Silva shrugged — a gesture he liked, because it reminded him of Ana — to indicate that she couldn’t quite follow.
“Let me put it another way,” he said. “While those who felt a kind of nostalgia for things Russian stayed loyal out of conviction, or misapprehension, or sentimental attachment, those — a smaller group — who went crazy about China did so not out of love for the place but because things Chinese provided them with something that disguised their own deficiencies — inefficiency, lack of talent, envy, inferiority complex and spiritual poverty. It provided them with an outlet for their fundamental wickedness, and! don’t know what else!”
“Phew! You don’t mince your words!”
“Perhaps, but such are their motives, and that’s why it’ll be difficult to turf them out, even after the Chinese have gone… Just look at C–V—!” he said, turning towards him. “The perfect embodiment of…”
Silva turned round, but the shoulders of other visitors hid the critic from view.
Skënder leaned closer.
“I expect you think I’m fanatically anti-Chinese, Be frank — you do, don’t you?”
“Well…”
He stifled a laugh.
“Well, you’re quite wrong!”
She rolled her eyes mockingly.
“I’m serious,” he exclaimed, looking at her evenly as if waiting for her to stop smiling. “In fact I’d regard myself as an ignorant boor if I did entertain such views!”
Two or three people nearby turned to look at them.
They think we’re quarrelling, thought Silva, and tried to draw him away. Someone must have accused him of being anti-Chinese before, she thought. There was no other explanation for this sudden outburst.
“I have a great respect for their culture, as anybody must have if they’re in their right mind,” he said. “We’ve talked about their culture before, haven’t we?”
“Of course.”
“And who created that culture, that poetry, and so on, but the people you thought I was denigrating?”
Silva felt like saying she’d never thought any such thing, but knowing what he was like she restrained herself.
“If I get worked up and talk like this, it’s because it’s the Chinese people who suffer most when things go wrong.”
“I do understand, ‘Skënder,” said Silva soothingly.
He was talking now without even looking at her.
“People in this country are always telling stories and jokes about the Chinese, and I expect they always will. But it’s got nothing to do with racism, whatever some may think.”
“No…Good heavens, what a crush! It’s like being packed in a tie of sardines!”
The visitors were cruising around in complete disorder. They seemed to have come there to meet one another rather than to study Chinese ceramics. Everyone was beaming, contributing to one great meaningful smile. They came and went, eyes sparkling, ready to burst out laughing at the slightest excuse.
“And there’s the old guard for you!” said Skënder.
“So what’s their position?”
“They’re gaga. If they still had all their faculties they’d be lamenting now instead of exulting as they did when we broke with the Soviets.“
“But why should they be downcast?” asked Silva. “Perhaps they’re cherishing some hopes, now as then?”
“They’ve no reason to hope. We’re drawing away from China at the very moment China’s moving towards America. And so…”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“But they’re completely past it, and can’t understand the situation. Unless they’re only pretending…”
Silva started to laugh.
Then, from their right, there came a sudden noise, followed by cries of “What is it?” “What’s happening?” Heads turned, but no one could make anything out from a distance.
The crowd drifted towards the centre of interest. The more impatient elbowed their way forward. Others could be seen coming back in the other direction, wearing smiles of satisfied curiosity.
“What’s happened?” Skënder asked one of these.
“Someone’s broken a vase.”
“Good gracious!” Silva exclaimed,
“A Chinaman knocked it over by accident,” said the man. “I don’t know what would have happened if it had been one of us!”
Silva thought for a moment of Victor Hila. Scraps of conversation could be heard all round: “That beautiful vase — smashed to smithereens!”…“I was sure someone had knocked it over!”, “What? Who’d have dared?”…“Well, Ï never!”…“It was very valuable, too!”…“Still, I suppose it’s a good sign”…
Silva, turning round to see who’d spoken the last few words, was surprised to see the man they’d noticed a little while ago, looking at the poster. He was rubbing his hands, and his face was flushed with satisfaction.
“Let’s slip away,” said Skënder.
And after having strolled around for a little longer, they left. He went with her for part of the way, and as they parted she could feel on her lips a trace of the collective smile worn by the visitors to the exhibition. It was colder now and she walked faster. As she strode along she wondered if she’d been right not to tell Skënder Bermema that her brother had been expelled from the Party. Perhaps he might have been able to give her some explanation? Anyhow, she’d contrive to mention it to him another day.
As she was passing the Café Riviera, where the lights were on because of the overcast sky, a sudden intuition made her turn and look in through the window. And her whole being was invaded by a deep, burning sensation, spreading like ripples when a drop of water fails into a tank. There, sitting on a bench near the front of the café, Gjergj was sitting with a young woman. “What could be more natural?” she told herself. And then, as if to check the waves of pain that were pulsing right through her body, “So what?” So what if he was sitting in a café with a woman — that wasn’t the end of the world! But some blind force, stronger than her own will, made her do something that offended against her owe code of conduct and her own dignity: she looked again. The young woman — or girl — sitting with Gjergj was pretty. In the course of the two or three seconds that Silva had spent looking at her (I only hope I didn’t look again] she thought later), her mind took it all in: their pensive look, the way the girl was toying with her coffee cup, the smoke from his cigarette, and, worse still, the dangerous silence that reigned between them. How shameful! Silva reproached herself, swiftly turning her head away. How horrible! But between “shameful”, which applied to herself, and “horrible”, which applied to what she’d just seen, there was an enormous distance. “How horrible!” she said again, forgetting her own unseemly behaviour. It seemed to her a mere drop compared with that other ocean of evil.
The farther she left the café behind, the more irreparable seemed what she had seen there. The long light-brown hair, the whirls of cigarette smoke lazily enfolding them both…She’d have to be very stupid not to see there was something between them. She realized how fast she was walking by the sound of her own heels on the pavement. It seemed to come from far away. Then she felt a temporary calm descend on her, though she was well aware it was false respite, a grey, barren flatness bound in the end to emphasize the underlying pain. This was the reason, then, for his over-affectionate telegram. For that over-insistent “fondest”. Of course, a part of that effusion, perhaps the main part, was really directed towards the other woman! She saw again in her mind’s eye the intimate moments of their first night together after his return, moments cruelly lit by the thought that he’d done the same things the next day, or the day after that, in some anonymous room with the other woman.