“The worst of it is,” he went on, “having to explain it to people. They all take it as a joke. No one seems to understand, not even one’s nearest and dearest.”
At the first part of this sentence she had almost protested, but at the second she decided to hold back.
“Were you going to say something?” he asked,
“No…”
“So that’s how it is,” he said, tossing his lighter from one hand to the other. “Not even the person closest to you. Not even your own wife…”
Linda looked at him.
“She seems more and more fed up lately,” he explained. “She says the whole business has been dragging on too long, and she’d never have dreamed it would turn out like this. She acts as if i was making it out to be worse than it is - as if we’d agreed to treat it as something comic, and it was my fault that it’s degenerated into tragedy.”
“I suppose, if there are money worries…”
He smiled bitterly.
“Of course,” he said. “We’ve lost more than half our monthly income. I’m not joking!”
“I believe you,” said Linda.
“Sorry to bother you with all this. Why should you have to listen to my tale of woe? I shouldn’t have asked you to come here. But I really did need to talk to someone. My wife’s been away on a mission in the north these last few days, and I was feeling pretty lonely…”
“No need to apologize,” said Linda. “I’d be only too glad to be able to cheer you up a bit. We’re only human, after all…”
She turned towards the window so he shouldn’t see she was blushing.
Outside it was as dull as ever — that time of an autumn afternoon where everything seems becalmed. She went on staring at the window. The glass is nice and clean, she thought vaguely.
“I expect I’ve kept you too long,” he said. “We can leave whenever you like.”
Linda smiled and nodded.
“Yes, it is getting a bit late.”
Victor summoned the waiter. She couldn’t help glancing at his wallet. It contained a few 100-lek notes. Remembering he was out of work, she was tempted to offer to pay for their coffees herself, bet the fear of giving offence, together with a new surge of pity, was so strong it made her feel quite faint. For some reason or other, the sight of him handing over the money made her feel guilty. If it hadn’t been for the risk of being misunderstood, she’d have liked to say: “Let’s stay on for a while, if you like,” But even though she hadn’t opened her lips, and though it was she who led the way out of the café, her lack of haste revealed what she had been thinking.
By now they were walking along in a direction that was neither hers nor his, and still Linda found herself hesitating. Should she say she meant to go and see her friend now, or even merely go home, or should she just let herself be led aimlessly along? It didn’t yet commit her in any way…She couldn’t make up her mind, and to set aside her own uncertainties she asked him about the Chinaman again.
“What?” he exclaimed.
“The X-ray,” she said. “What will happen when it comes back from China?”
Victor shrugged and smiled.
“How should I know? They’ll certainly attach the Chinese doctors’ reading of it. Unless they ask for another X-ray altogether, I’ve no experience of that sort of thing.”
“What a nasty business!” she exclaimed.
She could feel him looking at her.
“The X-ray of a Chinaman’s foot flying from one country to another!” he said. “Macabre, isn’t it?”
She looked up involuntarily. For a moment, the fate of the man walking along beside her seemed linked to a vast expanse of sky being crossed by the long-awaited image of a foot. This brought back to her mind the X-ray her father had had to have a couple of years ago: the hazy white bones on the cloudy background…The future of the man beside her depended on a similar image.
She couldn’t help sighing. A Chinaman’s foot, she mused. The shop windows on either side of the street, the passers-by, all seemed to withdraw, giving way to that macabre image flying between the. continents, a combination of Asian and European myth. Any man who was hand in glove with that phantom foot must certainly be out of the ordinary.
“Oh, this is where I live!” she heard him say. But his voice sounded far away.
He’d stopped, and was pointing to the third or fourth floor of a block of Eats. Linda looked up, but absent-mindedly: she still felt strangely languid.
“Shall we go up for a minute?” he asked rather hesitantly. “It’s too soon just to go home, don’t you think?”
The afternoon seemed to be dragging on for ever. Linda’s mind refused to take anything in. She gazed idly at the little garden in front of the flats: the grass was starting to wither; there was a sketchily painted red seesaw.
“It’s so pleasant, talking to you. So peaceful,” he said, “Couldn’t we stay together a little while longer?”
Linda’s mind still dwelt on that still life with sky and the X-ray of a foot. In such a context, his suggestion seemed quite natural After all, why not? she thought. He’s so unhappy!
“Why not?” she murmured. And head bowed, without looking at him, she began to walk in the direction of the flats.
What am I doing? she asked herself several times as they went along. She’d agreed to go up to the apartment of a man she hardly knew before this afternoon. She asked herself the same question yet again. Bet she felt as if she’d been snatched up into some vast space in which she would soon dissolve.
Linda left Victor an hour later. It was dark by now, and she looked into the shop windows, which for some reason were not lit, to see if her hair was dishevelled. In fact, as she well knew, her hair was as tidy as ever. If there was any disorder, it lay elsewhere. Looking back on what had just happened, beginning with the sudden embrace which struck her as more insane with every minute that passed, quite apart from the fact that it had probably surprised her companion as much as herself, she wondered what sort of girl he must have taken her for.
“Goodnight,” she said suddenly when they came to an intersection, “I’m almost home.”
He made as if to say something, but then just murmured goodnight, almost as if to himself.
I never ought to have read any Russian literature, Linda thought as she covered the short distance to her own place, hurrying as if for dear life. It was all because of her owe damned soft-heartedness, she thought, patting her hair again as if the misunderstanding — she was now convinced that this was all it was - lay there, like a burr she was trying in vain to disentangle.
Victor was woken up by the telephone. It sounded unnaturally long and loud (ever since he’d been suspended from his job, Victor had felt that even the ringing of the phone sounded scornful and cold). He was wanted at the factory. What? Why? he asked. Would it be good news or bad? Come and find out, said the head of personnel.
As he dressed he wondered, almost aloud, “Why am I so calm?” Then, as if a load had fallen from him, he remembered the afternoon with Linda, their walk, and then, in his fiat, the amazing way she’d instantly put her arms around him. He’d thought about it over and over again, lying on his bed till midnight lighting one cigarette after another, as if trying to shroud in smoke something which was anyhow nebulous, inexplicable and vague as a dream. Curiously enough, what he remembered most clearly, better than all that had followed, was that first impulsive gesture of Linda’s. Sometimes he saw it as sisterly, sometimes as something quite different. He remembered learning at school than in the old Albanian ballads men called their sweethearts “sister”, and wondered whether it wasn’t his unhappiness that had made him so sentimental I’d never have had such tender feelings about an incident like this in the past, he thought. But then, in the past, it would never have happened. That soft hair on his cheek, the gentle touch of her lips, and above all those arms round his neck - it was all as fragile and fleeting as a rainbow: one vulgar word or gesture might destroy it. And even though t
hat which people call vulgar had happened, the original rainbow remained intact…
He felt the only way he could keep the memory safe was to disappear. That was what he must do. He wouldn’t phone Linda; he would set their moment apart from reality, let it be sublimated by oblivion. Even if he happened to meet her by chance in the street, he’d pretend not to remember anything, perhaps not even to know her.
As he walked to the bus stop he thought now of the events of the previous afternoon, now about the reason for his being summoned to the factory. The man at the gate gave him a cheerful wink.
“Back again, are you, lad? Good!”
“I don’t know about that, Jani It depends what they tell me in personnel.”
“Go ahead,” said the old man. “There aren’t any Chinks in the corridors. They’re all on the factory floor.”
Victor smiled sadly. How had things got to the point where he had to enter his workplace almost surreptitiously? In his last days at the factory, before he was suspended, his friends had kidded him about what had happened, suggesting he should come to the factory in a theatrical wig and a false moustache so that the Chinese wouldn’t recognize him.
When he came out of the personnel office, Victor couldn’t decide whether he ought to lament or rejoice. They’d told him he was to Seave straight away for a new job at the steelworks in Elbasae. “In other words, I’ve got to leave Tirana just to please that swine?” he’d exclaimed, surprising even himself by his sudden rage. “Watch what you say, comrade,” the head of personnel had answered sternly. “Hundreds of comrades and Party members consider it an honour to work at Elbasan, And don’t forget you’re in the wrong. The Party told us not to react to any provocation on their part, and you had to go and…”
“What a fool I am,” Victor thought then. “I ought just to be glad the matter’s being wound up without more ado…You’re right, comrade,” he told the head of personnel, who was still scowling at him disapprovingly.
But, once out in the corridor, he felt suddenly empty. He was going to have to leave here for good. No matter how much he told himself it mightn’t really be for ever, that the Chinese might eventually go themselves and he be able to come back — you never knew — it didn’t make him feel any better. He walked across the yard not bothering to avoid attracting the Chinamen’s attention. His case was settled now; he had no reason to skulk. He’d even have liked to meet them and say right to their faces: “Well, I’m going. Satisfied?”
He stopped at the refreshment stall for a coffee. Everyone said, “Oh, so you’re back at last, are you?” But he just shook his head.
Before he left he made one last round of the huge factory where ‘he’d spent part of his life. Everywhere voices called out, “Back again, engineer?” But he either shook his head or merely smiled. Pain at having to leave this place was like a growing weight inside him. The wall newspapers, to which until now he’d paid little attention, the graphs recording socialist endeavour, the photographs of outstanding workers., even the mere announcements dotted about the noticeboards - “Union meeting tomorrow at 4 o’clock,” “Choir practice today” - all seemed different now.
As he prowled around he could feel people looking at him. “There are all sorts of stories being told about you,” said an electrical engineer who kept him company for a while. “You’re a real legend! More than a legend! There’s talk of demonstrations against you in Tienanmen Square, protests at the U.N., and I don’t know what! Are people letting their imagination rue away with them, or can it all be true?”
Victor smiled as he listened. As a matter of fact, the business of the X-ray wasn’t all that different from such fabrications. As he passed through the workshops the female workers on either side gazed at him admiringly. Every so often he would remember Linda’s embrace, and he would feel as if he were weightless, borne along on some invisible wave. Then ordinary consciousness returned, and he could feel the ground under his feet again.
At last he came to the place where he had stood on the Chinaman’s foot. He shook-his head as if to drive away the idea of those cloth shoes, more like slippers, so symbolic of the Chinaman’s stealthy approach. The softness of those shoes contrasted with the cynicism which had made their wearer call for a stoppage ie two of the workshops and almost bring the whole factory to a standstill. For a moment Victor had felt as if all the hypocrisy in the world were concentrated in that pair of cloth slippers. Moved not only by anger but also by the desire to tear away the mask of deceit, he’d gone up to the man and trodden on his foot as if by accident.
“Yes, a real legend — you’re the hero of the hour,” the other engineer went on. “Do you know what Aunt Nasta says? She says it’s a shame to lose a good man just because of one of those short-assed Chinks!”
He guffawed as he spoke, but Victor found it hard to join in.
An hour later he left the factory and walked towards the bus stop, gazing blankly in front of him and still deep in thought. He looked back one last time at the chimneys, belching black smoke. He’d recently dreamed, of seeing others like them, only they were all upside down. Perhaps, with his transfer, his life would get back on the right lines. As the proverb said, every cloud has a silver lining. He went on musing as he looked back at the chimneys, thinking of the engineer’s jokes but still not finding them funny. The way the smoke rose into the sky struck him as somehow alien to and supremely scornful of the human race. Not for nothing did interpreters of dreams regard smoke as a bad omen.
5
HIGH ABOVE THE SURFACE of the earth, faint traces of life sped steadily across the sky. In the deepening chill of autumn, spy satellites transmitted from one to another a list of the members of the Politbureau of the Chinese Communist Party, arranged in the same order as for the committee appointed recently to organize a state funeral. There was only one slight change from the order as it had been three weeks earlier: the member who wore a towel round his head, the One in the Turban, as sinologists now called him among themselves, had risen from thirty-fourth to thirty-third, thus changing places with his colleague with the two barrels. Insignificant as the change might seem, the experts who were no doubt already rushing to interpret the signs would scrutinize it for the slightest indication that the balance was swinging, even temporarily, in favour of one faction rather than the other. Unfortunately, despite their untiring efforts, the experts had never been able to make out which school either of the two members belonged to. A novice might have thought their rivalry reiected a preference for developing the textile industry on the one hand and the food industry on the other (the towel and the chick-peas), and that the change In the list meant that the first had been given priority over the second. But the explanation was probably to do with something more profound, such as the Chinese economy as a whole; or, more important still, some change in foreign policy or in the state of the class struggle at home. Meanwhile other experts pored with equal zeal over Ming dynasty encyclopaedias and learned treatises on poetic symbolism in order to puzzle out what the towel and the chick-peas might stand for in themselves, and what they might mean when placed in a dialectical relationship.
The spy satellites made no mention of other events. But just before dawn, one of them transmitted the following: “As far as is known, no reply has yet been sent to the Albanians’ letter, This information is derived from a reliable source. It may be that no such letter exists.” In the morning the satellite received a message in reply: “There certainly was a letter from the Albanians. Do everything possible to get hold of the answer.” But there hadn’t been any answer. Though the attaché-case belonging to Gjergj Dibra, now on a Eight from Peking via Karachi to Paris, did contain some important papers, these didn’t include any reply to the letter. It was now eleven in the morning. The heavy aircraft was flying over the plains of southern China, above thin clouds touched by the autumn sun. Every now and thee the sound of the engines reached the ground. “Couldn’t they have re-routed the plane a bit?” grumbled Mao Zedong, a few thousand
metres below.
He was quite alone in the midst of the vast plain (his guards were crawling on all fours through the bushes, so as not to be seen). The horizon shimmered in a reddish haze. Mao looked up, trying to see the plane. He was worried not only about his own peace and quiet, but above all about security. These plains grew marihuana, and foreign secret services had apparently got wind of it: the international airlines all seemed to be trying to fly over the area, at low altitudes whenever possible because of what they alleged were difficult atmospheric conditions. But his own idiotic foreign minister and home secretary didn’t understand about this, and spent all their time trying to keep atomic secrets, as if the drugs being grown all over the plains were of less importance. They found it quite natural to concentrate all their attention on the sophisticated sciences of electronics and nuclear technology, ignoring fields and crops, the work of mere peasants. Mao let out a growl, in the access of blind rage that gradually swept over him whenever he thought anyone was daring to underestimate or even despise any work to do with the country. He always regarded such indifference or disdain as directed against his own peasant background, and his elderly brain, instead of dismissing it as a matter of taste or principle, saw it as the sign of a desire to take his place.
Let them guard their little aristocratic secrets. He had more faith in the fields of Indian hemp than in all the bags of tricks produced by electronics, atomic power, and all the other confounded sciences.
This was the fourth day that he’d walked in the fields, and he’d rarely felt as he did now. He’d been right to come here straight from his cave. His eyes half-closed against the light, he gazed over the quivering ruddy surface of the plain.
The red ceremonial flags, the posters, the banners…The anthem, “The East is red”…All the little red books brandished by millions of people…“Do you think I take all these red whatsits seriously?” He laughed to himself at the thought of this question, then suddenly stopped and tried to remember where he’d asked it and of whom; but he couldn’t. “Do you think I take all this seriously?” Oh, now it was coming back to him. It was one of the questions he asked himself in imaginary conversations with important people - politicians, kings, presidents, his own colleagues, his enemies. Deep inside himself he’d accumulated heaps of such questions, all waiting to emerge one day. Or perhaps they’d given up hope of ever doing so; perhaps they were quite dead, and lay there within him only in the form of corpses.