A Girl in Exile Read online

  Explaining to the investigator would be the most difficult thing of all. It would be hard to persuade him that this was not a sentimental and still less a political matter. It simply had to do with his profession. Also, deep down, it was a health issue, as the psychiatrist had explained to him. Dealing with depression, blah blah blah . . . And it would be better not to mention the secret unifying thread between the gold that was intern—, or rather walled up, amongst the copper ore, and the vague outline on the breast scan. These were secret, inexpressible connections, like all the enigmas of art.

  As before, he felt the spark die instantly, and he almost beat his brow against this same shelf, which try as he might he could not escape.

  He pushed aside the books with his hand, rifling through them until he remembered that what he was looking for was not there but behind the complete works of Gorky. There was the little pre-war Beretta revolver that his cousin, an army officer, had found for him a long time ago. Whenever he thought of it he told himself to hide it in a different place, but it occurred to him that if they searched the apartment they would find it anyway, so he put it back where it had been, between volumes six and seven, Gorky’s most optimistic works.

  Was it the sight of the revolver that brought a slight and perhaps ironic smile to his face? He had often smiled at the memory of how he used to imagine the most suitable age to die. The literary circle at high school thought of nothing else. They all agreed that the most stylish age of death for a poet was before thirty. This was why they worshipped Lermontov. They should have rated Pushkin above him for quality, but Lermontov was ten years younger than Pushkin when he died in his duel, and therefore had the prior claim.

  How crazy he’d been. He had really believed that after thirty, people would secretly turn their backs on Lermontov and attach themselves to Pushkin. How misguided we were, these people would say. We were young, what could you expect? Now Shakespeare’s funereal forties lay ahead of him, and beyond them the loneliness of fame, with chandeliers and cold women who were more intimate with death than with you.

  So there it is, he thought, finding himself back at his desk and staring at the blank pages in panic. You are a bit of a bully. It was Migena who had first said this to him, immediately after making love, qualifying what she said with a thousand apologies: excuse me, let me tell you something, don’t take it the wrong way, but on the contrary, in all kindness, etc., etc. He had stopped her mouth with his hand so that she would not repeat ‘I’m sorry’, until finally he had pacified her, saying, I know, perhaps it’s all that’s left of my youth.

  Act One. Scene One. The Ore Depot. Enter FOREIGN ADVISER.

  The script was hopelessly tedious until the moment when one of the characters sang quietly under his breath, before the Polish or Mongolian adviser came on stage. Rudian had written the text of this song at the very beginning, when the idea of the play had flashed into his mind. He leafed through the pages, searching for it. Recently, whenever he was looking for something he became obsessed with the idea that it was lost. His temples thumped. His anxiety at having lost it was strangely mixed with another, deeper suspicion that he had not actually written the song but only imagined it.

  Here it was at last. It was called simply ‘Song’, with no other title. He waited to calm down before he read it.

  If death comes looking out for me

  He won’t discover where I’ll be.

  Don’t be surprised, don’t stand and stare

  If I’m not here nor anywhere.

  Don’t explain and never weep.

  This is a different death, another sleep.

  He remembered well the morning when he had written these lines. After the line ‘This is a different death, another sleep’ he’d thought: Fantastic! He was sure that he’d discovered something entirely new, the sort of thing that happened once in a hundred or two hundred years: a different kind of death, something between a newly discovered continent and a new essence or system of mortality. But his elation was short-lived. He recalled the three domains of Dante, in any of which a fugitive might take shelter, and the excitement faded. And as the embers died down, so did the engine that was to drive the play forward. The trucks stood cold and black as before, full of ore that would yield nothing.

  The trucks rumbled past in succession. After the thirteenth came the fourteenth, clickety-click, with the five-year plan overfulfilled, the pledges of the Fourth Plenum, the fifth quarter of the plan, clickety-click, and the half-extinguished gleam of gold in the depths.

  Outside, the day was bleak. A taxi sped by in what seemed like simulated haste.

  Black ore, he repeated to himself slowly, like a lullaby. Sleep, sleep, my little ore, my little black mineral.

  The trucks rattled past on the iron rails. Nobody knew what their contents hid. If my mother calls me home . . . Say I’m buried under black chrome.

  He shouldn’t have taken that second Valium shortly before dawn. It was this that must have done for him.

  Valium secundum on the dies irae. Truckibus rattling past one after another. Horribilis planus maledictus, clickety-click, and a requiem for you.

  Enough! He could not tell if he cried this out loud. He had no need to keep persevering. Now that a dead language had appeared on the stage, he had got the message. He wouldn’t write anymore, ever. Quando Judex est venturus. That’s enough. He didn’t care what the verdict on him would be. Suicide on the pretext of creative sterility. Trrakkk. Nihil.

  He stood up, went to the settee and lay down with his head on the arm. The outline of a dream, dimly seen during the night, struggled to reassert itself in his mind. This happened to him very rarely during the day. The sign Drini Hotel was unambiguous. Third floor, room 307, Linda had said. If you have a problem with the porter, say you are from the hospital.

  The porter looked half-asleep. ‘Third floor, room 307,’ Rudian said. ‘You’re from Oncology?’ asked the porter. Rudian nodded. He had come equipped with a signed book, a souvenir from the author, but it seemed this was unnecessary.

  Linda stood waiting for him in a white nightgown. She was more beautiful than he had ever imagined. They embraced without a word and she took his hand in hers and laid it on her breasts. He didn’t manage to say a word to her about Cerberus, whom he had lulled to sleep. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ she said as she drew him to the bed. ‘I’m not a virgin.’

  She must have noticed astonishment in his eyes, because she added, ‘It’s the only thing I kept from Migena.’

  They made love with a strange feeling of surprise, as if it happened in some other dimension that was not yet part of the everyday world. Afterwards, a vestige of astonishment in his expression led her to return to their conversation. She had lost her virginity to the man Rudian had imagined. How strange, he wanted to say – but she did not let him. It was true, they called him Mr Right-Off and he was the last person she would have wanted to do it with. But as so often, this was exactly what had happened.

  ‘I know,’ he interrupted. ‘You did it . . .’ (At the last moment, he succeeded in avoiding the phrase ‘for me’, which seemed to him so banal.) ‘You did it . . . so that we could be here.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she replied thoughtfully. ‘Of course,’ she added. ‘That was the main reason.’

  Although she did not say ‘but’, the word loomed above them, cold and ambiguous.

  ‘Why else?’ he asked in a faint voice.

  It just happened. The opportunity arose. It was Rudian’s mind that formed this reply, while Linda remained silent.

  ‘Why else?’ he said again. ‘Was there another reason?’

  Linda hesitated.

  ‘Of course,’ she said at last. ‘Of course there was. He was the only person who came to my funeral.’

  He listened in bewilderment. Was it possible to accept such things so lightly, and say them so naturally?

  He felt the creases of his brow furrow. There was no logic to this, he wanted to say. How could something that could only be don
e when one is alive be caused by one’s funeral? Linda, as if understanding his bewilderment, said something linguistically incomprehensible, but which conveyed, more or less, the idea that from now on she inhabited a different realm, one that obeyed different laws.

  He remained spellbound. ‘I thought so,’ he murmured again and again, until she asked, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I’m surprised that the mysterious stranger at the funeral, who was the subject of all those rumours, turned out to be him.’ ‘Why be so surprised?’ she said. ‘You knew that.’ He became even more confused. ‘Of course I found out later, like everyone else. But still . . .’ he said. ‘What do you mean, but still?’ There was still a mystery. ‘In the changing room, by the volleyball court, you didn’t just give him a sign, as you told Migena, you pulled him after you.’

  ‘Are you going to reproach me for that?’ ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I don’t have the right to. I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to.’

  She put her fingers to his mouth. Then she took his hand and laid it again on her breasts. ‘It was only something . . . what you might call . . . clinical. You know as well as I do. You’re the first person really to kiss me,’ she whispered. ‘The first man, do you understand? And the first and last to touch me, or rather to trans-touch me . . . isn’t that enough for you?’

  Of course, he thought. To ask for more would be a sin.

  She continued to murmur about the hand of fate, which had so arranged matters that the two of them, Linda and Migena, had gone with these two men, only to come together at that fatal moment which was the inevitable end of all that had been set in motion. As she talked, her words became vaguer, and some of them even seemed to be his own rather than hers. Her soul was evidently preparing to enter another dimension. She talked on about that divine coincidence, and the fatal moment when her breasts were touched at the dance by the wrong hand, and when the two men, Mr Right-Off and the playwright, the base and the noble, were to contest each other, like in the story of Barabbas and Christ.

  The girl described rather more clearly the criminal investigation of Mr Right-Off, and the investigators’ possible efforts to understand the riddle of why she had surrendered to him. They would find out everything else but they would never find the answer to this enigma, which would remain a secret known only to Rudian, and to Linda, who had taken it with her. She repeated the word ‘never’ and he wanted to ask how she could know about the investigation, because she was no longer of this world, but he remembered that his mind was now working for both of them.

  They were gradually merging together in every respect, even sharing in that other realm. He had heard about this realm long ago, had even heard its anthem: If you take me . . . You’ll take a star, but not a wife. He remembered hearing the song that dark night near the filthy beer hall – so similar to the one owned by the English widow Eleanor Bull – where he might be stabbed with a knife in some ruffians’ quarrel, like that other playwright centuries before.

  He told her about the song, although he could hardly remember the words.

  It was about a girl who spoke of marriage, and even asks if the phrase ‘the marriage crown’ is still used, like long ago. It was a song almost dedicated to Linda.

  Before he managed to tell her that she was not only unnatural, but non-existent, she asked him, ‘Are you still suspicious? Are you rejecting me?’

  He replied that he had no right to be suspicious, still less to reject her.

  In fact it was she who was rejecting him.

  He thought that she cried no in a resounding voice. That would be more than cruel. It would be unthinkable.

  The girl suddenly looked distant. ‘It was so difficult to come to you,’ she said calmly. ‘Impossible, really. Barbed wire stretching everywhere, so many dogs, and such cold.’

  You don’t understand, he almost shouted. It wasn’t a question of suspicion or not. It wasn’t up to him to decide. It was her decision alone. In this case, she was in a superior position. In front of her, everybody was guilty: this country, the times they lived in, everyone, including himself.

  ‘I don’t want anyone’s pity,’ the girl said. ‘Or recompense.’

  He thought it would take years to say all the things he had in mind. He was preparing to tell just the gist of it, that this cold, lifeless union was a violation of the order of nature. But to his own astonishment, instead of uttering these words – if fact in contradiction of them – he lowered his head as a sign of acceptance.

  The girl seemed calmer, but without joy. She still shone coldly, and asked him again about the song. Wasn’t it, after all, about marriage?

  Suddenly, but still vague, the words came back to him:

  Be careful, if you take me in this life

  You’ll take a star, but not a wife.

  She stared at him, as if meeting the very centre of his own gaze. Then she asked, ‘Are you scared of me?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not of anything. I only have one fear, of losing you.’

  And at that point he woke up.

  THE SAME TIME, THAT SAME MORNING. IN THE LEADER’S OFFICE

  His elderly secretary, after summarising the previous day’s events and reading out the membership of a commission to draw up proposals for the next Central Committee plenum, continued with an even briefer report on the economic and cultural situation.

  The Leader listened in silence. Recently, his interventions had been much less frequent. That morning, his secretary had expected he would interrupt to enquire about the state of health of Albania’s consul-in-chief in Angola, following the snakebite. Or perhaps later, under the heading of culture, where the main subject was the publication in Switzerland of a French translation of the Leader’s selected works. But he had been indifferent to both these things.

  Energy situation. Mining industry. The secretary lowered his voice still further but, as had happened already two or three times, the Leader made a sign for him to stop where he least expected it.

  The question concerned copper, or rather the gold that had been found in it two months before. Or still more precisely, any rumours following its deposit in ‘the Party’s fund’ in Switzerland.

  ‘There have been no rumours.’ The secretary knew this wasn’t the case, but still he replied calmly.

  The sparkle in the Leader’s eyes, that brief light that the secretary knew so well whenever an idea struck him, was instantly extinguished.

  The gold in Switzerland had joined three or four other taboo subjects, the most important being a very private matter relating to his own youth which, at the insistence of his wife, the secretary had decided to conceal from him, in order ‘not to cause him anxiety’.

  The secretary had expected the Leader’s attention to be roused by the events in the town of Gramsh, about which he had drafted a second report, more comprehensive than last month’s. The Leader’s eyes sharpened, especially when prison sentences were mentioned. These were graded, from the director of the school down to the musicians in the band, including the saxophonist who was the main instigator of the debauchery and, it was thought, would be sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment under Article 55. The case of the gym teacher was still under secret investigation. Besides being suspected of abusing his pupils, he was the only person apart from her parents who had gone to the girl’s funeral, and in disguise too.

  ‘You see, you see,’ the Leader said.

  The secretary paused in his reading, until the Leader prompted him. ‘Go on.’

  As for the writer Rudian Stefa, who was in a way the start of the whole affair, his case was linked to the in-depth examination of the girl’s diary, and other issues that went beyond the framework of this report, such as his play, which had been shelved, and another play that was under consideration.

  The secretary had raised his voice, certain that the Leader was following him with interest. He lifted his head from the text to say that he had received a very strange report from the psychiatrist Dr Z. regarding the playwright R.S.

>   ‘Really?’ The Leader perked up. For the first time his eyes shone with delight. ‘Ah yes, it’s Doctors’ Day today.’

  Once a month, for more than ten years, special reports from the eminent psychiatrist had come directly to his office.

  The report essentially contained observations on the psychic disturbances of people he had been treating for years. They were very high-level officials, sometimes from the Leader’s most intimate circle, and people of distinction, writers and academicians. The secretary was sure that the Leader drew more sophisticated conclusions from his analysis of these reports, and especially of the nightmares described in them, than from the communiqués of the secret services. For instance it would have been almost impossible to expose the most recent conspiracy – in the oil industry – if the ringleader’s sister-in-law hadn’t visited the psychiatrist. She had revealed that the family of one of the oldest members of the Politburo lived in fear of their lives, and this was sufficient to unravel the thread. The secretary had never understood which group was in more danger, those who lived in fear because of their unquiet consciences, or those who didn’t.

  ‘Let’s hear what the doctor has to say to us,’ said the Leader, straightening his back. ‘But let’s have a coffee first.’

  This was one of the secretary’s favourite moments.

  The Leader slowly sipped his coffee. The secretary as always could not decide which was better: to finish his coffee at the same time, a little earlier, or a little later. He went ahead and finished it.

  In a steady voice he read the report on the depression of the young wife of the army’s newly appointed chief of staff. It was hoped that her second consultation would shed further light on its causes. The two nightmares of the interior minister’s mother-in-law could be of purely personal significance, but the finance minister’s insomnia, now entering its second week, certainly was not.