Ismail Kadare - Spring Flowers, Spring Frost

The painter was on the verge of saying, But why here, in my studio? when his eyes strayed toward his old traveling chest. That was where his other dress must be hidden — a police uniform … or a snakeskin!

You’re such a dolt, Mark told himself. Obviously they had to come to see you. Aren’t you the next deputy chief of police?

Coming face-to-face with death had led them to be the first to discover the great secret of his own life. They’d guessed what no one else had yet seen. For Angelin and his sister, from now on, the other world where Mark would have been the deputy chief of police was the only one that mattered.

Mark needed some time to measure fully what they were asking. The only way to block the mechanism that Angelin had set in motion — to halt the rusty gearwheels that even death could no longer arrest — was to have recourse to another machine, the machinery of state. The plan was simple: the young man would give himself up to the police, and the state would give him a heavy sentence, the harshest of all. Not fifteen years in jail, as the current law required, but capital punishment. At a time like the present when laws were changing from day to day and cases were batted back and forth between Tirana and the Council of Europe, that was a conceivable plan. So the boy would be judged and sentenced, then shot like most murderers. His only request was that in this case the state would assume the role of the opposing clan’s executioner. He was perfectly aware that in ordinary circumstances such a request would be considered insane. But in current conditions, with so many Albanian issues going to Brussels and Strasbourg and suchlike, and also more especially because the National Ferment Party was demanding that the ancient Kanun be incorporated in the revised penal code, everything was possible. So that…

Mark rubbed his forehead from time to time — the best way to restore the flow of blood to his brain when it was slowing down.

So, in that way, by inserting the state into the system, the circle of revenge would be automatically squared. The family — that’s to say, us, she said, pointing to her breast — would claim its blood (she pointed to her brother) not from the Shkreli, but from the state!

The two of them then expanded on their plan and expressed themselves quite clearly. Shifting the claiming of the blood into a new, unprecedented area made it all different. The state was accustomed to facing enemies. It could tolerate and maintain hostilities more easily than any clan. It all hung on whether the state would consent to the plan; that is to say, whether it would agree to pronounce the brother’s sentence not just as an expression of the law and the penal code, but also as an expression of the rules of the Kanun. Furthermore, the two of them insisted that in the death certificate that the prosecutor and the coroner would sign after the execution (or else in the report of it that would be published in the records), the following wording would have to be used: “The State of Albania has shot Angelin of the Ukaj, cleansing the blood of Marian Shkreli, its servant.”

Mark took his head in his hands, as if to stop it bursting. He hadn’t interrupted throughout his girlfriend’s long explanation. When she finished, he asked what he thought was a whole variety of questions, but it all boiled down to a single query: “So you think the state should become a player in the feud? “And every time she answered “Yes, exactly,” her eyes flashed with an icy gleam that seemed to say, And what’s so strange about that? Throughout its long life the state has done nothing but kill and slaughter people. You yourself are in a better position than anyone to know that!

In other circumstances Mark would have shouted back, “Why me?” But it was too late now. He drew himself up to his full height, and though he said nothing, his whole body, like a dancer’s, expressed a single thought: Of course I am.

Of course he was.

None of them had been watching the clock. It must have been near dawn when Mark promised to put in a word with the police chief or the prosecutor in the morning, or, if the opportunity arose, with the two of them.

Mark, Angelin, and his sister were all dead tired. The two visitors got up to take their leave. Mark went to the bay window, looked outside, and declared that they would perhaps be better advised to wait for dawn.

He showed them the bed where he only rarely spent the night and stretched out on the sofa. For a long while he thought he could hear snatches of their whispering to each other, which sounded to him like so many lovers’ sighs.

As the first rays of light came through the window, he remembered she had taken the pill, which reassured him, and he fell asleep immediately.

When he woke, he knew intuitively that they had already left. He moved around the empty bed, thinking he could recognize her smell, which he knew so well, but then suddenly turned his eyes away, as if afraid of finding something revolting.

It looked like a fine day outside. The prosecutor was nowhere to be found. As for the police chief, Mark ran into him as he was leaving his office.

“I was sure we’d run into each other someday,” the chief said warmly.

Mark was no longer surprised by anything. The idea that the chief had also foreseen and even expected this meeting seemed natural.

“Listen, do you want to come with me? I have to go out of town, and on the way we’ll have all the time you need to tell me about your request.”

Mark was tempted to answer that he had no request to make, but the chief didn’t let him get a word in. As he got into the car, he confided that he had always enjoyed the company of artists. To back this up, he nodded toward a literary review lying on the rear seat. Then he leaned toward the driver, presumably to whisper directions in his ear.

“You won’t be bored,” he told Mark. “Quite the opposite. I think you’ll have a great time.”

Just my luck! Mark thought. I could do without that — watching someone get arrested! This whole business could have begun far more simply — like, with forms to fill out.

“Despite all the work I get loaded with, I do try to find the time to read,” the police chief went on. “Of course, I dont really grasp all the contemporary stuff. You know, in that issue there, for instance, there are some poems … How should I say… Well, I would really like your opinion, at least on one of them, the one that mentions the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg….”

Mark leafed through the magazine until he found the poem. A moment later, he burst out laughing.

“You see!” the police chief exclaimed. “You’re an artist, but even you couldn’t help yourself laughing. That proves there’s something not quite right.”

“That’s true enough,” Mark said.

“Please read me the first two lines. I’d like to hear them said by you.”

Mark began to recite the verse aloud:

I shall come unto you dressed in sackcloth

Wearing Luxembourg as a condom

They guffawed in unison for a while. Then the policeman expressed his fear that the lines might be seen as offensive to the duchy. “We mustn’t forget that tiny Luxembourg is a member-state of the European Union!” Mark shrugged his shoulders. The chief went on: “What I say to myself is this: if you allow someone to refer to Luxembourg or Denmark as condoms, what would you say if someone else wanted to describe you — I mean, your country — as, let’s say, a chamber pot? That would be shocking, wouldn’t it? The land of eagles … a toilet bowl?”

Mark laughed again.

They had left the town and were driving toward the highlands. Mark could barely stop himself asking where they were heading. From time to time he told himself that the farther they got from town, the easier it would be to broach the subject he was anxious to discuss.