Ismail Kadare - The File on H.

The governor’s greeting, together with an invitation to drop in for a game of bridge, had been brought to the newly arrived travelers at around seven in the evening by the city surveyor. The surveyor’s evidence, corroborated by the hotel manager (he had been up to knock on the door to announce that they were being asked for by an official gentleman), was that the travelers were rather surprised by the invitation: not only were they not expecting it but it had seemed so odd, not to say bewildering, to them that they took a little time to grasp what exactly was meant. The surveyor (like the hotel manager, of course) refrained from revealing, on reporting the foreigners’ reply to the invitation, just how the governor’s kind request had been greeted. But that did not prevent both of them from telling their friends that the travelers had hardly been eager, that they were fairly reserved, you could even say cold, and when they heard the word bridge , they seemed distinctly irritated. According to the city surveyor (and the hotel manager, of course) — this account had reached the governor’s ears fairly quickly through the latter’s own informers — the two travelers accepted the invitation more out of politeness than from any wish to play bridge. Oddly enough, far from being offended in the slightest by these comments, the governor mentioned this fact with evident satisfaction in his weekly report to the Minister of the Interior stressing the degree to which the witnesses were honest and reliable folk.

All the same the governor knew nothing of all that as he waited for the mysterious foreigners together with his habitual playing partners — the postmaster the magistrate and Mr. Rrok owner of the Venus soap factory he only industrial plant in N—. But even if he had known’ he would have said not a word of it to his friends’ even less to their wives and especially not to his own wife, Daisy, for whom the travelers arrival was the most joyous event of the season.

Wearing a gently rustling sky-blue voile dress. Daisy perhaps because of the rouge she had put on her cheeks or because of the dark circles under her eyes seemed far away, as if she were slightly drunk. She went back and forth between the lounge and the room where the bridge table was set up’ catching fragments of conversations that seemed to her ever more horrendously banal. They were speaking of the travelers who were due to arrive at any moment speculating as to why they had chosen to settle in this town in particular. Daisy found such considerations quite scandalous. The very idea that they might not have come to N—, but could have gone to some other place seemed to her so horrible that the merest mention of that possibility, the miracle having happened, could put the whole thing in jeopardy, and she almost came to the point of fearing that the visitors might ask themselves all of a sudden, “Well, really, why did we pick N—? Isn’t there another town where we could go just as easily?”

“That’s what is really extraordinary,” said Mr. Rrok. “Yes, it is really strange that they decided to settle here. You have to admit this is a godforsaken hole, off any road to other countries. It’s not a historic site or a strategic town, as people say. A place with no name for anything in particular. And, what’s more, stuck fast against the foot of the mountains,"

“It seems they had set their eye on this area even before they left America,” the postmaster asserted. “People say that as soon as they got off the boat at Durres, they hauled a map out of their bag and said, 'That’s where we want to go,'“

As they chatted, they glanced now and then at the governor, but with a slightly weary smile on his lips (good God, how do you manage to keep the same smile on your face for hours at a stretch, for dozens of people?), with his early-evening smile on his face, he pretended not to hear them. In fact, he too had been wondering what made the foreigners choose the area of N-- for their puzzling business. On several occasions he had had an intuition that it would give him a lot of trouble; at other times he felt the opposite, that it could be advantageous to him. When he was feeling low he sometimes imagined that someone who wished him no good had packed these undesirable Irishmen off to him as part of a murky plot. All the same, though they might be wily foxes, they would this very night, the first night of their stay, reveal at least a part of what they were up to. In the confidential letter that he had sent to the minister by return mail on receipt of the latter’s note, he confirmed it to be his view too that it was of the utmost importance to bring the travelers secrets into the light. Yes indeed, the governor sighed, the state is deeper than the deepest well. While he was still wondering when the whole affair would become clear, the doorbell rang. The sound of the bell affected all present like an electric charge. Most of them turned toward him as if waiting for instructions on what to do, others put down their glasses of port on a table or on the marble mantelpiece. All except Daisy became feverishly agitated; she stood stock still, her eyes riveted on the landing.

Meanwhile the maid had opened the door, and everyone could hear first of all the sound of their steps on the stairs — a sound that the governor likened in his mind to the noise of wooden legs (maybe because he had skimmed through the reports that alluded among other things to the stiffness of the foreigners Albanian, or maybe because it really did sound like that). In a flash, he caught sight of his wife’s profile, which manifested her anxiety. Her hair was done up in a chignon, but a few stray blond wisps emphasized the grace of her smooth-skinned neck. With surprise rather than contentment, the governor wondered why he was incapable of feeling any jealousy on her account.

Without even bothering to hide her feelings, Daisy kept her eyes on the two guests as they climbed the wooden staircase behind the servant girl, half turned toward them, who led the way. They did not look anything like what she had imagined. Neither of them had hair that was remotely dark, or soft, or flattened. Nor was either of them redheaded or hairy, as Max Ross had been in her mind; quite the opposite, one turned out to have thinning, fairish hair. As for the other, he had a strong and energetic face and somewhat darker but still unremarkable hair, which was moreover cut short like a boxer’s. That could not be Bill, but on the other hand, with his affable appearance as of a tame hedgehog, he could not be Max either! She almost released a loud sigh: They were completely unlike what she had imagined, but fortunately, thank goodness, they were young men.

Her turn came to shake hands, and to her great astonishment, the blue-eyed one with blond hair, as he took her hand in his, gave out in antiquated Albanian:

“Fair lady, to thee I bow, thy servant Bill Norton.“

“Daisy,” she replied.

The visions that had come over her in her bath a few days before, her speculation about it all ending up at the gynecologist’s, dozens of equally insane details, flooded back to her mind and made her blush.

So that’s the one called Bill, she thought after a moment, as they completed the round of introductions. She had certainly expected them to be different, but she could not say that she was disappointed. That would not have been fair, especially when she imagined the possibilities for scientists — venerable duffers in slippers and ridiculous nightcaps readying themselves for bed. For the time being, what remained from all that was a sense of losing her balance.… She should have shown herself equally attentive to the other one, Max Ross, but though he had brown hair and his companion was blond, she felt herself inclining toward the latter, the one called Bill It certainly was not his name but something else about him that decided hen Maybe a kind of gentleness, though very reserved and as it were constrained, together with his way of speaking, which seemed made of stone and which cast a cold shadow all around it. Daisy could not bear to be disappointed. Anyway, each is as handsome as the other, she thought by way of consoling herself, and what’s more, both are young, even younger than she had expected. As for language, quite apart from speaking Albanian after a fashion, they both seemed to be in perfect command of English. Darling … My dear