time you don’t feel safe. According to Llukan, each state agency would think that another one knew why the dramatist R.S. had drunk coffee in the Dajti for several days in a row without batting an eyelid. For instance, the director of the theater, instead of concentrating on the recent instructions delivered by Fidel Castro in a six-hour speech to the actors of Havana, would rack his brains for an explanation for Rudian Stefa’s boldness, and might suspect that the criticisms of Stefa’s most recent play that the director intended to put before the Artistic Board were too harsh.
Rudian stifled a sigh of such force that it seemed to kick against his ribs, unleashing an unpleasant wave of dizziness.
Why should I care about all this? he thought. Let them think what they want, I have no business with them. Nor did he need the mean-spirited pleasure that he had enjoyed five minutes ago, speculating about the qualms of the theater director as he listened to the pearls from Castro’s speech. Let them do what they want, so long as they don’t touch my play . . .
and . . . also . . . don’t keep Migena from me.
The realization that they could keep Migena from him flashed through his mind. But it was followed immediately by the thought that nobody was keeping her away. She had left him of her own accord.
A great weariness, like some mist from far away, seemed to have settled between them. It was a long time since he had fallen in love, although he wondered if this were not love but something else that had donned love’s familiar mask to deceive him.
She was avoiding him and soon she would become almost a stranger to him, the perfect stranger who would never be forgotten. He strove to recall her palpable form but already this was not easy. He could not even remember her body below the waist. Had she ever let him see it? At first he had interpreted this as her provincial shyness, but later he suspected something else.
He fumbled nervously in his jacket’s right-hand pocket for the letter that she had placed on the pillow before she left their last meeting but one. “There’s a letter for you on the bed,” she had whispered in his ear, before fleeing downstairs as if scared he might follow her. Who are you? Are you really my prince? These words had been scrawled in red ballpoint in the semidarkness after their lovemaking. The question Who are you? was repeated at the end, with another question: And me, who am I?
He longed not only to fold her in his arms, in the usual way of men throughout the world, whether in socialist republics, confederations, kingdoms, or prince-bishoprics. He wanted to howl again and again as he had done by his bookshelves, among the streams, crags, and chasms with those treacherous names.
“Revolutionary Cuban theater, under the teaching of Fidel Castro, is advancing toward new developments . . .” What was that? He turned his head toward the now empty table where the Cuban cultural delegation had been sitting, astonished to hear their conversation again. Before he suspected himself of losing his wits, he saw the bartender fiddle with the radio and turn down the volume.
He motioned to the passing waiter and asked if this was still the radio program about Cuban theater. The waiter nodded. It was the same one. Day four.
His mind returned to the girl.
If she could ask him who he was, how had it not occurred to him to find out more about her? He had started on enigmas and anagrams but it struck him that he didn’t even know her surname. He had learned nothing from her but a little about her first sexual experience.
“It was our gym teacher, as so often in schools. Two or three of us girls had been together since the third grade. We thought we couldn’t say no, because he was the only man who had seen us in our underwear . . . Only one of us, your Linda.” “Who?” “I told you once, that’s what her friends called her . . . So my girlfriend stood up to him. Not that she was a prude, not at all, but because she was different, in every way . . .”
Idiot, he snorted to himself. What an idiot to listen to this sort of thing without caring. He reproached himself again but with less conviction, realising that without the summons to the Party Committee and all that followed he would have known nothing about this girl.
He ordered another coffee and thought that the waiter was looking at him with increased respect. New customers had entered the bar. He tried to forget everything, at least for the duration of his second coffee. But this made matters worse. As he tried to forget the Artistic Board of the theater, his mind still turned back to the girl.
If I could just see her once more . . .
What a cheap, superficial, semiarticulate idea without depth or mystery, not worthy of respect. He knew this and yet he repeated it: If I could just see her once more. Only once. He wasn’t sure if he would wail at her—Who are you?—or lovingly embrace her as he had in a time that now seemed so distant.
Abruptly he stood up and went to the counter.
“May I use the phone?”
“Of course,” the bartender replied with unconcealed surprise.
Rudian Stefa was surprised at himself. All Tirana knew that the phones in the Dajti were tapped, but this didn’t deter him. He dialed the investigator’s number carefully, pausing to ask himself what he was doing only when he had nearly finished. But this question, far from restraining him, had the opposite effect. “Hello, this is Rudian Stefa.”
The voice down the wire sounded friendly. Distracted, Rudian imagined rather than listened to the investigator’s polite words, and tried to make it clear that he was not phoning to report anything. Perhaps this might be a disappointment, but he was phoning for no reason at all, just to extend an invitation for coffee.
The investigator understood even before Rudian had said half of this and was quicker off the mark with his own invitation. Would he have time for a coffee?
“I’d be delighted,” Rudian replied. In some confusion he heard the man mention a place he didn’t call the cake shop, but “Café Flora,” as it had once been known before the ideological campaign against cafés.
Rudian was struck less by the investigator’s friendly manner than by his total lack of professional inquisitiveness. He hadn’t expressed the slightest disappointment at Rudian’s “for no reason.” In fact he had almost welcomed it with relief.
What am I letting myself in for? he asked himself as he passed the marble colonnade of the Palace of Culture, his mind dogged by the thought that he was going like a lamb to the slaughter. Passing the National Museum, he had even wondered aloud, “What are you doing?” Was he attracted to a game that he liked to think was dangerous, but wasn’t really? He knew that none of this was for no reason, as he had tried to deceive himself a short time ago at the crossroads of Dibra Street, from where Skanderbeg’s bronze horse loomed so grim in the distance. His mind was hazy, but he was aware what lay behind this mist: Migena. From afar, the red sign of Café Flora glinted perilously. Nobody in the world would find out what he might do to this girl. Protect her, or the contrary: hand her in. Even if he wanted to do one of these things, neither was possible. No doubt they knew everything about her. He was totally uninvolved in the case. That was why he was in no hurry and the investigator was so courteously indifferent.
The windows of the café drew closer, and soon he would see his own wavering reflection in them. Perhaps everything was simpler than it seemed. He dimly remembered a story by Chekhov or Gogol in which a man stroked the neck of a horse and talked to it because he could not find a single human being with whom he could share his sorrow.
It is like that, he thought as he pushed open the glass door. In this desert, he had found
