Читать книгу The Successor - Ismail Kadare - Страница 10

Like all bad news, the report of the broken engagement got around much faster than its formal announcement. Convinced that the crisis was a thing of the past, most people liked to think that the incident, far from weakening the nation’s moral fibre, had in fact strengthened it. The country and its Guide had shown just how steadfast they were in a storm of whatever magnitude. Just as they had done during the squabble with the Yugoslavs. As they did later on, with the Russians. And, of course, with the Chinese.

As tension declined, so interest in the sentimental details of the end of the affair grew. Though whispered, stories were passed on by word of mouth almost everywhere. No more phone calls between the two youngsters. The young man and his father, Besim Dakli, standing at the Successor’s front door, wrapped in heavy winter coats, waiting to find out what would happen. The girl in despair, who had shut herself in her room and stopped eating. The poor boy drowning his sorrow by strumming his guitar, for which he’d written a new song that began:

And so that is how

They tore us apart …

In Albania, the majority of public holidays occur in the autumn, which meant that the Successor had no chance of keeping himself out of the way of television cameras. Awkward as that was for him, there was no way he could avoid thousands of eyes studying his face on screen, searching for a clue to the real truth. Some thought he looked more grumpy than usual; others thought on the contrary that he looked calmer. Both interpretations were obviously worrying, but the latter seemed the more ominous, since it implied that the Successor was feigning indifference.

What had begun as mere curiosity took on a tragic hue at the National Day parade, where the Guide and the Successor stood side by side on the platform. In contrast to previous occasions, when the two had been seen smiling and chatting with each other, this year the Guide stood stock-still. Not only did he not utter a word to the Successor, but, as if to make his scorn doubly clear, he turned twice to say something to the person standing on his other side — the minister of the interior.

From one end of the country to the other, people were dumbfounded by what they saw happening before their eyes. The benighted engagement had long been broken off, but no reward, not even a sign of clemency, had yet been granted the Successor for the action he had taken. On the contrary, everything seemed to suggest that the Guide was only growing angrier.

It was the first time people had seen what almost amounted to a public display of things that in the old days could have had you convicted of malicious gossip seeking to undermine Party unity. The militant Party members were racked with worry. They would rise at dawn after sleepless nights, with bloodshot eyes, aching muscles, and coated tongues, turn to their greying wives and share with them what could not be broached in any bar: Could a forty-year-old comradeship be scrapped just like that?

The optimists among them looked forward to the next parade, hoping that, if things would not be completely resolved by then, at least some slight improvement might be visible. And when the next parade day came, and not only had nothing mended, but the chill was even icier, they felt a great weight on their chest and, sighing with anxiety, barely managed to articulate the words “Woe betide us!”

Towards the end of November, a tentative rumour had it that the whole business would come to an end at the winter break. Oddly enough, it gained greater acceptance than other stories, perhaps because it invoked the calendar and the natural cycle of the seasons. The red banners and bunting on the stands, the speeches and brass bands broadcast by the citywide loudspeaker system, would give way to whistling winds, to blankets of fog, and to the rumble of thunder, which had not changed in a thousand years.

And if the first week of December had always been labeled “taciturn”, this year it seemed doubly, triply speechless. It was this silence that was broken by the gunshot that put an end to the life of the Successor. A fully muffled shot, moreover, a shot not heard outside the residence, or even inside its walls. As if the gun had been fired from beyond the grave.