Ismail Kadare - The Concert

The party secretary nodded his agreement. The Minister of Education and Culture, also at the meetings did the same. But when a voice from the back of the room piped up, “What shall we put instead of the author’s name? The name of a cornfield or of an irrigation canal?” it was greeted with more hoots of laughter. The secretary lowered his large head menacingly, and said loudly to C–V—, “Go on, comrade, even if what you say isn’t to everyone’s taste.”

Skënder closed his eyes for one last doze, then lay for a while trying to make up his mind which was more disagreeable, returning to the world of sleep or plunging into the world of consciousness.

When he woke up for good his head felt heavy. Sunday still seemed to be written all over the curtains, but less clearly than before. The void inside him was so tangible it was as if there were another person beside him. What’s the matter with me, he thought, thrashing about in the bed. But the void wouldn’t go away. He lay still for a few minutes looking up at the chalky white ceiling and depressively projecting concentric circles on to it. He suddenly realized that the strange body inside him was none other than his own unborn novel.

He lay on motionless between the white sheets. For several days now he’d felt the book stirring, groaning, slowly asphyxiating. And now, this Sunday dawn, his novel had started to give up the ghost.

What could he do to keep it alive? Where could he go? To whom could he protest? He could feel the book growing cold inside him, like a corpse. I should never have agreed to come on this trip, he told himself. Wandering around in the midst of this dehumanised society had killed his novel. For days he’d been feeling it leave him, evaporating, drying up as if in the desert.

Well, it wasn’t surprising. He should have expected it. Still lying there, he remembered what Gjergj Dibra had said about the aridity of human contacts in China, He’d laughed at the time, not suspecting he’d be experiencing it himself one day.

The death of human relationships, that was the cause of everything. Human relationships are at the root of everything, and here they’d managed to annihilate them. They’d stifled and dehydrated them until they turned into thorny cacti. “What wouldn’t I have given for an ordinary conversation,” Gjergj had told him. “A conversation between thieves sharing out the swag would have done, so long as it was the real thing!”

He rubbed his temples. Chance alone couldn’t explain what had happened. It had all been orchestrated in accordance with some diabolical plan. In order to do away with literature and the arts, you have to start by atrophying human speech. For three thousand years it had been cultivated. Without this marvel, life would be mere primitive stammerings. And now Mao Zedong had come to strangle it.

Is such a thing conceivable? he wondered. He contemplated the white ceiling. No, it couldn’t be true! He remembered the titles of some Chinese poems he’d read: Conversation by Moonlight, Conversation with My Friend Van on Mount Tian Kun in Late Autumn, Conversation with Lu Fu on the Day of the First Snow…

Carried away by the memory, he threw off the bedclothes and stood up. When he looked in the mirror on the wall his face looked rather pale, and if they hadn’t been his own eyes he’d have said they were cold as ice. Sleep with a blind man and you wake up cross-eyed. Where had he heard that saying?

He looked at the wall between his room and C–V—’s. We may be in the same hotel, thought Skënder, but I’m as far away from him as ever. And leagues away, light-years away from this Chinese Milky Way. So you may think, said a voice inside him. But your novel’s dead, just the same.

He began pacing frantically round the room, not only his expressions and gestures but everything about him reflecting his exasperation. He felt as if the death of his novel had completely destroyed his equilibrium. People talked about lack of vitamins and shortage of red or white corpuscles, but how did you feel when a work you’d been carrying for months in your body and mind was removed?

He was still flinging about when there was a knock at the door. It was C–V—.

“So you’re up, are you?” he asked, poking his head into the room. “Coming down to breakfast?”

Skënder looked at him as if he were a murderer.

“I don’t want any breakfast,” he said.

“Suit yourself,” said C–V—, shutting the door.

Skënder growled. The room felt too small for his pacings. This trip, he thought. Before they’d left, the secretary of the Writers’ Union had said, “There may be some friction between you, but I’m sure all that will be forgotten. I hope the trip will bring you together.”

Skënder growled again. This cursed trip.

Every day the relations between the two of them grew colder. The offer of a cigarette or a lighter, some word exchanged in the car, might seem to ease things for a bit, but by the evening, when they went to their separate rooms, the tension would be worse than ever.

I should never have come, he told himself again. Or at least not with him. He’d thought he’d be able to put up with him. For years he’d despised him, but that was all. ln China his feelings had started to intensify. He’d thought that despite their different views about things, the fact of being thrown together into that great ocean of Chinamen would bring them together. But precisely the opposite had happened.

It had become obvious with Skënder’s first attempts to talk to C–V— about the silly things they came up against everywhere they went. He’d known C–V— had a soft spot for anything Chinese, but he’d never have thought his admiration was such that he wouldn’t listen to a joke about the crass stupidities even the Chinese themselves must be ashamed of. That was Skënder’s last attempt to get closer to his travelling companion. It’s ridiculous! he grumbled, going back to his room at nine in the evening when he’d have liked to talk with someone till dawn in this strange hotel thousands of miles from home. He couldn’t forgive C–V— for being so unapproachable. It would be easier to communicate with an ape! Then he calmed down, reflecting that it was only natural. Given that C–V— was so fascinated by everything Chinese, he was bound to be against any kind of dialogue. And perhaps after all it was better so. Heaven only knew what construction he might have put on what Skënder said to him, and he might well send in a report about it to the Party committee when they got back to Albania, Skënder thought of the day when he’d glanced through the open door of C–V—’s room and seen a lot of papers on his desk. “What are you writing?” he’d asked. “The same as you,” C–V— had answered spitefully.

The same as me, thought Skënder now, standing by his own desk, It too was strewn with papers. Well, one thing is certain, he told himself — we’re definitely not writing the same thing!

He picked up one of the pages, read a couple of lines, thee put it down and looked at another. He hadn’t re-read any of this since he’d started writing it: it was a kind of travel journal, or rather “nocturnal”, since it was during the night that he’d jotted down these impressions, reflections and notes of ideas for future works.

Perhaps this was what had made him abandon his novel? What a depressing thought! He shoved the papers aside. His eye lighted on his suitcase, standing in a corner. He went over to it, slowly and cautiously, as if afraid to break some spell. The draft of his novel was inside the case, right at the bottom.

Good Lord, even the handwriting looked wrong! It seemed to have grown dull and shrivelled from being shut up like that,

He leafed clumsily through the exercise book to which he’d consigned his work. There were all kinds of notes and sketches: parts of chapters, descriptions of characters, different versions of the same scene. Every so often there were scraps of verse, accounts of dreams, chapter headings, odd episodes that might or might nor be incorporated into the novel: such as one passage, for example, called The Soliloquy of the Sphinx , Other scraps: “Three in the afternoon, the time of day he always dreaded…” “Men’s beauty contest, Doomed Heights 1927.”