Ismail Kadare - Agamemnon's Daughter

They would have done better not to give me this invitation, I reflected. Or I would have been better off not coming, as Suzana and I had agreed. . Suddenly all the pain of her absence hit me as heavily as the lid of a tomb. Oh Lord! I sighed bitterly. Too many burdens to bear all at once!

Where the two boulevards intersected there was another checkpoint, which was stricter than the others. But I had now stopped worrying about them. A secret hope that the cops would find something out of order on my invitation and make me turn back made my heart beat faster as I waited at each security check.

No such luck! In some areas of life, delays, oversights, and sloppiness just don’t arise. Issuing official invitations was one of them.

Both sidewalks of the Grand Boulevard were packed with people. That was where most of the invited guests were placed. That’s exactly how it was written on their cards: “Left or right side of grandstand.” Whereas we who had seats still had to plow our way through this seething ocean. I’d already aroused suspicion and jealous pangs by getting this far, but when people realized I was supposed to go even higher, how much more animosity would be coming my way! Anyway, the real nightmare would presumably begin only at that point. I imagined that when people realized what I was set for, they would grab my coat tails, haul me back down, and raise the alarm.

Instinctively, I slowed my pace to deflect any suspicion I might have aroused by marching forward too eagerly. I wanted to look like someone who, in common with all the other recent arrivals, was simply bent on finding the best spot.

Shortly after, I realized that the sidewalk had been transformed into a promenade. Since the best seats for watching the parade had long been staked out, everyone not yet ensconced was sauntering up and down, running into old acquaintances, greeting them with guffaws, and so on. Here and there you could make out a glinting medal. On rare occasions it was a star of the Order of Heroes of Socialist Labor. Seen from outside or by the goggle-eyed people who’d just been watching us make our way to the platform, the place must have looked like a corner of paradise. A contingent of the Socialist elite in glorious May Day sunshine, right next to the heavenly choir. .

Well, I thought to myself, even if none of that is true, even if there’s not a sliver of paradise here, maybe it’s not exactly the total opposite either, not the hell on earth I had imagined it would be. . Things were probably much simpler, and my fevered mind was making everything seem blacker than it was.

Slightly reassured, I looked at my watch. It was almost half past nine. Maybe it was time to go up into the grandstand. Out of the human mass on the street, a line had formed and was making its way in orderly fashion in that direction, and to my great surprise no one betrayed any sign of guilt, shame, or hesitation. On the contrary, most people were holding their invitation cards in plain sight, with a touch of pride, and stopped to look at them close up or at arm’s length as they pretended to be checking where their seats were (as if they hadn’t already done that at home a dozen times over!) and then, with serious faces, moved straight ahead.

I was about to join the line without any further self-doubts. After all, they had been coming here for years, and I was discovering it all for the first time. For the last time too, in all probability. .

“Keep moving! Keep moving!” a voice bawled from the nearby loudspeaker, as if to bolster my resolve. I thought that a smile was about to break out on my face, but it never got that far. For on my right, in a group of quite young fellows most of whom I knew (some were employees of Zeri i popullit, the daily newspaper, and others worked at the Central Committee), I saw G. Z.

I can’t imagine what else in that crowd could have brought me back so sharply to the very worst that the world has to offer, to its most deathly and abominable manifestation. A somber chasm, then a great fall, then a desperate jerk to try to escape at any cost from the chaos. . But wasn’t that the ancient tale of Bald Man Falling?

One night as he was walking in the dark, Bald Man fell into a hole and kept on falling and falling right down to the netherworld. .

I had known G. Z. since the time he was employed at our TV station, and I’d never thought very much of him. His complexion was gray, but more sickly than pale, probably a symptom of his lack of personal hygiene which, combined with his unwashed shirts and self-proclaimed taste for plain dressing (which was more likely just miserliness) and with his constant harping on his orphan status at meetings (Comrades, I never had a father or a mother. No! The Party is my only family.), which itself provided an inexhaustible supply of emotion for delegates but never failed to exasperate one of our colleagues no end (What unadulterated bull-shit! he would grumble. It’s only his mother who’s dead, his father’s alive and as fit as a fiddle. Given the circumstances, why doesn’t he say the Party is his substitute mommy?), his whole personality and history corresponded in sum to what in relatively polite language is called a pile of shit.

But that was presumably where the roots of his career were planted. Because a career, as one of my friends often liked to say, is built not just on enthusiasm and energy, but on some special gift that has to be such an integral part of the individual in question as to be barely distinguishable from his genes. That gift, which in others may take the outward appearance of a heart of stone, natural perversity, infinite servility, or God knows what else, manifested itself in dull-witted G. Z. in his ostensible orphan identity, which for reasons unknown persuaded our leaders that there was nothing he was not prepared to trample in the mud if he one day should be asked to do so.

Indeed he had already covered quite a lot of ground. At the Broadcasting Service to begin with, then at the National Theater, where, people said, he was highly valued. You could see right away that he had an inextinguishable hankering for the higher slopes. . But one night, one of his relatives was arrested.

One night, Bald Man fell all the way down to the netherworld. .

It had never occurred to me that a nonentity like G. Z. could be the pretext for likening an old folktale to what was, ultimately, an ordinary event in the lives we led. But as our office boss was wont to ask, isn’t it true that repulsive insects bring to mind, more often than you might expect, fine and lofty thoughts?

After his fall, Bald Man strove with all his might to find the way and the means to clamber back to the upper world. He wore himself out searching every corner, until an old man whispered the solution in his ear. There was an eagle that could fly all the way up by the sheer strength of his wings — but on one condition. Throughout the flight, the raptor would need to consume raw meat. Bald Man didn’t think that would be a problem.

(What had they asked G. Z. to supply in return for his place in the upper world? Whose flesh had he given?)

G. Z. was in a state of utter turmoil for days and nights on end. He spent his time going from one office to another poor-mouthing his cousin, repudiating him, swearing he would wring his neck with his own two hands, if only the Party would put him to the test! People who knew him better than I said that the man’s agitation was not just for show. By their account, it sounded more like proof of integrity, which to some extent justified his attitude. But when I heard about it, I thought it a perfect example of the baseness of human nature.

He traipsed all over the place and wore himself out hunting for a solution: his servility and eagerness to crawl were like a drug. The inexhaustible supply of devotion to the Party that such a person found himself able to summon up may have come as more of a surprise to himself than to anyone else. He raced from corridor to corridor, from office to office, until someone finally showed him how to climb out of the hole he was in. That someone knew someone who… on one condition. . G. Z. didn’t think that would be a problem.