And so it goes on for several weeks, or perhaps months, until the day of the catastrophe. There is no doubt that a disaster occurs, and it is entirely credible that Lothario, now in the role of eavesdropper, should see someone leaving the house in secret. What is not credible in the story as Cervantes tells it is the introduction of the servant girl’s love affair, and so on. In fact, it is not the servant girl’s lover leaving the house, but Camilla’s.
And this is what the new reading tells us really happened:
Camilla and Anselmo quickly tire of Lothario, and want to stretch their limits again. As is usual in such cases, they want fresh stimulus. And so they need a new partner, as Anselmo had predicted they would from the start.
Lothario has noticed something odd. His suspicions have been aroused. That is why he spies on his friend’s house every night until he discovers the truth.
Here the curtain falls on the drama and we are left in darkness. Something serious happens, something that brings death to all three, but for some reason this is not revealed.
Besfort was tired, and he fell silent. As so often when he spoke again after an interval, his eyelids moved first.
“A strange story,” said Rovena, with averted eyes. “Do you want to know what happened in the Loreley?” she added.
He paused before replying.
“I didn’t tell you the story with that in mind, believe me.”
“I do believe you. But I want you to know.”
He felt the familiar stab in his heart.
She spoke with her eyes lifted, as if telling her story to the ceiling.
“I wasn’t unfaithful to you in the Loreley,” she said calmly.
Each avoided the other’s eyes. In a steady voice, as if talking about someone else, Rovena described what had happened. Besfort listened with the same detachment, reflecting with sorrow that there is a proper time to ask every question, and he was no longer curious about the Loreley. She had walked to the massage couch, and the masseur was “suitable”, as she and Besfort would have described him, like Camilla and Anselmo long ago … She described the uncertain borderline between massage and fondling, her temptation, her hesitation. With astonishing precision, she described how she cast aside all shame, but finally and unaccountably demurred on the very brink …
“That is all,” she said. “Are you upset?”
He did not reply immediately. He cleared his throat, coughed.
“Upset? Why?”
The silence became awkward.
“Upset at what happened … although in fact nothing happened …”
“Then why should I be upset?”
She felt an emptiness in the pit of her stomach.
“I could ask it differently. Are you upset because nothing happened?”
“No,” he said curtly. “Not for that reason either.”
Suddenly, Rovena felt traduced. The old question of where she had made a mistake surfaced again, accompanied by all the anxieties she thought she had left behind. As people so often do, in trying to repair her blunder she merely made it worse.
“Don’t you even care?” she cried despairingly.
She was on the verge of breaking down in tears.
“Listen, Rovena,” he said calmly. “I don’t know how to talk to you. Until yesterday you were complaining that it was my fault that you aren’t free. And now you say you have too much freedom. But somehow it’s always my fault.”
“I’m sorry,” she butted in. “I know, I know. Please forgive me. We’re different now. We have a pact. You’re the client, I’m the prost … The call girl. I don’t have the right … I …”
“That’s enough,” he said. “There’s no need for a drama. There’s enough of that around.”
Years ago he had shouted “That’s enough” in just the same way. Ashen-faced and with a trembling hand, he had grabbed her by the hair, just by the window, and the appalling thought flashed through her mind, oh my God, here I am being treated like a whore in the middle of Europe.
He did not hit her. With a pale stare, as if he himself had been struck, he sank onto the sofa.
It was all over. The thought came to her, that of the two “enoughs” she would have chosen the first, and she burst into a torrent of tears. Tyrant, she said to herself. You pretend you’ve lost your power, but you’re still the same.
She heard his voice. “It’s three in the morning. Shall we go to sleep?”
“Yes,” she replied faintly.
They said goodnight, and a few moments later Rovena was astonished to hear his breathing deepen.
He had never before been the first to fall asleep. The emptiness of the room became somehow suspicious. This is no use, she thought. You can’t win against him – ever. She had lost her last chance long ago, and now it was too late. She had never resorted to her only superior weapon, her youth, because forbidden arms can never be used.
Now he was out of danger. He had persuaded her that they would come out of it together, leaving behind all their hesitations, their doubts over separating or not separating, and the question of where she had gone wrong or not gone wrong, as if these belonged to another world, like the Cervantes story, or old movies, or Greek tragedy.
Naïve as ever, she had trusted him. Now he was secure, but she was not. Not at all. His steady, pitiless breathing testified to his domination.
Tyrant, she said to herself again. Just before you were overthrown, you voluntarily gave up the crown. “I’m abdicating. I myself am standing down,” you said. “Nobody will ever topple me.”
Do what you want, take power or reject it. There is no way I can escape from you, not even from your shadow, or from your dust as you fall. I have been yours. I accept your rule and I am not ashamed. I don’t want that crown myself, because I want something else – to be a woman. Totally a woman. To suffer, and if I want to dominate, to do so through suffering.
A woman, she repeated to herself.
Sleep eluded her. Slowly she got out of bed and went to his bedside table. There, next to his glass of water, was a small packet of sedatives. Stilnox, she read. Quiet night.
She picked up the packet with a kind of tenderness. Here was his balm. These were what calmed his mind.
As she stretched her hand to the water glass, her eyes fell on a black object. Inside the half-open drawer was a revolver.
She caught her breath. She remembered all at once the secrecy of this journey, the false names at the reception desk and his advice to her to turn up the collar of her coat. What was it all about? But then she recalled him saying that he always travelled armed in Albania, and she calmed down at once.
Without further ado, she detached a tablet from the blister pack and swallowed it.
In bed, she lay back and waited for sleep. How had she been reduced to this? She didn’t even have the right to call him “darling”.
She tried not to think any more. Perhaps she was demanding more of this world than she should. A woman like her didn’t need much.
Sleep would come soon. She was curious to know what kind of oblivion his sedative would bring, as if the nature of his sleep would reveal more of his secrets.
But perhaps she didn’t even need to know his secrets. A woman like her needed to know only one thing, that there had been nights when Besfort Y. had taken these sleeping pills because of her … That was sufficient.
As she listened to his deep breathing, she thought that this sedative had finally helped her enter his brain. Now, however clever he was, he could not hide.
His breathing was changing, but she would stay vigilant. Now it was her turn to trick him by pretending to be asleep.
Apparently Besfort had been waiting for this moment. He moved slowly, not to waken her. Then he reached out to the drawer beside the bed. Is he in his right mind? she thought.
It was obvious what he was doing. She had no reason to pretend she didn’t understand. She heard the scrape of the drawer and the movement of his hand as he took out the gun. Oh God, she pra
yed. She had feared being killed in a motel, and now it was happening. But instead of acting to save herself, she remembered a whores’ song:
If she doesn’t end up in a ditch,
In a Golem motel you’ll find this bitch.
The cold barrel of the gun touched her ribs just below the right breast. In spite of the silencer, she heard the trigger and felt the bullet enter her flesh.
So this is what he wanted, she thought.
She saw his arm make the same circular motion to replace the weapon. Then there was silence. How incredible, she thought. He had fallen asleep straight after the crime, in the same position, lying on his side.
Rovena pressed her hand to the wound to staunch the blood. Besfort was breathing deeply again. Had this struggle worn him out so much? thought Rovena, as if treating him with indulgence for the last time.
She stood up and moved silently to the bathroom. The wound held no terror for her. It looked clean, almost as if drawn by hand. Among her cosmetics under the mirror she found a sticking plaster of the kind she usually kept with her. She fixed it to the wound and felt reassured at once. At least she would not give up the ghost like some motel whore.
Incredible, she thought again, climbing back into bed. He was still sleeping as if nothing had happened. Just like one thousand years ago, she lay down beside him.
Chapter Eleven
The next day. Morning.
He had no right to behave like this. She spent most of her mornings alone, and he should have been beside her on this one. Even before she opened her eyes, her bare arm groped for him, but he wasn’t there. Drowsily, she stretched her arm further, to the edge of the bed. Beyond lay Austria and the plains of Europe. The names of great cities glowed palely like on old wireless sets, fraught with terror. He shouldn’t do this. Inevitably he would be the first to go, leaving her alone in this world for many long years. So he shouldn’t be in a hurry now.
Finally she opened her eyes. The waking world was in order. It was simple and obvious: he had gone for a walk through the pine trees while waiting for her to wake up. Scraps of daylight filtered awkwardly through the shutters. The little burgundy Cervantes lay there inert, weary of its old secret.
She heard steps and the door handle turned. He bent down to kiss her temple. He was carrying the morning papers. Over breakfast, he glanced through the headlines.
“The queen is ill,” Rovena said.
He said nothing.
She set aside her coffee cup and phoned home. “Mother, I’m in Durrës with my girlfriends. Don’t be worried.”
The coffee struck Besfort as particularly good. How sweet this world could be, with queens ill and women telling white lies.
“Look at this,” Rovena said, handing him a newspaper.
Besfort laughed, and read aloud, “ ‘Baroness Fatime Gurthi, spokesperson of the Tirana Water Board, attempted to justify the water shortage.’ Buying titles is the latest fashion. A thousand dollars, and you wake up a count or a marquis.”
“I thought it was a joke, but even in jest it makes no sense.”
Besfort replied that it was no joke. There were international agencies that trafficked titles. Everybody in the former East was crazy about them.
“That’s all we need,” said Rovena.
Besfort was sure he had the business card of a certain Viscount Shabë Dulaku (Reinforced Doors and Windows Made To Order) from the suburb of Lapraka. He’d heard of a duke in the traffic police and a countess who had written a booklet entitled Albanian Irregular Verbs.
After breakfast they went out for a walk along the shore. A fierce wind blew, and it seemed an alien, indifferent kind of day. Clinging tightly to his arm, Rovena felt her hair strike Besfort’s face.
She did not know whether she was still supposed to tell him everything that was on her mind or not. She had the impression that the eyes of both of them had become as hard as glass in the wind. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t be able to admit everything, not even to herself.
Behind iron railings, the swimming pools were frozen. Films of ice like cataracts spread over the surface of the water.
They found a restaurant for lunch and then spent the whole afternoon locked in their room. In bed, before they made love, he caressed her and whispered something about Liza. He had forgotten all the little details, or pretended to have done. She replied to him in the same whisper. He told her that nobody understood men like she did. Rovena flattered him in the same way.
As dusk fell Rovena spoke to her mother again on the phone while Besfort switched on the television to see if there was news of the Queen. “It’s lovely here, Mother. We’re going to stay tonight too.”
As she spoke, he stroked her belly, tracing circles around her navel.
Evening deepened fast. As midnight approached, the roaring of the sea sounded increasingly plangent. In the morning they left the hotel in a hurry, not knowing themselves why they felt so flustered. As they drove towards Tirana, the traffic grew heavier. There seemed to be more florists than ever at the crossroads leading to the western cemetery. We all get flowers sooner or later, thought Rovena. She remembered scraps of their conversation about the bogus conspirators. Some of them must be buried here. They would have flowers like everybody else.
At the entrance to Tirana the line of vehicles was barely moving. A traffic policeman walked past their car and Besfort asked him if there had been an accident. The policeman glanced at their licence plate out of the corner of his eye before he answered.
“The queen is dead,” he said.
Besfort switched on the radio and they heard the queen mentioned. But the voices were raised in anger. They were arguing. By the time they reached Kavaja Street it became clear what it was all about: the funeral ceremony and also the site of her grave. The government, as always, was caught on the wrong foot.
“Just wait, they’ll appeal to some commission in Brussels next,” said Rovena.
Near Skenderbeg Square they heard a statement from the Royal Court. A requiem for the queen would be sung at St. Paul’s Cathedral at three o’clock that afternoon. No word about the burial site. The government had still not issued a ruling about the restitution of the king’s property, including the family graves, in the south-east of the capital.
They had almost reached Rovena’s house when the radio broadcast a second statement from the court. The place of burial was still undecided.
“This is scandalous,” Rovena said, opening the car door.
On his way back, Besfort wanted to take the street past the cathedral, but it was cordoned off. After an announcement that the parliament would convene for an emergency session early in the afternoon, the radio carried interviews with ordinary passers-by. “This is a disgrace, a total disgrace,” said one anonymous citizen. “To begrudge a patch of land for the queen’s grave, it’s crazy.” – “And you, sir?” – “I don’t know much about these things. I think we should follow the law. The law should hold good for the wife of the king or the president as for everybody else.” – “Are you alluding to the dictator’s widow?” – “What? No, no. Don’t get me mixed up in that sort of thing. I was talking about the queen and other serious issues, not about that old witch.”
The radio interrupted the interviews to announce that a third statement from the Royal Court was imminent.
Chapter Twelve
The Hague. The last forty days.
For a long time there was no evidence that Besfort Y., and still less both of them, had been in The Hague forty days before the end of the story. In fact, indications that they were in Denmark on that day seemed to eliminate the slightest suspicion of such a thing. Rovena’s friend in Switzerland, usually cautious in her testimony, was certain of it: Rovena had phoned from the train just after crossing the Danish border. Jottings in Rovena’s notebook, made four days before, supplied further evidence of her intended journey. “Jutland. Saxo Grammaticus. Villages where the events of Hamlet (Amleth) took place … Two-day visit.”
&nb
sp; In fact, suspicions regarding The Hague had taken root immediately after the reported exclamation “I’ll see you both in The Hague”, uttered by Rovena’s intimate friend Liza.
There was no supporting evidence for a visit to The Hague from travel tickets or hotel registrations. The convincing alibi of Denmark also nearly banished this suspicion as quickly as it had arisen. This trip was like one of those imaginary journeys that take place in the minds of would-be travellers, or, in the case of The Hague, in the minds of those who are keen to see someone in the dock. However, a few lines in the diary of Janek B., Rovena’s Slovak classmate and casual lover, mentioned again the fateful destination of The Hague. In this diary was a brief and obscure description of a nightmare in which the dreamer saw pieces of white paper announcing apartments for sale stuck on telephone poles, but from a distance looking like a summons to the Hague Tribunal.
The discovery of another diary notebook put an end to the confusion by making sense of the writer’s style and casting light on both the relationship between the Slovak and the beautiful Albanian and the matter of the nightmare, which was not the Slovak student’s, but Besfort’s.
“After that unexpectedly generous night, R. changed,” wrote Janek B. In a few terse words he described his pain, although he avoided using the word “pain” itself, and particularly that other word, “suffering”.
His notes were vague, with phrases often left incomplete, but they still conveyed the distress he had felt the following evening when Rovena had failed to keep her appointment at the bar.
He drank. He tried not to show how he felt in front of others. A few days previously he had said half-jokingly, “We from the East have had our share of suffering. Let us not suffer in love too. Now it’s the turn of you Westerners.”
He thought he saw the retort in the eyes of one of his friends, “My dear Janek, there is suffering under any regime.”
Rovena was different when she came to the university the next day. She explained that someone had arrived from her own country, Albania. Her face was pale, and in her nervous haste she could not concentrate. A mafia type? A trafficker in women? A lover? Janek B. made three guesses about this mysterious visitor. Which was most likely? The newspapers were full of reports of Albanian gangsters. They arrived from their distant country, made threats and then vanished, leaving emptiness and terror behind them.