What sort of thing did you hear people say about Minister D—?
Delicate things. Very…tricky.
Are you sure you heard them? Couldn’t they have been figments of your guilty conscience?
I don’t know …It could have been both.
Both, eh? Of course it was you and your brother, your whole typically petty-bourgeois family, who made them all up. All very well for them, but you — an official in a government office — how could you indulge in such vile slander? But let’s get down to the rumours themselves. You say they were about delicate matters. What sort of delicate matters?
Well…Some complicated affair about tanks. They were supposed to encircle some kind of committee…
A Party committee?
That’s right!
Was there anything about the Chinese?
In connection with the minister? No, never.
Delve into your memory. Dig deeper.
What?
Despite her self-reproaches after Simon Dersha’s departure, Linda soon found herself staring round at the empty room and the silent telephone, and beginning to fall back into her former state. She would have relapsed completely but for the fact that it was nearly the end of the working day, and there wasn’t time for her to sink into what she now didn’t scruple to think of as pain,
At half-past two, partly with relief, partly with regret at the end of another of the few bitter-sweet days when she would be alone with the telephone, she locked up the office and made her way slowly down the broad staircase.
All that afternoon and evening she kept herself busy with trivial things, so that she almost forget the agitations of the morning. If she did think of them, she put them down to a passing weakness induced by spending so much time all alone in the office. But as soon as she got in to work the next day, she was overcome by exactly the same feelings as before. Could one really be affected like this, all of a sudden, without even being able to see the object of one’s obsession? Was this love? If so, what kind of love? Her second, or the first real one in her life? In any case, how could it come out of nowhere?
But the more she thought of it the more she realized that it had been coming on for a long time, slowly, invisibly, like a stream flowing secretly under snow. Everything remotely to do with him had become engraved on her mind — not only all Silva had told her, but all aspects of public events, past and present, that he was connected with. Anything relating to the Soviets or the Chinese had become associated for her with something about his looks or words or gestures. Even before she met him she had longed to know the mystery man whose life had included both Moscow and Ana Krasniqi. And after she’d met him, she longed more and more to meet him again. Whenever the television news showed an international conference, or she read something in a book or paper about the Moscow Congress, she thought of him: he became a kind of myth. The person she had actually met was merely one facet, a superficial^ everyday aspect of an infinitely complex and inaccessible personality. He’d become so closely identified with the age he lived in that she’d failed to notice that she herself belonged to another era. Only now did she realize that there was something rather cold and artificial in her feeling for him so far.
She had made inquiries about his former fiancée: the reason why he had broken off the engagement — like many other things about him — had never been clear. Linda had heard that a month ago, at some engagement party where the conversation turned to the break with China, Besnik’s ex-fiancée had stopped her ears and shouted almost hysterically, practically in tears, “Stop it! I can’t bear to hear any more about it! Please, please, stop!” The person who told Linda about this incident treated it a§ a mere anecdote, but Linda guessed at once what lay behind it. The mention of the Chinese must have reminded the young woman of the break with the Soviets, and the days when her hoped-for happiness had been destroyed.
Now that, as she though^ she was seeing things more clearly, Linda decided to let matters take their course. He was bound to ring up one of these days. She imagined some variations on the ensuing conversation. “Hallo — is that you, Silva?” “No, if s her colleague, Linda.” “Oh yes — haven’t we met?” “Yes.” “How are you?…is Silva there?” “I’m afraid not.” — Linda pulled a face at her owe hypocrisy — “She’s away on a mission.” “Oh.” This was the critical moment. The pause that seemed to cut the world in two. “Can I be of any use?’’ “Well…I wanted to speak to her…I don’t know if…” “I’m at your service!” “Well, could I see you,thee?”
Oh no! That wasn’t it at all! Far too banal Neither of them could be so tedious as that. They mustn’t be! And that awful, coy “At your service!” Absolutely not!
As if winding back a tape recorder, she made a fresh start. “Suva’s away on a mission.“ “Oh,” A pause. Fragile; precarious; they could hear one another’s breathing. “So how are you managing, all alone in the office?” “Oh, working as best I can. Getting bored,” Yes, that was much better. “And what do you get up to in the afternoon?” “What?” “I asked what you did in the afternoon.” “I heard what you said, bet I don’t quite know what to answer.”
Linda’s imagination then leaped forward a few hours, and saw them sitting opposite one another having tea in the Café Flora. “To tell you the truth, I’d been wanting to meet you for a long time. I thought you were so interesting…” Ugh! That wouldn’t do at all! Much too direct. It might be better to talk about Silva to begin with. “Silva told me about you — we’ve been working in the same office for a long time, Silva and I…” No — that sounded as if she was one of those timid souls who dragged her friend along to a date to give her courage. “Whenever the break with China comes up, Silva and I talk about you…” That wasn’t too bad, either. It gave him a chance to say something interesting about current events, like a character in a modern novel.
Suddenly it occurred to Linda that the phone hadn’t rung all the morning. Perhaps it was out of order! She flew over and picked up the receiver. No, it was all right — she could hear the dialling tone, She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry.
Four days went by like this. The team that had gone to the steel complex might be back at any moment. Linda felt she would look back with regret on all these lonely, fruitless but in a way thrilling hours. On the fifth day, just before two o’clock, when she had already given up hope, the phone rang. Superstitiously, she let it ring three times, thinking that would turn any call into a call from “him”. When she picked up the receiver she was almost sure of it. Yet strangely enough her hand was quite steady, and her face showed no emotion even after she recognized his voice, But the phone felt as if it weighed a ton, and everything else in the world seemed grey and monotonous.
They exchanged a few words: Silva … I remember meeting you…afternoon…Nothing of what she’d imagined.
She put down the phone as calmly as she had picked it up, thee stood there for a while by the empty desk. It looked preternaterally bare, like something on the eve of great changes.
The hotel lift was out of order, and Silva, late already, ran down the stairs. Her colleagues were waiting for her by the minibus. They looked glum.