The Concert (68 page)

Both the doors on the second-floor landing were open, and without knowing which was the Bermema's apartment, Linda went in through one of them. Fortunately the hall was crowded. She tried to make out which room had, ie accordance with custom, been set aside for the men to deliver their condolences, and which for the women. Then she realized there was eo such arrangement here.

She looked for some quiet corner from which she could look on without attracting notice. Her courage was ebbing away. In the end she decided she might as well stay in the hall; there were so many comings and goings, and one seemed to be standing on ceremony. As Silva had suggested, in the case of a calamity like this, the usual forms were abandoned.

So far Linda hadn't seen anyone she knew. At one point she thought she glimpsed Suva's husband, but she couldn't be sure. And where was the coffin? she wondered.

About a quarter of an hour went by, and she might have stayed there indefinitely, but suddenly she saw Silva come into the hall

“Oh, there you are!” Silva whispered.

“Have you jest arrived?” asked Linda.

“No, we've been here some time. Have you presented your condolences to the family?”

Silva looked rather distraught, too.

“No,” said Linda.

“Neither have I. Come on, let's go together — it's not easy for me, either…”

Lînda gave her a grateful look, and clung to her arm as they made for the door, She longed to ask where Besnik was, but only said, “I'm so glad I found you!”

The room Silva led her into was spacious and heavily furnished,with chairs placed round all the walls. They chose a couple of seats in the row on one side, and sat down, Linda still clutching Suva's arm. The silence was broken only by murmurs too faint to be heard all the way across the room.

“Is that him?” Linda whispered, nodding towards a large photograph on the opposite wall.

Silva nodded.

Linda gazed absently at a big bronze clock with a statue of Skanderbeg on top. Inscribed on its base were the words: “Albania's hour has come.” She remembered learning it at school — the six-hendred-year-old maxim that could be applied as easily to national victory as to national disaster.

A new wave of visitors arrived, and a few of those already there, Silva and Linda included, stood up to make room for them and thee went back into the hall. Some continued across into the other apartment, bet:

“Let's stay here,'' said Silva.

Linda wanted to ask about Besnik, but didn't like to. It was as if Silva had forgotten their conversation that morning.

People kept passing in and out of the hall. One man with a very sad expression came up and greeted Silva. Linda thought she recognized him.

“A friend of mine,” said Silva, nodding towards her. “This is Skënder Bermema — Ï think you know him.”

“Oh, it's you!” said Linda, holding out her hand.

His response was friendly, but his sad expression didn't change. For a moment he looked at Silva without saying anything, as if he had been angry with her, bet now was angry no longer.

“I was so shocked,” said Silva. “I met him only a few days ago, at the complex, just as he was working to prepare the explosion. Just before …”

You could see him gritting his teeth.

“Who'd have credited it?” he murmured. “We thought that scourge would go away of its own accord. Who could have imagined it would take Max with it?”

“A scourge indeed.” echoed Silva.

“We split our sides laughing at their deceit, but it turned out to be more deadly than we thought.”

Their laughter…Silva thought of Victor Hila. She couldn't imagine him blind. Laughter starts in the eyes…And that was where it had ended.

“Oh, here's Ben,” said Silva, moving towards a tall young man whose face was partially covered with dressings held in place with sticking plaster.

He must be Besnik's brother thought Linda. She'd have liked to go over, joie in the conversation, perhaps even kiss him, but she was too shy. She was here, wasn't she? She mustn't ask for more. There were traces of tears on the young man's bandages, and again she felt like kissing him tenderly. My brother-in-law…God, was it possible?

“That was Besnik's brother,” Silva said, coining back to her.

“Yes, so I guessed.”

She suddenly felt she had to see Besnik himself. This was no mere wish arising from a fleeting passion, but something stronger, derived from the real affection that can only come into being gradually, maturing slowly like wine,

A stir of activity suggested that the journey to the cemetery was imminent.

“That's the dead boy's mother,” said Silva, showing Linda a woman in deep mourning who'd just come into the hall “Her husband was a minister just after the Liberation,”

Linda was clinging to Silva once more, drinking in all she said.

“The man over there in the dark grey suit is the present husband of Besnik's first fiancée.”

Linda looked at him until he seemed to notice he was being scrutinized. “Where's she?” she asked,

“I can't see her, but she must be here somewhere.” Silva looked round. “Yes, I should think she
is
here.”

The crowd in the hall and on the landing was getting denser. Besnik's brother went by again, with his tear-stained, black-streaked bandages. Then Linda felt Suva's hand on her arm,

“Look, there she is!” she whispered, “Zana…”

Linda trembled.

“Where?”

She was over by the door, in a black dress, with another woman who couldn't stop weeping.

“The one who's crying is the dead boy's sister. Her name's Diana…”

Silva went on talking, but Linda was scarcely listening now. She couldn't take her eyes off the first woman, Zana. That was more or less how she'd imagined her, except… The weight and coldness of the big silver comb in her hair seemed to be echoed in her eyes - but the coldness there, it seemed to Linda, was the kind men like. She felt a pang. Yes, she'd imagined her rather like that, except for the comb…Besnik had told her very briefly about their break-up. Perhaps it was really just a misunderstanding, he'd said after a moment's reflection. She had been sorry to hear it. People who split up over a mere misunderstanding can come to love one another again. She would have been consumed with anxiety if it hadn't been for Ana. It was Ana who must have interposed between her, Linda, and Besnik's first fiancée, confronting Zana's power and neutralizing it. Linda, seeing Zana for the first time, with her seductiveness concentrated in that silver comb, marvelled at the thought of Ana and
her
saving power. Who was she, this dead woman who left behind her nothing but peace and light? How had she performed that miracle?

The crowd on the landing was parting. They were bringing out the coffin. Linda caught a glimpse of it, an oblong draped in red, being carried head-high. Then, further off, she saw Besnik, and Linda's husband. Ail the pall-bearers were gathered together now: Skënder Bermema, sad as ever; Besnik's brother, with his tear-stained cheeks; together with many more, A long, lugubrious procession. To Silva it suddenly looked like a whole generation moving along mournfully to the strains of a hymn.

It was quite dark when Max's funeral was over, and some people who were there, and who had departed friends and relations of their own buried nearby, took the opportunity to visit their graves.

Silva and Linda were standing by Ana's tombstone when they saw Besnik approaching, followed at some distance by Skënder Bermema. The two women moved away a little. After a while, Beseik, who hadn't noticed them, left Ana's grave and walked over to the middle of the cemetery, where his father and aunt were buried. As they waited for him to be out of range - it was Linda who had asked Silva not to let him see them — Linda noticed the name of another Ana, on another tombstone, sumptuous and made of marble: “Ana Vuksaei, aged 21, taken from her loving family and friends by an incurable illness…”

Then the two women moved back to the first Ana, their Ana. Skënder Bermema had stopped in an alley nearby to smoke a cigarette. Silva spent a little while arranging the flowers on the grave; she and Linda both stood for a moment in prayer; then she whispered, “Let's go now.” Skënder was waiting for them at the end of the alley — unless he was there by chance - and all three walked back together to the bus stop.

Before reaching the city, the bus passed by a kind of dump oe some marshy ground, and a lot of the passengers craned forward to see what was going on there. Bright streaks of light were shooting hither and thither in the gathering darkness, pursued by a little group not of urchins but of grown men.

“What is it?” Linda asked. But neither Silva nor Skëeder Bermema replied.

Other passengers were curious too. The driver stopped the bus and stuck his head out of his window to ask what was up.

A passing pedestrian answered perkily, and the driver, winding up his window again, passed on what he'd said.

“They're destroying the Chinks' bangers!”

This produced some jokes and laughter, but all were drowned in the roar of the bus starting up again,

On the waste land the work of destruction went on. The men had hoped to finish before midday, but just as they were getting ready to leave they were told more stocks of fireworks had been found in a warehouse. They had to wait more than two hours for this batch of crates to arrive.

They were the same as those the workmen had dealt with in the morning, except that two of the cases had got very damp, and the rockets were difficult to ignite. But when they finally did go off, the men started emptying all the crates one after the other with the same mixture of resentment and jubilation as earlier in the day. As darkness fell, the waste lot was lit up with shafts of brilliance darting everywhere.

But where the rockets had once shot high into the sky, accompanied by the shouts of the populace, to celebrate grand and joyful occasions, they now fell back like wounded snakes, and after a few convulsive leaps, fizzled out miserably on the ground.

The destruction went on late into the night. An acrid smell of burned rubbish and sieged cardboard hung over the whole neighbourhood. Sometimes a rocket, after squirming around for a while, would make a furious effort to lift off into the air, but then one of the workmen, carried away with excitement like all his comrades, would run after it, catch it, and grind it out underfoot, shouting “Snake, horrible snake!”

Some electricians working a few kilometres away, in open country, noticed, as it got dark, some many-coloured gleams and Hashes in the distance. They were perched high up in the air, dismantling the superstructure of the radio station that until recently had transmitted news to Europe from the Hsin-hua news agency.

“What are those flashes?” asked one. “Perhaps we ought to climb down…”

“No, it's not lightning,” said another, some way underneath him. “The sky's dark enough, but there hasn't been any thunder.”

After turning to look again several times, they eventually got absorbed in their work once more and paid no attention to the distant lights. Expert as they were, they weren't too sure exactly what they were supposed to be doing. They'd thought when the job was first mooted that they were to take down the entire system, and had bragged to their friends that they were going to destroy the whole mass of wires and metal which had filled the world with Chinese, That's right, root up the lot! their friends had urged. Bet when they reached the site they were told they were only to disconnect certain parts of the system. To ensure that they weren't making any mistakes, they checked every so often against the diagrams they'd been supplied with, peering at them by the light of a lamp fixed to a girder.

“This must be it!” said the oldest engineer jest arrived from the northern provinces. He was a native of Doomed Heights,. and although he hadn't actually lived there for a long time, he still had the typical local mentality. In his view, the part they had to remove was a particular piece of steel that understood Chinese. He wouldn't have been at all surprised if, by undoing the relevant nuts and bolts, he'd released a lot of hyperactive ideograms,

“Careful!” called the fitter who was working at the other end. “There's only a couple of bolts left at this end. What about you?”

“Same here! Hi, you down below - watch out!”

Ten minutes later the great mass of wires and metal collapsed with a deafening crash. The engineers climbed down and shone their torches to see where the wreckage had fallen. Only thee did they realize how wet and muddy the ground was thereabouts. The fallen equipment had almost disappeared into it.

But it was late now. They collected up their tools and got ready to leave. No one said anything - a sure sign they each had something on their mind, Although they'd spent their whole lives erecting and dismantling this kind of equipment, they couldn't stop thinking about what they'd just seen by the-light of their torches. Perhaps that bit of steel which could speak Chinese would lurk there in the mud, together with its drowned ideograms, thee crop up every spring, until the new grass strangled it to death. Just as in people's minds the memory would fade of their friendship with China.

By the time she got home, Silva was exhausted. Gjergj wasn't back yet. Veriana had dropped in, and she and Brikena were chattering away in Brikena's bedroom. As she kissed her niece, Silva remembered Linda. Who could say? — perhaps she and Besnik really were in love?

Ten minutes later Gjergj came in. He was tired too.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Silva asked him.

“I certainly would!” he replied.

They sat down in the living room, and although it was getting dark, neither switched on the light.

Out in the hall the two girls could be heard busy with something, and suddenly Brikena appeared in the doorway.