Ismail Kadare - The Concert

He’d hoped the interview would establish the fact that the officers hadn’t explained their insubordination. But they weren’t even conceding that much!

The ex-officer just sat there, expressionless. The minister made another desperate effort. Could it have been, by any chance, that as the officers themselves saw the question quite clearly, they took it for granted that no explanation was called for, since they had great confidence in their leaders — too much confidence perhaps, for people forget that leaders in general, and a minister in particular, may have weaknesses, may get angry, may be arrogant and brutal, may fail to study properly the documents issued by the Party and the classics of Marxism…er, where was he? Oh yes, had the tank officers, and Arian Krasniqi himself, considered it unnecessary to provide long explanations, and thought it quite enough to say, “it just isn’t done to encircle a Party committee”?

Even before the minister had finished speaking, the officer had started shaking his head. No, not at all They had explained the reasons for their disobedience briefly but quite clearly. If the comrade minister wanted more details, he could supply them. As soon as he received the order he had asked: “Encircle the Party committee? But why?” The order had thee been repeated. Then he and two other officers he’d got in touch with had asked: “Is there an enemy commando about, or the threat of some commando raid?” The answer they got was cert: “It’s nothing to do with you! Just obey orders!” The officers had repeated their question, and this time the reply was: “No, there is no enemy commando. Obey the order!” It was then that they’d said: “The order is unacceptable. Tanks cannot encircle a Party committee, or any other legally constituted body — if they do so, it’s tantamount to trying to establish a dictatorship…” There had been some more terse exchanges, during which the tank officers had repeated that if there was no enemy commando invoked, the surrounding of the Party committee couldn’t be justified. When one of the signals people let out an oath, Arian Krasniqi had shouted, “We’re not living in Shanghai, are we?’

The minister flinched at this. Then he went on:

“That was all quite right and in the spirit of the Party, and I’m sure that’s what you said. But the point is, did the others hear you properly? Perhaps not, because of bad weather or technical conditions. If I remember rightly, it was very stormy at the time, with lots of thunder and lightning…”

The officer just repeated what he’d said before.

“We explained quite clearly why we were disobeying orders.”

“Ah …I didn’t know that. In that case…That alters every-thing. Of course you and your colleagues are not guilty. But perhaps the signals people were responsible for all this business, or members of my owe staff left things out of their reports. Unless they’re not to blame either: there’s no denying that the weather was awful, and there was a lot of thunder and lightning…”

But he realized that whatever he said it would be in vain. He began to falter. All he wanted now was for the fellow to go. He’d have told him, “All right — that’s enough! The interview is over!” if he hadn’t been afraid of putting his back up even further. I ought never to have sent for him, thought the minister as he went on protesting about how glad he was to see him, and how much he appreciated people who stood up to him…in the end he didn’t really know what he was saying, and when the officer turned and left he heaved a sigh of relief.

The confrontation had exhausted him. And he hadn’t even got anything out of it. On the contrary, his visitor had almost certainly guessed how worried he was. And if so, he had only himself to blame for making things worse! All he needed now was for everyone to know his real state of mind.

The minister stared at the notes he’d scribbled in preparation for his autocritique.

He was going to have to confront the plenum of the Central Committee, and there was no doubt he would be expected to carry out a thorough autocritique. Day after day he’d scribbled, crossed out and scribbled again, without ever arriving at a satisfactory result. Go deeper! — the words with which he’d tormented so many other people at other meetings were now terrifying the minister himself. He’d noticed that every time the phrase was addressed to someone performing an autocritique, the victim literally seemed to sink into the ground. Now he was going to be on the receiving end.

He tried to push the thought away. He looked round his desk, at the array of telephones and red and green buttons marked “Alarm No.1”, “Alarm No.2”, “Army Headquarters”, “Admiralty”, “Air Force”…He kept thinking how any Latin American colonel, with only half all these means at his disposal, could, But, like a drug to which a patient has grown accustomed, the thought no longer did him any good. “That’s no consolation!” he exclaimed. For it was plain that no one gave him any credit for doing right when he had at his fingertips so much power for doing wrong.

His hands went on toying instinctively with the draft of his autocritique. That’s right, he told himself, forget about those buttons. Your fate depends on these notes.

He already had a wad of them, but he knew he’d have to write more. He scrabbled for the passage that referred vaguely to the tanks. Since Enver Hoxha had mentioned the business specifically, he would have to explain it in full to the plenum. He skimmed quickly through what he’d written. It was too flimsy. He’d dealt with the aftermath of the affair and his anger against the tank officers (which he’d presented as unjustified, the result of his own presumptuousness and lack of contact with the masses), but he hadn’t yet said anything about the beginnings of the episode — the mental processes that had led him to give such an order, his underlying motives. He could already hear a voice calling out to him: “The causes! — go deeper into the causes!”

No, he would never go that far! He’d never tell this plenum, or the next one, or the hundredth or the thousandth plenum after that, about that cursed dinner with Zhou Enlai! He’d take the knowledge with him to the grave. They could yell at him to “go deeper” until they were blue in the face, but he would never dig all that up again. Zhou Enlai was no longer of this world, so he wouldn’t care one way or the other…But somehow or other he, the minister, was going to have to justify himself.

He absolutely must find something to say. It wasn’t enough just to explain what he’d done as due to lack of political foresight on the part of a technocrat who hadn’t gone into Marxism-Leninism properly. If he wanted to be credible he would have to make a greater sacrifice than that. Perhaps the best thing would be to admit a bit, just a tiny little bit, of the truth? People always said the most plausible lies were those that contained something of the truth. For example, he could say that the idea of encircling a Party committee had probably been suggested by the events of the Cultural Revolution in China — an incorrect interpretation of the struggle against Party bureaucracy or the anarchist slogans of Mao. Also, admittedly, by his own imperfect acquaintance with the classics of Marxism-Leninism. All this would hp exposing himself to criticism, but he had to take some risks to avoid complete disaster. Let them think what they liked of him. Let them call him a Sinophile, a half-wit. Let the Party mete out some punishment or other. He was prepared to put up with anything so long as the real truth never came out.

At least he didn’t have to worry about Zhou Enlai. He was as dead as a doornail — and he didn’t even have a grave! Sometimes the minister felt a surge of resentment: if all Zhou wanted to do was end up as a handful of ashes scattered into the sky, why had he bothered to get him, the minister, into such a scrape? But on the whole Zhou’s death could be regarded as a blessing.