Silva started to clear the table, as if she were trying to get rid of the remains of the argument too. She soon disposed of part of the débris, but when she came to Arian’s plate she felt another qualm at the sight of his helping of roast meat, with scarcely a mouthful missing. “Oh, I do hope he manages to get out of this scrape all right!” she thought.
The familiar sound of water running into the kitchen sink cheered her up a bit. She had started automatically on the washing up. Then it struck her this was an idiotic thing to do at half-past four in the morning, and she left it.
By now she was feeling cold again. She buttoned up her cardigan. The kitchen windows too were covered with frost. It must be well below zero, she thought. Thee she suddenly remembered the lemon tree that had been delivered the previous afternoon, and what the man from the nursery had said: If there’s a frost you must cover it up, otherwise it can shrivel up in a single night, It seemed crazy to think of going out on the balcony in this temperature, yet as she switched the hall light off and made to enter her bedroom, she paused. After all, why not? It wouldn’t take long to go and cover up a little plant. She went on into the bedroom, opened the cupboard over the wardrobe, and felt around for a big cellophane bag she’d stowed away there at the end of the summer. Here we are, she exclaimed, tugging at it. Then she remembered that it was full of clothes, the kind of thing you probably won’t ever wear again but can’t bring yourself to throw away. With some annoyance she started to pull the things out of the bag. There were frocks and blouses that Brikena had grown out of; a loose jersey dress that Silva herself had worn when she was pregnant; bits of lace; skeins of embroidery thread; different-coloured balls of wool; scraps of knitted sweaters started and left unfinished; and various half-forgotten frills and flounces made of materials pleasant to the touch and triggering off vague memories.
Silva tipped them all out on to the carpet, meaning to put them away later in the day, then, throwing a coat round her shoulders, went out through the French window on to the balcony.
It really was very cold, and the pale yellow light of the moon, together with the utter silence, made it seem colder still The wan brightness seemed to have cast a numbing spell on the leaves of the lemon tree, as on everything else. Looking up, Silva saw a terrifyingly smooth sky which seemed to belong to another universe. At the thought that at this very moment Gjergj might be winging his way across that treacherously featureless expanse, a shiver ran down her spine.
The lemon tree would certainly have died in the night if I hadn’t remembered to cover it up, she thought. She arranged the cellophane bag carefully over the little bunch of leaves, glad to find that it came down not only over the tree itself but also over part of the tub. Through the film of plastic the lemon tree looked nebulous, like something seen in a dream.
As Silva was about to go inside, something held her back: the waxen mask of the moon. She almost had to tear herself away from the pull of it.
Back in her bed, which still retained some warmth from her body, she found she was still trembling, not so much from the cold as because of that terrible emptiness. She couldn’t get back to sleep. Snatches of the evening’s conversation, the arguments about Albania’s relations with China, and thoughts about her brother’s situation kept whirling about in her mind in ever-increasing confusion. If you want to understand anything about China, go and see the Peking Opera…But it’s full of fearful symbols, monkeys and snakes and dragons…Silva tossed and turned. Monkeys and snakes, she murmured, trying to remember something. Oh yes — it was something she’d been told years ago by Besnik Struga. He’d said how, just as snakes appear to people in dreams as a sign of misfortune, so he had seen some in the Butrin marshes just before the break with the Soviet Union. “As you know,” he’d said to her, “I’m not and never have been superstitious, but afterwards, when things went wrong between us and the Soviet Union, I couldn’t get those snakes out of my mind. And oh, I almost forgot — do you know what happened to me a few months after the break?”
Then Besnik had told Suva how he’d been out in the street on the night of the first reception held after the rupture.
“Everyone was waiting to see a firework display, with rockets that had just arrived from China: they’d been the main topic of conversation for days. The whole sky suddenly erupted, and people looked up in delight and astonishment. For these were no ordinary fireworks — they were foreign, and as they fell they let out an eerie whistle that seemed to say, What crazy sort of a world is that down there? And as if that wasn’t enough, another kind of rocket followed, producing shapes like mythical Chinese serpents: first they all hung in a kind of curtain or fringe, then they disappeared one by one, leaving the sky black as pitch. People started shouting, 'Snakes! Snakes!’ and my own heart began to thump. 'What, more serpents?' I thought. 'Another evil omen?’ Because, don’t forget, Silva, this was the first public celebration after the crisis…”
Silva, huddled under the blankets, remembered all these incidents, and for the umpteenth time asked herself why Gjergj’s journey had had to take place just now. In her mind’s eye she saw again the black briefcase containing the secret documents he had to deliver — documents that were keeping the two of them poles apart tonight. What was that briefcase Gjergj was carrying across the sky without even knowing what was inside? And this journey…She remembered the sudden notification, the summons to see the minister, the rapid issuing of the necessary visa. The mere thought that her husband had been sent on a special mission was unnerving. He shouldn’t have gone, she told herself. And as she felt herself dropping off, her mind was filled again by visions more vivid than ever of Besnik Struga’s rockets, her brother’s imminent expulsion from the Party, and Gjergj’s mysterious briefcase. She woke up again several more times, and always those images seemed linked together by threads invisible in the darkness of the room. But soon the first gleams of an autumn dawn began to creep in through the window.
2
THE SKY WAS UNIMAGINABLY EMPTY that late October eight, A few hundred planes landing at or taking off from airports, some millions of birds, three forlorn meteorites falling unnoticed into the immensity of the ocean, a few spy satellites orbiting at a respectful distance from one another — all these put together were as nothing compared with the infinite space of the sky. It was void and desolate. No doubt if ail the birds had been rolled into one they’d have weighed more than the planes and taken up more room, but even if every plane, meteorite and satellite were added to those birds, the result still wouldn’t have filled even a tiny corner of the firmament. It was to all intents and purposes empty. No comet’s tail, seen by men as an omen of misfortune, blazed across it this autumn night. And even if it had, the history of the sky, rich as it was not — only with the lives of birds, planes, satellites and comets but also with the thunder and lightning of all the ages, would still have been a poor one compared with the history of the earth.