Ismail Kadare - The File on H.

The governor was now visibly at ease. The thought of his two best sleuths in action outside in the dark, the cold, and the wet gave him special satisfaction. Others, he knew, were jealous of the perfect duo that afforded him his “ears” and his “eyes,” but as for himself, he had a distinct preference for Dull. And whenever rivalry between them was at issue, either because of some spat or on a question of pay, though he always tried to appear fair, he generally took Dull’s side.

We are not a very developed country, he liked to philosophize from time to time, and as in any country of this kind, the eye does not play a preponderant role as far as intelligence is concerned. Most people here are illiterate, and even those who do know how to read and write do not like to do so often. Very few write their memoirs, keep a diary, or have a regular correspondence. Even wills, which are hard to imagine as not written down, signed, and sealed, are still frequently oral And do you know what stands in lieu of initials and the duty stamp? Curses! “May you never know a single day of happiness in this world or the next if you do not carry out my wish!” “May you turn into a tree!” “May the earth never accept your corpse!” And so on and so forth.

That is what he liked to say on the matter of eyes, but as soon as ears were the issue, he changed his tone completely. Ah, ears, gentlemen, are a quite different matter! The ear never rests, for people always want to talk and to whisper; what is said and especially what is muttered is always, as you all know, much more dangerous to the state than what can be seen. At least, in our country, he would add. And if the governor was among a group of very close or very reliable friends, he would indulge in recalling his one and only real failure in intelligence matters. A failure due., of course, to the “eye”: in letters from a provincial Don Juan to a Tirana tart called Lulu (the correspondence was naturally checked because of the king’s open flirtation with the aforementioned tart), he had read the words organization and secret (“I swear it, those really were the words that I thought I deciphered, hidden like two hares in a thicket made of allusions to Lulu’s belly, to her delta, to her thighs!”), whereas what was actually written was orgasm and secretions! Good God, he still blushed as red as a beet whenever that misadventure came to mind.…

Mr. Rrok’s conversation with the guests was still in progress, and the governor took a few moments to pick up the thread,

“Verily, there is a true and real connection, good sir,"the fair one was saying, “but it grows late, and there is not time to give the reason tonight.”

“Some other time, without fail,” the other one said, in an odd kind of lilt. “Weary we be, for our voyage was long…."

“But of course,” the governor said to himself. “It’s time you worked out your cover stories! You didn’t even bother to do it in advance. Ah, my unhappy province, to be so despised by mere spies!”

Someone suggested a hand of bridge, but the foreigners shook their heads. They repeated their litany about the tiredness caused by such a long journey; but the biggest surprise of all was that they did not know how to play! That was just too much!

Once the idea of bridge had been abandoned, the ladies took charge of the conversation. By far the most talkative among them was the postmaster’s wife, beneath the half-patronizing, half ironical gaze of Mrs. Rrok, the soap manufacturer’s spouse.

“I am deeply shocked to see how our own dear friends can hardly wait to meet the foreigners, so as to put on airs and graces and lead the young men on,” Mrs. Rrok whispered to Daisy, who turned away abruptly toward the fireplace, so as to hide her blushes. After busying herself for a moment at the hearth, she could turn back to Mrs. Rrok and show entirely justified bright-red cheeks. “I find this thirst for adventure quite revolting!”

Daisy smiled absentmindedly. She realized that Mrs. Rrok was irritated at not being able to show off her knowledge of Italian, but that at least allowed the magistrate’s indolent wife to feel smugly satisfied. It was she who asked the visitors

“Will you be settling in at the Globe Hotel?”

“Nay, ma’am,” they replied together, almost as one.

The magistrate smiled sourly.

“So where else do you expect to stay? The Globe is the only decent hotel in our town,”

“Nary in town,” said Bill “We shall go hence.”

“What?” Daisy cried out, as if something had burst inside her heart. She had avoided looking into the eyes of her guests, as one puts off one of life’s enhancements until later, but now she turned a wild stare straight at the man who had chilled her heart by uttering such an ice-cold sentence. Daisy’s glance was at once heated, reproachful, and enticing, a combination that ought to have led the man to change his mind, but the foreigner only repeated his merciless words.

The governor had moved away from his guests momentarily, but now he came back to lend an ear to what was being said about the newcomers accommodation. And what he heard was really odd. The foreigners were explaining quite openly that notwithstanding the pleasure of present company, they had no intention of hanging about in the town, No, they weren’t off to any other town, certainly not to any other area; they were going to stay in this zone, for sure, but not in the town of N--, and anyway, they wanted to have as little as possible to do with towns. They would lodge in a wayside inn far from any other houses, a remote hostelry or, more exactly, one of those coach houses located where major routes intersect. If the cold weather had not already come on, they would have gone up into the highlands to carry out their research but as the hills were now deep in snow, they would have to settle for a lodging at the foot, beside the old highway, as they said, one of the places where traveling singers usually put up. In fact, they had already pinpointed the inn they had in mind, and it was not very far away.

“Ah! You mean the Cross Inn,” the soapmaker butted in, “It’s beside the main road, about halfway between Shkodér and Tirana,”

“Nay, sir,” replied Max Ross, “Tis called the Inn of the Bone of the Buffalo, or, for short, Buffalo Inn.”

“Oh,” said the postmaster “but that’s a very old inn, and so far away from anything that even telegrams take four days to get there.”

The Irishmen let out a gentle laugh.

“We saw it on the chart,’ said Bill “It is the place that best befits our task.

“Obviously!” the governor muttered to himself, “You couldn’t imagine a better place for your secret machinations!”

“So you have also brought maps along with you” he inquired aloud.

“Aye, a goodly number. And all the epic areas are marked."

Wonderful, thought the governor. They are not even bothering to pretend anymore. He was tempted to ask them what these epic areas were but chose instead to pretend not to have noticed the term.

“Where is this Buffalo Inn, then?” Daisy asked the postmaster’s wife in a whisper.

“How can I explain? I don’t remember very well. I only went there once, with Petro, but it’s such a tumbledown place it makes you shiver just to see it — it looks like a heap of ruins.”

“Unless I am mistaken,” the governor interjected, “it is, with the exception of the Inn of the Two Roberts, in central Albania, the oldest house of its kind and has been in existence since the Middle Ages.”

“And is it very far from here?”

“No, not really. An hour’s drive in a cart, I guess.”

Daisy felt warmer. An hour in a horse-drawn carriage wasn’t the end of the world. The conversation around the foreigners had got livelier.