Ismail Kadare - The File on H.

All the same, she was sure that the Irishmen talked about hen Last time especially, when she was dancing with Bill and he made eyes at her a couple of times, his colleague had offered some remarks and Bill had answered back over her shoulder. Yes, she was sure they had been talking about her.

My lord, my love…. Daisy heaved a great sigh as she recalled the only words of English that she had learned from the cinema screen. The mere thought that somewhere in the middle of the icy plain, in a godforsaken inn, two men were talking about her in English would have elevated her to a plane of ecstasy.

Another ball will be arranged, then a farewell party, she thought, with melancholy. She would indulge in more reveries, would spend more sleepless nights, and then be crushed by disappointment. Her husband and she would do better to forget the receptions. Why walk into turmoil like that again? Why? she moaned, with tears in her eyes. But a few moments later, there she was with them again, at a dinner being held in their honor. All the guests from the previous receptions were there, and the fire was burning in the hearth, as it always did. The only difference was that people’s conversation had changed mouths, just as you change guests’ places at table. Bill was saying what the postmaster ought to have said, and similar permutations had occurred among the other diners, so that Daisy herself — how flattering! — found herself speaking the words of the soapmaker’s wife….

The bedside telephone rang and woke her from her dream. She buried her head in the top of the blanket; the heaving of the bed told her that her husband had reached out an arm in his sleep to take the call

“Hullo,” he said in a sleepy drawl. “Hullo, who is calling?”

Even before his voice changed tone, she could feel his body stiffen as if it had been electrified.

“At your service, sir. I am all yours, Minister,” he blurted out. "Ah, you got it, did you? Delighted, sir. Excuse me? You have authorized the dispatch of an English-speaking informer? Excellent news, sir. To be honest, I had given up hoping. No, no, don’t worry, Minister. We’ll catch our chickens in the roost. In double-quick time too — I’ll vouch for that. Minister.”

During the conversation, Daisy raised the blanket and listened. Who was this English-speaking informer? she wondered confusedly. Her husband went on talking to the minister. He came out with “catch them in the roost” and ‘“chickens” again.

When he put the receiver down, his face looking like a vessel filled to the brim overflowed with a smile.

“Who is this English-speaking informer?” she asked.

“Oh, so you’re awake?” he answered gaily, “Obviously you couldn’t not be awake. Damned telephone!”

“You were talking about an informer who can speak English …” she repeated.

“It’s administration business. You know what a bore all that is.”

“Is it about the two Irishmen?”

“What? Hey, why did you think of them? It’s true that…Look, Daisy, why don’t you go back to sleep and stop tiring your brain with such nonsense?”

“Are you going to have them watched?”

She felt him tense up in bed. Then the springs of the mattress creaked, as if they had relaxed.

“And what if we did? Let’s suppose we did what you just said. Would that be the end of the world?”

She clenched her teeth. There was a bitter taste in her mouth.

“That would not be decent. We invite them to dinner and then …”

“Ho ho!” He burst out laughing. “Will you never grow up?”

He stretched out an arm to stroke her face, but she turned her head away in disgust.

“All the same I love you the way you are.”

“Stop bothering me," she riposted, “and let me sleep.”

She really did seem to go back to sleep, and after waiting for a moment, the governor got out of bed and slipped from the room as noiselessly as he could. He must have gone to his office to telephone his spies, Daisy thought.

She imagined bells ringing in bug-ridden bedrooms, then the bleary-eyed, drink-bloated defectives who called themselves spies reaching for receivers just as her husband had done a few minutes before,

I am the wife of a common petty official, she thought. She had poured out her bile to the prison warden’s wife and the wife of the soap manufacturer with no effect. Her husband did dirtier work than theirs, he really did. She was the one to pity, she really was.

She opened her eyes wide. The droplets of condensation on the windowpane reminded her of tears on a tragicomic mask. They’re going to listen in on their conversations, she thought with sudden fright. And the Irishmen were so absentminded that they would fall right into the trap. “The chickens…" It was not right to call them that. They were totally lost, as if they had been “let drop ” by a bird of prey, as Daisy’s grandma Mara used to say. Not to mention that those spies would also eavesdrop on the Irishmen’s remarks about hen Her own name overheard by mud-filled ears! She tossed and turned in her bed. “I have to do something/” she said to herself. This was no time for daydreaming, like at the movies; it was time to take real action. To warn them …

She imagined a carriage with curtains drawn setting off behind a pair of horses. Inside, a woman wearing a black veil, who would be herself. Oh, Lord, she had seen that a hundred times at the movies…. But the carriage conveying the worried woman kept on rolling toward the Inn of the Bone of the Buffalo.

The English-speaking spy arrived at N— at the end of the week. Apart from the governor and one of his staff, no one was aware of the real trade of the black-suited gentleman with the handlebar mustache who took a room at the Globe Hotel It was natural that inquisitive townsfolk should seek to discover the real reason for the presence of this visitor from the capital, beginning at the very moment of his arrival, and as the information they picked up was not sufficient to satisfy their curiosity, it was even more natural that their inquisitiveness should intensify throughout the following week. It was variously reported that he was a collector of antiques and ancient manuscripts, a beekeeper, and a psychopath who benefited from mountain ain Other hypotheses that would have accounted more or less satisfactorily for the visitor’s frequent absences from the hotel might well have done the rounds had a tiny part of the truth not come to light. Did the suspicion first emerge among the town’s informers, for entirely comprehensible reasons (relations between colleagues, professional rivalries, and so on)? Or did the spies pick up the rumor somewhere and then, for the same reasons as before, adopt the story for themselves? It’s hard to say. But the spies’ own interest in getting to the bottom of it is easy to explain. As in all closed circles, in the world of shadows and muffled whispers that was the informers’ community, there were stars and there were black sheep, beginners full of admiration for their mentors as well as emotions of jealousy and hatred; there were tyros dreaming of future glory, along with legends about the exploits and adventures of Tirana spies, and lamentations on the difficulties of working in the provinces, and so on. All these tensions were suddenly reenlivened by the arrival of that confident man of the world with oiled hair and handlebar mustache who sauntered infrequently into the dining room of the Globe Hotel.

The most surprising thing was that the rumors circulating in the closed society of the informers ended up leaking out into the wider world. It had been an open secret for years, of course, that the loyalty and commitment of the spies at N fell some way short of absolute; indeed, it had been a well-known fact ever since the declaration of the monarchy and the founding of what was then a new profession in N— by the unforgettable Palok Veshi (“The Ear’), whose real name was actually Gjoku (it had been changed for obvious reasons). But for things to reach such a scandalous pass — in other words, for a rumor to escape from the magic circle of the spies own community and to resurface in the population at large — well, that really was the limit!