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. Love.”
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,