Linda said nothing for a while. Then she repeated Migena’s phrase: Of course. Of course. It depended on your viewpoint – to a prisoner shackled in his cell, an internee like Linda might seem free. In which case she had no reason to complain. Linda might say the same of Rudian, who was complaining about the treatment of his play, and so on. It was all very complicated, like the universe itself, which they’d talked about so much, infinite time and space, totally beyond their conception.
Linda returned to the unforgettable week after the arrival of the directive. ‘We were all dumbfounded. You were in Tirana, and I could hardly wait for you to come back. I had never missed you so much. And then, as if you knew, you returned with that miracle in your hand, his book.’
To say that his book restored her to life would be the least of it. She opened it dozens, hundreds of times to read its dedication, For Linda B., a souvenir from the author.
Migena was well aware of the effect of this gift. Linda had been a fan of the playwright and almost in love with him, but it was the book that had turned her head completely. Everything else paled in comparison – her internment and the fatal directive. She thought only of him, to the point that she felt ashamed. ‘When you told me that he had problems at the theatre and his play might be banned, I broke down completely. I dreamed of being close to him, laying my head on his shoulder, consoling him, saying, Darling, don’t worry, it will pass.’
Migena barely contained her tears. Perhaps she, the understudy, should have consoled Rudian in this way. But there was no hint of reproach in Linda’s words. It was as if everything they had just said had been wiped out.
The band abruptly fell silent and the dancers turned their heads to see what was happening. Angry voices could be heard, probably an ordinary quarrel among boys, inevitable at these evenings and now well overdue. The band struck up once more and the separated dancers came together again. Others had migrated to the toilets. Migena and Linda unthinkingly headed in that direction. Curious eyes followed them. The toilet doors swung open and shut incessantly. Boys were smoking cigarettes half in secret. Passages shrouded in semi-darkness led off the main corridor. Migena and Linda wandered blindly towards them, perhaps to get away from the noise of the doors and the unpleasant odour. The sound of the band receded. Here and there, the silhouettes of couples could be seen. Linda pushed open a door, surprised that the chemistry laboratory should have been left open. They entered and stood between the open door and the long shelves of bottles and test tubes. A pale light illuminated the inscriptions on the bottles, which they knew so well: potassium bicarbonate; the two rival acids – sulphuric and hydrochloric – which stuck in their memories from their many exams and also the vindictive rage of a classmate who out of jealousy had vowed to disfigure the face of a girl in 3B with H2SO4. Next came the poisons, their cold bottles no doubt locked up, as if sequestered from this world. ‘What a lot of poisons,’ Linda said quietly.
The music could barely be heard except for the saxophone, whose piercing shriek grew louder. The silence lasted longer than it should have done and Migena silently prayed that Linda would not resume the conversation about internment, but it seemed to her that it was Linda’s right to speak first.
Linda was attentively studying her friend’s face. With a gentle, dream-like movement her fingers touched Migena’s lower lip, and then both lips together.
‘How strange,’ she said. ‘These lips have been kissed. By his lips.’
‘I didn’t know how to reply. It was too awful for words. I couldn’t cope with it.
‘How strange, she said again, and drew her lips to mine. It was an odd kiss, stiff and frigid. In this way we kissed each other, until Linda asked, Did you go further?
‘Any delay in my reply would have been fatal. So would telling the truth. These thoughts did not come to me clearly, yet I felt both of them like an electrical discharge. I had to reply at once, and at all costs conceal the truth.
‘I shook my head in denial, without taking my eyes off her, convinced that this was the only way.
‘No, I said aloud, he only stroked my breasts.
‘What more could I say? She didn’t ask anything else. With her delicate fingers she unfastened the buttons of her blouse while her other hand searched for my own. She wore no bra, and neither did I, which was the recent fashion among girls who felt confident in their figures. She drew my hand to her breasts, whispered, Do it like him, and stood motionless with her eyes half-closed. An icy shiver ran through us as if a door into the unknown had suddenly been opened.
‘We were not lesbians, either of us. It was something else.’
Rudian imagined this moment, and he thought of it during the hours and days that followed, without being able to define what it was. It was something stranger than lesbianism, more singular, and doubtless more transgressive. There was no name for it. Nothing that had happened between the girls had a name yet, especially the experience of that moment. They were both close and distant. Two girls inter-, supra-, trans-caressing. And between them: frozen, uncomprehending, soulless spaces. If Migena was a courier of death, as he had said, what role was left for Linda? A girl who sent her body a long distance to perform the rites of love, without which she would find no peace? Usually it was the opposite, the soul rushing to overcome obstacles, while the body remained a physical hostage to a place. But here something unprecedented was happening. Her body was striving to acquire the characteristics of a soul, or if it were not her own body, then its simulacrum, or understudy . . . the body of her closest friend.
They were both beyond the laws of this world. In consequence, what had happened must have been unprecedented in the history of the planet. Something appointed by destiny, to be accomplished by two girls – daughters of socialism, as the phrase went – in a godforsaken Albanian province at the end of the twentieth century.
During this part of the story, Rudian Stefa had felt for the second time, yet more hopelessly, a slab-like weight on his chest. You bastard, he thought. You rat. Nothing he had written would have any value after this.
Linda held her breath. Only in this way could she catch the quiet scraping noise, accompanied by what seemed like faint, very faint voices, which she had dimly sensed before Migena mentioned them to her.
It was real. Something like the scraping of a door, some very soft voices, and a muffled scream or perhaps a burst of laughter froze her completely.
In panic, Linda covered her chest, and craned her head to the right and left. Migena whispered, ‘Perhaps it’s our imagination.’ But nothing could still their shaking terror.
They went out into the corridor and in confusion walked in the direction of the music. There was not a soul to be seen, and Migena said again that perhaps they were imagining things.
The familiar din of the ball drew closer. They passed the toilet doors, still slamming. Boys with cigarettes, a few holding beer bottles and with dangerous looks. At last, the safety of the hubbub that seemed now to have reached its peak.
They plunged into the sea of dancers, and hoped not to look conspicuous as they followed each other, looking for a safe corner. They pretended nothing had happened, but were scared by the glances of alarm that focused on them. Some curious onlookers put their heads together to whisper, and then broke into laughter. The teacher on duty wore a glacial expression. Somebody mentioned the poet Sappho and then something about modern ways. It was useless to pretend they didn’t understand.
What had happened? Who had seen them? How had the rumour spread so fast? Nothing could be understood in the noisy confusion now drowning every word. Between the savagery of the band and the wail of the saxophone that grew louder with every dance, furtive whispering counted for nothing.
How was she able to rise above it all? Where did she find the strength?
Migena would ask herself these questions many times later, but at that moment she could think only of how to escape. Linda, who so rarely lost her cool head, seemed even worse. She was the first to say ??
?Let’s go’. But also the first to hesitate: ‘No, better stay.’
Any last hope that their panic might have been excessive was dashed when they heard Flora Dulaku of 4B pipe up, ‘You were hiding away?’ Her squire erupted into laughter. ‘Leave them be, it takes all sorts.’ Somebody to their right butted in with: ‘New experiences.’
‘Scum,’ Migena burst out, unable to hold back her tears.
To their horror, the ball was ending. The saxophonist gave a farewell howl until he looked about to collapse on the floor, and everything stopped.
Among the shouts, farewell embraces and tears, they were now the only ones excluded. Like does cornered by hunters they ran to the exit, not knowing that worse things awaited them there.
A boy puffed his cigarette smoke in the couple’s hair, and followed it with a savage whistle, while another trailed beside them, wailing ‘Decadence,’ then ‘Life on Lesbos,’ and a little further on the phrase ‘the whole world’ came up again, this time drawn out in the song:
Lovely breasts like yours,
The whole world will adore.
Another boy shouted to his mate, ‘Hey Blendi, Blendi,’ and completed the verse:
Lucky the girl who’s tried them.
She’ll live for evermore.
More shouts came: Hey Blendi, classic, eh? Get the difference? Lucky the girl who’s tried them. Girl, not boy. Ha ha, phew! Bunch of lezzies.
The whistling grew wilder. How had their assailants managed to take up positions so far away, like in an ambush? The darkness thickened and the whistling came out of the murk, blind and cruel. ‘Over here, Linda.’ ‘No, go away.’ ‘I’ll walk you home.’ ‘No, I’ll go myself. Go away. No . . .’
‘And so we parted, without coming to any understanding. I didn’t know if I would see her again.’
Even before she finished, Rudian knew what had happened the next day in the little provincial town. On that confused, damp morning when Migena left early on the long-distance bus, the meetings would have already begun. At the Party Committee, for sure. At the Secretariat for Internal Affairs. In the school. The neighbourhood. Class enemies, although facing defeat, are still active. After their sabotage and conspiracies have failed, these hostile forces have resorted to different tactics, using perversion and sex.
For two days Linda did not leave her home. She could endure no more. It was not hard to find poison in this agricultural town.
Her parents discovered her in the morning, totally discoloured. A sheet of paper on which she had apparently wanted to write something remained blank.
They buried her that same afternoon, using the municipal cart that did service whenever the hearse broke down. A lock of chestnut hair poked out from the blanket covering her body on the open bier, which swayed with the movement of the cart. Her parents and little brother followed with a municipal employee and, a few paces behind them, a stranger with a cap and the collar of his overcoat raised.
This stranger in the dark coat who didn’t want to be recognised provided a last curious twist to the story. Most people suspected him to be someone to do with Internal Affairs. But others said with lowered voices that this secret mourner was none other than the gym teacher.
13
TWO WEEKS LATER. RUDIAN STEFA’S MORNING
HE WOKE AT more or less the time he thought it was, about eleven. This was a good sign. He didn’t like to find it was twelve, when he expected it to be half past five, or the other way round. But still he swore under his breath, spluttering and letting rip with mankind’s most common expletive that serves for any occasion. Dreaming of it brings good luck, they say.
He emerged from the bathroom with a few protracted yawns and among them, unrelated to any flu or cold, a strong, emptily triumphant sneeze that rang through the apartment.
His legs carried him against his will to his desk, where his papers had lain scattered in disorder since yesterday. He bent over them with almost childish curiosity, as if he believed they might have written themselves during the night.
What he saw was not encouraging. The mercilessly crossed-out lines loomed black, and the survivors huddled awkwardly, as if cowering in shame amidst the carnage. He let out a deep breath and his mood plummeted. What a hell of a business, he thought, swallowing with difficulty that other word he had recently tried hard to avoid in his writing.
He started to read.
Act One. Scene One. Warehouse at the copper-enrichment plant. Sacks or trucks full of ore. Brigade-leader SHPEND and his ASSISTANT at work on them. Enter HUNGARIAN ADVISER.
HUNGARIAN ADVISER (greeting them): Good morning, comrades!
SHPEND and his ASSISTANT (in chorus): Good morning, Comrade Imre!
ADVISER: Vairy neece weather, yes?
SHPEND and ADVISER: Lovely.
The word was unavoidable as Rudian crunched the paper into a ball. He wanted to weep.
The week before, on the psychiatrist’s advice and in an attempt to avert depression, he had decided to start a new play. He had found an old synopsis in his notes, which looked surprisingly promising; in an industrial plant producing copper for export, traces of gold are unexpectedly found in the ore.
Like most of his notes, the synopsis was both concise and very vague. The phrases bore little relation to one another. After Gold in the copper ore? came the word ‘strange’ – twice even. Then identical trucks: black, boring, carrying who knew what substance. Then incomprehensible phrases, as if they had something to hide. Which country was the customer? In fact there were two. The first country, the earlier customer, belonged to the communist bloc, and hadn’t mentioned the gold. So it was behaving dishonestly. The other country, which came later, did mention the gold, so was honest. Which country was it? He’d forgotten. The main point was the trucks running along rails, endless black trucks. With the hidden gleam of gold in their loads.
The synopsis looked as if it had been broken off. He was about to kick himself, but remembered that this was how he preferred his summaries. He was convinced that only in this way, with brief, vague, mysterious phrases, would they keep their suggestive power.
His eyes slid over his old handwriting, and he felt a first spark strike from his brain. Then another. Gold among the copper. A pale radiance, smothered by the mineral darkness. A secret message found somewhere deep down.
He could almost hear the murmur of his working brain. But the sparks were weak, and growing paler. They were almost extinguished. Oh no, he howled. Don’t you leave me too.
Now he tried to think without their help. It was the question of which country would speak up about the gold. The second customer. It couldn’t be the first one. Identity forgotten, it said in his notes. After the quarrel with the socialist camp, all the old contracts were torn up. The new customer, the honest country that had drawn attention to the gold, definitely mustn’t be a Western state, but there were no friendly states left. After China, North Korea had gone too. That theatre delegation had been merely the latest effort to patch up relations with Cuba, of course in vain.
What the hell, he had to find some country that fitted the play, or rather his depression. He was no longer meeting Migena. They had both decided not to see each other, at least for a time. Albana’s phone calls were petering out. Her internship in Austria had been extended again.
Some state, he thought numbly. He couldn’t have the gold discovered by German or British Marxist–Leninists. Only Angola was left, although relations were very fragile after two snakes had got into the embassy building in Luanda and bitten the Albanian consul. It was said that the snakes were just a pretext, like in the story of that Trojan leader, and the real reason for the delicate relations was the presence of the Russians.
He thought of the map of the Soviet bloc, which always looked larger than it was. Endless wastes that expressed nothing. Leaving the bloc had brought neither exhilaration nor regret.
Automatically he went to his desk again, threw the ball of paper into the basket and took out a fresh sheet. Bez
slyoz, bez zhizni, bez lyubvi. Without tears, without life, without love. Pushkin’s cold line, as if straight from the icebox. Act One. Scene One, he wrote again. His right eye watched his writing hand in astonishment.
Ore Collection Point. Enter CZECH ADVISER.
CZECH ADVISER: Glory to labour, comrade.
ALBANIAN LABOURER: Morning, lad.
CZECH ADVISER: No good marning, that word mistake. Glory to labour. That’s what say in Prague. Good marning forbeeden.
ALBANIAN LABOURER: Aye.
Rudian felt the last spark die. Nothing. Just slag. No gold, no divine spark anywhere.
Don’t do this to me, he thought, without knowing whom he was addressing. He stood up, perplexed, and found himself next to the same part of his bookshelves where the meteorite had struck so many weeks ago between Scott Fitzgerald and Toponyms. A new place name should have been added to this book: the Rock of the Bride Killed by Lightning. Or simply, Black Rock.
It was here that he had hit her, at first without realising it. Only later did Migena mention, quite naturally, ‘when you hit me there by the bookshelves’. After that he believed it too. When I hit you, my darling, that evening.
He had vowed it wouldn’t happen again. But he reached out to rearrange the books so that at least Fitzgerald wouldn’t be there if it did.
When I hit you, my darling, in front of a fellow writer. You lout, he said to himself. He had struck on the head the best girl in the world, heedless of the scandal, her protests, the possible X-ray.
For days he had been wandering round that dim world of X-rays of one sort or another.
He knew it was useless requesting Linda’s breast scan. The hospital would say that her family had it. Her family would surely say that the investigators took it during the house search, with her diary, her few photographs, and of course the book with his dedication.