Ismail Kadare - The Concert

The other stretched out both of his, bending forward stiffly like someone unused to demonstrations of feeling.

Skëeder, embracing him, felt his tears on his owe cheek.

“May he rest in peace!” he murmured. It seemed to him this venerable expression was the phrase best suited to the occasion, existing as it did on a plane above truth and untruth, above all human passions.

He walked slowly back to his room. Before going to bed he went over to the window again and looked out at the ideograms shining here and there in the darkness. “The Chairman is dying,” he repeated. There were no doubt plenty of signs out there that meant “chairman”, but probably none that meant “death”. Bet tomorrow, he thought, or the next day, or in a week at the latest, it will be there.

He put his hand to his face, where there must still have been traces of the Chinaman’s tears. How strange: he hadn’t embraced any Chinese when it would have been natural to do so; but he had embraced one now, unexpectedly and at the moment of parting. Was it an omen? If so, of what?

He paced up and down for a while as if to clear his head of his swirling thoughts before trying to sleep. It was the moment of parting from evil, certainly. The omens foretold a farewell to suffering. The pain which history had inflicted on Albania at the end of the present millennium was about to end.

He felt like shouting for joy.

“Let the bells ring out!” he cried aloud. “There has been a sign from heaven, and we have come to the parting of the ways!”

He looked in the mirror at his cheek, at the place where Asia had bestowed a final kiss.

Outside, the unintelligible ideograms hung in the sky like words in a dream. He turned away from them and went to bed, bet before he fell asleep they crept back into his mind, a vast galaxy in which, somewhere, an invisible hand prepared to switch on another, paler light: the ideogram of death.

MAO ZEDONG WAS STILL on the point of death. For hours his closest relations and colleagues had been in his bedroom watching him die, and many others were waiting in nearby rooms. Some were still in the clothes they’d been wearing at the concert, when the news came that the Chairman was dying. Every so often, in his lucid intervals, he would look round at them as if to say, “So you went to the concert, did you?” And then they wished they could slip away and change into mourning. But they were all kept rooted to the spot by the knowledge that if they were away for a moment they’d find the door barred to them when they got back.

Mao moved in and out of a state of coma, but even when he emerged from it he was usually still delirious. At one point he saw the world, shrivelled to the size of a pitiful little globe, flying through infinite space, surrounded by cosmic dust and carrying his owe coffin. It was tied down with ropes which would later serve to lower it into the grave. (Lord, where was it all happening? On the forty-second or the forty-third parallel, or at some unknown latitude?)

The faces of those around him merged with other visions. Zhou Enlai must be dead by now, he thought in a lucid moment, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to keep him away from my coffin. But, in a kind of painful whirlwind, the word “coffin” kept changing into “power”, and then changing back again, endlessly. As for the other people, they all vied with one another to hang on to the bronze handles of the coffin. If he could have spoken, he’d have shouted to them not to buffet him about like that!

That was the picture they conjured up, so obvious was their hatred of one another. Only the prime minister was missing. His will, his request that his ashes be scattered over China…It was when he, Mao, heard of Zhou’s last wishes that he himself had been struck down. God alone knew how many days had gone by since then. Zhou must be dead and buried a long time ago. Otherwise he'd be here, hanging on to the coffin handles with the rest. “Careful!” he called out inwardly. “Can’t you let me spend my last hour in peace?”‘

His dimming eyes scanned their expressionless faces. His mind conjured up, only to destroy them, one scenario after another for what would happen after his death. The uncertainty was unbearable. The various possibilities whirled around in his head like a ghostly ballet. Hua Guofeng put up against a wall to be shot, Jiang Qing made empress, her crown ornamented with Deng Xiaoping’s gold teeth. Yao Wenean married to Jiang Qing after her triumph, thee murdered by her in his sleep. Then both of them superseded by Deng Xiaoping. Then Peng, a lame man, in power, as in the days of Tamburlaine. (Deng-lang, perhaps they would call him.) Jiang Qing mouldering in prison, her hair hanging loose in despair. An empty plane flying in search of people alive or dead, to take to Mongolia, but no one would go on board — Hua Guofeng rose out of his grave to tell Mao, with a diabolical grin, that he wasn’t so stupid as to do so! “What have you done with your scissors and comb? Mao asked him. “I hear you fancy yourself as a hairdresser lately!” “Who told you that?” gasped Hua Guofeng. “Jiang Qing — it was the last denunciation of hers I was able to read, just after the concert you all rushed headlong to…”

The others stood round the coffin, silent.

“I oughtn’t to have left them so divided,” thought Mao with a groan, trying to turn over. The nurse hurried forward to help him. His eyes were half closed, but he could still see Zhou Enlai strolling through a field leading a crab on a string. “Why aren’t you attending to affairs of state?” Mao asked him. Zhou smiled and pointed to the crab, “I have to look after this now,’ he said. “It’s my cancer, and I’m trying to tame it,” “You’ve got it on a lead like a dog!’’ said Mao. “Of course, you’ve always been attracted by English customs.” Zhou didn’t answer. He started to walk away. “Are you dead?” Mao called after him, “It’s a long time since I read the papers or listened to the radio…” But by now Zhou was too far away to hear,

Lie Biao appeared instead. He was strapped into a plane seat, and the words “No smoking” kept blinking on and off over his head. Where were they flying to — the Kingdom of the Blue Monkey? “You plotted the coup — you ought to know what happened!” said the marshal “As the victim, you had a ring-side seat!” Mao retorted. “All the accounts were doctored, both on earth and in heaven!” said the other. Both on earth and in heaven? Mao was taken aback. He felt like asking Lin what had become of him. As a matter of fact, Mao had wondered at the time whether something hadn’t gone wrong… But he decided not to pursue the matter at present.

Then he saw Lin Biao again, but in the distance this time, wearing a raincoat and standing on a grassy plain. It was raining, and people were collecting up the débris from a burned-out plane. Mao nearly said, “You’re clutching your coat around you as if you were, burnt to a crisp.” The other only drew his coat closer with his yellow fingers.

“The fool — does he really think he boarded that plane alive?” thought Mao.

Lin smiled coldly. “I know everything,” he said. “But I’m looking for the person who burned in my stead. I’m trying to find his upper left canine. When you chose the poor wretch to take my place you forgot that my upper left canine is gold…” He laughed. “All great criminals get caught in the end because of some small oversight!”

As he laughed he made sure to show the gold crown in question. “It’s this little toossie-peg that gave you away!”

“All ghosts like bragging,” Mao answered. “Do you think I'm so foolish as to have put someone else in your place? It was you all right in that plane, you wretch! Have a good look at the débris and you’ll recognise yourself.”