As if afraid of being overheard, he tiptoed over to a cupboard and got out a comb and a pair of scissors. Why were his hands shaking? Other people had used poison or a dagger…
That thought calmed him a little. But when the first tuft of hair fell down beside the mirror, he was almost surprised it wasn’t spattered with blood, it was past five when he started on his task: at seven o’clock he still hadn’t finished. As he plied comb and scissors alternately, his thoughts wandered to the still empty theatre, the envelope containing Zhou Enlai’s will, and other more trivial things, His hands went on shaking. Sometimes he thought the resemblance was increasing, sometimes it seemed to have disappeared altogether. Once he suddenly turned and looked at the portrait of Mao up on the wall: he appeared to be looking back at him sardonically. The scissors in Hua’s hand flashed as if with menace.
At a quarter past seven there was a knock at the door. It must be one of his bodyguards. The time has come, he thought, and tiptoed back to the cupboard, put the comb and scissors back in their drawer and covered them up with a towel. Then he walked towards the door. But just as he was reaching out for the door-knob, he remembered in time and went back to the mirror and the tufts of hair still lying around it. He gathered them up in his handkerchief; rubbed the top of the dressing-table to make sure there was no trace left behind; then he went over and opened the door.
* * *
The car taking Skënder Bermema and C— V— to the concert drew up outside the theatre. As they alighted they saw other groups of guest, Chinese and foreign, making for the lighted entrance as their limousines glided quietly away like empty shells.
As he entered the auditorium, Skënder was dazzled by the bright red velvet. The stalls were starting to fill up, but there was practically no one in the boxes yet.
Skënder and C— V– followed their guide as he located the seats assigned to them. They settled down. The theatre was quieter than Skënder had expected, but when he looked around he saw that the stalls were now almost full, except for a few latecomers picking their way to their places. The boxes too were filling up, and Skënder noticed that the people round him were looking at them as he was, but without actually turning their heads. It was twenty-five past seven. Skënder, like all the rest, went on watching the highest dignitaries arrive. He saw the Albanian ambassador and almost waved to him; but of course the other wouldn’t have noticed. Thee he spotted the Politbureau member with the turban: he was in the same box as “Double-Barrel”, whom he recognized from seeing him on television. But this wasn’t the moment for laughter.
At seven-twenty-eight Jiang Qing and Wang Hongwen took their places in their boxes. There were only two boxes vacant now. At first glance it was as if the whole power of the state was embodied in those present, and the two empty boxes didn’t count. But a few seconds later, by some mysterious process, the opposite came to be true: for the thought of those who were absent sent a chill down everyone’s spine. They might make their appearance at any moment, with their pallid faces and the mocking smiles that seemed to say, “You rejoiced too soon at our not being here!”
There wasn’t a murmur. On the contrary, the silence deepened, and only a mute kind of stir ran through the theatre when Hua Guofeng appeared in one of the last two empty boxes. “What’s this? What’s this?” hundreds of people silently chorused. Skënder watched their guide’s profile: his pale face had gone red, as if it were bathed in a sulphurous light; he wore an expression of mingled terror and hope, like someone pleading for mercy, “Hua Guofeng’s face!” Skënder exclaimed inwardly, “What’s happened to it?” But he didn’t expect to get an answer here, in this place inhabited by ghosts. His own mind, that mechanism so apt to produce the strangest associations of ideas, soon supplied him with a number of possibilities. Hua Guofeng’s face was the spitting image of Mao’s. He might have taken the skin off Mao’s face and stuck it on his own. Many others must have been revolving the same horrible thoughts as Skënder, for the whole theatre seemed to have suffered an electric shock.
It was exactly seven-thirty when the house-lights began to fade. And it was at that precise moment, between the house-lights going out and the foot-lights coming on, that Zhou Enlai appeared in the one remaining empty box.
So now the boxes are full, thought Skënder Bermema.
Zhou Enlai seemed to hover between being a human being and a phantom. The curtain slowly rose. “God!” exclaimed Berraema, astonished to find himself using a word that had been obsolete for so long.
The concert had been going on for an hour, and it was evident there wasn’t going to be an interval Hundreds of motionless heads gazed at what was going on on the stage. Although everything seemed so cold and stiff, one was instinctively conscious of something, some thrill of apprehension, passing from the stage to the auditorium and vice versa. When the second woman dancer, rustling her lilac-coloured skirts, went over and almost brushed against the yellow stork, the whole audience held its breath, Pooh, thought Skënder, what has it got to do with me? But try as he might he couldn’t help sharing in the general feeling of dread.
The second woman dancer twirled more and more slowly near the stork. The audience was mesmerized. Suddenly, as if by mistake, a red spotlight swept briefly over the boxes, so that their velvet walls seemed to be streaming with blood. Skënder thought he saw a pair of eyes rolling in ecstasy. What face was this that he thought he recognized? He’d seen it somewhere before, in a book or perhaps in a newspaper article about Cambodia, Again- he told himself all this was nothing to do with him, but the more he said it the more involved he became, as the music went on throbbing through the theatre. He thought he was going to faint. Once or twice he almost stood up and shouted: “Stop these celebrations! I’ve got a novel that’s dying!”
He glanced at C— V—, whose profile showed he was watching the show with a mixture of interest and exasperation, Skënder leaned closer and whispered in his ear, so quietly he couldn’t hear himself: “My novel’s giving up the ghost”
The other didn’t react, but Skënder thought he saw a brief grin show briefly on C— v—’s lips. “I certainly chose the right person to confide in!” thought Skënder angrily. But was his colleague’s smug smile caused by what he himself had just whispered, or by something that was happening on the stage?
A gong sounded, the audience started, a light suddenly illuminated the second woman dancer’s face. At the sight of that livid mask, Skënder was filled with horror: it expressed at once distress, accusation and an icy, unearthly anger. If only this nightmare would end, he thought. God, let it end soon!
A few minutes before the show finished, a vague stir in the auditorium — perhaps a member–of the public had happened to turn his head — made Skënder look up at the boxes. What he saw took him aback. Some of the boxes were already emptying. Not until a few moments later did the whole audience seem to register the no doubt unprecedented fact that part of the political leadership, the most important figures in the government, were leaving before the curtain had come down.
“What does it mean? What does it mean?” everyone seemed to be shouting as if through the most powerful loudspeakers, though no one actually uttered the words. Had they disliked the show? Had the symbols they’d seen triggered off anticipation of some disaster? For a moment Skënder imagined carnage must already be raging outside…
At last the curtain fell and the lights revived as if after a long swoon. As the spectators stood up to leave, they now looked openly at the empty boxes. Jiang Qing, Wang Hongwen and Zhou Enlai had vanished. And though most of the leaders had chosen to stay, they seemed colourless and uninteresting compared to those baleful absences.
“What does it mean? What’s going on?” Skënder asked the Albanian ambassador when he finally found him on the way out
The diplomat’s expression was surprisingly enigmatic. If Skënder thought he caught a gleam of some kind, it came from the ambassador’s spectacles rather than from his eyes.
“I don’t
know what to tell you,’ he said. “Perhaps Mao …As you know, he took to his bed a long time ago …”
“Yes, But ! got the impression it was something else.”
“Your theory could be right,”
“How do you know what it is?”
“Oh, it’s easy enough to guess,’ said the ambassador, smiling.
They said goodnight and went in search of their cars. Only then did Skënder remember C— V—, who was some way off, trying to attract his attention.
They drove back to their hotel without exchanging a single word. Their guides sat scowling too.
As he got out of the car, Skënder could feel almost physically the pain in his side, in the place from which he imagined his novel had been removed. He was afraid he mightn’t be able to walk. The guides said goodnight to them in the hall
Back in his room, he knew he wouldn’t be able. to sleep. After walking up and down for some time, he went and stood by the window. Through the cold panes he could see a part of the street, with some neon ideograms that looked as though they were suspended in the darkness. “Just look what the Chinese language has come to,” he thought “In the past people wrote magnificent works of literature and science in it, but now those characters are used only for insults, incitement to hatred, empty phrases, all the things that C— V— delights in.” He glanced at the wall that separated their rooms. That was how C— V— regarded language …as a vehicle for poison! Such people were plague-carrying microbes. It was they who had killed his novel! Skënder seethed with rage. He must have a talk with his travelling companion - tell him exactly what he thought of him!
“A talk!” he said to himself, grimacing. “I’ll show you what I'm made of! How would you like to have a little discussion?” He still wasn’t sure how he was going to handle it, but thoughts of something rather more violent than mere debate were flashing through his mind.
He was still grinning when he went out into the corridor After glancing to left and right he went and knocked on C— v—’s door. “Who is it?” asked the other, after a pause.
“It’s me!” Skënder imagined himself saying softly. “Let me in!” But he didn’t really say anything. He was imagining, as he stood there, the scene that might follow…
In his mind’s eye he saw himself pushing the door open, However much he tried he couldn’t restrain himself. C— V—, in pyjamas and bedroom slippers, seemed to recoil. Perhaps because of Skënder’s sudden irruption, perhaps because of his increasingly menacing smile, C— V— took a step or two back. His expression seemed to say, “What is all this? Have you gone mad?”
He had come to a standstill in the middle of the room, waiting to hear what the intruder had to say, when Skënder, instead of saying anything, clenched his fist and punched him on the nose, like a character in a silent film.
C—V— staggered and caught hold of the bed-post to stop himself from falling.
“What’s got into you? You must be out of your mind!” he cried incredulously. Skënder himself was even more amazed at what he’d done, but that didn’t stop him raising his fist again.
C—V— managed to dodge the second blow. He even attempted to feed Skënder off, but seeing that his visitor was too furious to desist, he launched a few blows of his own. But either because he’d been taken by surprise, or for want of experience, his arms only flailed about in an ineffective and effeminate manner.
“Rat! Vermin! Not C— V—… W.C!” roared Skënder.
He hit him again, but the blow glanced off the other man’s jaw. This, together with the allusion to water closets - it wasn’t the first time he’d heard this pleasantry - finally got to C— V—.
“Swine!” he bawled, “Savage!” And kicked Skënder right in the groin.
Bermema let out a howl of pain. The pain was atrocious - if C— V— had been wearing shoes instead of slippers, he would probably have been writhing on the floor, He turned pale, his mind went blank for a second, then started to race again. He vaguely associated the attack on his genitals with C— V—’s jealousy about his love-life, with reviews by C— V— criticizing the plots of his novels, with the women he, Skënder, had known, and even with the memory of Ana Krasniqi and her marble belly, now consigned to the shades…
“So that’s how it is, is it?” Skënder growled through clenched teeth, hurling himself on his adversary once more. “Is it?” he repeated, trying to drive the other into a corner.
Blind with rage, he rained blows on his opponent, who was caught between the window and the radiator.
“Take this for the two truths…and this for the four errors…and this for the three demons of the city…”
Then he heard himself mocking: “Here we are in the midst of a battle of ideograms - when are they going to come to your aid?”
Bet the other man didn’t answer. Their hoarse breathing was all there was to be heard. Outside, because of their own exertions, the ideograms were jigging about as if they had St Vitus' dance.
“It’s just what you deserve - to be beaten up in the middle of China, with your billion Chinese comrades unable to come to the rescue!”
…But Skënder Bermema was really still out in the corridor, leaning his head against C— V—’s door. He’d imagined the previous scene so vividly that his fists hurt from being clenched so tightly. But no, he mustn’t act so disgracefully here in China. He mustn’t sink so low.
“Who is it?” said the voice from inside the room again.
Skënder felt like answering, “It’s shame!”
How shameful it would have been. Everyone would have known they’d gone for one another like two fighting cocks while on an official visit to China. A visit that coincided with the Day of the Birds!
Skënder turned away from the door and began to wander up and down the still-empty corridor. He glanced both ways: not a soul. He concluded that no one could have heard them: the scene he’d imagined was still so clear in his mind that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see someone rush up to see what the noise was all about. He hesitated for a moment at his own door, uncertain whether to go in or not. At the end of the corridor, sitting in a little glass box, there ought to be an attendant, a combination of guard and floor-waiter, who saw everything. He’d certainly have noticed Skënder’s comings and goings, Skënder tiptoed towards the glass cage. Yes, the man was there. Skënder thought he should make sure he was wearing the necessary smile, but when he caught sight of his reflection in the glass of the cage he saw that his expression, such as it was, would do: after all the man was a Chinese, and Skënder didn’t know him from Adam, The man looked back at him vacantly: he obviously hadn’t noticed anything,
Skënder nodded affably. Unusually, the man didn’t return his smile.
“Ho,” said Skënder, using the only word of Chinese he knew, “Everything all right?”
“Ho,” replied the other, still not smiling.
Hell! thought Skënder. He must have noticed something.
“Quiet, isn’t it?” he said.
The Chinese leaned nearer to the glass, and spoke. He was probably saying, “What?”
Skënder tried scraps of all the languages he knew in order to try to communicate, bot it was no good. Then he remembered that these attendants had to pretend they didn’t know any foreign languages, even if it wasn’t true. He waved to the man by way of goodnight, thee turned and began to walk away. He was amazed to hear a voice behind him call out in English:
“Comrade!”
The Chinese had stepped out of his cage and was obviously trying to tell him something. He’s seen my comings and goings in the corridor, thought Bermema, and the scoundrel means to concoct some slanderous report about me. He started to go towards him: after all, if the man was prepared to talk to him, perhaps he wasn’t going to write a report, merely give him a friendly warning.
“Eh?” said Skënder. Then, in English: “Do you speak English?”
The Chinese nodded, rather guiltily. Skënder smiled, and told himself to kee
p cool.
“Can’t you sleep?” said the Chinese. “I can’t, either.”
Skënder’s jaw dropped. A Chinaman talking about sleep like an ordinary human being? Their usual way of referring to the subject of repose was: “Imperialists and revisionists sleep with one eye open,” or “Revolutionaries mustn’t rest on their laurels.”
“Why not?” asked Skënder, though it was rather a ridiculous question: the man was on duty - he was supposed to stay awake.
“The Chairman in dying,” said the Chinaman.
Skënder leaned nearer. His breath misted the glass of the cage and made a sort of screen between him and the other.
“Mao dying?” he repeated. It was hard to believe a Chinese could bring himself to say such a thing.
The man nodded. His eyes were red and mournful.
“I’m sorry,” said Skënder, nonplussed.
Through the mist on the glass the man looked grief-stricken.
Skënder muttered some words of sympathy, and found he couldn’t just walk away. As the Chinaman’s almond eyes looked blankly back at him, it struck Skënder that these people’s slanting orbs were made to express suffering. Why hadn’t he noticed it before?
He’d have liked to offer the man some consolation, to show sincere fellow-feeling. It seemed barbaric just to leave him alone in his cage with his sorrow.
What’s happening to me? Skënder wondered. Why was he feeling so overcome with pity when he least expected it? Was it just a passing reaction, due to the fact that the word “dying” evoked for him the phrase “giving up the ghost”, and thence an image of the soul? Or was it some other association, deriving from the thought of that placid round face, which seemed a million miles away from hatred; of his words, now those of a rather senile old man - “I am only a wandering monk with holes in my umbrella;” of the children he had lost, the wife who had died too, and the poem he’d written for her — “Perhaps we’ll meet again amongst the stars;” and of how he now lived in a cave like a kind of deranged hermit. But the important thing was that whether you liked it or not, he was the creator of the new China…