Ismail Kadare - The Concert

“I thought you were worrying about…”

“Not at all! I was thinking of something quite different. Do you know what?…If I tell you, Lin Min, you must promise not to breathe a word to anyone else.”

“You can count on me!”

The girl looked at her for a moment, hesitating, then made up her mind.

“I don’t even want to know what you were talking about, Lin Min. I don’t understand such things. All I can think of is when the show is over and the foreign members of the audience come up on the stage to congratulate us… Perhaps I’ll be lucky and one of them will kiss me …You see, Lin Min, at the last concert, in October, there was a fair-haired man who smelled so delicious …I shall never forget him…”

As the young ballerina was speaking, her colleague looked at her with an expression that might have been either envy or pity.

Then the older woman went away, and the young dancer was alone again. She tiptoed over to the heavy velvet curtain, pulled it aside a little, and looked through the gap into the auditorium, where the seats ail looked weighed ‘down under the same red plush. The audience weren’t there yet. An oppressive silence seemed to rise up from the great empty space. The girl sighed and let the curtain fall back into place.

To Hua Guofeng the chiming of the clock on the wall sounded different from usual For some reason he paused with the comb and scissors in his hand, waiting for the seventh stroke. I’ve only got fifteen minutes left, he thought. As he lifted the comb and scissors to his head again he noticed that his hands were trembling. He was nervous — he should have started getting ready sooner. It wasn’t his fault though…The idea that his resemblance to Mao might be increased had suddenly occurred to him that afternoon. The notion excited him, though he was sorry he hadn’t thought of it sooner. The fact that he looked like Chairman Mao hadn’t gone unnoticed among his friends, who sometimes made rather risqué jokes about it, but it hadn’t occurred to anyone that the likeness could be improved, cultivated like species of fruit. The thought had taken a long while to come to the surface in Hua Guofeng’s own mind, wandering first along devious and mysterious ways, as most ideas do. He’d wondered for some time about Mao’s possible successors, and had occasionally thought of the Kagemushas, the doubles whom medieval Japanese war-lords used to send to replace them in battles and at celebrations. If I were just a little bit more like him, he reflected, I could be Mao’s Kagemusha . Then, as it became more and more difficult for Mao to preside over ceremonies and receive distinguished foreign visitors, and especially when the Politbureau first deliberated over whether he ought to give up appearing in public, Hua thought about the Kagemusha more and more But it wasn’t until the meeting of the Politbureau this afternoon that everything around him seemed to freeze, and the idea of the double suddenly emerged from the depths of his brain, hitting him like a cosmic ray. The meeting had ostensibly been discussing something quite different, but, as usual lately, it was clear everyone was thinking about the succession. The problems involved were well-known; Zhou ill with cancer; Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife; her band of supporters; the Deng Xiaoping faction…People said Zhou would soon be sending Mao his will…Everyone let his thoughts run riot. And it was then that an inner voice cried out to Hua: “Why not you? Why do you stand modestly aside? The others are no closer to him than you are. You have a definite advantage in your face and physical appearance. As for the soul, no one can see that” Then a host of chaotic thoughts crowded into his mind: a case of mass psychosis, a people yearning for its lost leader, their longing to see his face on the rostrum again…

“This very evening!” shrieked the inner voice. “Appear as him this evening, and you will triumph!”

Back home again, he had wandered around the rooms aimlessly until he realized what it was he was looking for. A mirror. He stood for a long time gazing at his own reflection. He couldn’t send for a hairdresser or a make-up man from the theatre — no one must be let into the secret. Everyone had been suspicious and on the alert lately. He’d manage by himself.

As if afraid of being overheard, he tiptoed over to a cupboard and got out a comb and a pair of scissors. Why were his hands shaking? Other people had used poison or a dagger…

That thought calmed him a little. But when the first tuft of hair fell down beside the mirror, he was almost surprised it wasn’t spattered with blood, it was past five when he started on his task: at seven o’clock he still hadn’t finished. As he plied comb and scissors alternately, his thoughts wandered to the still empty theatre, the envelope containing Zhou Enlai’s will, and other more trivial things, His hands went on shaking. Sometimes he thought the resemblance was increasing, sometimes it seemed to have disappeared altogether. Once he suddenly turned and looked at the portrait of Mao up on the wall: he appeared to be looking back at him sardonically. The scissors in Hua’s hand flashed as if with menace.

At a quarter past seven there was a knock at the door. It must be one of his bodyguards. The time has come, he thought, and tiptoed back to the cupboard, put the comb and scissors back in their drawer and covered them up with a towel. Then he walked towards the door. But just as he was reaching out for the door-knob, he remembered in time and went back to the mirror and the tufts of hair still lying around it. He gathered them up in his handkerchief; rubbed the top of the dressing-table to make sure there was no trace left behind; then he went over and opened the door.

* * *

The car taking Skënder Bermema and C–V— to the concert drew up outside the theatre. As they alighted they saw other groups of guest, Chinese and foreign, making for the lighted entrance as their limousines glided quietly away like empty shells.

As he entered the auditorium, Skënder was dazzled by the bright red velvet. The stalls were starting to fill up, but there was practically no one in the boxes yet.

Skënder and C–V— followed their guide as he located the seats assigned to them. They settled down. The theatre was quieter than Skënder had expected, but when he looked around he saw that the stalls were now almost full, except for a few latecomers picking their way to their places. The boxes too were filling up, and Skënder noticed that the people round him were looking at them as he was, but without actually turning their heads. It was twenty-five past seven. Skënder, like all the rest, went on watching the highest dignitaries arrive. He saw the Albanian ambassador and almost waved to him; but of course the other wouldn’t have noticed. Thee he spotted the Politbureau member with the turban: he was in the same box as “Double-Barrel”, whom he recognized from seeing him on television. But this wasn’t the moment for laughter.

At seven-twenty-eight Jiang Qing and Wang Hongwen took their places in their boxes. There were only two boxes vacant now. At first glance it was as if the whole power of the state was embodied in those present, and the two empty boxes didn’t count. But a few seconds later, by some mysterious process, the opposite came to be true: for the thought of those who were absent sent a chill down everyone’s spine. They might make their appearance at any moment, with their pallid faces and the mocking smiles that seemed to say, “You rejoiced too soon at our not being here!”

There wasn’t a murmur. On the contrary, the silence deepened, and only a mute kind of stir ran through the theatre when Hua Guofeng appeared in one of the last two empty boxes. “What’s this? What’s this?” hundreds of people silently chorused. Skënder watched their guide’s profile: his pale face had gone red, as if it were bathed in a sulphurous light; he wore an expression of mingled terror and hope, like someone pleading for mercy, “Hua Guofeng’s face!” Skënder exclaimed inwardly, “What’s happened to it?” But he didn’t expect to get an answer here, in this place inhabited by ghosts. His own mind, that mechanism so apt to produce the strangest associations of ideas, soon supplied him with a number of possibilities. Hua Guofeng’s face was the spitting image of Mao’s. He might have taken the skin off Mao’s face and stuck it on his own. Many others must have been revolving the same horrible thoughts as Skënder, for the whole theatre seemed to have suffered an electric shock.