Ismail Kadare - The Concert

“Hush,” said Silva. “He might hear.”

As a matter of fact Simon heard quite clearly what Linda said, but though in other circumstances it would have made him furious, today it didn’t bother him. This was quite simply because he’d heard the same words applied to himself several times in the past twenty-four hours. He’d used them too, not only about other people but also about himself. “You must be off your rocker!” his wife had shouted yesterday after he’d broken the news that his sister-in-law (his brother’s wife) might be leaving Tirana to go and live with her husband, who’d been posted to another town a year ago. This meant that Simon’s mother, who had been living in the brother’s house in Tirana, would have to come and live with Simon and his wife. “You must be mad even to think of it!” said his wife. “We’re already squashed together like sardines in this apartment, and now you suggest adding one more?” “Where’s she supposed to live then? ln the street?” cried Simon. “Why in the street? Why can’t she go and join your brother with the others?” “Oh, that’s what you have in mind, is it?” “I don’t see why any of them has to move,” his wife went on. “It’s quite usual for a man who’s posted to have to leave his family behind.” “But it’s a serious matter now,” Simon objected. “Haven’t you read the article in The Voice of the People? “ It’s always serious! That doesn’t stop other people from leaving their families behind,” “No, no — this is different!” And heaven knows how long the argument would have gone on if Simon’s brother hadn’t suddenly turned up, accompanied by his wife. They both looked extremely downcast.

“What’s going to become of us?” moaned the sister-in-law, bursting into tears. Her husband sank into a chair and buried his head in his hands. Simon was taken aback. Only his wife was as energetic as ever. She stuck to the idea that Simon’s brother shouldn’t take his family to live with him, and the more blankly the others listened to her the more vigorously she sought new arguments and examples. She actually quoted the Constitution, not once but twice!

“Don’t go!” she adjured her sister-in-law, “I know it’s a question of one’s attitude to society and the socialist conscience and so on. But just admit your conscience isn’t very developed., and don’t go. It would be different if you were a member of the Party, but someone like you isn’t obliged to go. It’s not the same for Benjamin — he’s been posted and he has to obey. He’s got a duty to the State, it’s a question of administration — but taking wives too is another matter, a question of ideology, you might call it. Aren’t I right, Simon? Officials themselves may have to set an example by going and living among the grass roots, but their wives are not under any such obligation — it’s only a matter of individual conscience, And our consciences are not very developed — there’s nothing we can do about it, is there, Benjamin?”

She carried on like that, addressing now one and now the other, until finally she made them listen to her. As might have been expected, the first person she persuaded was Simon’s sister-in-law. After that, the two women had no difficulty in convincing Simon himself that the only solution, even if not an ideal one, was to leave his brother’s family where it was. It was imperative that, in this impasse, some issue should be found. Only Benjamin didn’t come round, and just sat miserably on the sofa with his head in his hands.

Simon’s wife made coffee, and as they drank it the previous arguments were gone over again, slightly more optimistically, Cases were quoted where families had been left behind but, what with reasonableness on the one hand and consideration on the other, instead of their lives being wrecked, things had gradually sorted themselves out.

“Yes, but it’s precisely such cases that the article in The Voice of the People was about the day before yesterday,” objected Simon’s brother. “All the reasons alleged for not taking your family with you — illnesses that can only be treated properly in Tirana, a mother who needs help, a paralytic father — all these things have been denounced!”

“What does that mean — ‘denounced’?” exclaimed Simon’s wife. “Are people supposed to change their attitudes just because a newspaper says so? If you ask me, it may produce the opposite effect, and people who never thought about it before may adopt the arguments the paper decries.”

“Yes, and make things worse for themselves,” said Benjamin. “If they act like that they may provoke even more drastic measures — we’ve seen it happen quite recently.”

“People will always do anything to get out of-being posted,” observed the sister-in-law.

Simon’s brother shrugged dejectedly. The fact that he’d withdrawn from the conversation enabled the argument to take a turn for the better. More happy endings were quoted, in which reason had prevailed and unhelpful administrators had been foiled,

“It’s a well-known fact that lots of people manage all right. The ones who get it in the neck are poor dopes without any friends or influence,” said Benjamin’s wife, nodding her chin at her spouse. Then, to Simon: “You’re the only one we can turn to.”

A tense silence followed. Simon still sat motionless and pensive in a chair facing that of his sister-in-law. He was the one who had spoken least, not because he was an introvert by nature, but because as a civil servant himself he didn’t want to get mixed up in recriminations against official regulations, however much he might disagree with the latter.

He was the most distinguished member of their comparatively modest family. It was him all the cousins came to with their problems: scholarships for their children, housing problems, jobs. He realized most of them exaggerated the importance of his post at the ministry, and he’d often been tempted to explain that he was merely a clerk and not some senior official. Had he done so, they would have been horribly disillusioned — if they’d believed him. More probably they’d have suspected him of trying to fob them off. The reason he hadn’t chosen this way out of all the trouble his family’s claims brought him was to spare them the truth. He preferred to be accused of indifference, caprice, uselessness and egoism rather than damage the fiction of his own importance.

And now, in the silence that followed his sister-in-law’s “You’re the only one we can turn to,” he felt the moment they had all been waiting for had come, the moment for which all the rest had been but a prelude. He gazed thoughtfully at his wedding ring. His wife finally caught his eye.

“Why don’t you do something, Simon?” she said. “I know it’s not easy, but after all this does concern your brother.”

Simon raised his eyebrows: the silence was so oppressive he was surprised those appendages didn’t make a noise, like the hands of a rusty clock.

“I suppose I'll have to have a try,” he said.

No one actually sighed, but the relief was almost tangible. For the first time, Simon’s brother looked a little more cheerful

“Perhaps you could speak to the minister who asked you to dinner,” Simon’s wife suggested. “A word from him would be enough …”

“Has he had dinner with a minister?” exclaimed the sister-in-law. “He didn’t tell us!”

“And not just any old minister!” said Simon’s wife, with a gesture that seemed to say, “If you only knew!”

As soon as Benjamin’s wife had heard the word minister her jaw had dropped, but her husband looked depressed.

“Don’t you want me to ask him, then?” Simon asked him.

“Yes, yes — I do,” was the answer. “But I just don’t know…Has he got enough influence …?”