Ismail Kadare - The File on H.

Although his particular branch was aural, Dull went on in his long-winded way, he had tried to accomplish his mission as scrupulously as possible, that is to say keeping watch on the foreigners from a distance, which in his humble opinion (if His Honor the governor would pardon such forthrightness) belonged more to the ocular branch.

So without claiming to offer advice to anyone, and certainly not to the governor, he would have thought that for this first phase of surveillance it would perhaps have been more sensible to employ the services of his colleague Pjeter Prenushi, an old hand at the oculars, whose abilities in this branch had long been unrivaled and had reached new heights on the day when — the honorable governor would perhaps recall — he had managed to spot from a distance of thirty meters that despite her exaggeratedly heavy makeup, the wife of the French consul, on a visit to their ancient city, was making eyes at someone.

Notwithstanding the aforesaid, and never wishing to question orders from above, he felt no awkwardness about taking on a task that was perhaps not strictly within his purview. On the contrary, deeply encouraged by the confidence that had been placed in him (even if it was perhaps on this occasion a confidence not entirely warranted on the part of His Honor the governor), he had as always spared no effort in fulfilling his mission as conscientiously as he could and in reporting the facts as laid out above with the greatest precision.

As for the two foreigners, it could not be asserted with absolute certainty that their behavior aroused no suspicion at all In fact, it quickly became apparent that they were not at their ease, as evidenced by their constantly turning their heads this way and that, their weary faces, their hesitant gestures, almost certainly the symptoms of the anxiety, not to say the fear, that was torturing them.

They spoke first to Haxhi Gaba, in Albanian, making mistakes that were more likely the result of confused feelings than of genuine ignorance of the language. They took the Gypsy for a porter, whereas Haxhi Gaba thought he was being asked for his usual disgusting performance and was preparing to oblige, that is to say he was limbering up his whole body, so to speak, in order to expel the required quantity of air with sufficient force and sound — “I must ask Your Honor to pardon me once again" — so as to produce the sequence of farts that he imagined the two foreigners had ordered. The aforementioned was thus ready to perform his outrageous action — which he would have perpetrated this time, without a doubt, on what could indeed have been considered an international stage — when the present author, moved solely by a sense of patriotic duty and disregarding the fact that he was in no way authorized to do so, intervened and shooed the Gypsy away.

As for the suitcases and especially the metal trunks that the foreigners were lugging with them, the present informer had some difficulty in ascertaining anything about them on the basis of mere sight, especially as it was a well-known fact, as he had had cause to recall just a moment ago, that his field of action was essentially auditory, etc., etc.

On this point, while it was not his habit to meddle in other people’s business, his sole concern being the smooth running of affairs of state, and while he would not wish to cast the eagle eye of his colleague Pjeter Prenushi in the slightest doubt, he felt obliged to point out that even Pjeter’s gifts would hardly have sufficed to assess exactly the weight of the suitcases and especially of the metal trunks, let alone establish some relationship between the aforesaid weight and their contents. That said, he would take the liberty of suggesting that it might be appropriate to seek the opinion of the man who had hauled the load on his back, to wit, the porter Cute, also known as Blackie.

Blackie the porter: Suitcases? Don’t talk to me about them suitcases, for God’s sake, they nearly broke my back! Forty years I've been at this job, I never carried anything that heavy. Heavier than lead, I tell you! What was inside them? Don’t ask me — stones, iron, maybe the devil himself, but definitely not shirts and ties, I’ll swear to it. Unless they were clothes of iron, like knights used to wear in the old days, the sort you see in the movies — but these were modern gentlemen, nothing to do with suits of armor, and they didn’t look like madmen either. No, no, those weren’t no ordinary suitcases of clothing… Blackie can tell what’s in a suitcase just by handling it. Soon as he hoists one up on his back, he can guess whether it’s a rich man’s, full of heavy, silver-embroidered cloth, or a padre’s or a mufti’s, with holy books inside, Bibles and Korans and the like. Nothing misses Blackie’s eye where suitcases’re concerned. He just has to stroke one to know if it’s got a bride’s clothes in it, all buoyed up with joy, or a widow’s rags, weighed down with grief. Blackie’s carried a heap of cases — the cases of happy folks, crazy folks, exiles running from the king’s fury, desperate people expecting to hang themselves the next day with their luggage straps, the trunks of thieves, painters, women with their minds on only one thing (you can feel that right down your spine!), officials’ traveling bags, hermits’ packs, and even madmen’s luggage half full of stones. Blackie has seen it all, he has, but those two, they had suitcases like Blackie has never carried in his life, for the love of God. They took my breath away. I thought I was going to split in two, and I said to myself, “Blackie, old man, you can say good-bye to this lousy job! Fall down and die rather than bear the shame of having to say: I can’t carry that!” ‘Cause Blackie once had a dream that was sadder than death. A traveler with a suitcase appeared on a road made of green and brown sticky cardboard and said, “Hey! Porter!” Blackie tried to lift the suitcase but didn’t have the strength. There you are, it was just like in that dream — I was soaked in cold sweat under them damned cases. Those weren’t suitcases but the devil himself!

The manager of the Globe Hotel: The suitcases were really heavy, but the trunks even more so. In order to get them upstairs to the room on the second floor — dear me! — I had to involve not just the usual bellboy but also two chambermaids and the cook.

The foreigners spoke to me in Albanian, but truth be told, the language they spoke was not our usual way of speaking at all. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like a tongue that was frozen in places, hard as ice, if you see what I mean. My job as a hotel manager involves meeting quite a few foreigners, so Fm used to all sorts of peculiar pronunciations. I don’t mean to boast, but the truth is, because of these peculiarities I can tell straight off, without even looking at their papers, whether customers are Italian, or Greek, or Slav. Well, as for these two foreigners, it wasn’t any of those kinds of accents. No, it was something completely different. Maybe I'm not making myself clear. They spoke a language that was … how shall I put It like it had cooled down. A bit like the way my mother — may her soul rest in peace — came back to talk to me in a dream a few years ago. And I was so taken aback that I remember saying to her, “What have I done to you, Mother, to make you speak so?” Forgive my digressing like that, I beg you….

Then what? Sorry, I almost lost the thread of my story! Well, they went up to the room we agreed to give them. Following your orders, we had sprayed it three times with insecticide, but dear me! I must confess I wasn’t sure we’d managed to get rid of them all They could have got in from the rooms next door, or under the doors, or especially they could have come down through the ceiling. But that’s another story. … I just wanted to say that the foreigners stayed up there on their own until a messenger came from the governor, with an invitation to a game of bridge.