As she listened, she looked at me with her piercing gaze as if she knew there was more to come.
“John Teedler’s messenger…” I went on. “Disguised as a beggar woman dressed in rags…I can even remember where we met…It was a deserted fields beyond the old priest’s house…That’s where I heard for the first time about the plot Duncan was hatching against me…All that’s as clear as day…What I don’t understand is how Billy Hampston got hold of it…I always kept it a secret…You can bear me out on that, can’t you?”
“Perhaps John Tendier or his agent confessed…”
“Do you think so?”
“They must have done. It can only have been one of them.”
“I suppose so. Admittedly, I didn’t follow what happened very closely after the fuss died down…But anyhow, it was Duncan who was chiefly implicated while he was still alive …Whereas now…If John Tendier were still alive today, I wouldn’t mind if
he did talk…It might even be to my advantage if he told what
he knew…But of course, he is no longer with us!”
“Perhaps his messenger is still alive?”
“The one he sent disguised as a beggar woman? Bet who can say who he was? John Tendier was the only one who knew…And that messenger was so horribly disguised I wouldn’t be able to recognize him myself…”
“I see…”
After that, I noticed that whenever the subject of the witches cropped up she looked very sad. One day she asked me gently,almost tenderly:
“Michael, are you sure the man you met on that heath really was John Tendler’s agent?”
“What do you mean?”
She stroked my hand before she went on.
“Did it really happen, or might it have been a vision?”
As she told me later, I suddenly went pale, I could hardly speak.
“It was as real as can be,” I managed to answer, through clenched teeth. “And if you don’t believe me, your Majesty, come with me and 111 show you the very field.”
“No, no — I believe you,”
“Let’s go at once!”
“Michael, please!”
“You’ve got to come, do you hear? You and ail the others who still have doubts. Let them all get ready - guards, courtiers, and priests!”
“Don’t shout so loud - the servants will hear.”
“Let them! Let everyone know Macbeth’s wife no longer trusts him!”
She began to weep silently.
Even now, after all these years, it hurts me to think of it. I don’t know why, but ever since she died, of all the things we used to talk about’ it’s the witches I think of most often.
One day (cold and gloomy, like today),1 mounted my horse and rode out in the direction of the heath. As we drew near I told my guards to come no further. The heath where I had met John Tendler’s tattered messenger looked more derelict than ever. A chilly drizzle fell on the stony scrub, I stood for a long while looking at the place where the woman in rags had appeared to me, I felt expectant, somehow. At one point i even thought ! heard footsteps behind me. Î swung round. But apparently it was only the sound of a bird dropping a twig.
Standing there in the rain, I remembered my lady’s words. “Might it have been just a vision?” And for the first time î found myself wondering if ! really had met John Tendler’s emissary in this fallow field, or if it had all been a figment of my imagination.
God Almighty, î cried, deliver me from these ridiculous doubts! Over there were the two bushes growing together. And there was the third, a little way off. There was the splinter of rock, sticking into the ground at a slant. And to the right of it, the dead tree-trunk. I remembered it all quite plainly,
I intended all this to reassure me, but a voice inside me said, yes,you’ve been here before, not once bet several times, but what does that prove? The question is, did John Tendler’s messenger ask you to meet him here, and if so, did he really say those things to you. Or…?
If Tendier had still been alive, I’d have gone and found him straight away, to gather from his own lips the proofs of Duncan’s perfidy. Unfortunately I was reduced to going over and over everything in my own weary mind.
Back home I tried to recall my meetings with John Tendier. Or rather my one meeting, because after that, for security reasons, Ï avoided any further direct contacts.
“Duncan obviously dislikes you.”
“Why?”
“Oh, it’s easy to understand. As with all tyrants, his ruling passion is jealousy. Suspicion only comes afterwards, to justify the crime…What should you do? Keep your eyes open, my lord. That’s the only advice I can give you now. Ill warn you if anything looks like happening. One of my men will come to see you disguised as an old beggar woman, muttering verses or some other mumbo-jumbo …”
Just before Duncan’s visit John Tendier managed to send me a message: “My lord — beware of your guest. Another warning follows,’
For days I waited anxiously for his messenger, longing to find out what Duncan intended to do while he was staying with me. I was haunted by the most terrifying possibilities. As if deliberately to reduce my nerves to shreds, the emissary still didn’t come. My wife was as anxious as I was, if not more so. I didn’t want to add to her anxiety, so Î didn’t tell her I’d decided to ride out to the old priest’s house where all the rogues and vagabonds gathered on Sundays…I certainly heard plenty of mumbo-jumbo there…I spoke to one of the beggar women, but try as I might I couldn’t make head or tail of what she said… Nor was Î very lucid myself, after so much worry and so many sleepless nights… I took the old woman aside and whispered to her, twice: “Now we’re alone, speak clearly!” But she only started raving worse than before…Apparently that was what she’d been instructed to do…She talked about a black cauldron, boiling something…It was very difficult to make her out, but she seemed to be going on about some imminent trick, some trap, someone being murdered in his sleep, an act of treachery…In the hope that she might thee speak more clearly, I arranged to meet her again two days later on a patch of waste land behind the priest’s house…And there, distraught, I waited for her for hours, on a day just like this…
“That’s enough!” i shouted at last to my astonished guards, and set my horse off at a gallop. “I don’t want to think about it any more. To hell with the shades of the past!”
Age was bringing me close to the kingdom of the shades myself, and I had no reason to fear it. Soon it would be I who frightened others, not as a king but as a ghost. Strangely enough, î found this thought soothing. There was no reason why ! should cudgel my brains about something that had happened fifteen years ago. The only thing that mattered was that Duncan had plotted my death, and I had circumvented him. That was the heart of the matter. The rest was insignificant detail
Feeling better, I went out on to the terrace and started to look through the regular report on the day’s main events, and the account from the secret police on the rumours circulating among the people. I’d always taken a particular interest in the latter, especially in recent years, since gossip about the murder of B— had risen to the surface again. Noticing my interest, the chief of police was always adding extra material — whole conversations recorded by his spies, intercepted letters, prisoners’ confessions, anonymous denunciations, and so on.
The strange thing was that some of the rumours coincided with what Billy Hampston had written in his play. All the gossip, from that which could be traced back to the Duchess of M— or the Bridge Tavern to the mauederings of the drunken Cheavor, mentioned Duncan’s ghost. But there was frequent mention, too, of the bloodstains my late wife was supposed to have seen on her hands, ï remember that was mentioned in Hampston’s play too — I can even remember the first reference:
I: Take the body to the canal at Berverhill!
SHE: Will the waters of the canal wash away the blood?
And in a later scene (one of the most melancholy, I recall: when my beloved lady read it she went terr
ibly pale), she was shown trying to wash her hands, thinking she could see those cursed stains on them.
All the rumours more or less agreed on that point: during a meal, or a dance, or while she was busy at her embroidery, my wife suddenly saw her hands grow covered with bloodstains that no soap could ever remove.
Ugh! How deep can man’s morbid imagination sink? The truth is that a year before her death she developed a skin disease on her hands. Her doctor tried every possible remedy, but couldn’t cure her. My heart bled at the sight of those beautiful hands covered with ointments and bandages. In the course of a reception the shrewish Duchess of M— stared at my wife’s arms and asked, “How are your hands, your Majesty? I’m told there’s something wrong with them…”
My wife was dumbstruck. That night — or perhaps it was another night - trying to console her for her suffering, ! started to kiss her bandages and to move them aside a little to kiss the skin beneath. But she pushed me away roughly, and in a toneless voice I’d never heard before, said:
“Perhaps you think it’s Duncan’s blood, too!”
My poor lady…It was apparently from then on that the rumours started about stains of Duncan’s blood. Perhaps she confided her anguish to some trusted woman friend, thus becoming the source of her own misfortune?
How often have I asked myself, in vain, if those rumours really did start then, and if Billy Hampston, more skilful than my secret police, managed to hear of them and put them in his play. Or was it his play itself that exploded into a thousand rumours? Learned men say that it’s like that, by means of particles coming into being, disappearing, and coming into being again in an endless cycle, that the celestial bodies are created.
I was sure there must be a copy somewhere of that wretched play, but though ! did my best to get my hands on it, my efforts were in vain. My spies went through every nook and cranny with a fine-tooth comb, searched secret drawers, inspected cellars and the remotest priests’ houses, to no avail. What didn’t they find in the course of their researches? The most lurid manuscripts, descriptions of disgusting orgies, vile letters revealing the existence of immoral liaisons and abject vices, not to mention other aberrations too horrible to mention. Some of these were frankly ridiculous, others excruciatingly boring. But none of them remotely resembled Billy Hampstoe’s play.
But I can’t get rid of the idea that it’s lurking somewhere^ waiting for a more propitious moment to reappear. Or if not it, some variation of it, or else some other source for that damned rumour that will not die away. If so, I’d have to be mad not to admit that it’s beyond my power to stand in its way. If the rumour of all mankind insists on turning me into a tragic character, no power on earth,let alone my own, can ever stop it. The only thing left for me to do is pray that if the play in question is ever produced, the posters announcing it will replace the name of the playwright, whatever that may be, with the name of Duncan, because he is its real author.
16
THE SUDDEN INFLUX of students back from China changed the look of the capital The first to return were those concerned with the human sciences, and they were followed by the natural scientists and the various kinds of student teacher. They all began to fill the streets, cafés and restaurants of Tirana with an unwonted atmosphere of good humour. The fact that they’d been sent back at the express request of the Chinese government, in a note which gave as the main reason for their expulsion their allegedly improper behaviour towards Chinese girls, conferred on the newcomers a certain aura. People saw them as a seductive combination of Don Jean and Don Quixote, the heroes of countless adventures as mysterious as they were fantastic.
Stories of their exploits, preposterous enough without the inevitable exaggerations and accretions due to distance, circulated by word of mouth. Every day a new star emerged, each one a possible instigator of the famous note. Some, with a wink or similar gesture addressed to some Chinese damsel, had caused the Albanian ambassador to be summoned to the Chinese foreign ministry. The names of others were said to have figured on a list of complaints delivered by Zhou Enlai to an Albanian government delegation on an official visit to Peking. Not to mention the interesting condition in which some Chinese young women found themselves and of which some Albanian young men were already aware, though luckily it wouldn’t come to the knowledge of the Peking authorities until four or five months later, when relations with China would certainly have deteriorated completely…
People listened to these tales with a smile. Especially those who had been students in the sixties in the Soviet Union or other countries then in the socialist bloc, and who had had to interrupt their studies because of the break between Albania and the various host countries. “It wasn’t like that in my day!’’ these would comment pensively. Of course, even thee there had been plenty of comical incidents. One Albanian student in Sofia had chucked his lectures and managed to get himself made vice-chairman of a cooperative in a little Bulgarian town, while his family fondly believed he was still at the university and the ambassador had search parties out after him. But on the whole the stories dating from this period were rather sad - dull and lacklustre as an old pewter jug, As those who’d been students in the sixties started, with a certain modest pride, to recount their own memories, those jest back from China waited impatiently for their stories to come up with something amusing. “But don’t you see?” said their elders, “there wasn’t anything funny about our experiences. We didn’t feel at all like laughing when we had to part from our pretty Russian girls.” The younger ones, the “Chinese” as they were called, couldn’t understand how the others could have been wretched in such circumstances: they couldn’t help bringing out the entertaining aspects of their own tribulations. At all events, the students of both these generations regaled everyone else with so many stories that a few old show-offs who’d studied in Europe half a century ago started to bring forth their own reminiscences — mostly insipid, old-fashioned romances with prim little, dim little fraüleins tinkling away at sheet music on hired pianos.
The new arrivals split their sides with laughter. They themselves had been delighted to break off their deadly boring studies, In the-general euphoria, some of them got engaged within a fortnight of their return to girls they used to know before, but who seemed prettier and more desirable after their own stay in China. Others took up with Albanian girls who were so fascinated by these new-style Lotharios that they promptly ditched their previous boyfriends.
These goings-on lent a humorous touch to a situation mainly determined by the deterioration of Sino-Albaeian relations after Mao’s death and the arrest of his widow. But this time the Albanians bade an ‘old friendship farewell with a smile, as one foreign correspondent noted, with an allusion to Marx. Bet he who laughs last laughs longest, he added. And who was going to have the last laugh here?
* * *
Silva opened her eyes for a few seconds, but, reassured by the sight of her husband’s head on the pillow next to her, went back to sleep again. It had been light for some time, but she went oe waking up and dozing off again as if to savour the joy of Gjergj’s return as often as possible.
I think I’ll lie in for a bit, she thought when she finally awoke properly. She tried to remember a dream: it was about some frozen snakes emerging from the snow… But no, it wasn’t part of a nightmare - it arose from something Gjergj had said in the pauses between their caresses. The frozen snakes had come to the surface just before the big earthquake. And now all China hinted that the tremor was a harbinger of Mao’s death, and Jiang Qing’s arrest in the middle of the night.
Silva looked at Gjergj’s brow: she thought it showed signs of fatigue. As a child she had believed_ people’s thoughts were concentrated there. She kissed him on the forehead - lightly, so as not to wake him — then got out of bed.
Their daughter had already gone to school Silva made tea for the two of them, but as Gjergj was still asleep she decided not to disturb him. She left him a note: “Tea on the stove. See you at lunch-time. Lo
ve.”
It was eleven o’clock by the time she left the house. Her boss had told her not to come in that day until she felt like it, but she didn’t dawdle. All the government offices were working overtime because of the problems caused by the Chinese.
She thought of Gjergj’s hair on the pillow and of how glad she’d be to find him there again at lunch-time. And she was filled with happiness.
When she got to the office, Linda and the boss looked unusually serious. She’d have preferred even the teasing they subjected her to the last time she saw them, about Gjergj’s homecoming.
She soon learned the reason for their glumness. A meeting was due to be held in the minister’s office at any moment, and as usual the boss, resenting it, was taking his annoyance out on Linda.
He came back after about half an hour, looking downcast. It was at short meetings like this that the severest criticisms were usually meted out. But today’s gathering had been different.
“Well,” he said, sitting down at his desk, “you already suspected that the economic situation was very serious. But it’s much worse than you thought.”
In a low, weary voice he told them what the minister had said, When all the data were taken into account, it emerged that the defection of the Chinese had done much more damage than expected. It was no passing misunderstandings causing only minor problems, as some officials and economists had thought, but a coldly premeditated rupture, calculated to do as much harm as possible. Whole sectors of activity that were dependent on one another were grinding irrevocably to a halt, in a chain reaction that eventually affected institutions which appeared to have no connection with China — for example, the State lank. There was no end to the complications, Because the big dam in the north was near the frontier, and the Chinese had warned that it might burst if there was an earthquake, Yugoslavia was showing signs of alarm. And it was no accident that acts of sabotage had been perpetrated in the oil-fields. According to a report received by the Politbureau, some wells looked as if they had been bombed. Dozens of them had been abandoned, with machinery and pipelines left lying around to rust in the middle of the muddy plain,