The Fall of the Stone City (12 page)

“I know of no other way,” Gurameto replied.

The German investigator had been briefed about the case and asked the doctor to tell him in a very few words what had happened on the day of 16 September 1943 and the following night.

Dr Gurameto nodded. He replied in German, the language of the question, and his account was as detailed as before.

When he had finished, the third investigator asked quietly, “Is that the truth?”

“Yes,” the prisoner replied.

The silence was insupportable. Then Gurameto noticed another figure, an interpreter whispering into the ears of the two Albanian investigators.

“What you have just said is not the truth,” said the German.

Dr Gurameto’s expression did not change.

“The German officer, Colonel Fritz von Schwabe, whom you insist that you met on 16 September 1943, was not in Albania at the time you claim.”

The German’s voice sank lower. Not taking his eyes off the handcuffed prisoner, he said that Fritz von Schwabe had not been present on Albanian soil or indeed any other kind, because he
had been buried four months before.

Gurameto’s face turned wan.

The other man explained that Colonel Fritz von Schwabe had died of wounds in a field hospital in the Ukraine on 11 May 1943. The investigator had brought his death certificate and photographs
that showed the colonel in the hospital, and his funeral.

“There’s no need to go on,” Gurameto interrupted in a broken voice. His head suddenly fell forward, as if struck by a blow at the back of the neck. “I need to
sleep,” he added after a moment. “Please.”

The investigators exchanged glances.

CHAPTER TEN

The uproar caused by what was called the conspiracy of the century spread across the entire planet. The investigation was conducted by eleven communist states, in twenty-seven
languages and thirty-nine dialects, not to mention sub-dialects. About four hundred doctors imprisoned in as many cells were subjected to continuous interrogation.

None of the inmates of these cells received any news from outside, and those outside were ignorant of the cells. The Cave of Sanisha was only one cell among many.

At noon the following day the three investigators, with the interpreter a shadowy presence behind them, paid another visit to the two handcuffed prisoners in the cave.

“The truth was . . . the truth is that I suspected from the very start that it wasn’t him.”

Gurameto’s first words crept slowly out of his mouth and were swallowed up by the echoing vault. He squinted in an effort to recall the time more clearly, casting his mind back to the
square of the city hall, the wet asphalt and the tank crew who went up to the window of the closed café and raised their hands to their brows like peaked caps as they tried to see
inside.

An aide had nodded towards one of the armoured vehicles, where the officer was waiting. On the way to the square the aide had told Gurameto explicitly, “The regimental commander, your
friend from university, is waiting for you by the city hall.”

The colonel stood leaning against the armoured vehicle, in dark glasses, with one leg crossed over the other. Gurameto, even before he was close to him, felt his chest tighten with a spasm of
doubt. After his greeting, “Don’t you recognise me?” the same spasm came again. His voice had changed. The man smiled and pointed to his face; it did not need a surgeon to notice
the scars.

“Four wounds,” said the colonel, as the two spread their arms to embrace one another.

Of course the scars made a difference, Gurameto thought. But there were other things too. The uniform, the passage of fifteen years, the war.

The doctor described their conversation to his interrogators almost exactly as before: the colonel’s disappointment at the treachery of the Albanians and their violation of the laws of
hospitality enshrined in the
Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini
, the threat of taking hostages and finally his own invitation to dinner.

He described the dinner in the same way, now dwelling on certain details, like the donning of the masks. This had been a fashion of the time at student dinners when the men were at university,
even if he could not remember Fritz von Schwabe following it. Nor could he understand why the other man put on a mask and then took it off. Of course, from time to time the doctor’s
suspicions had been aroused, especially when he caught out his guest in some error of fact. But he had put these doubts out of his mind for the reasons he had explained: the passage of time, his
career in the army, the war. The doctor also said more about the following morning. His daughter, seeing them all asleep where they had fallen, thought that her father had poisoned his guests
alongside his own family. He himself suspected his daughter of the same thing.

But now for the first time he mentioned his later suspicions. He never saw the German again. He tried once to meet him but was told that he was busy. On another occasion when he enquired after
him he was told that there was nobody by the name of Fritz von Schwabe. He discovered later and only by chance that von Schwabe had been transferred elsewhere on duty. After that he heard nothing
more.

The prisoner hung his head as a sign that his story was over. But a moment later he added that the other side had probably also deplored the dinner.

“What?” said the investigators almost together.

“I said that the Germans too may have disapproved of the dinner.”

“Aha.”

The silence was so protracted that everybody was sure that there was no more to say. The investigators whispered for a while among themselves. Shaqo Mezini was the first to speak.

“My question is a simple one: Why? A man arrives from far away, commanding the first regiment to enter another country and suddenly takes it into his head to change his name and pretend to
be someone else. What is he up to?”

The handcuffed prisoner shrugged his shoulders. He had no idea.

The investigator’s voice rose, resonating through the cave. “What was he thinking of? How could he find the time, in such conditions, exposed to so many dangers, to invent this tale
of a college friend and come for dinner? Was it his prank, or yours? Or were you both involved? Tell me.”

“I don’t know,” replied the prisoner. “Perhaps it was his game. But not mine.”

“Gurameto. Don’t try to wriggle out of this. It wasn’t a game, but something much deeper. Tell us!”

“I don’t know.”

“You knew you would meet him. You had agreed between yourselves. You had codes, masks, false names. Talk!”

“No.”

“Do you recognise this writing? This name?”

The German investigator had interrupted, producing a short letter in German that ended with the words “Jerusalem, February 1949” and was signed “Dr Jakoel”.

“I know this man,” the prisoner replied. “He was my colleague. He was a pharmacist in the city, a Jew. He left for Palestine in 1946.”

“What else?”

“He was one of the hostages released that night.”

“Aha, a Nazi colonel, a bearer of the Iron Cross, releases the first Jew he captures in Albania. Why? Sprich!”

The prisoner shrugged his shoulders.

“Herr Gurameto, I haven’t flown two thousand kilometres to listen to ravings in a medieval cave. Let me repeat the question. Why?”

“Because I asked him to.”

“Aha. And why did you ask him? And why did he listen to you? Sprich!”

“Because we were, according to him, college friends.”

“College friends or something else? Sprich!”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Herr Gurameto, do you know what the ‘Joint’ is?”

“No. I’ve never heard of it.”

“Let me tell you,” Shaqo Mezini interrupted. “It’s a long-standing Jewish organisation. A murderous sect, whose aim is to establish Jewish rule throughout the
world.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“Their next crime, their most horrible crime, was to be the murder of the leaders of world communism, starting with Stalin.”

“I’ve never . . . ”

“That’s enough. Don’t interrupt. And now talk!”

“Sprich!”

“Never . . . ”

“That’s enough.”

“You’re not letting me speak.”

“Speak!”

The investigators started a crossfire of questions.

“There is a mystery, I admit,” said Gurameto. “But you can work it out yourselves. You have the means. You have the real name of this person who pretended to be a dead man.
Perhaps you have the man himself.”

“That’s enough! You’re here to answer questions, not ask them. Speak!”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Then we’ll force you. We have the means to do that.”

The eyes of first the investigators and then the prisoner wandered to the corner with the antique instruments of torture: hooks, knives, pincers to gouge out eyes, pliers to grip testicles.
Witnesses had testified that it was the tortures effected by the pliers that Ali Pasha Tepelene particularly liked to watch through a spyhole in the wall.

The investigators whispered again among themselves.

“Dr Gurameto,” said Shaqo Mezini, no longer hiding the fact that he was in charge. “Despite our differences, we hope we will come to an understanding. As you can see, our
suspicions relate to a terrible and macabre crime. The State requires us to be suspicious. For its own protection, of course. We don’t believe that you are its enemy; you have worked for it
for years. You don’t want to see this State overthrown any more than we do. Is that true? Speak!”

The prisoner shrugged his shoulders again.

“The matter is simple. We want to know what lies behind this story. What was this game from the very start? What really happened at that dinner? Where did the orders come from? What were
your secret signals and codes? I hardly need remind you that we’re dealing with a worldwide conspiracy in which you played a part, perhaps unwittingly. Speak!”

The prisoner raised his head. He moved his lips several times as if testing them before he spoke. “You think the German colonel was part of this conspiracy? And me too?

“Why not?

“I had no part in it. I know nothing about it. There’s your answer.”

“Did it cross your mind, even for a moment, that your dinner guest was . . . a dead man?”

This question came from the other investigator, who had been silent so far that night.

The prisoner screwed up his eyes. “As I said, I suspected it wasn’t him. And also, but only for a moment, that he was dead. It was a well-known story in the city, passed down by our
grandmothers. You couldn’t help thinking of it.”

“Aha, go on.”

“I can prove that I suspected it. I have a living witness.”

“We know,” the investigator interrupted. “Blind Vehip. We know everything.”

“I thought that as soon as you arrested him.”

“Go on! Keep talking!”

Gurameto went on to describe his conversation with the blind man under the pale street lamp at the intersection of Varosh Street and the road to the
lycée
. As he talked he
couldn’t help thinking of the interrogation they must have carried out, their questions and the blind man’s answers. “You’re not telling the truth, old man. Where did you
get the idea that Dr Gurameto had invited a dead man to dinner? Speak!” “I don’t know what to say. It just came into my head.” “You’re blind. You’ve never
seen either the living or the dead. How can you tell the difference when you have no eyes?” “I don’t know. Perhaps just because . . . ” “What? Speak!”
“Perhaps it’s just because I’m blind.”

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.