The Concert (19 page)

Later, when he'd begun to receive his first fees, Ekrem realized that his involvement with Chinese brought him a certain amount of political security as well as material advantages. It brought him closer to officialdom and to the régime in general. Not for nothing was Chinese called the language of friendship. As soon as people found out what he did, a feeling of mutual trust was generated which wiped out his bourgeois past But now, alas, all this was being reversed. He would be made to pay dearly for that partial rehabilitation. The excellence of his Chinese, of which he had been so proud and which had acted as an antidote to his past, would now tern into an exacerbation, if it hadn't done so already. Henceforward he would be doubly undesirable, as a survivor of two detested eras - that of the bourgeoisie and that of the Chinese. People would point at him in disgust as the worst of time-servers, the most servile and shameless of turncoats. God! he groaned. Suddenly everything looked black. Every door was closed to him. And to think he'd still had the heart to go begging for translations out of that accursed lingo! He'd do better to shut himself up at home and never go out again, in the hope of being left in peace and forgotten.

He shouldn't have let himself crawl from door to door like that. It would have been wiser to go to the opposite extreme: even if anyone offered him some translations left lying about by mistake, he ought to have said, “Sorry, I gave up that sort of thing a long time ago. I don't feel sure of myself now. The ideograms have impaired my sight, and although I've had two sets of new glasses I still can't see them properly any more.”

That's what he ought to say even if they came and implored him. Instead of going looking for trouble! “Take yourself off while there's still time,'' he exhorted himself, “and shut the door in their faces! The break with China is the signal for you to make a break of your owe.”

He felt like bursting into tears, A day like this was enough to make you weep, anyway. The bare rows of trees lining the streets made the grey frontages of the ministries look even more dreary than usual. Ekrem imagined the porters and duty officers inside, warming their hands over their stoves. He noticed he was passing the vast offices of the Makina Import company, and began to walk faster as if he were guilty of some crime. Take yourself off ! he told himself. Go away, you wretch, before it's too late!

As he slunk along with his chin sunk in the fur collar of his coat, his attention was caught by a familiar symbol on a poster. No, not a symbol - a line of ideograms. He slowed down to decipher it: “Exhibition of Porcelain”. What's this, he wondered, going nearer. Yes, it was Chinese all right, though underneath the text there was a translation into Albanian. The poster looked as if it had been there for some time, but the wind and the rain and the street cleaners had failed to tear it down.

But it didn't look as old as all that. An elegantly dressed couple had stopped in front of it. The man, whom Ekrem thought he'd seen somewhere before, was smiling and talking to the woman as he examined the words on the poster.

Ekrem looked at the pair. He felt as if the man's smile invited him to join in their conversation, as often happens when strangers meet by chance at some unusual sight or incident. He felt an almost irresistible desire to speak to them. To say, for instance: “Fancy leaving that poster up now! What a joke, eh!” And in spite of his natural shyness he might actually have spoken, but for the feeling that he'd seen that face before. On the way up to the Kryekurts's first-floor apartment? Or somewhere else? On television, perhaps?

He moved a step forward. Perhaps I should look at the date? he thought. Abandoning all precautions he peered closely at the poster. He thought he must be seeing things. Could it be possible? He took off his glasses and got another pair out of his pocket. Then he read the date, first in Chinese and then in Albanian, then in Chinese again. No doubt about it. The poster bore today's date. It also said where the exhibition was being held. The Palace of Culture, Impossible!

“Today?” he asked the man, his voice faltering with emotion.

“Yes,” replied the other, looking him straight in the eye. “Today.”

Ekrem thought he could discern a kind of amused mockery in the man's voice and expression - a mockery aimed not only at him. But this was of no interest to him now.

“Thank you,” he said. And then he made his way back across Government Square towards the Palace of Culture. A surge of pleasure made him almost stagger. He felt his chest suddenly expanding - his old lungs couldn't cope with it. So things weren't as bad as all that, he thought. One of the tunes that generally came back to him in moments of euphoria tried to make itself heard. But this time it wasn't
O Sole
mio
. No, it was
The East is Red
. He recited the words to himself in Chinese as he approached the Palace of Culture.

Skënder Bermema looked after the stranger for a few moments, thee turned back to the poster.

“Just look!” he said to Silva, whom he'd met by chance in the street a little while ago, “An exhibition like that at a time like this! How exciting! I love it when this sort of thing happens on the eve of great events. Come on, let's go and have a look.”

“All right,” said Silva. “I'm late already, but I can't resist!”

The Palace of Culture, where the exhibition was being held, was quite close by, and on the way Silva told Bermema some details about Gjergj's recent trip to China. He was highly amused.

“He's dying to see you,” Silva told Skënder. “He tried to phone you but you weren't there.”

“Really? Well, I'm eager to see him, too…I say, look at all the people!” They had almost reached the Palace of Culture, and Skënder was pointing to the crowd around one of the entrances.

The atmosphere was much as he had expected. The exhibition was probably attracting far more visitors now than it would have done six months ago. Most of their faces wore a strange smile, an unnatural mask-like expression of curiosity mingled with bewilderment. Among the rest there were several Chinese and some officials from foreign embassies.

“I've noticed that just before a breaking-off of relations they always put on an exhibition,” said Skënder, turning his own smiling mask towards Silva. “Or perhaps ‘mystification' would be a better word for it.”

Silva, finding it hard to concentrate, was gazing at a mass of terracotta objects, unenticingly displayed. Her companion's warm bass voice reached her through loud background music. Chinese music.

“Someone told me,” he was saying, “that in accordance with their habit of conveying political messages by means of symbols, the Chinese have placed a couple of pots in a particularly significant position here.”

“Really?” said Silva. “Where?”

Skënder laughed.

“Ah, there you have me! First we have to find them, and then, if we do, we have to try to guess what's meant by their placing.”

“Could it be those?” asked Silva after a while, pointing out a couple of vases of unequal size on which a weedy little man seemed to be feasting his eyes.

They both burst out laughing and let themselves be swept along by the crowd.

“There's a pair of yesterday's men,” said Skënder, indicating two visitors wearing off-white raincoats as wan as their smiles. “I shouldn't be surprised if at least one of them didn't still cherish the hope of our getting together with the Soviet Union again. I don't believe in argument by analogy, but they remind me of the time when we broke with Moscow. Do you remember? — everyone was asking when were we going to take up with the West again.”

“Yes, I remember."

“Just watch their faces when they look at some Chinese vases. They seem to be saying, ‘Did you really think these objects were ever going to take the place of
Anna Karenina
and Tolstoy?'“

Silva put her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.

“I don't know why they don't just say it outright. And look at the way they dress. Always in the same colours the Soviets wear on their rationalist Sundays - pale grey and off-white. I don't know if you remember the first New Year after the break — the idiotic way some of them behaved?”

“Yes, I remember,” said Silva again. For some reason or other she was thinking of Ana. Perhaps he was too, for he was silent for a while. Then:

“Look, there's one of our China fanciers - a genuine connoisseur!” he exclaimed, “I knew we'd find examples of every species here!”

“I didn't know there were such people.”

“Oh yes,” he said, his tone suddenly harsh. “They're rare, but they do exist…Do you know that one over there?”

“No,” she said. The person he meant was short and swarthy.

“That's C— V—, the critic.”

“Is it? I've read some of his articles, but this is the first time I've seen him in the flesh. Does he really like the Chinese?”

Skënder's grey eyes went cold.

“After the break with the Soviets he was all poised to step into the breach and fill Albania with Chinese theories on literature and art. And he was the first to suggest our adopting the Chinese habit of not putting authors' names on the books they write.”

The crowd seemed to have grown since Silva and Skënder arrived. It was quite difficult now to move about the long room, which every so often was lit up by a camera flash.

“Two years ago in this very hall,” Skënder said, “they exhibited the famous sculpture,
Outside the Tax Office
— a real piece of rubbish, as you may imagine. There were plenty of sarcastic remarks about it, but in those days the people who swallowed Chinese art hook, line and sinker were still in the ascendant."

Silva's smile told her companion she thought he was overdoing it a bit.

“And look at them now,” he went on, “prowling around those vases, or whatever they are, making disparaging remarks. The whole thing is a cold-blooded war in which neither side really gives a damn about anything. But of course, in present circumstances, the enthusiasts are in the minority…”

“Look over there,” said Silva, interrupting him.

A group of people were gathered around a showcase. A press photographer, who from his equipment looked like a foreigner, kept crouching down to take pictures.

“I should think that's where the fox is lurking, shouldn't you?” said Skënder.

But when they got near enough to see, the vases the group was looking at turned out to be quite ordinary.

“Sorry I interrupted,” said Silva. “You were saying the China enthusiasts are on the wane…”

“Ye-e-es…But that sort of riffraff don't give up easily. To start with, they still hope the rift with China can be mended. But the main thing is, they think that even if the Chinese do go they'll leave a useful amount of their jiggery-pokery behind.”

“How can they possibly hope such a thing?” said Silva indignantly.

“Because they're swine!” he answered. “Still, you ought to know there's a difference between the two camps. The first lot's love of Russia was to a certain extent understandable — it was connected to a part of their life that they'd spent there. To Russian literature, the Russian winter, and so on. And especially Russian girls — as you may have heard, Russian girls are very charming. But the other lot's love of, or rather craze for China is completely base. It hasn't got anything to do with China really, with Chinese art or the Chinese view of the world…It's inspired by ignoble considerations that have only to do with themselves …”

Silva shrugged — a gesture he liked, because it reminded him of Ana - to indicate that she couldn't quite follow.

“Let me put it another way,” he said. “While those who felt a kind of nostalgia for things Russian stayed loyal out of conviction, or misapprehension, or sentimental attachment, those — a smaller group — who went crazy about China did so not out of love for the place but because things Chinese provided them with something that disguised their own deficiencies — inefficiency, lack of talent, envy, inferiority complex and spiritual poverty. It provided them with an outlet for their fundamental wickedness, and ! don't know what else!”

“Phew! You don't mince your words!”

“Perhaps, but such are their motives, and that's why it'll be difficult to turf them out, even after the Chinese have gone… Just look at C— V—!” he said, turning towards him. “The perfect embodiment of…”

Silva turned round, but the shoulders of other visitors hid the critic from view.

Skënder leaned closer.

“I expect you think I'm fanatically anti-Chinese, Be frank — you do, don't you?”

“Well…”

He stifled a laugh.

“Well, you're quite wrong!”

She rolled her eyes mockingly.

“I'm serious,” he exclaimed, looking at her evenly as if waiting for her to stop smiling. “In fact
I'd
regard myself as an ignorant boor if I did entertain such views!”

Two or three people nearby turned to look at them.

They think we're quarrelling, thought Silva, and tried to draw him away. Someone must have accused him of being anti-Chinese before, she thought. There was no other explanation for this sudden outburst.

“I have a great respect for their culture, as anybody must have if they're in their right mind,” he said. “We've talked about their culture before, haven't we?”

“Of course.”

“And who created that culture, that poetry, and so on, but the people you thought I was denigrating?”

Silva felt like saying she'd never thought any such thing, but knowing what he was like she restrained herself.

“If I get worked up and talk like this, it's because it's the Chinese people who suffer most when things go wrong.”

“I do understand, ‘Skënder,” said Silva soothingly.