“Well, goodbye, then.”
“Goodbye.”
Once outside he gave way to his dejection. There was nothing. No point in trying anywhere else. No point at all… Just the same, he felt his legs carrying him back towards Government Square. He was jest going round in circles. Like an ass on a threshing Moor.
The man at the Ministry of Trade was new, and took some time to understand what he wanted, Then, mortifyingly, he didn’t even leave Ekrem time to invent an excuse: he just said no one had left anything to translate into any language. Ekrem even got the impression the man suspected him of being up to no good! That was the last straw! he thought as he left. He probably ought to have stayed and explained that he came here regularly to collect work. But he didn’t go back. What was the good? Let the oaf think what he liked! But Ekrem couldn’t help sheddering at the thought that the man might have picked up the phone and spoken to a colleague at the Ministry of Construction: “Hallo? Has a shady-looking individual been there asking if you still need translations from Chinese?” In other words, had he been there trying to find out the effect on international relations of the recent rumours — rumours well-known to have been put about by ideological agitators.
He shivered and came to a halt. Should he go on? Then he started walking again. Let the oaf phone his colleague! The other man would sort it all out and there wouldn’t be any problem. What an idiot I am! It’ll be all to the good if he does phone!
The Albimpex and Makina Import buildings were both in the same street. Ekrem hadn’t yet decided which he’d go to first. He could feel the damp air chilling him to the bone. He’d never imagined that one day he’d be reduced to running from one government office to another begging for a bit of translation. In his wildest dreams he’d never imagined his Chinese ending up like this! All those friendship meetings and delegations going back and forth had seemed to promise just the opposite.
His Chinese…When he thought of all the sarcasms, the sneers and the bitchiness he’d had to put up with from his acquaintances! One day Hava Preza had said, “There’s no harm in learning Chinese, but I don’t like to see you putting all your eggs in one basket and using up all your spare time on that gibberish. Supposing — God forbid! — they put you ie prison again? The last time you learned Russian. What would you do this time?” “Don’t be so spiteful!” his own Hava had answered. “My Ekrem certainly won’t be going to prison again!” “You never know,” retorted Hava Preza. “As the unfortunate Nurihan said, anyone can land up in jail whether they’ve been there before or not.” After that, she would sigh and add: “Still, there are plenty of other languages left to learn, I suppose!”
At first even his own Hava had made fun of Ekrem, but at least she’d also been the first to understand the point of his efforts, and had even begun to encourage him. When he’d managed to learn the first eight hundred ideograms they celebrated by going out to a restaurant for supper. There, as she looked at him with a mixture of excitement and regret, Ekrem, his cheeks slightly flushed with wine, described what their future would be like under the new dispensation: how successful his first translations from the Chinese would be; how celebrated he’d become as the best in the field; the fat fees he’d earn; how he’d probably be asked to do a new version of the poems of Mao Zedong. These would no doubt be followed by invitations to the Chinese embassy, and then — why not? — after he’d done some particularly important translation, for instance Chairman Mao’s complete works, he might be sent on a trip to China, with stop-overs — heavens above! — in Paris and Rome…
She went on looking at him with the same despondent eyes, almost tragic with their heavy mascara and puffy, painted eyelids.
“Why are you looking at me like that, my darling? Don’t you believe me?”
“Yes, I believe you,” she answered. “I’m jest sorry all these things won’t be happening to us because of a more civilized language — English or Spanish, say. Chinese strikes me as — how shall I put it? — a dud sort of language.”
“Never mind,” he’d answered cheerfully. “One can find happiness even with the language of the devil!”
Later, when he’d begun to receive his first fees, Ekrem realized that his involvement with Chinese brought him a certain amount of political security as well as material advantages. It brought him closer to officialdom and to the régime in general. Not for nothing was Chinese called the language of friendship. As soon as people found out what he did, a feeling of mutual trust was generated which wiped out his bourgeois past But now, alas, all this was being reversed. He would be made to pay dearly for that partial rehabilitation. The excellence of his Chinese, of which he had been so proud and which had acted as an antidote to his past, would now tern into an exacerbation, if it hadn’t done so already. Henceforward he would be doubly undesirable, as a survivor of two detested eras — that of the bourgeoisie and that of the Chinese. People would point at him in disgust as the worst of time-servers, the most servile and shameless of turncoats. God! he groaned. Suddenly everything looked black. Every door was closed to him. And to think he’d still had the heart to go begging for translations out of that accursed lingo! He’d do better to shut himself up at home and never go out again, in the hope of being left in peace and forgotten.
He shouldn’t have let himself crawl from door to door like that. It would have been wiser to go to the opposite extreme: even if anyone offered him some translations left lying about by mistake, he ought to have said, “Sorry, I gave up that sort of thing a long time ago. I don’t feel sure of myself now. The ideograms have impaired my sight, and although I’ve had two sets of new glasses I still can’t see them properly any more.”
That’s what he ought to say even if they came and implored him. Instead of going looking for trouble! “Take yourself off while there’s still time,’’ he exhorted himself, “and shut the door in their faces! The break with China is the signal for you to make a break of your owe.”
He felt like bursting into tears, A day like this was enough to make you weep, anyway. The bare rows of trees lining the streets made the grey frontages of the ministries look even more dreary than usual. Ekrem imagined the porters and duty officers inside, warming their hands over their stoves. He noticed he was passing the vast offices of the Makina Import company, and began to walk faster as if he were guilty of some crime. Take yourself off! he told himself. Go away, you wretch, before it’s too late!
As he slunk along with his chin sunk in the fur collar of his coat, his attention was caught by a familiar symbol on a poster. No, not a symbol — a line of ideograms. He slowed down to decipher it: “Exhibition of Porcelain”. What’s this, he wondered, going nearer. Yes, it was Chinese all right, though underneath the text there was a translation into Albanian. The poster looked as if it had been there for some time, but the wind and the rain and the street cleaners had failed to tear it down.
But it didn’t look as old as all that. An elegantly dressed couple had stopped in front of it. The man, whom Ekrem thought he’d seen somewhere before, was smiling and talking to the woman as he examined the words on the poster.
Ekrem looked at the pair. He felt as if the man’s smile invited him to join in their conversation, as often happens when strangers meet by chance at some unusual sight or incident. He felt an almost irresistible desire to speak to them. To say, for instance: “Fancy leaving that poster up now! What a joke, eh!” And in spite of his natural shyness he might actually have spoken, but for the feeling that he’d seen that face before. On the way up to the Kryekurts’s first-floor apartment? Or somewhere else? On television, perhaps?