Ismail Kadare - The Concert

“Tell me what else she said.”

She brought her moist, imploring eyes closer. Perhaps he shouldn’t have told her about all that, he thought. But the next moment it seemed to him his earlier affair probably made him more interesting to her.

After a while, when their breathing had slowed down somewhat, they could hear the old clock ticking, then the hum of the visitors' conversation in the next room.

“Muttering away just the same as before!” he said.

“Just the same as before,” she murmured to herself.

He imagined the older people sitting in the same old row on the sofa, like waxworks in a museum.

“All life long the same eternal whisperings!” he exclaimed. “Don’t they ever get tired of it?”

“Ssh! I’d like to hear what they’re saying. I’ve never heard what the old guard say to each other before, when they’re alone.”

“Haven’t you?” he smiled. “Well, you’ll have plenty of opportunity now! It’ll be coming out of your ears!”

“Be quiet!”

She strained to listen, then pulled a face because she couldn’t hear properly.

“Put your ear to the wall,” Mark suggested.

She got up from the couch and followed his advice. After a few moments she beckoned him to join her.

“Listen!” she breathed, looking surprised and a little bit scared.

He put his ear to the wall. A couple of seconds later:

“Good grief!” he whispered. “They’re speaking Chinese!..This time they really are losing their marbles!”

Silva had made the necessary preparations for the next day’s lunch and was curled up wearily on the living-room sofa when the doorbell rang. She got up with some annoyance, thinking it must be some unwelcome visitor. But when she saw it was her sister-in-law her face lit up,

“Sonia! I’m so glad to see you! Come in!”

As Sonia was taking off her coat, Silva noticed she’d had her hair done very becomingly. She was just going to tease her about making herself beautiful now her husband was back. But, hair-do apart, Sonia looked rather down.

“What’s the matter, Sonia? You look upset.”

Sonia chewed her lip, but didn’t contradict.

“Well, I must say!” exclaimed Silva. “Aren’t you two ever satisfied? Instead of being happy that things turned out all right, you still go around with faces like fiddles!”

“Don’t you think I’ve told Arian so?” Sonia retorted, “Bet I might as well talk to a brick wall!”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. But he spends all day moping. I hardly know him.”

“Perhaps he’s worrying about being expelled from the Party? But I expect they’ll reinstate him, don’t you?”

“That’s what people say.”

“But that doesn’t cheer him up?”

Sonia shook her head.

“There’s something more serious bothering him.”

A surge of pity made Silva forget her momentary annoyance.

“I suppose it’s understandable. You do your job properly and all of a sudden there’s a bolt from the blue and you find yourself chucked out of the Party and into prison. It’s horribly unfair — disgusting. But there’s no point in letting it get you down…”

Sonia sighed.

“That’s what I keep saying, but it doesn’t stop him being depressed…And that isn’t all. There’s something else…and it frightens me…”

“What do you mean?” cried Silva, going cold.

“I’m half dead with fear,” said Sonia. “One day, when he let himself go for once, he said something terrible …. I can’t get it out of my mind.”

“What did he say?”

“We were just sitting talking, and for the umpteenth time I’d said more or less what you just said, and he interrupted me. ‘Do you think I’m like this because of what happened to me? Well, it’s something quite different that’s bothering me! What I can’t accept is that both sides, ours and theirs, come out of the business unscathed…’“

“What did he mean?” cried Silva.

“Let me finish telling you. ‘One side or the other must be declared guilty/ he went on, ‘otherwise it’s all a lie and the world has been turned upside down.’“

“I don’t understand, What other side was he talking about?”

“The people who had them arrested.”

“Oh,” said Silva, going pale. “But they say it was the minister himself who gave the order for their arrest…”

“That’s who he means,” answered Sonia, “And that’s why I’m afraid.”

They were both silent for a moment.

“You’re right,” said Silva. “It’s enough to make your hair go white.”

“If he goes around saying things like that he’ll be back in jail before he knows where he is. And next time…”

“Shall I try to talk to him?” asked Silva. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to say, I doubt if it’ll be any use. But you can always try…”

Silva remembered Arian’s almost untouched, plate at Brikena’s birthday party. It all seemed to have happened in another age. Bet now, as then, she felt a pang of anguish.

Minister D— put his name to the fourth document, thee stared at his signature. It looked strange. What was happening to him? He picked the paper up and held it closer to his eyes, but it made no difference — his writing was smaller and more cramped, and his surname tailed away pitifully.

How can this be? he wondered. He’d thought a person’s signature was always the same — witness the evidence of handwriting experts in court, and the model signatures kept in Swiss banks…Perhaps there was something wrong with his sight?

He reached out for the other documents he’d just signed. All the signatures looked alike — shrunken, as if withered by the cold. He remembered that he’d had cramp in his arm yesterday evening. His fingers were still numb. That must be the explanation.

He put the paper down and decided to think no more about the matter. But after a moment he found himself looking at the documents again. Could there be something wrong with his pen? Yes, of course, he admonished himself, shaking his head reprovingly. And he’d almost believed it was that wretched affair that was at the root of everything, altering his voice, his breathing, his taste and finally his signature!

He pressed a bell for his secretary.

“What use are these pens supposed to be? The nibs are as fine as needles — absolutely no use for signing things! Please get me some that are broader — twice as broad, as broad as possible!”

“Very well,” said the secretary. He came back soon afterwards with a handful of other pens. “Try these,” he said, putting them down carefully on the desk. “They should be all right."

The minister tried one of them on a scrap of paper, then signed his name several times with some of the others, examining each signature closely and trying to persuade himself it was the same as usual

“What are you still here for?” he asked his secretary rudely, when he noticed him watching placidly. “That’ll do — I don’t need you any more!”

When he was alone again he put his head in his hands. It wasn’t the signature. Something else was wrong. He knew very well why he was anxious, but he refused to think about it. Every morning he hoped the new day would deliver him from his anguish, but it wouldn’t let him go. He tried everything. But no matter how many meetings he called, how loudly he pounded on the table and upset the flowers, how fierce the threats he uttered or how severe the punishments he handed out, it made no odds. Every word and gesture seemed somehow muted, the people he chastised seemed to be trying not to laugh. The sound he made when he banged the desk sounded so dull he’d looked under the red plush cover to see if the wood had changed into some other substance.