“But they came to the house to arrest him!” cried Sonia, “And I don’t know if it was done according to the rules - I’ve never seen an arrest before. But it didn’t look like a disciplinary matter.”
“Did they have any authorization?”
“Yes, of course. They had a kind of warrant, and one of them showed it to me as well as to Arian. Not that I could read what was written on it, I was so upset. There was someone else with them — a member of the local committee of the Democratic Front.”
Gjergj and Silva exchanged a surreptitious glance. Sonia noticed it, but she still didn’t know whether the warrant and the member of the Democratic Front were good signs or bad.
Gjergj finally moved away from the French window, but to Silva he seemed to do so more rapidly than was natural, and this added to her uneasiness. He too started coming and going around the kitchen, helping to get the meal ready.
“Don’t worry, Sonia — I’m sure my explanation is right, Sit down and have something to eat,” he said, shifting chairs about noisily, “Brikena, where’s the pepper? Come along, Sonia…Why were you so late, by the way, Silva?” He sounded as if he wasn’t sure it was possible to say anything so ordinary here any more.
Silva stared at him for a moment.
“I’ll tell you later on,” she said, lowering her eyes. “Come on, Sonia — come and sit down.”
“I don’t want anything to eat! I couldn’t swallow a mouthful!”
“Don’t be silly,” said Silva. “I’m sure it’ll all be explained. We mustn’t give in. And don’t forget the family, Sonia…Most of them are senior Party members…It’s not as if we hadn’t any influence any more …”
But it seemed to her that the more she said the less she believed it. Take those stupid remarks about the family. She knew the arrest of a member of a communist family was just as serious as the arrest of someone connected with the old guard. More serious, in fact, because it was so unusual As for the warrant and the member of the committee, they showed this was no routine matter.
But it was precisely what Silva said without believing in it herself that persuaded Sonia to come to the table.
During the meal, though everyone did their best to avoid long ‘silences, they couldn’t und much to say. So they made much play with china and cutlery. When they’d finished, Silva made coffee — the only thing that was welcome to everyone.
“I must go,” said Sonia. “Heaven knows what’s going on at home,”
“In any case, don’t say anything to his mother or the children,” Gjergj advised her.
“But how long can it be kept from them?” replied Sonia. “It’s impossible!”
Impossible, thought Silva… Gjergj, for all his advice to Sonia, knew that as a Party member himself he would have to inform the next meeting of his cell that his brother-in-law had been arrested. Out of the corner of her eye, Silva could see Brikena’s hair almost falling in her plate, as she ate without looking up at the others. She hadn’t uttered a word throughout the whole meal: heaven knew what she might be going through…Her textbooks were full of enemies of the people who were finally unmasked and arrested, and now that world, which had been as distant for her as ancient myth, was irrupting into her owe life. And this wasn’t all! Silva bit her lip at the thought of the forms her daughter would have to fill in to join the youth movement, then to go to the University, and so on throughout her career. To the question, “Has any member of your family been arrested or imprisoned under the present régime?,” most of her friends would be able to write “No,” but she, with a trembling hand, would have to write, “I have an uncle who…”
Sonia stood up.
“I must go,” she said.
They saw her to the door, with flustered reassurances which, though they may have soothed Sonia, had the opposite effect on themselves.
“Phew!” exclaimed Silva, collapsing on to the sofa when Sonia had gone. She wept for a moment in silence, while Gjergj went over to the French window again and stood with his back to her, smoking a cigarette.
“I’ll have one too,” she said, between sobs. She asked Brikena to go to her room, and the girl went without a word.
“Do you really believe what you said about the arrest?” Silva asked.
Gjergj still didn’t look round.
“I’m more inclined to think it’s a misunderstanding. One soldier does as he pleases, and his superiors give him the boot…”
“Do you really think that?”
“I did wonder whether it hadn’t got something to do with the Chinese question …It may seem ridiculous, but at times like these the key to the inexplicable often lies in current events…And if this particular business were connected, even indirectly, with China, I'd be tempted to think it was very serious. But I can’t see any evidence for it. Especially as he was expelled from the Party for disobedience — in other words for being a bit of a rebel. And the reason for his arrest must be the same as the reason for his expulsion from the Party.”
“That would make it just an ordinary detention, as you said from the beginning.”
“But being expelled from the Party makes it worse,’ said Gjergj, “and other things may get drawn into it too. When the charge of disobedience is being examined, perhaps the officers inquiring into it will discover aggravating circumstances - insubordination towards his superiors, or insolence…”
The phone rang. Silva shuddered. Gjergj answered, and as soon as he spoke she sensed that the call had nothing to do with what had flashed through her mind. As he went on talking, it occurred to her that the time might come when they’d call or be called by her brother much less often, or not at all, and of course stop seeing him. And it wouldn’t end there. If Arian was in prison for long, it wasn’t impossible that Sonia would divorce him. There were cases where not only a prisoner’s wife but all his relations too dropped him completely.
Gjergj hung up and went over to the French window again. They remained as they were for some time. Silent. Outside, time seemed suspended.
“When you came in just now i thought you knew,” said Gjergj. “You were so pale.”
Silva looked up.
“No. That was for another reason.”
She didn’t want to talk now about her anxieties that morning.
“What reason?”
Silva plucked at her brow, where her eyebrows met. If he insisted on knowing why she had come home looking distraught^ she was going to have to tell him. But perhaps this was the moment to have it all out. Now or never. At any rate it would take their minds off the other business.
“I saw you this morning in the Riviera,” she said finally, giving him a sidelong glance. “You were with a young woman.”
He didn’t flinch. He was still looking out through the window. The mist on the panes made the grey of the late afternoon more dismal still.
“Perhaps you’re going to tell me you met her by accident,” she said, unable to bear his silence any longer.
He didn’t answer straight away. Then:
“Not exactly," he said.
Silva felt her heart thumping. Perhaps she was probing too far. Wasn’t all this too much for a single day? She’d been sure he would stammer out something to deny the facts, or minimize them, or,…But now, instead of justifying himself, by lying if necessary, he was telling her he hadn’t been with that woman in that café by accident. That’s ail this awful day needs,’ she thought: my husband calmly admitting he’s deceived me!
“This isn’t a very good moment for me to explain,” he went on.
“Perhaps not,” said Silva, feeling a great icy wave sweep over her. “Maybe it would be better to leave it till another time.”
She’d spoken quite sincerely. All she wanted now was for the matter to be closed. She was even ready to ask him not to mention it again,
“You’re right,” she added. “It’s not the right moment. I shouldn’t have started it.”
“Not at all,” he answered. “Perhaps it’s just the
right moment…”
Just the right moment, she murmured to herself, shattered. What did that mean?
“Gjergj,” she murmured faintly, “Please…I’m terribly tired…Why do you want to add to my torment?”
“I want exactly the opposite. I want to explain, to relieve you of any kind of doubt…”
What a ghastly day - would it ever end? thought Silva. But she felt just a twinge of relief.
“It’s not easy to explain, but I’ll try,” said Gjergj. “It all began in China,…”
What all began in China? Had the girl been there too? Had they met in a hotel? The anguish Silva thought she’d thrown off gripped her again.
“I’ve already mentioned the spiritual barrenness you can experience there, but you know I don’t talk much — I didn’t want to go into detail.” He was still staring at the window. “You feel a kind of void, an indescribable panic. It’s impossible to have a genuinely human conversation. You begin to long for simple, authentic phrases - ‘It’s raining,’ ‘How are you this morning?’ But they don’t exist. As soon as you remark on how windy it is, the person you’re talking to says, ‘The wind from the East is stronger than the wind from the West.’ If you complain that it was foggy, he’ll answer, ‘Chairman Mao says fog suits the imperialists and the revisionists.’ ”
Gjergj shook his head as if dismissing further examples put forward by his memory.
“Empty words and tedious slogans everywhere. 'Though far apart, our peoples are friends’ — that’s what they say instead of ‘good morning’. One monotonous refrain peppered with endless quotations. Wherever you looked there was nothing but placards with ideograms scrawled all over them…For nights now I’ve been dreaming the world has been invaded by billions of Chinese characters, like ants. How I used to long to hear a human sigh over a cup of coffee. What was the name of that chap who went through the market in the daytime, carrying a lantern and looking for a man? Diogenes, I think …Well, in the middle of that ocean of banners and placards, we were looking for a man…Not that there was any shortage of people, but we didn’t really have any contact with them. We were isolated from them by a cordon sanitaire of guides, officials, and all those wretched slogans. If we ever had a normal conversation with someone on our embassy staff, it was immediately swallowed up in that sloganomania. What I clung to in my mind was our life here, I told myself, as soon as I get back I’ll do this and that, and above all I'll live closer to other people. I was dying, dying to talk to human beings — even if they were surly or exasperating, so long as they were human beings! That was why when I got back I wanted to stay with you as long as possible, with you and with our daughter. Do you remember the first night I was home, when I was half-dead with fatigue and yet I asked you to talk to me a bit longer, and you said, “Don’t be so childish — do you need a fairy-tale to seed you to sleep?’”
Even if she couldn’t quite manage a smile, Silva could feel her face relaxing. It had all happened just as he’d said, and he had dropped off to sleep while she talked to him about something she’d now completely forgotten.
“I expect you remember finding me reading a book of poems the day before yesterday,” said Gjergj, “and the day before that, listening to music. That too was because of my craving for warmth. The cold had penetrated so deep inside me — to my very bones — that I felt nothing could ever warm me up again. So I wanted to build up reserves, just as someone who’s been through a famine hoards bread. That’s more or less how I felt. And then, this morning…”
Gjergj paused for a few seconds, lit a cigarette, and started to describe that morning, his first Sunday since he got back from China. He’d gone to a café, then strolled along the main boulevard as far as the avenue Marcel-Cachin — near the Dajti Hotel and the bridge with a marvellous view of the falling leaves. Thee he suddenly felt an urge to visit the cemetery. For no reason at all he’d got it into his head that the Chinese had abolished cemeteries! He’d bought a bunch of flowers to pet on Ana’s grave, and thee he’d set out.
“Pink roses,” said Silva.
“Yes,” he answered, with no sign of surprise. “Were you there too, then?”
She nodded,
“There were quite a lot of people at the cemetery,” he went on. “I stood by Ana’s grave for some time, remembering things about her life, and about ours. Thee I came away. When I got back into town it was still early and I felt like having another coffee. But not alone, nor with a mere acquaintance — no, it had to be someone with whom I felt a bond. In China I’d come to think no one ever remembered anything: of course that couldn’t be true, but it was the impression you got from the outside. So I felt like having a coffee with someone who did remember things.”
Silva recalled the old woman in the cemetery, with her cup of coffee.
“I don’t know how to explain it, but that was what was missing from my Sunday, So I did what I haven’t done for a long time — I phoned an old student friend whom I hadn’t seen for years. I tried to explain to her over the phone what had made me call her up, and she somehow managed to understand my ramblings. She was a very nice girl, the girl-friend of one of my fellow students — we’d had a brief romance in our first year. She’s married now. That’s all, Silva - neither more nor less. I just wanted to talk about another part of my life…I was like someone who’s been ill and is on the brink of convalescence…I don’t know if I’ve managed to make you understand at all…I’m afraid I probably haven’t.”
Silva couldn’t take her eyes off his face: it looked suddenly haggard. Her own expression was full of tenderness.
“How awful it must have been for you over there,” she said gently, Then, to herself: “But perhaps the situation that caused his suffering will soon be over?”
Outside, it was getting dark. ln the dusk, everything was growing distant and insubstantial: the balconies of other apartments; the first lights lit inside them and twinkling faintly; the pigeons swooping over the roofs, their grey and white wings merging into the general pallor.
Silva gazed at the man standing there by the window: he was not only her husband but also a mythological messenger raised into immortality, bearer of a missive to a terrifying foreign state. A letter severing relations…She suddenly felt an irresistible desire to comfort him after his journey into that alien universe.
As if he’d read her thoughts, Gjergj left the French window, then came slowly and quietly across the room and sat down beside her on the sofa. She ran her fingers through his hair and down to the nape of his neck. Then started to stroke his hair rhythmically. And so they sat on, side by side, through the end of a day that might well prove to be the beginning of an era.
7
THAT NIGHT SILVA tossed and turned, her sleep broken by dreams of which, in the morning, she could remember nothing. When she got up, her face looked drawn. Gjergj was up already — the hum of his electric razor could be heard through the half-open bathroom door.
In the kitchen, Silva automatically turned on the tap, then remembered she’d done the washing-up the night before, and turned it off again. The growing brightness in the dark-blue sky, which she could see through the window, made her feel a bit calmer. Things are bound to sort themselves out, she thought dimly — she still wasn’t properly awake. It’ll all come right in the end.
It seemed to her Gjergj had never taken so long to shave. But finally the sound of the razor stopped, and Gjergj appeared in the doorway.
“Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”
She shrugged.
“So-so.”
‘Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”
“There’s nothing worse than waking up in the morning with a worry like that on your mind.”
“He was the first thing I thought about, too.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Silva felt relieved, somehow.
“It’s especially awful when you wake up…”
“Yes,” he ag
reed. “Particularly the first morning.”
She was on the point of asking him when he’d been in a situation like this before, but restrained herself. He might be referring to quite a different kind of ordeal. She’d felt something similar herself during a youthful love affair.
Silva’s hands opened and closed the doors and drawers of the dresser without even thinking about it. As she was cutting the bread she realized Brikena was still asleep, and went to wake her.
The three of them breakfasted in silence. It wasn’t until Brikena had gone off to school that her parents began to talk. But all they could find to say to one another was more or less the same as what they’d said the night before. As she drank her coffee, Silva reflected that people under stress feel a need to keep repeating themselves, like children.
Gjergj walked with her to the ministry. It was very cold. People were flocking round the newsstands as usual to buy their morning paper. Nonsensical as it was, it always seemed to Silva they bought more of them when the weather was cold. Gjergj bought a paper too, folded it twice and put it in the outside pocket of his raincoat. Silva suddenly felt she couldn’t bear to start discussing China again, though lately this had been one of her favourite subjects of conversation. As if he guessed this, Gjergj had avoided the topic since the day before. Had Arian’s arrest got anything to do with these events? Though they’d asked themselves this question several times, and every time answered it in the negative, they both still harboured a slight doubt. But be that as it might, Silva didn’t want to hear China so much as mentioned any more.
After she’d left Gjergj, she went up the steps into the ministry, calling out her usual greeting to the porter as she passed by his lodge. But inside the hall she couldn’t help turning back to check up on his expression: had it been colder than usual, or had she just imagined it? This is getting to be an obsession! she exclaimed, and ran up the stairs.