Ismail Kadare - The Successor

As she went back upstairs, she passed two soldiers carrying furniture down. Her mother was busying herself on the landing on the second floor. Without looking left or right, her brother was running down the stairs a second time. This time he was carrying not just books but also a large package. Maybe his tape recorder. Or else a typewriter.

Suzana puzzled over the half-open drawers where her underwear was kept. With languorous, hesitant gestures, she took out her cotton underclothes, then the sanitary towels her mother had brought back from a trip abroad. As she placed them in her bag, she tried to work out how long her supplies would last. Three months? Four months? She couldn’t be sure.

The voice of her mother on the landing could be heard piercing the air. She was talking to Suzana’s brother. Probably about his books.

The other drawer where her silk things were kept also put Suzana in a quandary. She stretched out her hand, then withdrew it almost in the same movement. Each garment was in a different style and color, but for her they all fell into one of two categories: those that were connected to him , “Number one,” and the others, fewer in number, that she associated with Genc.

She picked up a pair of sky blue panties, the ones she had worn her very first time. It was probably on account of this garment that he had come out with these unforgettable words: “I like expensive women.” She put it back, then picked it up in a bundle with the rest, then in exasperation let go of it. Everything seemed to her to come down to one blinding, unbearable core: For years, in one way or another, what had been required of her was always one and the same thing — to renounce her love. And they always won! She came close to screaming, No! out loud, as her hands hurriedly swept up the whole lot, like a thief.

The door opened behind her back, and she heard her mother saying, “Faster, my girl!”

They always win, she kept on saying to herself as she went down the staircase. She had tried to protect herself, had bleated feeble protests, like a lamb being led to the slaughter, but she had ended up giving in. And now that has to stop! she yelled inwardly. Her sacrifices had been totally in vain. Nobody had even noticed. Except her first man. He who had been destined for the sorry fate that was now hers.

Suzana felt tears streaming down her cheeks. Cold and salty-tasting, like the tears of any woman with hands made dirty by housework, they just kept on flowing. The kind of tears she would no doubt shed henceforth on a towpath or behind a bush as a local farm worker did up his fly.

“Faster!” her mother shouted again as she walked over to the truck with a portrait. “You’ll have plenty of time to cry later on!”

The soldiers weren’t accustomed to this kind of work and loaded the furniture clumsily. The tall mirrors sent back oblique reflections every time they were jolted. They had presumably witnessed the eviction of their former owner, and had been waiting their turn for years.

“Careful, soldier!” her mother commanded in an ever more tinny voice. “Wedge some cardboard underneath so it doesn’t shift around too much!”

Dimwit! thought Suzana. Her mother was bustling around the truck, keeping hold of the portrait with both hands. That was when Suzana saw that it was a portrait of the Guide. “Insane!” she muttered under her breath.

Her brother followed behind with a great pile of things. “There’s no room left,” one of the soldiers said. The truck driver and the two plainclothesmen supervising the loading looked at their watches from time to time. The uniformed policemen kept their distance. A bunch of onlookers had gathered on the sidewalk opposite, to watch the free show.

“Come on, time for you to get in,” the driver said, pointing to the back of the truck. “Make a bit of room for them,” he said to the soldiers.

Her brother stretched his long legs and climbed in first. Suzana felt her knees buckling. “Give the old lady a hand,” someone said. With deathly eyes, Suzana’s mother stared at the soldiers in turn, unwilling to let go of the portrait. Her son jumped down, roughly took the picture from her, and pulled her up into the vehicle. Suzana bowed her head.

All of a sudden they were enveloped in the regular rumble and throb of the engine, and the two women, who had been quiet so far, burst into sobs. The young man stared at them as if he could not recall who they were.

The truck was still laboring across Albania’s central highlands while the event was already being talked about in all the cafés of the capital.

The shock that people registered seemed to be of a very particular kind. It masqueraded as a precursor of things to come, but clearly it was actually the final jolt in a whole series of upsets. Briefly astounded, people went on to rediscover a feeling they had almost forgotten. Initially diffuse, it grew ever more identifiable, despite the fog surrounding it, and it became apparent in due course that what had first looked like blankness, weariness, and a kind of lethargy was in fact the expression of relief. In other circumstances, the word “plot” would have aroused terror, but on this occasion it was on the verge of being treated as good news. As they went around repeating that word, people came to realize how much they had been tired out by its not having been uttered all winter long.

So there really had been a plot, or a conspiracy, to use the other term, and people not involved in it had no reason to be afraid.

No one was unaware of where campaigns that began with the thin end of the wedge ended up. They might start with a few apparently indulgent relegations for liberal ideas in the cultural field, or for foreign influence, or for new artistic trends … Then there would be a meeting at the National Theater. Then a firing squad on some empty lot on the outskirts of Tirana.

Whereas this time there was an open announcement that the issue was a conspiracy. In other words, a putsch planned by the Successor, an attempt to overthrow the Guide. Which presumably meant he had had loyal henchmen and supporters, secret codes, weapons, and staging posts. The Successor would not have done himself in for nothing, would he now, seeing how many times he’d mocked at suicide. So the word “plot” was as reassuring as could be. That is, for people who didn’t have bees in their bonnets. That’s what separated the guilty from the innocent as cleanly as a knife cuts butter. In past times, nobody ever felt certain of anything. You thought you were as white as snow, and then, without even knowing what you had done, you found you had been subjected to foreign influences. Or that you had been contaminated despite yourself by the wind of liberalism. It wasn’t by chance they called them winds of ill fortune — you could get caught out by a diabolical draft anyplace you stood. But this time you couldn’t get picked on and blamed, for instance, for making love to your wife incorrectly — in a decadent manner, as they used to say. But could you call that a plot against the state? Come off it, you know what you can do with that kind of nonsense. Decadent behavior was rightly so called; it wasn’t very savory, to be sure; it was extremely unhealthy for all and certainly unworthy of a Communist, not to mention an official, but you had to face facts: No way could things like that constitute a plot!

The latest news that reached the city’s ears at nightfall only made the day’s rumors more plausible. In late afternoon, the Successor’s tomb had been demolished and his mortal remains bundled up with the planks from his coffin and the soil around it, put in a plastic bag, and removed to an unknown location.

To judge by the way these facts were reported, something seemed to have affected people’s linguistic abilities … Some kind of petrifaction of language had condensed their stories, and this in turn curiously served to make them more precise. The soil-stained tarp that had been used to carry off the Successor’s remains probably revived memories of snatches of ancient epics, parts of which had been dropped from school textbooks as a result of campaigns to eradicate medieval mysticism from the national curriculum.