The Successor (11 page)

When, two days later, the Communists assembled once again in fourteen of the city’s halls to listen to a speech by the Guide, the last winter winds sweeping down from the hills seemed to bring with them some ill-remembered scenes from the past …
In the Yellow Valleys, the fourteen lords of Jutbine foregathered within the walls of their fourteen towers
…

The astonishment that had arisen on the previous occasion was provoked once again by the wording on the invitations. The same tape recorder was to be seen on the same small table with its vase of flowers. The Guide’s voice was weary and almost off-hand, which spread a sense of menace more effectively than ranting would have. He now hardly bothered to hide the imminence of his own demise; time was too short to waste it on unnecessary words.

So what had happened had been a conspiracy. The most heinous in the whole history of Albania. The most terrifying. Pressured by foreign sponsors, the Successor, the instigator of said conspiracy, had been cornered into making a desperate move — to sacrifice his own daughter. That was the only way he could signal that he was intent on dropping the class struggle and initiating a change of line. He had thrown his own daughter into the maw of the class enemy so as to make his own preference clear to all.

Fear glazed the eyes of everyone listening to the Guide’s explanation. The country’s history was full of examples of clans who had sacrificed their daughters for the sake of the nation. The celebrated Nora of Kel-mend had gone to the tent of the Turkish commanderin-chief not to give herself to him, but to slay him. Whereas he, the Successor, had pushed his daughter into the enemy’s clutches for the opposite reason.

Had the wedding taken place, it would have sounded the death knell of Albania.

Silence fell after these final words. The continued humming of the tape recorder made it seem even deeper, so much so that people began to think that they would soon be able to hear the thoughts that were buzzing around in each other’s heads. They stayed riveted to their chairs until someone walked quickly and stiffly onto the platform and switched the machine off.

The fourteen halls of Tirana were full again a week later. Although the same number of invitations had been sent out as on the previous occasion, the halls seemed particularly crowded this time. The impression that shadows had slipped in between the seats was presumably due to what was coming out of the tape recorder. It was broadcasting the answers given to the interrogators by the Successor’s wife, son, and daughter. The most serious accusation was made by the wife. Unlike his mother, the son insisted he had not been aware of his father’s goings-on, save for a letter he had posted at his father’s request during a trip to Rome, which had aroused his curiosity at the time and which, moreover, still puzzled him. As for the daughter, she spoke only about her broken engagement. Her speech, which was confused and broken up by bursts of sobbing, made it sound as though she was not talking about one engagement, but about two, both of which had been shattered for reasons connected to her father’s career.

The judge interrupted her in an attempt to get some clarity about the earlier affair, but his question actually made things even murkier. No, her father had not encouraged her, quite the contrary, he had been against her first love insofar as it might be disadvantageous to his career, though from a different angle.

“Our information is that this man, your first sweetheart, was from a Communist family and worked as a journalist at National Television. Is that correct?” “Yes,” the young woman concurred. “In other words,” the judge went on, “your boyfriend had socialist credentials, and that was enough to make your father stop him ever darkening his doorway.”

Suzana’s breathing grew faster, distorting her words now and then. The judge reiterated his question, saying that as far as he could see her father had in mind to reserve his daughter’s hand for a damaging political marriage, but all she could reply, between two sobs, was: “I don’t know!”

The rest of the girl’s story — of her tearful pleading that failed to soften her father’s heart — could just as well have been about her first love cut brutally short, as about her later engagement, which had been speeded up with a sinister end in view — as was only now becoming clear.

What a cynic that man was! the Party veterans muttered as they left the hall. He offered up his daughter like a lamb — so imagine where he could have led Albania! The country had been really very fortunate in escaping a Successor of that ilk.

As they chatted along these lines, some of the oldest stalwarts nursed private hopes that the Guide would in the end pick a Successor worthy of the name. Many others weren’t at all sure that a man deserving to stand that close to the Guide could ever be found. The best that might be done would be to appoint an acting Successor, so to speak, a kind of ante-Successor, if such a title could legitimately be used.

In that case, someone piped up, it was no secret that the only plausible candidate for the post was Adrian Hasobeu. The others nodded. That was obvious. Hadn’t he long been thought of as a silent opponent of the Successor? He’d even been suspected of…

As they got nearer home, their expressions softened, and when their families set eyes on them they breathed a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, the cleaners who were clearing up the meeting halls, opening doors and windows to let in some air, were surprised by the odd smell that filled the place. It was different from the odor of feet, sheep-wax, and sour milk they had encountered after the assembly of top-ranking herders. It was another smell, one that had been getting more common recently. It was the smell bodies make when they are afraid.

Adrian Hasobeu was aware that his name was now on everybody’s lips. But whereas rumors of that kind would have kept him awake all night long in days gone by, they now produced quite the opposite effect.

Everything had changed in a flash when the Guide, after tergiversating unendingly throughout the spring, which had been a dark season for Adrian Hasobeu, had reached his decision and denounced the Successor for treason.

Never before in his whole existence had he felt such relief. The slackening of the tension in his limbs and of all that coursed through his lungs, his blood vessels, and his brow made him realize that a part of his being that he had believed dead, but which had in fact only been sleeping, was coming back to life, as if it was slowly emerging from a static bank of fog.

Several members of his clan had gathered under his roof. Near silence reigned over their solemn presence. They said nothing, but gazed with shared affection at his drawn features. The eldest of his uncles was the only one to put his arms around him, before breaking down in tears.

After lunch, when he told them, “I’m going to take a short rest,” the same caring glances fell upon him, alongside muttered have-a-good-nap-have-a-good-rest-sweet-sister-souls.

From his bedroom he lent an ear to the murmurs that his absence had probably revived. It lulled him to a sleep more delicious than any he had known before.

When he woke up, he knew at once that they were still in the house. They were probably even more transported by joy than he was, just as in March, when the house had been almost entirely empty, they had probably been even more distraught than he had been. He didn’t feel the slightest resentment for their having abandoned him at that time. He had even strongly advised them to act that way. “It would be better if you didn’t show your faces here until things have been cleaned up.”

The clarification took its time. Complications arose from the first morning after the Successor’s death. His wife had been the first to grill him: “What do you say to the rumors people are spreading about you?”

He didn’t answer. A long silence followed, then his wife returned to the attack: Even supposing he had really been over there … at
his
house … around midnight … why should it have been divulged? Who had spotted him? In short, why had the gossip not been stopped?

He raised his eyes, with a bitter smile on his lips, but his wife didn’t let him get a word in edgewise. “I know what you’re going to say — that you can’t put a stop to gossip. But you know as well as I do that you can!”

Indeed he knew. Despite that, this first phase, oddly enough, left him cold. At the end of the day, he had gotten the better of his perfidious rival. Even the suspicion that he had liquidated the Successor somewhat ahead of time served to show only that he’d been excessively eager. It was a well-known fact that, in this kind of case, overeagerness earned not only a reprimand, but also a degree of respect. The mere existence of the suspicion had suddenly enhanced his stature in the eyes of others. Because of it, his promotion to a higher position now seemed only a matter of course. The rumor that he might even be picked to fill the Successor’s shoes sprang from the same kind of reasoning.

Things only started to turn the wrong way in March, with news of the autopsy. The scalpels and tongs used to section the Successor’s cadaver would have caused him less agony than the fragmentary speculations he heard from all quarters. The autopsy wouldn’t have been ordered if there hadn’t been doubts. Its results could turn things upside down. The Successor’s sudden return in the shape of a martyr could easily cast his rival into the abyss.

The same questions preyed on Adrian Hasobeu’s mind from the moment he got up to his going to bed: Why was no one taking his defense? Why was the Guide not giving him any support?

The latter’s eyes appeared to recognize him no longer. It was apparently the last benefit that the onset of total blindness could give him. But as he went over in his mind his last meeting with the Guide, Adrian Hasobeu still could not see what mistake he had made.

… The Politburo meeting seemed to go on forever, on that late afternoon of December 13. The Successor was answering questions with ever sparser sentences. Sometimes he left a pause, as if waiting for the end of some inaudible translation. His eyes remained fixed on the typescript of his self-criticism, on which every now and again he penciled annotations.

All of a sudden, the Guide took his fob watch out of the pocket of his black jacket. He kept looking at it as the secretary sitting next to him whispered something in his ear, presumably what time the watch said.

The room froze and waited.

“I think it’s getting late,” the Guide had declared. His eyes were trained on the place where the Successor was sitting. “I propose that we put your self-criticism off until tomorrow …”

In the ever deeper silence, most of those present who had attended a similar meeting years before probably recalled the very same sentence being said at more or less the same time of day: “It is getting late; I suggest we leave your self-criticism, Comrade Zhbira, until the morning.” Not a muscle twitched on Kano Zhbira’s livid face, as if the death mask that would be placed over it the next day, after his suicide, had already begun to turn it into rock.

“Well, then,” the Guide resumed, still gazing toward where he thought the Successor was seated. His voice was weary, almost gentle, after such a long day. “As for you, try to get a proper night’s sleep, so as to be in good shape for your speech tomorrow. And the rest of you too.”

The pallor that had not left the Successor’s face was the same, still recognizable color. Adrian Hasobeu felt his body relax, as if the Guide’s wishes for a good night’s rest affected him first and foremost. The vague impression that it would once again be at night … a transitional night … yes, like the last time … on a calendrical quirk that only the blind man could control and which cropped up each time the latter invoked the passage of time … that idea made him go weak in the knees in anticipation.

He went home in the same half-dead state. He was just getting into bed when he was called to the telephone. The Guide was waiting for him in his office. The old man’s eyes were cloudy and his diction even more so. “I have something like a bad intuition about what might happen tonight,” he had told him. That’s why he had called him in. “You’re the only person I trust.” What he was asking Hasobeu to do was not very clear. The more he tried to concentrate, the hazier it got. He was supposed to go over to the other man’s place. Try to find out what was going on there … “Only you can do it.”

No help shone from the Guide’s dark brown pupils. Only the inscrutable opacity of blind eyes. Twice he thought the Guide was going to give him something, perhaps the keys to that underground passageway, if it really existed. But nothing of the sort occurred. No keys, and no further explanation. He just kept on repeating, “You’re the only person I trust.” He regurgitated his other assertions as well: He had to go over there on foot, around midnight; when the guards recognized him, he shouldn’t worry, he was a minister, it was okay for him to inspect the duty squad in the thick of night … not to mention the other … then he was to return … he, the Guide, would be waiting up for him, eagerly …

Adrian Hasobeu did not once dare to interrupt him, and obeyed his instruction: “Now, go.” He went. He waited at home for midnight to come, then went out again, alone, on foot, by a side door, wearing his black oilskin cape. The night was dark and wet, cut asunder by lightning at irregular intervals. It was a special night, a night of transition, and he stepped through it as through a nightmare.

From afar he made out the Successor’s bedroom. It was the only one on that side of the house that was lit. When he pushed back his cape, the guards recognized him. He paced up and down around the house like a man in a fever, peering at each of the doors as if he still hoped that one of them would suddenly open …

A few minutes later, Hasobeu was back in the Guide’s office. The
Prijs
had indeed waited up. He even made to move toward Hasobeu.

“Did you do it?” he asked, with unmasked impatience.

Adrian Hasobeu nodded.

Himself
stared at Hasobeu’s hands as if trying to make out spots of blood on his skin. His gaze was so powerful that it made the minister want to hide his hands behind his back.