If I could just see her once more . . .
What a cheap, superficial, semiarticulate idea without depth or mystery, not worthy of respect. He knew this and yet he repeated it: If I could just see her once more. Only once. He wasn’t sure if he would wail at her—Who are you?—or lovingly embrace her as he had in a time that now seemed so distant.
Abruptly he stood up and went to the counter.
“May I use the phone?”
“Of course,” the bartender replied with unconcealed surprise.
Rudian Stefa was surprised at himself. All Tirana knew that the phones in the Dajti were tapped, but this didn’t deter him. He dialed the investigator’s number carefully, pausing to ask himself what he was doing only when he had nearly finished. But this question, far from restraining him, had the opposite effect. “Hello, this is Rudian Stefa.”
The voice down the wire sounded friendly. Distracted, Rudian imagined rather than listened to the investigator’s polite words, and tried to make it clear that he was not phoning to report anything. Perhaps this might be a disappointment, but he was phoning for no reason at all, just to extend an invitation for coffee.
The investigator understood even before Rudian had said half of this and was quicker off the mark with his own invitation. Would he have time for a coffee?
“I’d be delighted,” Rudian replied. In some confusion he heard the man mention a place he didn’t call the cake shop, but “Café Flora,” as it had once been known before the ideological campaign against cafés.
Rudian was struck less by the investigator’s friendly manner than by his total lack of professional inquisitiveness. He hadn’t expressed the slightest disappointment at Rudian’s “for no reason.” In fact he had almost welcomed it with relief.
What am I letting myself in for? he asked himself as he passed the marble colonnade of the Palace of Culture, his mind dogged by the thought that he was going like a lamb to the slaughter. Passing the National Museum, he had even wondered aloud, “What are you doing?” Was he attracted to a game that he liked to think was dangerous, but wasn’t really? He knew that none of this was for no reason, as he had tried to deceive himself a short time ago at the crossroads of Dibra Street, from where Skanderbeg’s bronze horse loomed so grim in the distance. His mind was hazy, but he was aware what lay behind this mist: Migena. From afar, the red sign of Café Flora glinted perilously. Nobody in the world would find out what he might do to this girl. Protect her, or the contrary: hand her in. Even if he wanted to do one of these things, neither was possible. No doubt they knew everything about her. He was totally uninvolved in the case. That was why he was in no hurry and the investigator was so courteously indifferent.
The windows of the café drew closer, and soon he would see his own wavering reflection in them. Perhaps everything was simpler than it seemed. He dimly remembered a story by Chekhov or Gogol in which a man stroked the neck of a horse and talked to it because he could not find a single human being with whom he could share his sorrow.
It is like that, he thought as he pushed open the glass door. In this desert, he had found the only person who knew something about his infinite grief, and who might tell him something, or could perhaps help him find the girl again . . .
Surely that was it, nothing else. He wanted her back with him, to rest his head on her lovely breasts and then on her stomach, and on the edge of that dark abyss where he might still find out things about her he was yet to discover.
5
The investigator sat waiting in the far right corner of the café, at what had been Rudian’s favorite table for years. Rudian stretched out his hand and was about to remark on the coincidence, but it occurred to him that it might be nothing of the sort. The investigator would know as well as he did where he liked to sit. As all Tirana knew, the Flora came second after the Dajti for microphones under the tables.
The investigator’s smile provided a natural backdrop to their polite exchanges: how nice to see you, it’s my pleasure, perhaps I’m taking up your time, on the contrary, how delightful, particularly now that . . . Cuban theater, under the teachings of Fidel Castro, has been very successful, especially when . . . why is that radio so loud . . . we need to take a break from routine sometimes . . . revoluthion, only revoluthion . . . excuse me, could you turn down that radio . . . “Would you like a coffee?”
Instead of saying he had just drunk two, Rudian asked a question that he knew immediately was a mistake: “Are you busy these days?”
“You might say so,” the investigator replied quite naturally, discounting any possibility of having misinterpreted the question. “We’ve plenty to do,” meaning waves of arrests, conspiracies. Watch out . . .
Perhaps now the investigator would retaliate with his own irritating enquiry: How’s the writing going? Followed by that other fatal question: What are you working on at the moment?
Rudian imagined his reply, that the Artistic Board was considering a play of his. He could add without flattery: I would rather it were in your hands than theirs. At least the investigators would give it their expert attention, looking for hostile catchphrases, counting the number of lines given to negative characters as against positive ones, looking at the fingerprints on the manuscript to find out if anyone suspicious had read it. All this would be preferable to the assessment by the Artistic Board, where for the third time the sticking point was an appearance of the partisan’s ghost at the end of Act Two. Rudian had heard that the majority of the board had not only insisted that socialist realism didn’t allow ghosts, but that the matter went deeper and had to do with some dangerous influences recently evident. Ugh . . .
“There are problems in the theater, like everywhere,” Rudian said. “We heard just now on the radio about revolutionary theater in Cuba.”
“Really? I wasn’t listening,” the investigator responded. “I was merely thinking of how the radio was bothering us.”
“I know. Our theater has invited a Cuban delegation on an official visit. These Cuban comrades told us that Fidel Castro spoke for six hours about issues in the Havana theater.”
“Really?” the investigator said.
“Can you imagine, six hours? Setting aside all the affairs of state. This business must be so complicated that . . .”
The investigator looked at him blankly. “I go to the theater and read as much as I can, but to tell the truth I’m not very clued in,” he said slowly.
“I understand.”
“You are one of the few people from the arts whom I’ve had a chance to meet. On this occasion, unfortunately, for other reasons.”
“I understand,” Rudian said again, while thinking: Now, at last. The investigator was getting close to what Rudian had been waiting for with such impatience.
Neither spoke a word for a long time. They sipped their coffee and Rudian was ready for a fourth, or even a fifth, until his temples thudded from caffeine, if only this man would speak.
The investigator’s silence cut into Rudian’s very soul. They must learn these tricks at those academies of theirs, just as students at Migena’s art college picked up the techniques of the stage: long pauses, yawns that simulate indifference, coughs.
“Some new play?” he said at last, in that special bright tone reserved for hope for the future, and often used with visibly pregnant women you met in the street . . . Expecting a little one, are we?
“Not yet,” Rudian replied doubtfully. “In fact I have a play ready, but it’s still with the Artistic Board.” It was hard to resist asking: Do you know why? You have forensic expertise, you deal in facts. You might not credit that it’s stuck there because of a ghost.
“As I said, I’m fond of the theater, especially—as you may imagine—when plays deal with subjects close to our work: investigations, conundrums . . .”