at least. Do you mean the ones that fell when he tried to bash my head against the bookshelves? Not just those. You mean the others too? The books in general. You were there several times and of course you saw them. It’s true, I remember some of the names but I didn’t know most of the authors. I remember, for instance, Picasso, next to a Heidegger, if I’m not mistaken. The others were new to me.
Speak up. What’s the matter?
He thought back to his own questions. Oh God, those questions he’d asked her at their last meeting, like an interrogator.
Something is on your mind. We’ve talked about it so often. Tell me, what’s the matter? I can’t bear your tears. Nor those enigmatic phrases of yours: I don’t know who you are, my prince or someone else’s.
Now it was his turn to ask these questions, he thought. Who do you belong to? Are you my princess or . . . the Party’s?
Yet remorse still wormed its way inside him. Perhaps he was being unfair. Perhaps she was suffering too. Perhaps they had interrogated her at night and there was an explanation for all those sighs and tears: she was in two minds, to betray him or not.
A faint cough came like a distant roll of thunder from another age, no doubt a sign for him to break his long silence. They had allowed this silence as a sign of the respect for him that they had mentioned at the start, but he couldn’t continue it for ever.
It was possible that it was the other girl, the girl in exile, who had betrayed them. “You’re always going to Tirana, find a book of his, I need one . . .” Or maybe it was neither of them, but a third person.
As if waking up, he raised his head. There was a glint of malice in his interrogators’ eyes, like in those place-names. The evil eye. In that book of names that fell first after Fitzgerald.
What did it matter to him who was watching him? It wasn’t his problem, as people said nowadays. They might find a book signed by him in the bag of some criminal . . . It wasn’t the first time that they had harassed him. If they wanted a pretext to condemn his play, let them do what they wanted, just not torture him like this.
As had happened before, he spoke less than half of these words aloud. But they were enough for the second secretary to frown again. This time his frown looked different.
“That is not the problem,” the secretary said quietly. “It’s more complicated than it seems.” He fell silent, then added, “As I said at the beginning, the Party trusts you just as before. The problem is that the girl we are talking about killed herself.”
Rudian Stefa bit his lower lip, suddenly remembering how they had spoken of her in mixed tenses, sometimes the living present and sometimes the dead past.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “What a sad story.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” said the second secretary. “I think you know that we take a different view of suicide, especially now.”
In a tired, monotonous voice he explained that since the prime minister’s suicide—which, as Rudian well knew, had unraveled the greatest conspiracy in Albanian history—there was a tendency to look for a hidden meaning in every suicide, however apparently straightforward.
“You know,” he continued, “that suicides are intended to give signals and convey messages. Think of Jan Palach in Czechoslovakia, or Stefan Zweig . . . You will know better than I do. We are not ruling out this possibility—”
“Especially because the girl came from a former bourgeois family,” the investigator interrupted. “Close to the old royal court. Some of the family is in Albania and some abroad. So the investigation will take time.”
The playwright didn’t know what to say.
“It’s not just a question of the book,” the second secretary said. “The girl often mentioned your name in her diary.”
“I see,” the playwright replied uncertainly.
“That’s the reason we brought you in,” the secretary said. “If you think of anything, or remember something that might be useful to the investigation, phone me. Or drop in whenever you like. The Party’s door is open.”
“I understand,” the playwright said. “Of course.”
He was about to stretch out his hand but instead he looked from one man to the other, wondering to whom he should put his last question.
“May I know how long ago this happened?”
The investigator thought for a while.
“Four days ago,” he said. “Today is day five.”
3
Four days ago. Today is day five, he repeated to himself as he walked along the edge of the Park of Youth. He was unable to tell how many days had passed since his last meeting with Migena, on the evening of their quarrel.
Sometimes he counted four, making today day five, but sometimes the result was totally different.
He found himself on the main boulevard opposite the Dajti Hotel. Drinking coffee there among foreigners seemed even more unwise than ever. Don’t pretend life’s still the same, he told himself. It was Llukan Herri who had invented what their circle of close friends called the “Dajti test.” When you’re not sure you feel totally safe in your own skin, pass in front of the Dajti Hotel. If your feet hesitate even for an instant before entering, forget it. Admit that you’re no longer safe, to put it mildly.
The National Gallery, next door to the hotel, was closed. The Writers’ Club, on the other side of the street, offered a test of a different kind. By a strange coincidence, everybody who was marked for prison visited the bar more frequently before fate struck.
It was eleven o’clock and he was standing by the entrance to the theater. The old posters had been torn down and not replaced. Tirana had never looked so forlorn.
It seemed incredible to him that three months ago he had signed that book in the midst of the cheerful first-night
hubbub.
Migena had phoned him a week later. “Hello. I’m an art student. I’m sorry to bother you, but it was me who asked you for an autograph for her friend. Perhaps you remember?”
He had said that he remembered her very well, and the tone of the girl’s low voice at the end of the phone brightened. Her friend had been delighted with the book. He couldn’t imagine how happy it had made her. She herself too, of course.
They met two days later, and again her first words were about her friend, but when he said that next time the two girls might come together if they liked, her eyes momentarily froze. Of course her friend would be thrilled, really thrilled, but right now . . . she couldn’t. “I understand,” he had said, although he hadn’t understood anything at all. Was something stopping this girl coming to the capital?
He felt someone’s presence behind him and a stranger’s voice asked, “No performances this week?” “See for yourself,” he replied, without turning his head.
Despite his resistance, his feet then turned him back toward the Writers’ Club. Let happen what may, he thought.
At
