Ismail Kadare - Twilight of the Eastern Gods

‘Yes, those were grandiose and terrible events.’

‘And now I give lectures, go to conferences, write theory…’

‘Things have calmed down more or less everywhere,’ I said, with a smile. ‘Have you noticed our embarrassment when we hear people talk about the epic spirit of the old revolutionary struggle? We’re like schoolboys when their parents come up from the provinces to visit them, wearing old-fashioned greatcoats.’

‘I see what you mean.’

‘It’s like the alias business,’ I went on. ‘If you ever took on another clandestine job, I don’t think you’d look to the tragedies for a new pseudonym—’

Smiling, he interrupted: ‘Do you mean I’d take one from a comedy? Go on being ironic! I’ve got a thick skin, I can take it. When all’s said and done, I’m a defeated man.’

In the few words he’d just spoken, I saw a suggestion of vulnerability, and shouted, ‘It’s impossible to have a conversation with you any more! You’re always so prickly!’

In fact this was the first time he had seemed to take offence, and we had never quarrelled before.

‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘I’m on edge, over-sensitive. Anyway, take no notice. Please, go on. What were you saying about pseudonyms?’

‘Let’s talk about something else.’

He laughed. ‘I can guess what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘You see an ex-militant who’s now a peaceable Muscovite. With a fur collar on his coat and a pair of bedroom slippers, Antaeus has become the very model of the petit-bourgeois. What a character! Am I right?’

‘Typical characters arise in typical situations. Isn’t that what Engels said?’ I joked.

‘True, in typical circumstances… In typical circumstances,’ he said again, nodding. ‘Yes, of course, with baby fox fur and slippers as soft as the southern breeze on his bedside rug…’ He looked around for his coffee cup, but the waiter had already cleared it away.

‘So my aliases are just stage names!’ he said, as if to himself. ‘Be honest: isn’t that what you think of me?’

I’d actually said that as a general observation, not directly about him. I’d never thought about the matter at any length. It was just that in the atmosphere of the lives we led, ancient and legendary names, like Prometheus, Antaeus and so on, didn’t sit well with the activists I’d encountered at the Soviet Writers’ Retreat. At most they might use aliases from opera or, if it had to be a classical reference, then perhaps Dionysus…

I laid that out quite bluntly while insisting that my observations did not apply to him, he didn’t have to believe me but I wouldn’t waste my breath on telling lies, especially as I’d have to do it in Russian, which would be tiring. He was at liberty to believe me or not, that was up to him, but that was what I thought and it would be a good idea to put an end to the discussion.

He was intelligent. He understood I meant what I said. He put his somewhat sallow hand on mine, and said, ‘I believe you.’

‘It’s like the titles of Soviet politicians,’ I said, following my train of thought. ‘They used to be called People’s Commissars, and in those days it sounded right, didn’t it? Then, for whatever reason, they were turned into ministers, like everywhere else. Nowadays if you tried calling them People’s Commissars it would sound so peculiar.’

‘If they wanted to be called People’s Commissars, they’d have to start by being the commissars of the people!’

I pretended not to have heard and looked out through the window. An intermission was taking place at the cinema next to the metro station.

My conversation with Antaeus lurched on clumsily, like a caged bird beating its wings in the café until one of us managed to open the door and let it fly off to the southeastern corner of Europe, which was home to us both. We started talking about things that had happened to us when Antaeus was a teenager and I was a child. He told me about the severed heads of Greek partisans that our enemies had kept in refrigerators to show to people, and I told him what I’d heard about the severed heads of rebellious pashas that were displayed in a stone niche in Istanbul, to dampen separatist aspirations.

‘That’s the way large aggressor nations always behave,’ he said. ‘Scare the people! Horrify them! Terrorise them mercilessly! But, tell me, what was that niche called?’

‘Ibret-taşι : Let it be a lesson!’

‘Hm.’ He nodded, as a sardonic smile spread across his face. ‘You share a naval base with the Soviets, don’t you?’

‘Yes — Pasha Liman.’

‘Another Turkish name!’

Conversation drifted back to the Albanian-Greek border, to rain, winter, hail and shame.

‘On the march towards Albania,’ he said, ‘we didn’t know whether you would defend us or not. There were rumours that Tito would hand over men from our side. But you stuck to your ancient besa … Besa ,’ he whispered. ‘I know that Albanian word. I heard it in Athens, when I was a student. One day it will come into every language in the world.’ He stopped talking and swept his hand over the table, as if he were wiping it clean. ‘OK,’ he said eventually. ‘Let’s drop the subject. Tomorrow I shall drink like a character from an opera!’

I laughed heartily.

‘Tomorrow everyone is going to get drunk. We’re all at the end of our tethers…’

‘Hanging over us all is a black cloud of discouragement,’ he said, lowering his voice on the last words as if he already regretted having uttered them.

A cloud of discouragement… I looked through the window at the people streaming into the cinema. Most were young, holding hands or arm in arm, and all of a sudden I was overcome with joy at the memory of Lida Snegina. We’d met again since her return from Crimea and we’d been back to Neskuchny Sad, as well as to the bar on the thirteenth floor of the Peking Hotel, which had a view over all of Moscow and our other old haunts. The following day, a Sunday, we were due to meet at Novoslobodskaya metro station, and suddenly, at the table where we’d just been talking about khandra , thinking of Lida, I was overcome by a wave of sentimental gratitude for the metro trains that ran day and night, for overground trains, ticket-sellers, taxis that were always there to help if you were running late, and for all the other means of transport that allowed us to see each other. The warmth I experienced was such that I felt a bit of an imposter at a table where we had talked of painful things. I was about to tell Antaeus that at six thirty the next day I had an appointment with a wonderful woman at a station, but just then, without looking at me and still staring at the street, he mumbled, ‘Raise your head, you faker!’

I pretended I hadn’t heard and looked towards the metro station exit. I thought of Lida approaching our rendezvous the next day with the light step of any girl on her way to meet a boy, her eyes at an angle of forty-five degrees to the ground, all alone amid the passers-by, five minutes late, her steps rustling with anxiety and desire.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re perfectly right.’

I looked at him, puzzled. I hadn’t grasped what he was talking about.

‘A character out of comic opera,’ he resumed, after a short pause. ‘And yet…’

I still had no idea what he was talking about. ‘And yet what?’

He stared at me intently. Ancient Athenian, I thought, why won’t you tell me what you know?

‘There’s going to be a meeting in Bucharest,’ he said. ‘A friend of mine who’s a member of the Central Committee of the Greek Party passed the information to me. You’re not in the loop?’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘No!’