Ismail Kadare - The Concert

He’d known Albania would go on being restive — but that it would actually get to the point of giving him orders …! It was inconceivable. Yet it had happened, unless his wife had gone out of her mind and what she’d written was just a figment of her imagination. But that was highly unlikely. There was little doubt that the letter had come: the thing had happened, and if the Chinese people got to know of it he’d be reduced to grovelling humiliation. Mao realized he was getting angry more quickly than he’d expected. I’ll show them! he thought. I’ll teach Albania a lesson it’ll tremble to remember for a thousand years! I’ll play with it like a cat with a mouse!

He hadn’t yet decided exactly how. For the moment only one word whirled around in his head: economy. He dimly felt that was the beginning and end of everything, but the vagueness only increased his vexation. As a matter of fact he had given orders during previous periods of dissension for policy to be angled on economic considerations, but the idiotic officials whose business it was had evidently misunderstood his instructions. Their way of doing things was obvious, their tricks stuck out a mile. They thought there was only one way of going about it: by slowing down ships carrying machinery and cutting off aid. How often had they come to him and said: “We oughtn’t to deliver that steel works — let’s leave them to stew in their own juice!” But he would always say: “Really? So they can get what they want from Sweden instead, and thumb their noses at us? …No, we’ll send them the goods, but it’ll be the sort of stuff that’ll make them curse the day they took delivery of it!”

When he explained what he meant they ail had a good laugh. That steel works would be more like a blacksmith’s forge! Then he explained that such measures needed to be accompanied by others in different sectors. The idea was to drive the Albanians crazy little by little. It was in such terms, many years ago, that Mao had defined the policy to be adopted towards Albania. He had gone into it in the minutest detail But obviously the idiots in charge of carrying it out hadn’t understood a word. And now, instead of China having atrophied Albania’s whole brain-centre, Albania was trying to tell China what to do. How horrible! he cried. Now he really did feel angry. Memories about the relations between the two countries were beginning to come back to him; conversations with his colleagues; plans. Not long ago he, Jiang Qing and Lin Biao had studied a letter from a middle-ranking Chinese official who had spent some time in Albania. His account was full of bitterness and repining. Their standard of living was much higher than ours, he said. The people lived in apartments; the shops sold lipstick, armchairs, and all kinds of other degenerate objects; young women and girls frequented cafés and drank whatever they liked; there were no curtains at the windows; the women reeked of perfume; you could buy novels, and as much bread as you liked. The question was bound to suggest itself: why should Albania still be receiving aid from poor old China? To help it wallow even deeper in luxury and extravagance? Cut off ail aid, dear Chairman Mao, said the official, ending his letter, or else find some other way of putting an end to this scandal.

Samatha, he muttered to his unknown correspondent: calm down. But he didn’t feel at all calm himself. The first letter from the irate official, which he hadn’t answered, had been followed by a second that painted an even more sombre picture. Punish me if I’ve done wrong, wrote the official. Denounce me as an agent provocateur, an agitator, drag me through the mud, gouge my eyes out — but reply! He must have realized his first letter had been completely ignored: Chinese aid to Albania, far from being reduced, had actually increased. In his second letter he tried to express himself more calmly, attempting a description of the Albanian national psychology. It was a tiny little country, he wrote, and there was nothing more horrible than seeing a place like that in the grip of a mania for expansion. According to him the Albanians, in the past, enable to wrest a single inch of territory from their neighbours, who were just as tough as they were, had hit on a novel way of extending their influence: by flirting with the countries that occupied them, offering their services as allies. After they’d been beaten by the Turks, or rather when they finally admitted defeat, they offered their help to the victorious Ottoman Empire, acting just as their lllyrian ancestors had done towards Rome. (These forebears too were not only rough and excitable but also feeble-minded, and had taken about a hundred and fifty years to accept that they’d been conquered by the Romans.)

These potty little countries! thought Mao. He’d often wondered how he’d have seen things, how he’d have judged events, even what his reaction would have been to the depression that sometimes swept over him, if China had been smaller, or if it had been an archipelago, like Japan, Once, in Tchangsha, he’d been afflicted by a really deathly fit of dejection, a boredom so monstrous it would have overflowed the boundaries not only of any little European country but of half the whole continent! Yes, he sighed, he really was made to measure for China, just as China was specially created for him!

He remembered a dream in which Mongolia had been transformed into a lake. His officials had all run hither and thither in such agitation, telephoning and transmitting his latest decisions, that he’d grown impatient: what are you getting so worked up about? he’d asked. They’d been abashed. It’s not easy, you know, Chairman Mao: there are all sorts of problems, and all the files and archives need to be altered. For example, that business of Lin Biao’s plane going up in smoke in the Mongolian desert…Oh yes, he’d said — I remember. But all you have to do is change “bursting into flames” to “sinking into the waves” — no need to make such a fuss! But it isn’t as easy as that, the others insisted. It’s common knowledge that Lin Biao was ill and what’s more had a horror of water, And what were they supposed to do about the burned wreckage of the plane and the bullet-marks on its fuselage? That’ll do! he’d snapped. It’s up to you to take care of the details. And then he’d turned his back on them.

His thoughts returned to the letter from the official. For some obscure reason, the man had said, the Turks accepted the Albanians’ services, and this resulted in one of the strangest phenomena in the whole history of the Ottoman Empire: in 1656 an Albanian was made prime minister, and five of his compatriots succeeded one another in the post. And you can easily imagine the long string of ministers and generals and admirals that went with them. They’d converted to Islam, blithely exchanging Christianity for influential posts without the slightest trace of remorse. Their possessions extended from Hungary to the Sea of Azov; they controlled provinces and cities, armies, governments, whole nations. Some of them became so powerful they had the impertinence to set themselves up as rivals to the Sultan, to disobey him and sabotage his foreign policy; some of them even founded dynasties of their owe, in Egypt for example.

What chaos! thought Mao, though not without a tinge of envy. He made a face every time he heard the word mentioned. “Chaos in Cambodia, in Chile, in Ireland…” Pooh, he’d sneer: what sort of chaos could you get in those petty little countries no bigger than the palm of his hand? Genuine chaos could only occur in states of some size, and super-chaos only in China itself.

Shos-dbying … He’d always been fascinated by great upheavals. What he liked best in the works of the ancient poets were the descriptions of chaotic political convulsions. Li Po or Du Fu — he couldn’t quite remember which — had written passages like that. The Mongol armies sweeping over the country. The imperial armies put to flight. Couriers’ steeds roving about without their riders. Wolves and jackals with tufts of human hair between their teeth…But the biggest upheaval ever had been the one produced by him: the first state of chaos in which the opposing sides both acclaimed the same name. His. They vied with one another in adoration of him at the same time as they set about one another, slaughtering and reducing one another to ashes for him, while he stayed aloof down in his cave, listening to the sound of the tumult above. All he had to do now was get them used to the idea of his death…