put the receiver down slowly, as if she were afraid it might break.

As soon as she entered Skënder’s study, Silva was submerged in a wave of nostalgia. How many years was it since she’d set foot here? How long since the days when she and Ana used to come and see him? The curtains were different, and so were some of the books on the shelves, but the chair where Ana liked to sit leafing through a book or a magazine was still in its old place, and the pictures on the walls were the same. Silva stood there for a moment, forgetting why she was there. Skënder too seemed absent, perhaps for the same reason: the memories they had in common.

“Sit down, Silva,” he said at last. He sounded tired.

She took a chair. She’d hesitated about coming, even after she’d phoned. Should she really go to his place or not? Two or three times she decided to do nothing, to avoid giving the impression that it was only when she had problems that she thought of him. She wasn’t the kind to go round begging favours. But, apart from Gjergj, Besnik Struga and Skënder Bermema were the people closest to her. If she didn’t unburden herself to them, to whom could she speak? She’d said this to herself over and over again. Yet when she left her own apartment at a quarter to five, she didn’t tell Gjergj where she was going.

“What’s it all about?” Skënder asked eventually. “You sounded rather upset when you rang.”

She felt her eyes starting to fill with tears.

“To tell you the truth, I am upset.”

She set about telling him what had happened, and to her own astonishment — perhaps because he was listening to her so quietly — managed to express herself quite calmly. As she spoke he kept glancing impatiently, and more and more frequently, at the telephone.

“Very strange.” he said as soon as she’d finished.

And this brief epilogue convinced her that her story must indeed be out of the ordinary.

He bounded up and pounced on the phone as if it might try to escape. He grabbed the receiver with one hand and dialled feverishly with the other. The ringing at the other end of the line seemed to reverberate in Suva’s heart. No one answered.

Skënder hung up, then lifted the receiver and dialled again — whether the same number as before or another, Silva had no means of knowing. Then there was a click, and he said, “Hallo — Skënder Bermema here.”

She’d have liked to shut her eyes and have a rest after all that tension. At first she didn’t take in what was being said over the phone. It was comfort enough to know that someone was taking an interest in her brother, and someone else again was supplying relevant information. At least the general silence, the shrugs, the inability of anyone to explain anything, were over! How right she’d been to come here! She watched his lips gratefully as he spoke.

The conversation continued. Now she wanted to know what they were saying. Her agitation returned stronger than ever. How could she be so thoughtless as to be lulled by a mere exchange of words? What mattered was what was being said.