Ismail Kadare - Agamemnon's Daughter

I started to shake his hand in farewell, but he went on cheerfully: “What, are you leaving? Stay here, my dear boy. It’s a good spot, you can see everything.”

“Well, it’s just that.. ”

The instinct for self-preservation would have held me back from telling him that I had a seat in the grandstand, but as I couldn’t think what else to say, I had to let him know.

His attitude switched entirely. As if what he’d seen in my hand was not an official invitation card but a death announcement.

He took it from me, or rather, snatched it out of my fingers with the angry swoop of a bird of prey. Greedily, skeptically, his fierce eyes pecked every word on the card looking for some unforgivable error. He hung on to it for a while (I thought I could see his hands shaking) and drips of perspiration glazed his forehead. His face, his whole being, even the medals that I thought I heard making an ominous clinking sound, seemed to be saying: There’s been a misunderstanding! A misunderstanding! You! Admitted to the grandstand! You with your sick ideas about management, about Stalin, about free trade .. The look in his eyes was a mixture of suspicion and spite. I would have sworn that if he could have, he would have called the appropriate authorities on the spot to report the event, or rather to stab me in the back, as was only right and proper. It’s true he’s my brother’s son, but the Party has to come first, yes?

“Are you two having an argument?” one of his friends asked jovially.

“Er… no, not at all. .”

At last my uncle gave the card back to me. His face looked utterly flabby and worn. Then, in spite of his lingering bewilderment, a devilish gleam came into his eyes. They narrowed and narrowed until his glance was as sharp as a knife. He flashed it at me with an intensity that seemed unbearable. Awareness of his own superiority unconsciously reshaped his face, which a few seconds before had looked so defeated. The question I feared the most was plain to see in all its cruelty: What did you do to earn this invitation? And on its tail the sarcastic implication: You played at being a little hero as long as you could, didn’t you, but in the end you realized that there is no other way.

It was my turn to have sweat on my brow.

You may enjoy denigrating us day and night, but we did at least earn these invitations honestly, like we earned everything else. We mean what we say, and this is our celebration. But you don’t think that way. So what are you doing here?

Unless what made you so bitter was not being able to rise to the very top? Then at the first opportunity you denied what you are, and sold yourself body and soul in order to clamber up the greasy pole. You must have been really good at it, my boy, because you’ve not only caught up, but overtaken the lot of us! Yes, you must have done something really special! Well, I guess that’s how these kinds of things happen. Now it’s our turn to give you a wide berth, my boy!

I was pretty sure that that was what was swirling around in his head, whereas I was overcome with an irresistible desire to shout out loud: No! I’ve done nothing of the sort you’re mulling over in your squalid little pigeon-brain, you stupid old fogey! On the contrary! An hour ago I was fully prepared to swap this invitation for an assignation. If only you know who she was. . But what could a retarded oaf like you understand about that?

I was still gripping the invitation card in my hand when he came out with: “Go on up, you’re going to be late. .”

His eyes, like his words, were as cold as ice. Alternative expressions such as “Be gone, evil scourge!” would have been no harsher.

“Shove off yourself, you old nitwit, and take your rusty old medals with you!” I muttered to myself as I moved off without even shaking his hand.

Shortly thereafter, I found myself among the small trickle of people wending their way up to the stands. We were assailed from all sides by furtive, sideways glances charged with such a particular blend of envy, admiration, and bitterness that it twisted mouths into smiles that could just as well be called anti-smiles.

I would have done better to tear up the invitation and never shown my face here. Ah, Suzy, what have you brought me to?

My sorrow at losing her pained me cruelly. Suzy. . That’s how I’d said her name in my head every time.

I’d feared she would drop me. It was more apt to sear you, just as it seemed a better reflection of the pride of a daughter of the elite. Ah Suzy, what have you brought me to, I repeated. You really chose just the right day for breaking up!

I knew that the pain of losing her would be long-lived, but on that day it was almost unbearable.

As I moved forward, with my presumably glum face contrasting with the festive mood all around me, I saw a silhouette I recognized, barely a few yards ahead of me. It was Th. D., the painter, apparently on his way, like me, to a seat in the grandstand. He was holding his younger daughter by the hand. (Well, well: where had the blue and red ribbons gone?)

Probably in thrall to the notion that I would be less noticeable in his shadow, I elbowed through the crowd to get as close as possible to him. Perhaps I might also take advantage of the legitimacy of his presence here. In his case, at least, the reasons why he had a place in the grandstand were known to all.

As I proceeded, I studied the expression on his face. Apart from my own, his was the only blank face in the whole junketing crowd. That’s the way he always looked on television broadcasts of the various public ceremonies where I’d seen him appear. It was likely he’d earned the right to scowl in public long ago. Indisputably a far more precious asset than all the fees he must earn.

I knew of no one else in the whole country who was simultaneously considered privileged and persecuted. It sometimes happened that these two adjectives were both applied to him in the same after-dinner conversation, and even by the same speaker. Everyone agreed nonetheless that the nature of his relations with the state were shrouded in mystery. There was talk of him being criticized, even of his being accused of the kind of grievous error that can break a man for good, but, except on one occasion at a Party Plenum, it had all taken place behind closed doors. Then, when his fall was fully expected — He’s going to get it in the neck and He’s untouchable were equally popular topics for after-hours gossip — his face suddenly reappeared on some platform or other, looking as morose as ever.

What had he paid for such immunity? For, like all of us, he too must have had his eagle, probably a more terrifying one than any other, to keep him going through the night.

People said lots of other things about him in cafe conversations and after-dinner talk. He was rumored to arouse a great deal of jealousy in the upper echelons, not to say at the topmost rung of the ladder, especially because he exhibited abroad. Among the other observations that he provoked, what people disagreed about most was the role he might or might not play in the life of the nation. Some asserted that he already did play a role by means of his work; others said not. We should expect more, much more of him, they insisted, all the more so because he could rest assured that nobody would dare try to bring him down. He was well aware he was untouchable. So why didn’t he take advantage of it?

“You’re the one who says they can’t get at him,” another would reply. “In the light of day, they’re powerless, I grant you that. But who can be sure that nothing could happen to him under cover or behind the scenes? An automobile accident, for instance, or a dinner that just happened to be off, and then, next morning, a splendid funeral, and finita la commedia! I’d go so far as to say that the irritation you can feel now and then on his account is there for him to hear the message: Aren’t you grateful to he still alive? What more do you want?”