At the entrance to Tirana the line of vehicles was barely moving. A traffic policeman walked past their car and Besfort asked him if there had been an accident. The policeman glanced at their licence plate out of the corner of his eye before he answered.
“The queen is dead,” he said.
Besfort switched on the radio and they heard the queen mentioned. But the voices were raised in anger. They were arguing. By the time they reached Kavaja Street it became clear what it was all about: the funeral ceremony and also the site of her grave. The government, as always, was caught on the wrong foot.
“Just wait, they’ll appeal to some commission in Brussels next,” said Rovena.
Near Skenderbeg Square they heard a statement from the Royal Court. A requiem for the queen would be sung at St. Paul’s Cathedral at three o’clock that afternoon. No word about the burial site. The government had still not issued a ruling about the restitution of the king’s property, including the family graves, in the south-east of the capital.
They had almost reached Rovena’s house when the radio broadcast a second statement from the court. The place of burial was still undecided.
“This is scandalous,” Rovena said, opening the car door.
On his way back, Besfort wanted to take the street past the cathedral, but it was cordoned off. After an announcement that the parliament would convene for an emergency session early in the afternoon, the radio carried interviews with ordinary passers-by. “This is a disgrace, a total disgrace,” said one anonymous citizen. “To begrudge a patch of land for the queen’s grave, it’s crazy.” – “And you, sir?” – “I don’t know much about these things. I think we should follow the law. The law should hold good for the wife of the king or the president as for everybody else.” – “Are you alluding to the dictator’s widow?” – “What? No, no. Don’t get me mixed up in that sort of thing. I was talking about the queen and other serious issues, not about that old witch.”
The radio interrupted the interviews to announce that a third statement from the Royal Court was imminent.
Chapter Twelve
The Hague. The last forty days.
For a long time there was no evidence that Besfort Y., and still less both of them, had been in The Hague forty days before the end of the story. In fact, indications that they were in Denmark on that day seemed to eliminate the slightest suspicion of such a thing. Rovena’s friend in Switzerland, usually cautious in her testimony, was certain of it: Rovena had phoned from the train just after crossing the Danish border. Jottings in Rovena’s notebook, made four days before, supplied further evidence of her intended journey. “Jutland. Saxo Grammaticus. Villages where the events of Hamlet (Amleth) took place… Two-day visit.”
In fact, suspicions regarding The Hague had taken root immediately after the reported exclamation “I’ll see you both in The Hague”, uttered by Rovena’s intimate friend Liza.
There was no supporting evidence for a visit to The Hague from travel tickets or hotel registrations. The convincing alibi of Denmark also nearly banished this suspicion as quickly as it had arisen. This trip was like one of those imaginary journeys that take place in the minds of would-be travellers, or, in the case of The Hague, in the minds of those who are keen to see someone in the dock. However, a few lines in the diary of Janek B., Rovena’s Slovak classmate and casual lover, mentioned again the fateful destination of The Hague. In this diary was a brief and obscure description of a nightmare in which the dreamer saw pieces of white paper announcing apartments for sale stuck on telephone poles, but from a distance looking like a summons to the Hague Tribunal.
The discovery of another diary notebook put an end to the confusion by making sense of the writer’s style and casting light on both the relationship between the Slovak and the beautiful Albanian and the matter of the nightmare, which was not the Slovak student’s, but Besfort’s.
“After that unexpectedly generous night, R. changed,” wrote Janek B. In a few terse words he described his pain, although he avoided using the word “pain” itself, and particularly that other word, “suffering”.
His notes were vague, with phrases often left incomplete, but they still conveyed the distress he had felt the following evening when Rovena had failed to keep her appointment at the bar.
He drank. He tried not to show how he felt in front of others. A few days previously he had said half-jokingly, “We from the East have had our share of suffering. Let us not suffer in love too. Now it’s the turn of you Westerners.”
He thought he saw the retort in the eyes of one of his friends, “My dear Janek, there is suffering under any regime.”
Rovena was different when she came to the university the next day. She explained that someone had arrived from her own country, Albania. Her face was pale, and in her nervous haste she could not concentrate. A mafia type? A trafficker in women? A lover? Janek B. made three guesses about this mysterious visitor. Which was most likely? The newspapers were full of reports of Albanian gangsters. They arrived from their distant country, made threats and then vanished, leaving emptiness and terror behind them.
Janek B. had tactfully broached the subject with Rovena, but she had blinked and failed to understand him. When she had grasped what he was on about, she said no, he had nothing to do with things like that, not with… trafficking… threats…
He wanted to shake her by the shoulders and ask: “What the hell is the matter with you?” But something stopped him. “R. in the bar this evening again. But it’s no go now.” They sat next to each other as before, under the curious gaze of the other students from the East. They were hard people to figure out. Who knows what the dictatorships did to them.
Rovena’s eyes would sparkle cheerfully, only to grow dull and cloud over as she became pensive again. Did she remember that they had slept together? This question haunted Janek. He did not know how to remind her without causing offence. “Yesterday I managed to say to her: ‘Do you remember that beautiful night, when we danced together for the first time and when later…’”
The blood froze in his veins as he waited for her response. Her eyelashes hung long and heavy. She finally looked up to say, “Yes, it was beautiful.” Her voice was soft, neither cold nor tender. She could have been talking about a painting. He mentioned her visitor from far away. Who knows where the subject will lead, he thought. Rovena lowered her eyes, but the question did not seem to annoy her. Emboldened, he pressed on. “Are you always thinking about him?”
He spoke gently, almost in a whisper. When she raised her eyes, not only did she not show any trace of irritation, but her expression was full of gratitude. “How stupid of me not to realise that she didn’t want to talk about anyone else,” wrote Janek.
“I like complicated men,” she said later, after a long silence.
“Complicated in what way?” he asked.
“In every way.”
His earlier suspicions returned. Was this man mixed up in some shady business? Was he dangerous? Plenty of women fell in love with criminals. It had been quite the fashion recently.
Rovena toyed with the ends of her hair like a high-school girl in love. “He is complicated,” she went on, as if talking to herself. Janek was cut to the heart to see her eyes damp with tears. “One night he cried out in his sleep because of a nightmare,” she went on. Janek thought that if shouting in his sleep was the way to improve his standing in the eyes of women, he could shout to bring the house down, but he did not dare say this. He tried to look interested while Rovena told him about this man’s nightmare, the famous one about the summons to The Hague stuck to telegraph poles, bus stops and trees.