The Fall of the Stone City Read online

  His own questioning of the blind man nine years ago was where this interrogation had started. Now it was being turned against him. The investigators were repeating it word for word.

  The prisoner raised his hand to his brow. In a quiet voice he said that he needed to pull himself together.

  Of course he had suspected all the time that his guest was not what he claimed to be, and during the dinner especially. There had been moments when the two men had been on the point of admitting it to each other. “My dear unforgotten friend, aren’t you in fact dead?” And the other man’s reply. “Yes, but how could you tell? Of course I am.”

  Again the prisoner said he was not trying to hide anything. The secret that eluded him lay in the events themselves.

  Strangely, the investigators did not interrupt him.

  Ever since he had seen the colonel leaning against the armoured vehicle on the square of the city hall, two contrary thoughts had been at war inside him. Was it him or not? This man resembled his old college friend, but at the same time did not. The doctor thought of the moment when the disciples saw the risen Christ. His body was that of Jesus and yet was not. That was how the scriptures described it, soma pneumatikon, a spiritual or ethereal body.

  Gurameto saw in the investigators’ faces that the mention of Christ caused not just irritation but fear. Perhaps this was why they hadn’t interrupted him.

  Everything was like that, as if on two planes, the prisoner went on to explain. Sometimes he took the colonel to be a dead man, and indeed at times the colonel had seemed on the point of revealing himself as such. That donning and removal of the mask had probably even been a sign to him, which he had failed to understand.

  “A sign,” Shaqo Mezini muttered.

  The investigators looked at each other. For the first time, the prisoner had admitted that the conspirator had given him a sign.

  It was now past three o’clock in the morning. Gurameto, his voice faint from exhaustion, was saying that the dead man had probably come to him in a shape that was in accordance with the laws of his world and brought signs from it. That was why there was so much mystery and misunderstanding.

  The prisoner said he was no longer in a fit state. He would try to say more tomorrow.

  After a whispered consultation, the investigators told him he could rest.

  After the plane that had brought the German investigator, for the second time that week a light aircraft landed at the city’s airport. The airport had been virtually abandoned for ten years and this increase in traffic was striking. The first time, they barely managed to clear the runway of weeds and there had been no question of landing lights. In anticipation of the aircraft’s arrival, men holding torches had stood for hours in the February cold. Fortunately this second plane landed in the afternoon. At the last moment the wind from the Tepelene Gorge to the north of the city, as keen as ever, almost brought it down.

  Clearly something extraordinary was happening, but few associated it with the interrogation in the Cave of Sanisha.

  The man who disembarked from the second aircraft was a Russian investigator. His German counterpart with his gaunt, lined face had been a formidable presence, but this Russian looked unassuming. He was portly, almost bald and walked with an avuncular amble.

  Shaqo Mezini and Arian Ciu came to the airport to meet him. At first they were visibly disappointed, but their conversation with him as they walked from the runway to the little airport building made them change their minds. They quickly realised that this person must be important. They all spoke fluently in Russian and before even reaching the hotel, the two Albanian investigators felt certain that this man had come straight from the Kremlin.

  They talked in a secluded corner of the hotel. The Russian grasped the situation at once, as if he had been dealing with the case for years. He had come to provide assistance. He made it clear that he had experience of trials in Moscow that had been kept from the public.

  The Albanians described for him how the investigation stood. They told him about the German investigator’s help, about the moments when they hoped the doctors would crack and other aspects of the case about which they did not feel so confident.

  The Russian gave extraordinarily detailed instructions. In the first session they would test the prisoners’ sincerity, especially Big Dr Gurameto’s. Everything else depended on this. They would try to obtain precise answers to certain questions. What had the doctor and his foreign guest said in their private conversations during the dinner? What did the doctor know about German intentions towards Albania? There had been talk of secret discussions before the invasion with a group of pro-German Albanians who would take over the country’s government. What had been Dr Gurameto’s role in this group, if any? Why had he felt in such a strong position, almost equal to the German colonel? Where had he found the courage to speak up for the hostages, especially Jakoel the Jew? What did the Germans think about their massacre of civilians at the village of Borova? Did they feel remorse? Or did they pretend to? Who had waved that white sheet as a sign of the city’s surrender? If there was no truth in this story of the white sheet, who made it up, the Albanians or the Germans?

  The two Albanians were reluctant to interrupt the Russian, but expressed their surprise. So far they had thought they were investigating the great Jewish plot, but now they were being asked about the German occupation.

  As their discussion came to an end, the Russian investigator’s eyes gleamed. He understood what the Albanians were trying to say, but he was leading up to this. Testing the prisoner’s sincerity was merely a preparation for the final stage. First they had to make it clear to him that there was nothing that they didn’t know.

  The Russian explained that the revelation of private conversations was the most effective of all possible methods of interrogation. The prisoner might imagine all kinds of things, but never that they could know what he said in private. When he realised that they did, he would be overcome with terror.

  The Albanian investigators stared at the Russian in admiration.

  “Don’t look so astonished,” the Russian said. “I know my job and this is no bluff. We know all these things, maybe better than the prisoner does himself. For instance, we might remind him of the phrase he used, ‘I’m not Albania, Fritz, just as you aren’t Germany. We’re something else.’”

  “Excuse me,” said Shaqo Mezini. “This means that Fritz von Schwabe is still alive and he has told you of the events of that night.”

  “No,” the Russian butted in. “He’s dead. Our German colleagues have confirmed this.”

  The Russian’s clear eyes glittered with enthusiasm. The mysterious colonel really had died, but for the moment the two Albanians need not be told anything more. He knew from experience that premature revelations spoilt the proceedings. For the moment they should concentrate on this matter of private conversations. They were the key to everything.

  The next interrogation session would be decisive. The prisoner had promised to talk. The Russian investigator would watch through that same hole in the wall that Ali Pasha Tepelene had used, following for entire nights the torture of the men who had raped his sister.

  “Good God, he even knows about that,” muttered Arian Ciu.

  “What?” asked the Russian. The Albanians’ awe of him was obvious, and again their visitor’s glassy eyes glistened.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  At midnight Big Dr Gurameto was led into the Cave of Sanisha alone. This was the first time he had been interrogated without the little doctor. The handcuffs which had tied him to the other man’s right hand dangled from his wrist and his movements were clumsy. Without his colleague he felt an empty space beside him.

  “You promised to talk,” Shaqo Mezini said softly.

  The prisoner nodded.

  The questioning that night was long and tiring but the investigators did not intervene as they had in other sessions, when they had thought that a crossfire of interruptions was the best way to unsettle their vi
ctim. They now realised that not interrupting was just as disorienting.

  It struck the doctor that they were making him talk with the express purpose of wearing him down. He told them what he knew about the secret talks with the Germans before the invasion. Of course the Germans had kept a file on Albania and had their people in place. The group of German sympathisers was large. The cream of the nationalist elite, as they were known, all either had a German cultural background or supported the Germans. They included Mehdi and Mit’hat Frashëri, from the most famous Albanian family of all; the great Albanian linguist Eqrem Çabej; the country’s most admired poet, Lasgush Poradeci; Father Anton Harapi, a figure of uncompromised moral stature; the renowned scholar, Lef Nosi; the distinguished Kosovo politician Rexhep Mitrovica and dozens of others.

  Gurameto, the celebrated surgeon, expected them to ask him where he stood, so he told them himself. He had known many of these people but he did not count himself among this elite and still less was he a collaborator, any more than Çabej and Poradeci were. He did not hide that he had been inclined, tempted, like many who had studied in Germany, but this should not be confused with Nazism. It was an attraction to Germany, as was only natural. A lot of things were not as clear then as they later became. He was a surgeon and sometimes he performed ten operations in one day. He had no time for anything else. He would come home at midnight still wearing his white coat.

  Finally they butted in to remind him that the question was about the secret talks before the invasion.

  Of course he had heard about them, and in fact knew a good deal. The Germans had made preparations, knowing they would enter Albania sooner or later. So they had discussed certain matters in advance with their sympathisers in Albania. The essential point was that the Germans would come as liberators and not an occupying power. This meant observing certain conditions: there would be no murderous reprisals and the customs of the country would be respected, especially where Albanian honour and women were concerned. The doctor was aware of these things.

  One of the investigators broke in to ask if this knowledge had given him the courage to demand the release of the hostages.

  Of course, the prisoner replied. He was almost certain that the Germans would ask for the massacre of Borova to be forgotten and promise that such a thing would not happen again.

  But what about the release of Jakoel the Jew? How had he been so bold as to ask for this? It was well known that nobody at that time dared ask for the release of a Jew.

  The eyes of the investigators and the prisoner met for a moment.

  It was a matter of respect for local customs. To the doctor’s knowledge, the Jewish question had been one of the most delicate aspects of the talks. The politicians who were to take over the government of Albania had dug in their heels over the Jews.

  “So now you’re singing the praises of the Quislings!” the investigators pounced, speaking together.

  “I’m not praising anybody. I know that the communists too insisted that the Jews would not be harmed.”

  “We shot these Quislings afterwards,” Shaqo Mezini said. “You know that perfectly well: Father Anton Harapi, Lef Nosi.”

  “I know. But not because of the Jews.”

  “Go on,” said the investigator.

  “Well, the question of Jakoel also had to do with local customs. Besides, Fritz von Schwabe was well acquainted with the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini, which we had talked about so often. The Jews of Albania and all the Jews who sought refuge here at that time were considered ‘under their hosts’ protection’, and this principle was inviolable.”

  Shaqo Mezini leafed through the notes in front him.

  The investigators knew everything that had been said at the dinner table that night and asked only one thing. Towards midnight, the dead man, or the supposed Fritz von Schwabe, had said, “You will hear this music differently.” What did this phrase mean?

  The prisoner furrowed his brow. In fact he did remember this phrase, and even the smile accompanying it, but he had never known what it meant.

  “And those private conversations?” said Shaqo Mezini. “You may not believe it but we know about these too.” He bent down to the prisoner’s right ear to speak softly. “‘I’m not Albania, just as you’re not Germany, Fritz. We’re something else.’ Do you remember saying that?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “‘We’re something else . . . ’ A strange claim, isn’t it?”

  Gurameto hesitated. “I remember some of this but these things, about girls we had known and so forth, weren’t important. I remember vaguely . . . But amazingly, this man remembered precisely a dream I had told him long ago. In fact when I was becoming suspicious it was this that persuaded me that the man really was Fritz von Schwabe.”

  “Go on.”

  “I had not told this dream to anyone else. In fact it had no particular meaning. It was a kind of nightmare in which I was lying stretched out on the table being operated on by a surgeon who was my own self.”

  “Aha.”

  Shaqo Mezini drew close to his ear again. “‘When we were students, we said in the tavern . . . but if you are no longer the person you were then.’ Do you remember saying those words, doctor?”

  The prisoner shook his head.

  “What did you say in that tavern?” the investigator went on. “And why should one of you doubt the other?”

  Gurameto shook his head again.

  “When someone says, ‘if you are no longer the person you were then,’ I take this as a suspicion that the other person is trying to wriggle out of a duty or agreement.”

  The prisoner said he couldn’t remember. Perhaps they’d been talking about old traditions.

  Without hurry or irritation, the investigators put more questions, sometimes mentioning the colonel by name and sometimes calling him “the deceased”. What did the deceased say about this, or that? Why did the doctor feel he was on equal terms with the deceased?

  The investigators dwelt at great length on this point. “You were a provincial doctor but he was the commander of a tank regiment, and moreover on the victors’ side. Where did this sense of equality come from?”

  The prisoner shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don’t know. Memories of student days, perhaps.”

  “That’s not enough,” Shaqo Mezini said. “I’ll be plain. Who was taking orders from whom?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We were talking about your courage. Where did it come from?”

  The investigation had started to go round in circles.

  “This courage to ask for the release of the hostages. Where did you find it?”

  “I don’t know; perhaps it was because of the dinner.” The prisoner spoke more slowly. “It was due to the reasons you mentioned before, but especially because of the dinner. The invitation seemed the natural thing at the time but later it looked improper.”

  “What have I done?” he had said on arriving home. His wife and daughter had wondered too. This dinner would require an explanation. Otherwise he would be reviled as a traitor and shot by his own people. The only justification for the dinner would be the release of the hostages.

  Now it struck Gurameto as odd that he was no longer being badgered about that great conspiracy, the “Joint”. And, more lonely and exhausted than ever, he was overcome by a suspicion. How could they know so much? “How did they find out all this?” he repeated to himself.

  Like sheet lightning, pictures flashed through his mind of his wife and daughter, their hair in disarray, raped and tortured amidst cries of “Talk!” “Sprich!” No, it was the cave that caused this fear. These were things that not even his wife and daughter could know. So who did?

  Fritz, he thought. Alive, in irons like himself, and under interrogation.

  The investigators stared at him as he rejected the idea with a shake of his head.

  Then it must be someone else. There could be only one answer. Everybody at the dinner had been under surveillan
ce all the time. They were all suspected by both sides.

  With vacant eyes he stared at the investigators as if straining to find out from them, but their own eyes were just as blank.

  “Bravo! Excellent!”

  The delighted investigators were listening to their Russian colleague. Immediately after the session they had gathered in an adjacent cell, which had been turned into an improvised office.

  “Ve efferythink know, ha ha ha,” laughed the Russian, trying to pronounce the Albanian words. “You were terrific, boys,” he went on. “Tell me honestly, did you begin to suspect yourselves that Fritz von Schwabe was alive and in our hands and had told us everything that happened?”

  They cheerfully admitted that they had almost been persuaded, even though they knew to the contrary.

  “So, let me tell you again, he’s dead. Our German colleagues were correct when they told us he died on 11 May in a field hospital in the Ukraine. So, who was ‘the deceased’?”

  He asked for a coffee with milk before opening the file in front of him with chubby hands. Sipping the coffee, he drew out a sheaf of photographs from the file. “Here is ‘the deceased’,” he said, pointing to one of them. “Colonel Klaus Hempf, bearer of the Iron Cross. Here he is again, or rather here are the two colonels, the dead one and his ghost, with bandaged heads in a field hospital, in western Ukraine in May 1943. And now here is Klaus Hempf in a place that I think you will recognise.”

  They gasped. Colonel Klaus Hempf stood smiling in sunglasses, leaning against an armoured vehicle in the city square of Gjirokastër. The statue of Çerçiz Topulli was visible, as was Remzi Kadare’s house in the background.