Ismail Kadare - Agamemnon's Daughter

When we next met, with the seriousness that was hers in all matters relating to love, she took up a position such that beneath her pubic hair I could see the pale pink lips of her sex. I studied them for several seconds, and I guess my eyes must have expressed the surprise of a man who hears something growling fiercely in the bushes and then suddenly sees through the foliage not a fearsome monster, but an inoffensive pet.

Suzana’s sex looked utterly simple compared to its sophisticated function. In spite of myself I compared it to what my previous girlfriend’s looked like. Her organ could have been called imposing and almost baroque, like a pleasure factory. But maybe it had not always been so, maybe it had become that way from use. . So many ejaculations had gone down it! And not only mine. She — my other girlfriend — had had relations with two other men before me, and maybe that unspoken truth was what exaggerated the proportions in my eyes. But Suzana was only a beginner. Maybe later on, after all the pretenses to come, her sex would also become more complex. Later on, when I would have lost my rights. .

A sudden burst of brass and drums made me jump. It was the start of the parade.

It was the same old routine we’d seen so many times on television. Gymnasts formed patterns with vaulting poles bedecked with bunting, bouquets, and wreaths. Then color-coded squads of boy and girl athletes. Next would be the factory delegations, steel-workers in the lead, as always, followed by miners, textile workers, shop assistants, cultural workers, then neighborhood groups, then school parties, dum de dum. . Jiggling stiffly up and down over all those heads came the outsize portraits of members of the Politburo. My gaze attached itself to one of them in particular, the portrait of Suzana’s father. Why had he asked his daughter to make such changes in her dress and in the people she saw? What was the message? What was the symbol?

It would have been perfectly comprehensible if he’d taken that step out of fear, or if he suspected his foothold was giving way. But he wasn’t on a downward trajectory. On the contrary, he seemed to be climbing by the day. And it was that rise, specifically, that had engendered the word sacrifice and had directed it to the remodeling of Suzana’s future.

His portrait was now almost level with the grandstand. For the tenth time I exclaimed inwardly: What is the message?

Years before, the terrible campaign against cultural liberalization had begun just that way, with a step so small as to be almost imperceptible. A letter came in from the province of Lushnjë casting aspersions on the dress worn by the presenter at the Broadcasting Service’s Song Contest. Accompanied by sly grins and snide comments, the letter went on up from the music department to one of the assistant directors of the radio service. (All right, the presenter’s dress was a hit too long and caused offense. That’s because those bumpkins are still living in the last century! They get everything wrong. You can’t really hold it against them. . unless this is a put-up job?) In much the same state of mind, the assistant director, more out of curiosity than because he took the matter seriously, showed the letter to the Head of Radio. He was a naturally timid man, so he didn’t laugh out loud, but he didn’t make a big fuss about it either. He just said: “You must be careful with things like that, sometimes they can get you in deep shit,” and that sobered up the assistant director on the spot. It was only when they were having coffee a couple of days later with the Head of Broadcasting himself — Big Boss, as we all called him — and the latter interrupted the guffaws going on all around to inquire about that “famous letter from Lushnjë” that the assistant director felt the weight off his shoulders.

So they had all had a good laugh over coffee together: the Head of Broadcasting, the Party secretary, and the quaking Head of Radio.

It wasn’t long before the laughter stuck in their throats. A week later Big Boss himself got a telephone call from a branch of the Central Committee asking about the letter. Why hadn’t an answer been sent out? The Head of Broadcasting protested vigorously: It wasn’t the job of the Broadcasting Service to follow through on every piece of correspondence that came in, especially one as stupid as that!

Everyone who heard about what happened, including subordinates who had no great love for Big Boss and who would have been delighted to know he’d gotten a rap on the knuckles, were for once all agreed that he had been right, and that they’d all had enough of letters from the grass roots.

A few days later, however, the Head of Broadcasting was summoned to a meeting of the Central Committee, and he came back to the office with a long face. A meeting was called the same afternoon. The Party secretary reminded us of the attention we should pay to comments coming from the masses, and then read out his own self-criticism. The Head of Broadcasting spoke next, briefly. After emphasizing how fatal it would be not to value the views of the masses at their true worth, he too (and this was quite unprecedented!) read out a self-criticism dealing principally with the letter from Lushnjë.

All of us in the Broadcasting Service found that was going too far. Right after the meeting and several times over the following days we discussed whether it was necessary for the dignity of the Head of Broadcasting to be tarnished for such a trifling matter. We were all of like mind that it was not appropriate. It was all the more inappropriate because Big Boss was himself a member of the Central Committee and on this issue, after all, he had done no more than defend the interests of the Broadcasting Service.

It has to be said, however, that apart from feeling revolted by the affair, all of us (probably including Big Boss himself) felt a degree of relief. Because it meant that someone’s yearning to take the Head of Broadcasting down a peg or two (which was the sense we made of the whole maneuver) had now been satisfied. All it took were two or three well-chosen expressions, copied from the watchwords stenciled on walls (Always learn from the people! Keep things simple! and so on) to have the affair wrapped up. Self-criticism was a truly miraculous cure.

It did not occur to any of us to think we might have been wrong from start to finish. A week later, after the Party meeting where we were told that the boss and our other superiors had restated their self-criticisms, but with greater attentiveness and gravity, we got notice of a full staff meeting. Can it be about the same old business? — I can’t believe it! — Can you imagine, going over it all again, in front of everybody?

The purpose of the meeting turned out to be exactly what we had surmised. A representative of the Central Committee was in attendance, and he threw his piercing glance at everyone in the room in turn.

“I have as it were the feeling that you’ve treated this business a little too lightly, comrades. You thought a handful of superficial self-criticisms would do the trick and there was no need to dig into the causes and roots of evil. But the Party won’t be hoodwinked as easily as that!”

Big Boss’s eyes drooped with weariness. Weary, too, were the faces of us all. For it was but the start of a whole string of meetings that we would have to attend, like stations of the Cross. We would come out of it unrecognizable as our former selves, with our skin torn, our flesh bruised, and our bodies marked by it forever.

Our initial arguments about respect for the authority of the Head of Broadcasting, our fear of offending him, and so forth — how antiquated they now seemed! We were in a different climate, and our priority had to be to shelter from the hailstorm that was going to rain down on every one of us. Each new day brought utterly unexpected changes in mental composition. What was absurd, unimaginable, literally impossible on a Monday turned out to be quite all right on Tuesday, when it promptly began to eat away another, even more horrifying barrier.