The Concert (38 page)

“Alas!” sighed Musabelli again.

“And do you remember what happened next?” The hand holding Hava Preza's cup shook so much that a couple of drops of coffee splashed unnoticed on her dress. “Instead of having a meadow with a hundred flowers in front of us, we were confronted by the Gobi Desert, as poor Nurihan used to say.”

“She wasn't often wrong,” murmured Musabelli.

But for some time, without venturing actually to interrupt, Ekrem Fortuzi had been shaking his head to show he didn't agree with what Hava Preza was saying.

“Allow me to contradict you,” he said finally, as Hava Preza stopped to take a sip of coffee. “It's quite natural that you should be sceptical: we've often been deceived, sometimes quite cruelly, as in the case of the break with the Soviets, on which we'd built such hopes. But this time, believe me, things are different,”

“Ekrem's right,” said one of the other visitors. “It's not the same this time. Who would ever have thought the Chinese would invite the American president to go and see them? And yet that's what's happened.”

“True enough,” agreed the others.

“Maybe,” Hava Preza conceded. “I only hope you're right! Don't you think I want the same thing as you do? I've wished a thousand times that it should be so!”

“Believe me!” said Ekrem Fortuzi again. He was now quite carried away. “There's no one in the whole of Albania, perhaps in the whole of Europe, who has studied the philosophy of Mao Zedong as thoroughly as I have, I have unravelled all his secrets, understood all his hints, worked out all the symbolical implications of his slogans in a way that is only possible if you study the original texts. While all of you were making fun of me for learning Chinese, that was what I was doing: trying to find the key to the enigma,”

“As far as learning Chinese is concerned, you were right,” said Hava Preza. “On that subject you were certainly wiser than the rest of us.”

“Thanks very much!” said Ekrem. “But where was I?”

“The philosophy of Mao Zedong.”

“The enigma.”

“Oh yes! Well, after going deeper and deeper into Mao's doctrine I was convinced of one thing: it would be hard to find anyone this century who's done as much for us, the dispossessed bourgeois, as he has. I suppose that sounds paradoxical to you?”

“We're past finding anything paradoxical as far as the Chinese are concerned,” said Musabelli.

“Mao is our only hope,” Ekrem went on. “He's the one who'll save us from the cursed class struggle that hounds us like the Furies!”

“The class struggle!” said Hava Preza with a shudder. “To think of spending all our lives in the shadow of those three awful words!”

“And you see them everywhere!” cried Musabelli. “On walls, in shop windows, even in love songs sometimes! Sorry, Ekrem — if you ask me, if there's one thing well never get free of it's those words!”

“With the help of the Chinese I think we shall,” Ekrem answered.

“I doubt it.”

“It doesn't seem very likely to me either,” said Hava Preza,

“You mark my words,” Ekrem insisted. “Especially in the last few years, when they've undergone constant modification, Mao's thoughts have accorded less and less importance to the class struggle — in the end it's become as insubstantial as an opium smoker's dream. Believe me — Mao's philosophy now secretes a kind of drug that brings oblivion, where everything is reconciled with everything else as on the plains of Purgatory…”

“Religion deals in reconciliation too,” said Hava Preza. “It's been talking about it for two thousand years. Not to mention hundreds of philosophers and poets. So there's nothing new about your Mao.”

“There's nothing new about reconciliation itself, I know,” Ekrem admitted, “but you can't deny that to hear a communist leader talking about it
is
a bit of a novelty! When religion and philosophy preach general harmony it doesn't help us a bit — on the contrary, the more they talk about it the worse things go for us! But when Mao Zedong talks about it, that changes everything!”

“Yes indeed!” chorused the elderly couple.

“Mao, pastor to a billion human beings, the great helmsman, the red sue of the peoples of the earth, the fourth or fifth great classic of communist doctrine, ha ha!”

“Ekrem is right!” Musabelli conceded.

“Absolutely,” said the others.

“And take this challenge to the Party that we've talked about before…Don't forget the Party's the main thing, the foundation of everything else. And when the foundations start to crumble you can expect the rest to follow.”

“Talking of which, I heard something about some manoeuvres here where some tanks, I think it was, encircled a Party committee…”

“What? What?”

“For heaven's sake don't pay any attention to that kind of thing! Tanks, Party committees…forget it!”

“Hava's right! Let's get back to the Chinese!”

“Mao!”

“Are we really going to owe our salvation to him? Did we have that treasure all this time without realizing its value?”

“People never appreciate things till they're oe the point of losing them.”

“No question of losing him!”

“Out of the question!”

“Relations are getting better.”

“Things always get sorted out in the end.”

“I thought I'd have a fit when I first heard the rumours about a cooling-off ! Was the Lord going to abandon us again? Just as fate was smiling on us for once, God seemed to be turning his back on us.”

“Ekrem has shown he's got more intuition and perspicacity than any of us.”

“That didn't stop you making fun of me!”

“Forget all that now, and recite something to us in that wonderful new lingo of yours.”

“By the way, where's Mark got to? He hasn't even put his head round the door!”

“Leave him alone — he's all right where he is! Come on, Ekrem — they tell me you're jolly good at Chinese!”

“Well…”

“Now then, Ekrem, don't be coy!”

They could tell that with a bit more persuasion he would perform.

All this could be dimly heard in the next room, by Mark and his fiancée.

“Il fait froid,”
she read from the textbook open in front of her. Then they both looked up and gazed into one another's eyes. Hers looked rather tearful and troubled.
Il fait froid”
she said again faintly, looking at him as if she expected something from him,

As a matter of fact, soon after they first met and just before they first had physical relations, he had told her about his one previous affair, with a married neighbour whom he'd taught French some years ago. This adventure was closely linked with the words his fiancée had just spoken: when his
cliente
(the only word he could think of now to describe the young woman) had reached the phrase
Il fait froidj
they had abandoned the textbook and made love. The brief episode remained his most vivid memory.

To his astonishment he saw that any reference to this incident upset his fiancée, to whom also he'd started giving French lessons. Every so often she would ask him to tell her about it again: she wanted to know as much as possible about his former neighbour and about his life in general in those days. What is she doing now? she would murmur, imagining one of those lovely, enigmatic creatures who, having had some ups and downs in their love life, are not supposed to be excessively attached to their husbands. Mark told the little he knew, and promised to show the other girl to her when she came back to visit the house (she had grown up in an apartment on the first ioor). And what about him - the husband? What did he do afterwards? Was that why they separated? Mark shrugged. He didn't know. He wouldn't have thought so. If it hadn't happened for that reason it might well have happened for another. They were both distant and elusive people, seeming to live in another world. As a matter of fact, perhaps it was all really like that then…

“What do you mean — ‘it was all really like that'?” asked Mark's fiancée.

He tried to give her some idea of that unforgettable period when everyone lived in a state of wild hope and expectation…The atmosphere was incomparably more intense then than now, though of course things were the other way round. In those days they (he nodded towards the other room) longed for sudden change, whereas now they wanted things to stay as they were…

“The two periods seem to have quite a lot of things in common, though,' mused Mark's fiancée.

He almost told her that the similarity between the two situations might have been the cause of their own engagement, but decided to put it off till later, when they knew one another better. But he himself was convinced that this more than anything else was what had made him want to get married.

“Il fait froid,”
she repeated softly, still with the same imploring expression. “Tell me some more about those days.”

“What else is there to tell? As I said, it was like being in a fog…”

“Don't you remember some particular incident?” she asked, undressing so slowly she looked as if she might freeze like a statue.

“Il fait froid
- don't you think it's rather cold?”

“I suppose you think the world's turned upside down?”

“What do you mean?” She had been almost panting. Now she held her breath.

He'd thought he'd only said the words to himself.

“That's what she said,” Mark answered,

“Why haven't you told me before? What does it mean?”

He tried to explain, but the harder he tried the harder it got.

“What she said applied to the situation in general: she thought I wanted to see her people stripped of power after the break with the Soviet Union; but she thought it wouldn't happen like that; she thought that by having an affair with me she'd…”

“… she thought she'd lowered herself?”

“Something like that, I believe…She was very proud by nature, the daughter of a veteran communist who was also a vice-minister…To her, it was sinking pretty low…”

“Tell me what else she said.”

She brought her moist, imploring eyes closer. Perhaps he shouldn't have told her about all that, he thought. But the next moment it seemed to him his earlier affair probably made him more interesting to her.

After a while, when their breathing had slowed down somewhat, they could hear the old clock ticking, then the hum of the visitors' conversation in the next room.

“Muttering away just the same as before!” he said.

“Just the same as before,” she murmured to herself.

He imagined the older people sitting in the same old row on the sofa, like waxworks in a museum.

“All life long the same eternal whisperings!” he exclaimed. “Don't they ever get tired of it?”

“Ssh! I'd like to hear what they're saying. I've never heard what the old guard say to each other before, when they're alone.”

“Haven't you?” he smiled. “Well, you'll have plenty of opportunity now! It'll be coming out of your ears!”

“Be quiet!”

She strained to listen, then pulled a face because she couldn't hear properly.

“Put your ear to the wall,” Mark suggested.

She got up from the couch and followed his advice. After a few moments she beckoned him to join her.

“Listen!” she breathed, looking surprised and a little bit scared.

He put his ear to the wall. A couple of seconds later:

“Good grief!” he whispered. “They're speaking Chinese!…This time they really are losing their marbles!”

Silva had made the necessary preparations for the next day's lunch and was curled up wearily on the living-room sofa when the doorbell rang. She got up with some annoyance, thinking it must be some unwelcome visitor. But when she saw it was her sister-in-law her face lit up,

“Sonia! I'm so glad to see you! Come in!”

As Sonia was taking off her coat, Silva noticed she'd had her hair done very becomingly. She was just going to tease her about making herself beautiful now her husband was back. But, hair-do apart, Sonia looked rather down.

“What's the matter, Sonia? You look upset.”

Sonia chewed her lip, but didn't contradict.

“Well, I must say!” exclaimed Silva. “Aren't you two ever satisfied? Instead of being happy that things turned out all right, you still go around with faces like fiddles!”

“Don't you think I've told Arian so?” Sonia retorted, “Bet I might as well talk to a brick wall!”

“Why? What's wrong?”

“I don't know. But he spends all day moping. I hardly know him.”

“Perhaps he's worrying about being expelled from the Party? But I expect they'll reinstate him, don't you?”

“That's what people say.”

“But that doesn't cheer him up?”

Sonia shook her head.

“There's something more serious bothering him.”

A surge of pity made Silva forget her momentary annoyance.

“I suppose it's understandable. You do your job properly and all of a sudden there's a bolt from the blue and you find yourself chucked out of the Party and into prison. It's horribly unfair -disgusting. But there's no point in letting it get you down…”

Sonia sighed.

“That's what I keep saying, but it doesn't stop him being depressed…And that isn't all. There's something else…and it frightens me…”

“What do you mean?” cried Silva, going cold.

“I'm half dead with fear,” said Sonia. “One day, when he let himself go for once, he said something terrible …. I can't get it out of my mind.”

“What did he say?”

“We were just sitting talking, and for the umpteenth time I'd said more or less what you just said, and he interrupted me. ‘Do you think I'm like this because of what happened to me? Well, it's something quite different that's bothering me! What I can't accept is that both sides, ours and theirs, come out of the business unscathed…'“