Ismail Kadare - The File on H.

Today I shall reclaim an ancient debt of blood — No one else on earth has ever reclaimed so much …

Max and I shouted out in unison, “This the ballad of Zuk the Standard Bearer!"

And indeed it was that entrancing ballad he sang, and what’s more, in its full version. We had dreamed of hearing this poem ever since we first got interested in Albanian epic. Not for nothing have German scholars called it the Albanian Or esteia. It has all the elements of ancient drama. a mother’s betrayal, a sister inciting her brother to matricide, and Furies, and retribution…

When he had finished, we asked the rhapsode when he would be back, but to our great surprise (and to Shtjefen’s surprise, above all), he replied that he would never return to the Rrafsh .

Shtjefen was struck dumb by the answer. A highlander leaving the plateau forever was unthinkable, and worse still, it was a bad omen, a sign of terrible misfortunes to come .

“We live in bad times,” said Shtjefen. “The worst things can happen.”

March

The inn is empty. We keep working, but now and again our spirits sink. The first rhapsode has not reappeared .

His coming back is of vital importance to us. We are sure of recording and rerecording the singing of other rhapsodes, but if the first one doesn’t return, it will feel like an emotional hurt, like the wound that first love makes in your heart .

Shtjefen keeps glancing at us guiltily. It’s obvious that he is more upset than we are about the long wait. Sometimes he goes out onto the doorstep and peers at the road as it disappears into the fog. It isn’t a view that inspires optimism, especially when ifs raining .

Yesterday there was an unusual noise when we were downstairs drinking our morning coffee. A distant thrumming. We went outside to have a look. Shtjefen also came out and looked up into the sky .

“It's a civilian airplane, which overflies this area twice a month,” he said .

“With passengers?"

Bill and I exchanged glances, and our looks of suspicion did not escape Shtjefen, who came up to us and whispered:

“Don’t worry. Up there” — he made a vague gesture to where the noise was coming from — “in the Rrafsh, there are no airports, and even if there were, no highlander would ever get on board an airplane.”

“Oh, really?” said Max. “And why not?”

“There are lots of reasons, believe me,” Shtjefen answered. “But one will be enough for you: the price of a plane ticket would come to two or three years of a highlandefs income.”

We nodded to indicate that we understood .

“Therefore he will return, without fail,” Shtjefen went on, accentuating each word. Then his voice faltered. “Unless unless he is dead.”

IN FACT, THE INNKEEPER’S PREDICTION was borne out, and the rhapsode did return. It happened on a muffled, darkly overcast day. Everything seemed to be frozen still and the singing forgotten forever. The man looked so worn out that the Irishmen wondered what could have happened to him, but they did not dare ask. They did not even hope to hear the man sing again; they asked the innkeeper not to remind the traveler of his promise, but Shtjefen shook his head in disagreements the rhapsode would sing without fail; he had given his word. And he did indeed keep his promise. Without saying anything, as if fulfilling a duty, he took his place in a wooden chair in front of the microphone and began to chant first the one, then the other of the two ballads.

As soon as the rhapsode had left, Bill and Max started to compare the new recording with their transcription of the original performance, and they went on until late in the evening and again on the next day. They had thought that with his ashen face, the exhausted bard would have modified the words quite a lot. As a heading to the tape, Max recorded himself saying in English: “Ballad sung two weeks later by the same rhapsode, who appears to have suffered a psychological shock or deep distress in the meantime.“

However, to their acute astonishment they discovered that the two texts were to all intents and purposes identical In one thousand lines of verse, there were only two omissions; and in the scene where Muj is chained up, the line

The remains of the burnt pinewood

blackened Muj’s chin

was reformulated as

The burnt remains of the pinewood mingled

with the foam from his mouth

The two of them discussed the reasons for this change at some length. On the one hand, it seemed that this tiny alteration and the omission of two lines out of a thousand were the very least of the losses that might be expected; on the other hand, the change could be accounted for by the singer’s low spirits adding to the bitterness of his song.

Then they set that explanation aside, feeling it to be quite secondary, and looked more closely at the altered line. It was amazing. They had before their eyes their first, long-awaited free variant! There it was, not as a theoretical construct but as a real and living thing. The omission of two lines, that tiny void in the text, was the first example of forgetting that they had pinned down alive. They were fascinated and did not tire of examining both the variant and the absent lines, and suddenly everything seemed possible. They had in their hands one of the main threads of the Homeric tangle: what happened with a single rhapsode in a fortnight. Over several years or a century, or five hundred years, how many instances of forgetting would there be, and not just in a single rhapsode’s performances but in a whole series of them, over a generation and from one generation to the next? The device of forgetting suddenly grew to huge and striking size, and they could feel their pulses throbbing in their temples as they tried to get their brains to cope with such vast dimensions.

They were completely buried in their work when they got an invitation to a ball to be given by the governor and his wife. At first they did not really understand what it was about, since the approach seemed so peculiar out of place, irrelevant, so pointless and absurd. Both said “No!” instinctively. What use is that to us? It must be a mistake,”Unable to get used to the idea that they had indeed been invited to a dance, they persuaded themselves that it must be a mix-up and that the invitation cards were really intended for someone else. However their own names were handwritten on the invitation cards. Moreover the governor’s long-nosed limousine was parked right there in front of the inn. Not only had they been invited to a ball; they had been assigned a car to take them there! They were about to reiterate their refusal, when they vaguely remembered that there had been some talk of a ball at the soiree they attended on their first night in N-- and that in addition this whole area and maybe the inns and some of the itinerant singers came under the governor’s jurisdiction….

Half an hour later; dressed up in their dark suits, they were being chauffeured in an antiquated jalopy across a darkening, frosted plain that seemed strewn with enigmas. Here and there ghostly haystacks tried to duck under the headlights. Now and again Bill muttered under his breath, "Oh Lord, where are we going?" He needed to think hard to remind himself that they were on their way to the local governor’s ball, but no sooner had he come to his senses than his imagination raced again, inventing a thousand hidden dangers all around, long smothered by the ice but now reluctantly, and all the more distressingly, awakening from their slumbers.

He heard Max whisper into his ear: "I've never seen such a sunset!”