“Someone did mention something like it,” said Simon gloomily, “but I thought it must be some vaudeville sketch.”
“Not at all!” said the sister-in-law. “People are driven to shifts like that out of necessity.”
“And did you decide to do that?” asked Simon’s wife.
“Why not?” came the reply, “What else could we do?”
Goodness, thought Simon. Sham divorees, and then clandestine meetings, like lovers and mistresses. What a splendid idea! And you get rid of the mother-in-law into the bargain, because she can’t go on living with a divorced daughter-in-law! it sounded ideal
“Yes,” said Simon’s wife. “People are at their wits’ end.”
The table fell silent again for a while,
“Coffee, everyone?” said the hostess, collecting up the empty beer cans.
“Not for me, thanks,’ said Simon,
“Perhaps Simon would like to have a little rest?” his sister-in-law suggested.
“Would you?” asked his wife.
“Don’t bother about us!” chorused the guests.
“Especially as you’ve got this meeting later on.” His wife again. “Go and have a lie-down, Simon.”
“AM right, just for a while,” he said. “That beer’s gone to my head a bit.”
“Yes, you have a little nap,” said his brother affectionately.
Simon went to his room, undressed and lay down. Bet despite the faint muzziness due to the beer, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He ought to have had a coffee. Well, he could always have one when he got up. He could feel a weight on his stomach, and this grew heavier as scraps of the lunch-time conversation came back to him. So, he mused, that’s what they’ve been thinking of: a fake divorce, then rendezvous à la Romeo and Juliet, and to crown all, bye-bye mother-in-law! He wondered where he and his wife were going to put his mother if the other couple did leave the capital for good: the prospect made him shudder. The current arrangement suited him perfectly: he paid a thousand old leks a month for his mother’s keep (it was only five hundred to start with, but he’d had to double it when his brother was posted), and in return he was left in peace. And now all that family equilibrium was going to be destroyed. As his wife kept saying, to have one more person in the house, especially an old woman, was asking for trouble. Old ladies have special expenses, they like to have their cronies in to see them every day, it’ll cost about a thousand leks a month to keep her in coffee, not to mention all the rest. It was obvious that before long there’d be friction between his wife and his mother, and heaven knows where that would lead! He must solve this problem at all costs. It had been stupid to regret phoning the minister, I was quite right to do it, he concluded, burying his face in the pillow in the faint hope of getting some sleep. Yes, I was quite right. But he still couldn’t drop off.
At about half-past four he got up, dressed and went out into the hall. A pleasant aroma of coffee and the sound of whispered conversation came from the kitchen. They were probably waiting for him to wake up. When he appeared they all fidgeted on their chairs, eager to make a fuss of him.
“Did you manage to get some sleep?” asked his wife.
“Not much.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, please - I would now.”
Even though the minister would probably soon be offering him another.
The day was drawing to a close. The warmth of the room, the sound of the coffee grinder, the quiet, desultory conversation -made Simon feel sorry for his brother, He must have missed all this since he was posted to the provinces. I absolutely must get him out of that situation, he thought, I absolutely must.
Night had fallen by the time Simon left the house. The air was damp and it looked like rain. Come straight home, his wife had told him. Don’t forget we’ll be dying to hear.
As he went along he tried at first to concentrate on minor aspects of the affair. Sometimes he would polish up one of the phrases he’d prepared: “! have to think about my mother as well, comrade minister…” But then he set that aspect aside: it didn’t really present any difficulty. No, the problem was… What was it? said an inner voice more and more insistently as he approached the district where the minister lived. But he tried not to answer. Pretty dreary around here, he thought. The windows looked darker than they did elsewhere, the damp air froze you to the marrow. There were fewer and fewer people about. At last he reached the minister’s street. It was only a quarter to six, and he had to walk more slowly so as not to be too early. The street, lined on both sides with small villas, was feebly lit and almost deserted. Simon quailed. That thin voice, that eagerness to see him …He tried to dismiss his fears, but they kept swarming back. All he could do was swipe at them one at a time: his fear that this démarche was all a mistake; the rows there’d be if his mother came to live with them; the lion who could still bite even though he had only one tooth; coffee in the family kitchen; last Thursday’s television news…
He was now within a stone’s throw of the minister’s residence. The sentry on duty outside, muffled up in a black rain-cape, stood still as a statue. The front of the house was dark; a faint light was to be seen at the side windows. Simon slowed down as he approached the gate. The sentry’s rubber cape gleamed wetly.
Simon realized that the time for ordering his thoughts, however inefficiently, was over, and prepared to address the sentry, who seemed to be keeping an eye on him. But at the last moment he suddenly remembered the Chinese business…It was usually during this sort of crisis that the struggle inside the Party flared up…Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He’d wasted his time on all sorts of nonsense, not excluding coffee grounds, and overlooked this blinding truth!
He found himself walking straight past the sentry. What was he doing? Running away? Don’t worry, he told himself, if you want to turn back you can, there’s nothing to stop you. There are still two minutes to go till six o’clock. He went along by the railings for another twenty yards or so, then retraced his steps. But the thought of China persisted. Worse still, the closer he got to the gate the larger the idea loomed, until it seemed to be radiating out from inside the villa. It’s in situations like this…crises like this… that deviationists rear their ugly heads…like rats before an earthquake…He was now only a few feet from the sentry, but he still hadn’t decided whether to go in and see the minister or not. He slowed down and turned to look past the railings at the front of the house, which looked gloomier than ever through the dripping trees. He could feel the sentry’s eyes on him again. Then he heard the rustle of rubber and the sentry’s low voice:
“Do you want to see the minister?”
Simon swung round in amazement.s How did the man know? Could he possibly be aware of his intentions? Without answering, Simon started walking along by the railings again. After a while he slowed down again. But this time he didn’t turn back.
He must have been someone else, thought the sentry, who’d been told to expect a visitor. And he watched the retreating figure vanish in the distance.
Inside the villa, from the window of the main drawing room on the ground floor, the minister watched Simon Dersha disappear. He’s not coming, he observed. He’d been watching his to-ings and fro-ings through the slits in the shutters, and at one point had even reached out to ring a bell. Then he’d remembered the sentry had been warned to expect a visitor. When the figure outside finally walked away from the guard, the minister had almost exclaimed, “What’s that idiot up to? ^Why didn’t he let him in?” In other circumstances he’d have sent someone out at once to ask the man what had happened and why the visitor had gone away. Bet this evening he didn’t feel like it …In other circumstances…The minister gave a hollow laugh. In other circumstances, he told himself, you wouldn’t be lurking behind the shutters waiting for a wretched clerk whose name you can’t even remember to make up his mind whether to come in or not…
Meanwhile the figure had disappeared past the end of the raili
ngs. In other words, this wasn’t a matter of chance. For it was no accident, either, that phone calls and visitors had grown scarcer and scarcer during the past fortnight. Dozens of times he’d tried to dismiss his suspicions, but dozens of other times those suspicions had returned to the charge.
He’d spent all the previous week in this state, apart from Thursday evening, after the TV news. But the reassurance this had brought didn’t last long. It had been succeeded by more of those almost deaf and dumb days spent staring at all the telephones on his desk, at all those buttons and lights, at his secretary slinking in for instructions. He’d kept telling himself, “I’m still a minister, damn it!” Nothing had changed. The guards were still there in the ante-room, and then his aides, his assistants, and a whole lot of departmental heads all waiting to do his bidding, just as before…But he knew very well that it wasn’t really like that. Things were different…There’d been a change …He couldn’t have said exactly what it was, but he had the feeling nothing was as it had been.
He’d wondered more than once if he was suffering from some psychological illness, but realized he wasn’t being honest with himself. He’d have been only too glad if it were all the result of a disordered brain. Unfortunately he knew it wasn’t.
He was looking rather drawn, but that could happen to anyone. What he didn’t like was the sound of his voice — it sounded strained, and he was afraid this might give the game away to others. He had tried to disguise the change, to deepen his voice when he spoke, but he couldn’t keep it up for long. At the most it worked on the telephone. He really couldn’t reconcile himself to the change in his voice - it was as if that were the source of all his woes. In his attempts to improve matters he’d done things he’d never have dreamed of before: for instance, he drunk water straight out of the refrigerator in the hope that it would make him hoarse. But to his intense irritation, it didn’t work. His throat, once so sensitive to damp and cold, was unaffected.
His mood changed from frenzy to self-pity, then to a phase of comparative calm. He managed to convince himself nothing had happened, and even if it had, the trouble would soon be over. He’d been in this kind of mood when Simon Dersha rang up. He’d placed him at once, because he was connected with the evening of that other, that fateful phone call. The minister was ashamed of himself now — he even tried to hide from himself the fact that he, a member both of the government and of the Politbureau, had been glad to receive a phone call from so insignificant an individual But he’d enjoyed his lunch, afterwards, more than he had for a long time.
‘I’ll make you a coffee,” his wife had said when they’d finished.
Then he’d gone to his room to lie down, but he couldn’t sleep. However, he couldn’t help feeling slightly better — though only slightly, and the improvement was tinged with bitterness. He’d been put out at the previous lack of phone calls, and this one gave some cause for satisfaction. The man who’d made it was neither a bumpkin nor one of his own entourage. He worked in a ministry, and it was a well-known fact that people like that were good at sniffing out… the minister wouldn’t let himself think the word “changes”. Yes, when it came to…that sort of thing, that sort of man was the first to know.
He gazed up at the bedroom ceiling. His thoughts were in confusion. He’d wondered several times why this humble clerk wanted to see him, but told himself that was of no importance. What mattered was that he should come to see him. When you’re the victim of such…no one will come near you. It’s as if you had the plague.
But what if he was worrying for nothing? he asked himself for the umpteenth time. Supposing all these black thoughts, all these torments, were unfounded? He turned over. Oh, if only that were so, he wouldn’t mind all the anguish! He’d put it all behind him, if only it had been a mistake!
From then on he didn’t try to hide his fears. What still wasn’t clear to him was when it had all begun. But probably Enver Hoxha’s phone call during that dinner party was the turning point, the watershed between before and after. Unless it all began before that, one cold evening on the dreary plain from which he was directing the grand manoeuvres, when he was informed that a group of tank officers had disregarded one of his orders. He had stood at the entrance to his tent staring at the liaison sergeant who’d brought the message — or rather at the square of anonymous face left uncovered by the hood of a raincoat: just the lower part of a forehead, eyes, mouth and two patches of cheek.
“The tank officers have disobeyed the order to encircle the town’s Party committee,” the man had said in a tired, expressionless voice. And the minister had suddenly felt hollow inside.
“What?” he’d cried, “They dare to disregard an order?”
And as the sergeant, still in the same faint voice, started on some sort of explanation, the minister had started to yell louder and louder, drowning the other’s now baneful words. “Arrest them!” he bawled. But something of what the man was trying to say had sunk in, The officers…had said that in no circumstances…could the tanks…encircle a Party committee ….
“Arrest them!” he shouted, louder than ever. “Arrest them!”
When the courier had gone he stood at the entrance to his tent for some time, an icy void in his breast. Despite his subsequent efforts to hide it, his anxiety had probably started when he gave that order.
But had it begun even before that? — on an evening in Peking, after he’d come back from the theatre? It was a hot, damp night, and he was in a state of excitement. He wanted to stay up late, to talk to someone, to unburden himself. He’d never have dreamed a Chinese play could affect him like this. People were right when they said the Chinese party line emerged most forcefully in the theatre. The play he’d just seen was extraordinary. In the finale, a victorious crowd of good characters dragged the first secretary of a provincial Party across the stage by the hair.
“What did you think of the play?” Zhou Enlai had asked him afterwards, turning aside from escorting an African head of state towards the exit. He hadn’t known what to say. Zhou had looked very ambiguous,
“Perhaps well meet again after supper,” he said, “when I’ve seen our friend here home.”
Driving back through the dark to the government guest house, the minister felt strangely troubled. He’d never experienced this mixture of pleasure and horror before. It had begun during that final scene at the theatre when the mob hauled the Party secretary across the stage — the thrill you feel at the destruction of something sacred. It seemed odd that the Chinese, with their reputation for dogmatism and inflexibility, should allow such a thing. He couldn’t wait to hear what Zhou said about it. His eyes sparkled,
Zhou came straight after supper, as promised, and as soon as they’d shaken hands he asked again, “What did you think of the play?”
“Well…how shall I put it? Rather strange,” said the minister.
Zhou Enlai gave him a piercing look.
“It was magnificent,” he said.
The minister felt a shudder run through him again.
The two men then retired to a room in the guest house where they could talk alone. As he listened, the minister wondered why on earth Zhou Enlai was daring to speak like this to him. When you confided in someone you usually chose a person whose attitudes you could take for granted. Had the Chinese been bugging his, the minister’s, conversations with one of his aides? Both of them, carried away with enthusiasm for what they’d seen happening in China, had let fall a few criticisms here and there about the situation in Albania. This didn’t seem impossible, especially as their objections were mostly about the way the Party at home had its finger in every pie. In China, on the other hand, the position had become very different. Not only was it obvious that the Chinese Party was dominated by the army, but apparently other bodies were superior to it too. Of course, the minister and his aide weren’t in favour of any such aberrations in their own country, but the time had come for Party control to be relaxed. People were fed up, to put it politely, with being cal
led to account before the Central Committee for the least little thing. The Chinese had put a stop to that kind of nonsense: an officer in charge of a military region was his own master, and didn’t take orders from either the regional committee or the Central Committee of the Party, And was China any the worse? Had China been weakened? On the contrary, China was stronger than ever.
That was more or less what the minister and his aide had said, and perhaps the Chinese had listened in. Perhaps that was even why they’d taken them to the theatre. As Zhou went on talking, the minister became convinced that such was the case.
“The revolution before everything!” Zhou was saying, “The revolution changed everything, and to it nothing is sacred, not even the Party!”
“Not even the Party?” stammered the minister, at once ecstatic and appalled.
“You need the same thing in your country,” said Zhou.
“In our country, a thing like that could never—” began the minister.
“I know, I know,” Zhou interrupted. “A lot of things aren’t allowed in Albania, but that can’t go on much longer. China’s preparing to make changes that will alter the balance of the whole world. The question is, will you come with us or no? If you do, you will remain our friends. If you don’t, well have to ditch you. For the moment we’re putting it to you very nicely - or rather, I’m telling you in the strictest confidence…please don’t tell anyone else. We’re going to see upheavals and sudden storms all over the world, especially in the Balkans. And as an old Chinese poem has it, in bad weather it’s up to everyone to take shelter. But it’s something that has to be thought about now. Afterwards, it’ll be too late. Glorification of the Party was meant to prevent change. That’s why Mao has abolished the cult of the Party. And in your country too…”