“Have you missed him very much?” she asked, the first time the boss left the room.
“Yes, very much,” answered Silva, without looking up from her desk.
But she could tell Linda was still looking at her. It felt stiflingly hot in the office: had they turned the heating up too high, or was it just her imagination?
“What do you feel like when he comes back from abroad?” her young friend asked, hesitantly. “Are you very happy?”
“Of course,” said Silva, glancing at her.
Linda’s cheeks were slightly flushed, though she was pale around the eyes.
“Of course,” said Silva again, feeling her own cheeks going pink.
Does Linda really not understand? she thought. But that was probable enough. Marriage altered everything — especially what people felt after a separation.
There was a knock at the door. Illyrian. He’d heard Gjergj was arriving that day, Silva felt rather self-conscious. She had the feeling everyone was trying to imagine what she and her husband would be doing that afternoon and evening. As a matter of fact she kept thinking about it herself. Sometimes she thought about what underclothes she’d wear; sometimes she thought about the moment when she’d slowly take them off. He liked watching her do that.
She began to wonder if it wasn’t she herself, with these thoughts of hers, who was making the others imagine her consumed with desire. She almost believed that if she stopped thinking about it the awkwardness between her and them would disappear. But no. The others were meeting her more than halfway. When she’d asked the boss if she might leave early, he’d laughed roguishly and said, “Oh yes! — today’s the day, isn’t it?”
Illyrian didn’t take any such liberties. Dressed as elegantly as ever, but more serious than usual — almost solemn, in fact — he’d come to ask if she’d heard about the change in the plane’s time of arrival. And she, though she had in. fact been informed, thanked him without telling him she knew already.
There goes someone, at least, who knows how to behave, she thought as he shut the door.
At a dance nearly a year before, just after he’d been taken on at the ministry, Illyrian had paid her some very meaningful compliments. Silva was used to masculine admiration and paid no attention, but when, a little later, he returned to the charge more iesisteet!y, she responded so tartly she surprised even herself. What had made her iy out was the thought that his boldness might be due to some image about her, and especially about her sister Ana, that he’d acquired from somewhere else. After that incident she’d expected him to bear her a grudge, but apparently he’d concluded it was his owe fault, and had swallowed her snub with surprising dignity.
At eleven o’clock, as she was going down the stairs, she met Simon Dersha. He was still wearing his navy-blue suit, and his face was as drawn as before. One of these days this chap’s going to go off his rocker, she thought as she greeted him. The registry clerk in the planning department, who saw and heard everything, claimed that Simon had been invited to dinner one evening by minister D—, and that ever since thee he’d been wearing his only smart suit in the hope of being invited again.
As soon as she was outside the ministry, Silva breathed in a gulp of fresh air and felt much better. It was a dreary, drizzling day, but Skanderbeg Square suited her cheerful mood. You could stroll along the pavement in front of the ministry, and facing you was a garden laid out in the form of an amphitheatre. The road overlooking the garden was wet, and shrouded in a seasonable veil of mist. But she had no time to waste. At half-past one, two o’clock at the latest, she and Brikena must leave for the airport, and she still had a few things to do. But nothing very important. Perhaps she should buy two or three bottles of wine and some cakes to be on the safe side. as a few friends might very well drop in in the course of the evening. But everything else had been ready since the day before.
As she went by the local greengrocer’s shop she noticed some very fine apples on display outside, and went in. As usual the green. grocer, a great beanpole with a voice like disc jockey, was holding forth to the customers as he served them. There were eight or so of them, men and women, awaiting their turn. The greengrocer was tipping some apples into a string bag held out by a man who was rather carefully turned-out.
“How’s the Chinese coming on?” asked the greengrocer, rummaging in the cash register for the man’s change.
“I beg your pardon?” said the other.
“I asked how the Chinese was coming on,” the greengrocer said again.
“Well!” exclaimed the man, pursing his lips indignantly at the other’s lack of discretion.
“I don’t reckon all the trouble he’s taken learning Chinese will do him a bit of good,” said the greengrocer when the man had left the shop. “He lives near here — one of those ex-bourgeois types who’ve changed their tune,” he explained as he weighed out apples for one of the women. “He used to be a translator from Russian — he’d learned it in prison. But after the break with Moscow he abandoned Russian for Chinese, and managed to learn it in two years! But what’s the point? It doesn’t look as if Chinese is going to be much use to him now!”
“Those bourgeois devils could learn to talk in stomach rumblings if it suited them,” croaked an old man.
“Still, poor chap,” said the greengrocer, “Imagine toiling away for years to learn a language, and then practically overnight it turns out to be no use any more! He must be seething with rage!”
“That’s what you get for trying to be clever,” grunted the old man, “Why did he want to go and learn Chinese?”
“He must have thought there’d be plenty of translation going,’ said a young man.
“Well, he thought wrong!” crowed the ancient.
Several of the bystanders laughed.
Silva bought some apples and left. As she did so she could hear the old man saying something else, and the others laughing again.
How strange, she thought. The people in that shop hardly knew each other, but they talked about China more or less openly. She walked on faster, In the last few days, preoccupied with Gjergj’s return, she hadn’t paid attention to what was being said about relations with China. So the conversation in the greengrocer’s had in a way taken her by surprise. Such comments would have been unthinkable at the beginning of the break with the Soviets, And now everything’s so quiet, she thought, shifting the heavy string bag from one hand to the other. Well, so much the better, I suppose. And she started thinking about Gjergj’s return again.
At home Brikena was waiting impatiently. Silva asked her to stay by the telephone while she herself had a bath. As she lay in the water she couldn’t help remembering her boss’s arch remark and Linda’s pink cheeks and questions about her feelings. These recollections mingled with an acute sense of imminent happiness.
At the airport there was a small crowd, but they were almost all foreigners.
“Mother, did you see all those Chinese?” Brikena exclaimed in surprise as their taxi drew up outside the customs building.
The taxi driver smiled.
“The place has been full of them, the last few days,” he said. “They seem to take it in turns.”
“What do you mean?” asked Silva, handing him a 50-lek note.
“The usual thing — the first lot go and the next lot take their place,” said the man, feeling in his pocket for change.
Silva thanked him and got out. The concourse was crowded with Chinese too.
“We’re early,” she murmured. “We’re going to have quite a long wait.”
“Never mind, Mother — I like it here.”
They managed to find a free table and sat down. But between then and the moment when a female voice announced over the public-address system that the Berlin — Budapest-Tirana plane would be arriving in a few minutes, the time passed more quickly than they expected. Standing at the windows overlooking the airfield, they watched the plane land, the steps being wheeled up, and the first passengers begin to appear.