The Fall of the Stone City (11 page)

The doctors sighed in relief but the investigators did not look any more relaxed. “We have only one question. It is simple, but fundamental.”

After a long silence the question was finally put to the two prisoners. The investigators now knew that the doctors had not committed murder. But the question was, were they aware . . .

Almost in unison the doctors exclaimed, “
What?
” And indeed the astonished Big Dr Gurameto said it in German, “
Was
?”

The investigators tried to explain. The word “aware” need not be interpreted in a literal sense. They meant a general awareness that medicine could be used to commit murder.
Political murder, of course. For instance of communist leaders.

The same gasps of amazement came again, and an exclamation in German.

Never. Of course not. They were doctors. They were bound by the Hippocratic oath. Who would dare suggest something so repellent, even as a joke?

“Our interview is over,” said one of the investigators. “As you see, we have been impartial. We only wanted the truth. Guard, take the prisoners to their cells.”

Two hours later, at three in the morning, they brought the doctors back to the cave. Not only the investigators’ voices but everything else was different. The cave had
become their home. In fact the investigators’ first words were, “I think you know that we are here in the Cave of Sanisha.”

The doctors nodded to show they did.

Both sides stared at each other. “Don’t think we’re taking back what we said two hours ago, that we hoodwinked you and just pretended to believe in your innocence.
There’s no question of that. You’re clear of any charge of murder. We’re going to ask you about something else.”

The investigators felt that the cave had taken them into its power. A fervour and excitement that they had never felt before, in which lust and suffering were mixed, had totally mastered them.
They were not just investigators, they were the ravishers of Ali Pasha Tepelene’s sister. They were both torturers and their own victims.

“Dr Gurameto, we want to ask you about the dinner on the night of 16 September 1943.”

More than anything that had been said so far, this sent a chill of terror through the doctor.

Ah, that dinner. He did not say these words aloud, but they were in his eyes, his laboured breath, the very hair on his head.

The investigators looked straight at him.

“What do you want to know?” Dr Gurameto said, but in a voice that seemed to question whether what had happened could ever be known.

“We want the truth,” the investigators said, almost in one voice. “Everything. Hour by hour and minute by minute.”

The doctor stared into vacant space.

Could this truth ever be known or put in words? So far every effort had been made to conceal it. For almost ten years, by unspoken agreement, these events had been covered by the cold ash of
oblivion, forgotten by both Germans and Albanians, royalists, nationalists and communists alike. Now they wanted to wipe away this ash. They wanted the truth.

“The whole truth,” the investigators repeated. “What happened. What was said. What was not said.”

Big Dr Gurameto lowered his eyelids. The doctor began to speak, slowly and tonelessly. The square in front of the city hall with its wet asphalt and the statue of Çerçiz Topulli in
the middle appeared before him with extraordinary distinctness. The tank crews had just descended to stretch their legs. The officers fussed over the mud that spattered their boots. Then, by the
door of an armoured vehicle, he saw Colonel Fritz von Schwabe, the commander of the troops, with his army greatcoat slung over his shoulder. His college friend watched him with glistening eyes as
he approached.

Their emotional greeting. What von Schwabe said: ‘Do you recognise me? Have I changed?’ Then his dismay at Albanian treachery, his threat to punish the city, the hostages. As
threatening as anything he said was the pale glint of his Iron Cross.

Dr Gurameto asked if it was necessary to relate in detail what happened next. The investigators replied that he should tell what he thought was necessary, so he described his invitation, the
colonel’s acceptance and the dinner itself. He gave an account of who was present and of the atmosphere, the music and the champagne; he did not dwell any more than necessary on the release
of the hostages. After he finished describing daybreak and how everybody was exhausted after the long night without sleep, there fell a long silence that was finally broken by Shaqo Mezini with a
single ominous question.

“Is that all?”

Dr Gurameto said nothing. The other investigator bent down by his shoulder and murmured softly in an almost caressing voice, “What you have told us is accurate. But we know these things.
We want the rest of the story. What we don’t know. The mystery.”

Gurameto froze. The investigators watched him, but their expectations were dashed. With a jerk of his head, as if to banish all inner uncertainty of his own, he said, “There’s no
mystery.”

Shaqo Mezini straightened his back against the metal chair. “Doctor, I’m sorry to have to say this, but you’re not telling the truth.”

Gurameto gave the investigator a cold look.

“I know something different,” the investigator said, shaking his head as if to convey that saying this gave him a kind of pleasure that went beyond an investigator’s
professional satisfaction.

Big Dr Gurameto’s eyes conceded defeat.

An intoxicating thrill swept through Shaqo Mezini. He had not realised how eagerly he had been waiting for this moment. At times of weakness, when he lost faith in the investigation’s
prospects of success, he was more scared that the doctor would not give in than of his superiors’ displeasure. From the first day when he had learned that the doctor was part of this case,
all his thoughts, obscurely, inexplicably, had focused obsessively on the figure of the prisoner. He had seen him dozens of times on Varosh Street, setting off for the hospital, an aloof, imposing
figure. The investigator’s secret dream was to become a person like this, held in regard by everybody but not regarding anybody himself. He knew that he was not the only person to revere the
doctor like this and was aware that his aura came from his reputation as a surgeon, from having studied in Germany, and the many stories told about him.

Later, when he returned from the academy in Moscow to find this provincial city shorn of all its glamour, he was startled to discover that Big Dr Gurameto’s aura, and that of his little
counterpart, had survived undiminished. The young investigator was now conscious of this attraction, and that it was mixed with an element of anxiety. The big doctor was still unapproachable but
now also seemed opposed to him. Shaqo Mezini found it hard to grasp the idea that he felt men like Big Dr Gurameto were in fact a block to him. It wasn’t even that they stood in the way of
new ideas, the construction of socialism and the like; their opposition, though Shaqo Mezini could not know it, resulted from something deeper. It was intrinsic to men of Shaqo Mezini’s kind,
something infinitely ruthless, like every kind of male rivalry.

Dr Gurameto was in Shaqo Mezini’s way. With his scalpels in his hand and wearing his white mask, he had acquired a stature that nobody could diminish. Moreover, he was a gynaecologist. To
Shaqo Mezini’s mind, this meant having power over women, especially beautiful women, who submitted to him. A master of women! This was precisely what Shaqo Mezini was not. He was not ugly but
neither was he sufficiently handsome to attract beautiful women. He had had a few ordinary exploits but never with women of real beauty, and there was never a question of having them in his power.
But Gurameto ruled them, without possessing them. They came to him of their own accord, the investigator was sure, and he had no need to visit them. Perhaps his hand had even gone below the belly
of Shaqo’s own mother.

All these thoughts rolled through his mind like lowering storm clouds, and on the day when he was summoned and told that Big Dr Gurameto would be under his investigation, these clouds suddenly
burst. He had never felt so excited. His elation was mixed with a kind of savagery. The stark thought now came to his mind that Big Gurameto had been a general impediment, an impediment to Shaqo
Mezini in particular, and that he still stood in his way. In every sense.

Shaqo Mezini’s thirst for revenge was inseparably bound to a feeling of fear. Of course he had the doctor before him in handcuffs but still he did not feel safe. For some reason he felt
that these handcuffs might make the doctor all the more dangerous. Shaqo Mezini could not persuade himself that Big Dr Gurameto too might feel frightened. He cast sidelong glances at the
instruments of torture, kept in an alcove since the time of Sanisha, but not even these offered reassurance. This doctor had terrified thousands of patients with his surgical tools. How could he
feel fear?

The investigator was convinced not only that Dr Gurameto was fearless but that he could not lie. Fear and lying were connected. When Shaqo Mezini came face to face with the surgeon for the first
time, a sudden onset of terror drove out any emotion of anger against his enemy. The surgeon was shackled and his face was drawn and despairing, but still he showed no fear.

Shaqo Mezini was ashamed to realise that deep down he wanted to rouse not his enemy’s hostility but his sympathy, and this he tried to convey to him in an almost subliminal message.
“I’m sorry for you, but I can’t do anything about it. Talk, put an end to your suffering. Save us all.”

And then, as if responding to this covert appeal, the miracle-working surgeon, a legend in the city, caved in. At the critical moment he committed an act of suicide: he uttered a lie. Throughout
that endless day the two investigators and their superiors had liaised with
their
superiors in Tirana, and these superiors had liaised with the other leaders of the great Communist Bloc,
perhaps with Stalin himself. An aircraft had already reached Tirana and was expected to continue its flight to the airport of Gjirokastër. Now there was no room for doubt; the first crack had
finally appeared in the doctor’s story.

The investigators could hardly contain their joy.

Shaqo Mezini’s first impulse was to leap to his feet, fill his lungs with air and shout in triumph. At last everything had fallen into place. Dr Gurameto had given in and Shaqo Mezini, not
only a young investigator but also a young male, had gained the upper hand.

How grateful he felt to the Communist party that had worked this miracle.

His glance slid again to the antiquated instruments of torture that were now to be used on the manacled prisoner.

“Dr Gurameto,” he announced in a firm voice of command. “Big Dr Gurameto, as they call you, isn’t what you have just told us rather hard to believe? You have described an
emotional reunion with an old college friend after many years. This close friend, by an amazing coincidence, turned out to be the commander of the German troops invading Albania. Isn’t it a
bit like of one of those old fairy tales we learned at school? Quite apart from the dinner with music and champagne, the release of the hostages and the salvation of the city, doesn’t it look
a bit like a game? Why not stop this charade and tell us what was really behind it?”

“I’m not playing a game,” Gurameto said, looking him straight in the eye. “This isn’t a charade. I don’t behave like that.”

The investigators now stared at him in outright mockery. Shaqo Mezini’s only anxiety was that Dr Gurameto, having fallen into this morass, might find a way to climb out of it. But
fortunately he was only sinking deeper.

“And if it turns out that it was a game? If we prove it?”

Gurameto shook his head again, this time in contempt.

The investigators were clearly waiting for something. They looked at their wristwatches and whispered to each other, but none of this made any impression on Gurameto. They repeated in flat,
weary voices more or less what they had already asked. Had there been an ulterior purpose, or not, to the dinner on the night of 16 September? The investigators were now obviously impatient, and
mentioned an aircraft. The plane from Tirana was delayed but it would certainly arrive, if only just before dawn.

During the course of the interrogation the investigators remembered that Little Dr Gurameto was also there. All this time he had been handcuffed by the left wrist to the other doctor’s
right hand but he had not uttered a word for hours. Two or three times the investigators had been about to ask him something, but thinking that he had not been present at the events of that day, or
perhaps simply because they were tired, they forgot about him.

Both sides were succumbing to exhaustion. They heard muffled sounds from the entrance to the cave. Then came footsteps and the tapping of a cane, like a blind man’s. The investigators were
so tired that they entirely forgot Little Doctor Gurameto, who seemed to have evaporated like a ghost in front of their eyes. The two doctors had merged into one.

Big Dr Gurameto was experiencing something similar, except that the two investigators were not turning into one but had become three. “So there are three investigators,” he thought.
“But thirteen won’t drag a word out of me.” The three figures hovered before him as if in a mist and one of them stammered some words in German.

Upon hearing a sudden noise the doctor opened his eyes for a moment, and he realised that this was not a dream. There really were three investigators in front of him, and one was speaking
German. For the second time he was addressed with the words, “mein Herr”.

Gurameto shivered. An ashen light filtered through a crevice in the cave. Perhaps it was dawn. They were all fully awake now.

“Grosse Herr Gurameto,” said the newly-arrived investigator. “I am an officer of the Staatssicherheit, the security service of the East German Republic.”

The man’s German reached the doctor’s ears even more indistinctly than the investigators’ Albanian. The German said that he had flown from Berlin to interrogate him. He said
that in the entire communist camp, there was no more important case than this. He invited the doctor to consider it seriously.