Ismail Kadare - The Concert

The car had to stop in the Street of the People’s Communes. A crowd was blocking the road.

“Now what’s the matter?” growled Tchan.

The driver got out to see. He was soon back,

“A pedestrian’s been crashed by a bulldozer,” he said, starting up the car again. “A man called Van Mey.”

“Van Mey?”

It seemed to Tchan he’d heard that name before. But by the time the car had left the crowd behind, he’d forgotten it.

10

And so the winter went by, one of the worst director Tchan had ever known, full of work and worry. Far away in Peking the power struggle apparently still went on, though no one could say which of the two sides was getting the upper hand. Now one and now the other was borne upwards. Only the Zhongnanhai remained unmoved and unassailable, above the mêlée. Tchan felt his own star was hitched to it from now on.

He’d had to deal with plenty of problems during the winter. Once or twice he’d come quite close to disaster, but in the end chance had been on his side. The microphones were an additional complication. They had become the main cause of tension between him and the other local officials, giving rise to rivalries, intrigues and reversals of alliances. Sometimes Tchan felt he would never struggle free of this imbroglio.

Meanwhile the installation of microphones went on, with the inevitable ups and downs, pleasant and unpleasant surprises. But Tchan was more used to it now; he’d gradually become immunized, as to a poison, by his daily dose, The same thing seemed to be true of the population in general: the rumours about the mikes had died down, as the enYoys from the Zhongnanhai had said they would.

But time, though it sometimes hung heavy, was passing by, and Tchan was amazed when, at the first meeting held to exchange information about the qietingqis, one of his subordinates started his speech with the words:

“It was just a year ago that in accordance with direct instructions from Chairman Mao, our town began installing listening devices …”

The meeting was attended by two representatives of the Zhongnanhai, different ones this time, who took down copious notes about everything. The speakers dealt with every aspect of micro-surveillance, exchanging experience, drawing conclusions, and calling attention to successes and shortcomings.

The conference lasted two days, and after it had ended and the Zhongnanhai envoys had left, Tchan realized that everything was going to continue just as before. His attention had been caught by one out of the many speeches he had heard at the meeting. It had been delivered by a young technician, who had entitled his paper, “On some changes brought about in the way people speak by the introduction of qietingqis.” Tchan had noticed this phenomenon himself some time before, but it was like a revelation to hear it spoken of and see it written down in black and white. As a matter of fact the young man had only touched on the subject and not gone into it deeply. His main point was that the task of those whose job it was to transcribe the tapes was getting more and more difficult, for many of the conversations recorded now required decoding if they were to mean anything.

Tchan had already devoted some thought to this phenomenon, and he now paid it special attention. This was the people’s riposte in their duel with him: they were changing the way they talked so that he couldn’t understand it. It was no accident that the spies themselves had been complaining lately: “Our ears are perfectly all right — we’ve just had them tested. But we can’t make out a word of some of these conversations. Is this some new kind of Chinese that people are talking?”

Tchan paced back and forth in his office, which was heavy with tobacco smoke. This was more serious than he’d thought. By way of opposition to him, people were gradually inventing a new language, an anti-language. A growing proportion of the tapes was becoming unintelligible. Where would it end? What would happen?

Perhaps nothing would happen, thought Tchan after a while. If you looked at the matter calmly, it wasn’t so much a case of covert language changing, as of covert language coming to resemble overt language.

Was he going senile, inventing such ideas? But he couldn’t get it out of his head. Hadn’t the overt language been gradually filled with and eventually almost taken over by slogans and empty phrases? While the covert language, the one people spoke among themselves, had escaped that process and remained clear and precise. So what was really happening now was that the overt language was gradually infiltrating the covert one, The two were becoming one, and all because of micro-surveillance.

I’m raving, thought Tchan. If I go on like this much longer I'll end up in the madhouse or in jail. I shan’t listen to the blasted tapes any more. I’ll have a couple of months’ peace.

But he knew very well he couldn’t do without them for a single day. He was as addicted to them as he was to tobacco, and he’d never succeeded in giving up smoking.

And so winter went by, the second after the coming of the qietingqis , and then it was spring again. Director Tchan didn’t go crazy, and didn’t end up in jail. He was so busy he didn’t even notice the arrival of summer, and neither he nor his aides took any leave. One morning some dead leaves were blown against the window, followed by a gust of rain, He looked up from his desk for a moment, It was autumn.

In the same week as the first frost an urgent order came from the Zhongnanhai: in the new situation arising out of the cooling off of relations between China and Albania, top priority was to be given to collecting information about alleged acts of provocation committed by Albanian citizens in China, whether students, embassy staff or members of delegations.

11

An hour later, Tchan summoned his aides to his office to tell them about the new instructions.

“Here in N—,” he said wearily, “there aren’t any students or foreign embassies. That makes our task easier. As for the only Albanian delegation that ever set foot here as far as I know, I believe we sent the tapes recording their conversations to Peking for decoding, because we didn’t have anyone who knew the language?”

“That’s right,” said his aide.

“Regarding their contacts with people here, I think we have some reports on the subject. Is there anything in them that’s relevant to what this order asks? Some provocative phrase or other?”

“No,” answered his aide, but not very convincingly.

Tchan thought he looked rather uncertain too.

“What?” he said. “It looks to me as if certain things went on that I wasn’t told about.”

“No, no,” said the aide nervously. “There isn’t anything in the reports. I was thinking of something else.”

Tchan looked him straight in the eye. He squirmed.

“What were you thinking of, exactly?”

The aide gave up.

“Perhaps you remember that two years ago we lost a mike,” he stammered, “One of those special mini-mikes…”

“What’s that got to do with the present question?”

“There is a connection. Perhaps you also remember that the man whose clothes it was attached to was killed. Van Mey, his name was …”

“Van Mey,” Tchan murmured.

Yes, he did remember. That had been the only mike they lost, and Van Mey’s name had been mentioned…Yes, it was all coming back to him. They worried themselves sick about that lost qietingqi . The instructions about looking after them had been very strict, especially for the mini-mikes, and they’d had great trouble hushing the matter up.

“So what, then?” said Tchan. “What’s it got to do with this?” — pointing to the order.