Ismail Kadare - The Concert

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Ismail Kadare once called The Palace of Dreams "the most courageous book I have written; in literary terms, it is perhaps the best". When it was first published in the author's native country, it was immediately banned, and for good reason: the novel revolves around a secret ministry whose task is not just to spy on its citizens, but to collect and interpret their dreams. An entire nation's unconscious is thus tapped and meticulously laid bare in the form of images and symbols of the dreaming mind.The Concert is Kadare's most complete and devastating portrayal of totalitarian rule and mentality. Set in the period when the alliance between Mao's China and Hoxha's Albania was going sour, this brilliant novel depicts a world so sheltered and monotonous that political ruptures and diplomatic crises are what make life exciting.

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Back home that afternoon, Silva thought over her brief set-to with her boss. She was ironing some sheets, but this usually soothing occupation, instead of driving away her worries, only made her feel more tense. It might have been more relaxing to do some crochet or embroidery.

“Brikena!” she called. “Will you check the phone? It isn’t out of order, is it?”

First she heard her daughter’s footsteps, then her voice.

“No, Mother. It’s working.”

I’ll start believing in ghosts next, thought Silva. The phone hadn’t rung much since the previous Sunday, but it was silly to think this was because of the Arian affair…

She glanced for some reason at the calendar. Tuesday the 17th. Then she looked at her watch. Five-thirty. Gjergj ought to have been home by now. She imagined him ringing at the door, taking off his raincoat, asking, “Any news?”

She shrugged. None.

Next day Silva felt disoriented. Her boss seemed to be doing his best to avoid being left alone with her. On the two occasions that Linda went out of the office, he found an excuse to absent himself too.

“Let him do as he likes,” she thought. “I don’t want to think about it any more.”

After she left the office she took a bus to the cemetery. Gjergj’s bunch of iowers, almost withered now, was still there on Ana’s grave, Silva could scarcely believe only three days had gone by since the previous Sunday.

She didn’t stay long by her sister’s grave, but when she got home she felt better.

On Saturday, just as she was resigning herself to spending a tedious afternoon alone (Gjergj was at a meeting, Brikena at a friend’s birthday party), there was a ring at the door. A visitor, she wondered, then was doubtfull. It was her nature: the more she wanted something, the less she believed it would happen. It must be the woman who cleaned the stairs, asking, as she’d done the day before, to be allowed to fill her bucket with water. Or maybe a stranger inquiring after one of the other tenants…

She threw the door open with some impatience, as one does when about to tell an intruder they might have made proper inquiries before just knocking on doors at random. Her exasperation vanished when she saw she really did have visitors. But the relief was short-lived.

How on earth? And why? — the question was sharp and cold as the edge of an axe. Why had they come to see her after all these years?

As if reading her thoughts, the newcomers apologized for turning up without warning. “We said to one another, let’s go and see her — it’s ages since we met — people shouldn’t just lose touch like that… Anyhow, here we are…”

“Do come in,” said Silva half-heartedly.

She still felt stunned. As they took their coats off they chatted away airily (God, how could they be so self-satisfied?): How was Gjergj?…And their daughter? — she must be quite big now…They hadn’t any other children, had they?…Sorry again for coming without letting them know…Perhaps she and Gjergj had arranged to do something this afternoon?…After all, it was Saturday…

“No, it’s all right…” murmured Silva.

But in fact they’d just provided her with the best possible excuse for turfing them out: “Thanks so much for coming, but as a matter of fact a friend of my husband’s is due in about twenty minutes.” It still wasn’t too late for her to say that. But wait. You could always find a way of getting rid of unwanted guests; the important thing was to find out why they’d come.

“‘You can guess why! We’re all in the same boat now, so we can afford to go and see one another!’ Can that be it?” she asked herself. Could that really be it?

Her brain was gradually emerging from its lethargy. She would do her best to find out if that was why they were here. Or if, worse still, they’d come to gloat over her unhappiness, to avenge themself for the long years of indifference and neglect which she’d inflicted on them…She could still get rid of them if she wanted to by remarking, “It is Saturday, as you say, and unfortunately Gjergj and I have an appointment.”

Some years ago one of Suva’s two aunts had scandalized her nearest and dearest by marrying a member of the old guard, and thenceforward no excuse had been needed for steering clear of her, She had apparently found her husband’s circle quite sufficient, and hardly saw her own family at all except at the occasional funeral.

“This way,” said Silva, leading the way into the living room.

It was the first time she’d seen her aunt’s husband close to. She examined him surreptitiously to see what her aunt could have seen in him. He had a very ordinary face, but with curious wrinkles which instead of making him look older than he was seemed rather to fix him at one age for ever. Silva vaguely remembered hearing that he’d worked for an ltalo-Albanian bank during the Occupation, that he’d inherited money from Italy, and spent a few years in prison after the Liberation. But she could recall very clearly the uproar caused in the family by her aunt’s escapade. There’d been endless comings and goings, after-dinner councils, plans to intervene, telephone calls, and harassing interviews with the prodigal daughter. You’ve covered us in shame for the rest of our lives — how shall we be able to look other people in the face? And, never mind about tarnishing our reputation — have you so much as thought about the memory of your sister? How could you trample it underfoot like this? Suva’s other aunt, who’d died in the war, had never been invoked so often. She’d been extraordinarily beautiful (Ana took after her), and apparently it was because of her looks that the resistance group she belonged to entrusted her with an especially dangerous mission: she was to get herself up as an upper-middle-class young woman and infiltrate circles to which her colleagues had otherwise no access. She had carried out her task brilliantly (it was said she’d learned to make herself up more skilfully than the models who occasionally showed up from Rome), until one day, in circumstances that had never been clarified, she was unmasked at an officers’ ball at the Hotel Dajti. Although she was seriously wounded as she was trying to escape along an alley near the main boulevard, she managed to reach the safe house where her friends were waiting for her. She was still wearing her jewellery, though it was spattered with blood, and while her comrades were treating her injuries she kept making signs. But the others, trying to save her life, paid no attention to these gestures, which might well have referred to her brooches and necklaces, to her painted lips and eyes, or to the elegant gown which she would have liked them to remove. When she died, an hour later, they buried her in all her finery.

You have trampled your sister’s memory underfoot… How often Silva had heard that phrase! One day, after the scandalous marriage had taken place which was never referred to except with horror, Aunt Hasiyé, an elderly relative, had said: “God moves in a mysterious way. As soon as Marie started dolling herself up and doing her hair like a hussy, I had a premonition. All this bodes no good, I told myself. That’s why when I heard of her goings-on I realized all those frills and flounces were omens. Like those you see in dreams…”

One of her grand-nephews had protested at this ridiculous fatalism, but Aunt Hasiyé wasn’t to be moved: “I don’t know anything about fatalism or revisionism — that’s your business. But I can read the signs of the Lord!”

Silva now covertly examined this aunt’s profile. Her striking facial resemblance to the dead woman was emphasized by the way her hair was done, smoothed back stiffly as in a stained-glass window. The same style as that of the war heroine herself, in a photograph that had shown her dressed in the bourgeois fashion of the day.

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