“I understand you when you say that together you get on wonderfully and then you quarrel on the phone, although, in my case, with the man I have, the opposite happens – we say sweet nothings on the phone and as soon as we see each other we’re at each other’s throats. I understand that bit, darling, but the other things, about slaves and masters, seem way over the top.”
“I know, I know, that’s how other people’s problems always seem.” Sometimes, explaining a quarrel to her girlfriend was more exhausting than the original argument itself. “I’m trying to tell you simply that he’s preventing me from living my life. I’m not saying he does this on purpose, but the truth is that he has me tied hand and foot and he won’t let me go. His life is going downhill. Mine isn’t, and he only drags me after him. He doesn’t think of me, how young I am, the sacrifices I’m making.
“As I said before, the problem is that it’s hard to quarrel with him, and still harder to win. Once I sobbed out that I had given him my entire youth and asked nothing in return and he replied coldly that he had also given me the best part of his life.” That was how their arguments usually ended. After them he would move on, confident that she would follow. Because he had known from the start that she would follow him, while she had only realised this later, and, crazy as she was, had not only admitted as much to him, but had also written it in letters. Did she understand now?
“No. I don’t understand you,” was her friend’s reply. “You told me the opposite in your letters. You wrote that you were happy, madly in love. After all, every one of us expects this from life, to fall in love. There’s something unpleasant about this expression, looked at from the outside. Falling in love. A bit like falling into a pit, a trap, a kind of servitude. You have every right to get angry with this man Besfort if he treats you badly. But you have no right to get angry about the things that made you fall in love with him in the first place. You should thank him. And if you decide suddenly that this relationship is a mistake, then that’s your fault and not his. Rovena, darling, I don’t understand these things you say. Maybe there are other things that you’re not telling me. I don’t think you know yourself what you want.”
This was in fact the truth: Rovena did not know what she wanted. His jealousy made her angry, but his indifference infuriated her even more. During one of her outbursts about this infamous obstacle that prevented her from living, after his bitter retort, “Aha, so you’ve got some adventure in mind,” he had uttered the hateful phrase: “Do what you want. We’ve never promised fidelity.”
Really? she said to herself. Is that all I mean to you? Just you wait and see.
For days the sour aftertaste of this phone conversation lingered. You will see, she repeated to herself. The day will come and you’ll throw off your mask.
In the midst of her anger, she wondered what that day would be like and what lay behind this mask – and she longed to find out.
He still stood motionless by the window, or rather his back did.
Rovena made a final effort to sleep, even for a few minutes, in the hope of giving the day a different beginning. Like every day of crisis, it was starting badly. A few happy memories were not enough to put it back on course, as she used to imagine. Her memory of the first morning, for instance, when she had woken up in love with Besfort. No doubt the best part of every love story. Towards dawn, alone, in front of your new master. In other words, the tyrant you have fashioned for yourself. The curtains of the room, and your hair on the pillow, the longing in your breasts, all these things that he took one by one into his custody, were transformed.
She could not summon that day to mind, or rather did not want to. A messed-up day like this one called for different memories, of triumph and the spicy taste of revenge, of Lulu’s soft lips as they first kissed in the car, of the music to which she freely allowed the Slovak student to caress her on the dance floor. The first time in her life that she had kissed a woman, and the first time she had been with another man since she met Besfort.
Some vague fear kept her from concentrating. The direction her memories had taken was not a good omen. They say that memories become more intense before a break-up.
She knew this, but there was nothing she could do. She could not endure this fear, with its threat of emptiness. It was worse than the fear when Lulu had first warned her against him. “Listen, darling, and don’t think I am just jealous. I really am jealous, and I’m not hiding it, but jealousy would never make me warn somebody that they might be murdered. I know you don’t believe me, but from all you say he has all the marks of a murderer. That is what murderers are like these days, all sorts of surprising people. You can be murdered by the last person you expect, your financial adviser or piano tuner, or the priest who says mass on Sunday. Don’t be misled by his white shirts, his ties and those briefcases with the EU logo. Darling, I’m not paranoid, believe me. I know from experience what they are like. That special whiteness of your skin scares me. It tempts that sort of person.”
Lulu only hinted at what she meant by this, for all Rovena’s questioning. According to her, there was a kind of lustrous pallor which was particularly attractive to unstable minds.
The door creaked and she opened her eyes. He was no longer by the window. He must have gone down to drink a coffee, something he often did lately.
Now that he was gone, her mind seemed able to range more freely.
She imagined him sitting pensively at the corner of the bar, as he had done long ago at the café in the Palace of Culture. She had recognised him from a distance on one of his visits to the university over that problem that seemed to drag on without end, but this was the first time that she had looked at him calmly, as he sat with his coffee cup.
This time it had been Rovena who explained to her girlfriend, with whom she was sitting and eating ice cream, the mystery of this man who had got into trouble over Israel, or rather over a chess tournament that he was not supposed to play, or not supposed to lose, she wasn’t sure. It was a complicated business. Perhaps he wasn’t supposed to win it.
“You’ve got me confused. Is he a chess player? You said he was going to teach international law. What a blank look he has. It must be because of what has happened.”
“No, I don’t think he’s a professional player, but I think there are foreigners in the tournaments. You think he has a blank look? It’s that vacancy that I particularly like.”
“I think he’s got under your skin,” said her friend.
Rovena replied, “I don’t know. Perhaps he has. But it was so impossible.”
“What was impossible?”
“Everything. Starting from his coming to the faculty, where we had all expected him…”
“Of course it was impossible, after that… mistake,” said her friend.
The rattling of the chains dragging the dictator’s statue through the centre of Tirana kept interrupting her thoughts. It was this sound, louder than any earthquake, that divided past from present. Everything that had once been impossible suddenly became real, such as his invitation over dinner, a week after they had met, to a three-day conference in a Central European city.
She had said nothing. She had lowered her eyes in shame and a mist had crept over the evening after dinner, and over the whole world.
All through that sleepless night, the same questions turned feverishly round in my brain. What was this invitation? Was it sexual? Of course it was. What else could it be? Alone in a hotel. Three days, in other words three nights, with a man that you have still not embraced. Oh God, it couldn’t mean anything else. And she started again: what if he didn’t mean what she thought? What if they didn’t share a room? But of course they would. It could only be a double room. A double bed too.