“Good morning,” said Silva. “Anything new?”.
“The Chinese have gone,” said Illyrian.
The rest of them just went on smoking. From their expressions they might have been at a funeral.
“When?” Silva asked.
“Perhaps during the night. Perhaps just before dawn. Well soon know,’ said the boss, climbing into the bus.
As it drove along, Silva looked out at the frozen plain. A few sombre-coloured birds swooped low over the landscape. In the distance she was somewhat reassured to see smoke still pouring from the furnaces. Bet one of these days it won’t be there any more, she thought. It’ll be like when someone holds a mirror to a dead man’s lips.
The comings and going at the complex seemed different today, but perhaps that was just because everyone knew what had happened. The Chinese had vanished without warning, like ghosts. Albanian technicians had already taken their places. Everyone seemed to have gone deaf and dumb. But all eyes asked the same question: What are we going to do now? In the head office, a group of engineers gazed blankly at shelves full of files containing the complex’s production plans. They were all in Chinese. The shriek of a passing locomotive expressed the engineers’ anguish better than any human voice could have done.
A vice-minister had just arrived from Tirana: the minister for heavy industry would have come himself, but he was said to be ill. Rumour had it he’d been dismissed.
The panting of the furnace could be heard everywhere. Or perhaps everyone thought they could hear it, because they knew it was ailing. Whenever Silva heard someone say, “The furnace is going out,” she remembered Gjergj’s frozen snakes in the snow.
Back at the hotel, her room seemed more desolate than ever. She felt like writing to Gjergj, and even got her pen and writing pad out of her briefcase, but instead of starting a letter she found herself tracing the words, “winter’s day”. She remembered the snakes again, and realized she was falling into the same trap as Gjergj and Skënder Bermema in their hotel rooms in Peking. Nevertheless her hand still continued with, “It’s not true I killed Duncan for his throne,” She laughed and crossed it all out. Then sat for some time, pen poised, wondering whether to follow “Dear Gjergj” with “I miss you” or “What a pity we didn’t have more time together…”
Forty-eight hours after the Chinese left, the situation was still the same — simultaneously paralysed and nervous.
Concern about the furnace had gradually distracted attention from everything else in the complex, though the other units had their problems too. Even in the town there was only one subject on everybody’s lips: how were they going to get rid of the slag? Would the furnace go out?
A batch of reporters had come from Tirana, followed by a horde of young poets. Red-eyed with lack of sleep, they all roamed round the bars and workshops, showing one another their verses and articles. They often compared the furnace to the medieval citadel in the town, claiming that the “new fortress of steel” was even more impregnable than the old one. Others composed odes entitled “The flames will never go out,” or “We will throw our hearts into the furnace,” or “To Fire…” ln the last, the flames of the furnace were a positive symbol, but in “Back, clinkers!”, slag was used to represent revisionists and every other influence inimical to socialism, including decadent art
Meanwhile, as it was absolutely necessary to consult the production plans in the original Chinese, a group of students just back from China was sent for from Tirana. As they tumbled noisily off the train they told all and sundry they were sure they’d be equal to the task: they’d eaten dishes made up of sharks’ ears and cobras’ innards, among other abominations, and they were familiar with all the tricks of the Chinks and the snares of their language. Some gave themselves nicknames like The Three Scourges of the Country or Look before you Purge.
But after a few hours in head office, the students had to admit they were flummoxed. One was said to have asked his friend, The Seven Demons of the City, “Can you make head or tail of these hieroglyphics?” By way of reply, The Seven Demons swore horribly in both languages. And that was the end of their reputation as translators. The authorities were for sending all the students back, but some of them had already joined up with the young poets, and they all roved round the bars together. Two got engaged to a couple of lab assistants, and so that they shouldn’t be sent away, someone had the bright idea of co-opting them into the workers’ amateur theatricals. The students were cast as Chinese baddies in their current show.
Silva and her colleagues went to see it, and as they came out afterwards, still laughing, she heard someone calling her name. But when she turned round, she didn’t recognize the two youths who had hailed her. Or they might have been men, for their faces were quite black,
“Don’t you know who I am?” said one of them. “Of course, like this, it’s not surprising…I look more like Othello!”
“Ben!” cried Silva, surprised to find it was Besnik Strega’s brother. “No, I really didn’t recognize you! How long have you been here?”
“Several weeks. Let me introduce my friend — Max Bermema, We work together,”
The other young man’s face was even blacker.
“Are you related to Skënder Bermema?” asked Silva.
“I’m his cousin,”
She was going to ask why their faces were so black, but Ben spoke first.
“Max and I work in the blast furnace — that’s why we look like delegates from the Third World!”
They all laughed, but Silva was embarrassed that the two young men had met her coming out of such a low form of entertainment.
“Does an engineer called Victor Hila work with you?” she asked,
“Yes, we’re all on the same shift.”
“And how are you going to deal with the furnace?”
“We’ve put forward a suggestion. Let’s hope it’ll be accepted.”
“So you’re going to unblock it?”
“Yes. With an explosion. We’ve been up several nights working out the figures.”
Silva looked from one to the other.
“Isn’t it dangerous?”
They smiled, but their black faces made their smiles so weird that Silva was quite taken aback. She looked round at them after they’d gone, to reassure herself, but it was too late. Their faces had already vanished into the dark.
Silva walked on and caught up with her colleagues. But for some time she couldn’t get those shadowy smiles out of her mind.
17
UNDER THE SHOWER, Silva decided she wouldn’t tell Gjergj the news she’d brought back with her in the order in which she’d gone over it in her mind on the journey back.
She had arrived home suddenly by the last train, to her own and her daughter’s delight. As she turned off the shower, she knew that Gjergj, back in their room, would be imagining the water pounding on her skin. She wiped the mist off the bathroom mirror, and saw the rejection of the joy that filled her own body.
This time she was the one back from a journey. She was even bringing as many stories about China as if she’d been to a miniature version of that country itself.
She said as much to Gjergj when she went back into their bedroom and bent over him,
“Did you miss me? Really? Very much?”
She went on murmuring sweet but earthy nothings into his ear until laughs and whispers changed into choking gasps, in accordance with the great paradox of nature that expresses the height of human pleasure by the sounds of suffering.
Only afterwards did Silva get round to telling her husband the other half of her news. Then:
“And what about here?” she said, “Anything new?”