Ismail Kadare - The Successor

There was something pyramid-like about the whole business. Walls suddenly sprang up all around and blocked the slightest progress. The main chamber of the pyramid, where the most precious secret was kept, was locked from the inside. The same timeless principle was probably involved in the affair of the Successor.

The analogy was reassuring, in a way. The mysteries of the pyramids had not been completely solved in four thousand years. So why should intelligence analysts be in so much of a hurry in this case?

Taking advantage of all this haziness, clairvoyants — who had been making a comeback in recent times, after nearly fifty years’ absence from the field of state secrets — tried to intervene. But once contact was established with the spirit of the Successor, what could be gleaned from him was so obscure and undecipherable that, one after the other, the clairvoyants all ended up admitting defeat.

Oddly enough, Albania seemed to have sunk into never-ending silence. Over the border, the other Albania, “Outer” Albania, lay still and stiff under the winter sky, as if it had been laid low by a stroke. The same December sky arched over them, but it was a sky of such desolation that it seemed to be nursing two winters, not just one, two winters that were pacing up and down and howling like wolves.

Whatever was that feeling of joy, which seemed like nothing on earth? With a glass of champagne in her hand, Suzana sauntered among the guests as if she was walking on air. The great house, uninhabited since her father’s suicide, was once more full of people, light, and sound, just like it used to be. Nobody expressed surprise, moreover, just as nobody asked how the impossible had happened or why things had gone back to the way they were. Quite a few of the guests were unfamiliar, but that also did not seem surprising. Similarly, no one worried about how some of the bulbs in the chandeliers had failed to come on — having burned out from long disuse. For the second time, she heard someone saying, “What’s gone is gone and never comes back,” and then she set about looking for her father. Although he was the overall focus of attention, he was standing a little to the side, with a thin smile on his face that seemed to express some mild displeasure that would not be hard to dissipate. Suzana’s eyes lighted immediately on the white bandage that could be seen through her father’s shirt, presumably to protect the wound while it was healing. She put down her glass of champagne before going up to him and saying simply, “Papa, how are you feeling?” At that very moment she remembered she had still not seen Genc, her fiancé, among the guests, and almost shouted: How is it possible that he is the only one not to have come?

Albeit silent, the shout was what must have awakened her. As on the last occasion when she had had the same dream, Suzana burst into tears. She must have been weeping in her sleep as well, since the pillow was damp. She was holding it tightly to her face in the hope of going back to sleep when she thought she heard sounds. She raised her head to listen, and realized that her ears had not deceived her. There were people coming and going in the house.

Her eyes wandered toward the window. Then she switched on the light and looked at her watch. It was six-thirty in the morning, but the sky behind the curtains was still dark.

The noises resumed. They were not her mother’s footsteps, nor those of her brother, who habitually locked the bathroom door at that hour. They were something different. Apprehension lay like a lead weight on her chest, yet deeper down she felt no fear at all, but a kind of joy, as if she was still inside her dream.

She got up in a state of bewilderment and went to the door. Before turning the handle, she stood stockstill, to listen for voices.

The landing was quiet, but muffled sounds of speech and feet rose from below. Her mother’s and brother’s bedroom doors were shut. She went over to the railing and looked down into the hall. The lights had been switched on in the dining room and the grand salon , the room where her dream had taken place.

Her heart raced. Since her father’s suicide, irrespective of anyone’s wishes, it had been forbidden to enter that room, which had been formally sealed by order of the Ministry of the Interior.

She turned her head slowly to look once more at the doors of the bedrooms where her mother and brother slept, and then, in a growing panic, she stared at the other door on the landing, the door to her father’s room. A razor-thin strip of light shone from beneath. Every part of her body — her lungs, her eyes, her hair — screamed in unison: Papa! It was the same strip of light she had watched until two in the morning during the fatal night. She told herself she must still be dreaming, as she had not collapsed instantly like someone struck by lightning. With measured step, fearing she might wake herself up and thus lose this second chance of seeing her father come back, she moved toward the door. Yes, she must be asleep, or else out of her mind, since she felt that she would see her father again in the very bedroom where she had seen him dead, with a hole in his bloodstained shirt.

One more step, then another. Don’t give up now, she told herself. In any case, you’re done for.

At that moment the door swung open. A stranger rushed out. He was holding something black that looked like an old kind of camera. He looked the young woman up and down, somewhat surprised, and then, without uttering a word, raced down the stairs two at a time.

From the other side of the bedroom door that the stranger had left ajar came the sound of an exasperated man. Suzana managed to make out the word “autopsy.”

What next? That would really be the last straw if, after all the horror, they were now going to conduct an autopsy on the spot using an obsolete instrument in the shape of a camera.

Suzana put a hand to her forehead. It was probably just the continuation of her dream. Or did she mean hallucination?

Voices rose in the bedroom once more. A snatch of speech caught her ear: “… failing to carry out an autopsy was a scandalous omission!”

The door opened wide. His face crimson with anger, a man she thought she recognized as the new minister of the interior hurried out. Of his two escorts she recognized only one — the architect of the residence, the only one of them to have been in her recent dream.

The minister stared at her with some surprise. He stopped in his tracks to say, “Good morning!” then added, “Did we wake you up?”

The young woman hardly knew what to say.

The architect greeted her with a gentle nod of his head.

“We are making some inquiries,” the minister said before moving toward the staircase.

The other two followed in his footsteps. As they went down the stairs, Suzana once again heard the words “autopsy” and “scandal.”

The minister had sounded and looked very friendly.

She felt as if she was regaining her senses. They had apparently come before dawn to proceed with their inquiries. The day after Father’s death they had given close family members permission to go on living in part of the residence but not to enter the closed rooms and areas designated by red sealing wax. From time to time they would come to carry out various checks. They had the keys.

That’s what they had said, but they hadn’t come. This morning was the first time they had shown their faces. So if Suzana had felt entitled to ask a single question, it would have been: What took you so long?

The young woman felt a wave of cold settle on her shoulders. Her feet took her to her mother’s bedroom door. How in the world could she not be up, with all the commotion in the house?