“I should like to inform the meeting that I have renounced the royalties of four thousand new leks due to me for my latest novel…”
This was greeted by shouts and interjections all over the room. It was hard to tell whether they were expressions of approval or disapproval, or merely sarcastic laughter, C–V— was in the seventh heaven. He was speaking for the third time running. They were still discussing the removal of author’s names from literary works. Q—, the playwright, had just pronounced against it.
“I don’t see what you can put in its place,” he said. “A book is the work of someone, isn’t it? What are you going to put on it? — the name of the place where he was born? the members of his executive committee? perhaps the local farm cooperative!”
Amidst the laughter, C–V— glared at the previous speaker and took the rostrum:
“I don’t at all approve of the way the previous comrade approaches the problem. Nor of the laughter with which he was received. All that is the result of an unwholesome intellectualism which we ought to have thrown off by now. Some people think it’s wrong to suppress authors’ names — they’re quite scandalized at the idea. But I’d like to ask those comrades: don’t you think it’s even more scandalous that thousands and thousand of ordinary people toil away on all the fronts of socialism without asking for their names to be advertised, without seeking any vain notoriety? Have those comrades ever reflected on the fact that our heroic miners, our worthy milkmaids, our noble cooperative farmers have never asked to have their names on coal trucks or milk churns or sacks of wheat? Why do they think it would be so terrible if their names no longer appeared on their books?”
The party secretary nodded his agreement. The Minister of Education and Culture, also at the meetings did the same. But when a voice from the back of the room piped up, “What shall we put instead of the author’s name? The name of a cornfield or of an irrigation canal?” it was greeted with more hoots of laughter. The secretary lowered his large head menacingly, and said loudly to C–V—, “Go on, comrade, even if what you say isn’t to everyone’s taste.”
Skënder closed his eyes for one last doze, then lay for a while trying to make up his mind which was more disagreeable, returning to the world of sleep or plunging into the world of consciousness.
When he woke up for good his head felt heavy. Sunday still seemed to be written all over the curtains, but less clearly than before. The void inside him was so tangible it was as if there were another person beside him. What’s the matter with me, he thought, thrashing about in the bed. But the void wouldn’t go away. He lay still for a few minutes looking up at the chalky white ceiling and depressively projecting concentric circles on to it. He suddenly realized that the strange body inside him was none other than his own unborn novel.
He lay on motionless between the white sheets. For several days now he’d felt the book stirring, groaning, slowly asphyxiating. And now, this Sunday dawn, his novel had started to give up the ghost.
What could he do to keep it alive? Where could he go? To whom could he protest? He could feel the book growing cold inside him, like a corpse. I should never have agreed to come on this trip, he told himself. Wandering around in the midst of this dehumanised society had killed his novel. For days he’d been feeling it leave him, evaporating, drying up as if in the desert.
Well, it wasn’t surprising. He should have expected it. Still lying there, he remembered what Gjergj Dibra had said about the aridity of human contacts in China, He’d laughed at the time, not suspecting he’d be experiencing it himself one day.
The death of human relationships, that was the cause of everything. Human relationships are at the root of everything, and here they’d managed to annihilate them. They’d stifled and dehydrated them until they turned into thorny cacti. “What wouldn’t I have given for an ordinary conversation,” Gjergj had told him. “A conversation between thieves sharing out the swag would have done, so long as it was the real thing!”
He rubbed his temples. Chance alone couldn’t explain what had happened. It had all been orchestrated in accordance with some diabolical plan. In order to do away with literature and the arts, you have to start by atrophying human speech. For three thousand years it had been cultivated. Without this marvel, life would be mere primitive stammerings. And now Mao Zedong had come to strangle it.
Is such a thing conceivable? he wondered. He contemplated the white ceiling. No, it couldn’t be true! He remembered the titles of some Chinese poems he’d read: Conversation by Moonlight, Conversation with My Friend Van on Mount Tian Kun in Late Autumn, Conversation with Lu Fu on the Day of the First Snow…
Carried away by the memory, he threw off the bedclothes and stood up. When he looked in the mirror on the wall his face looked rather pale, and if they hadn’t been his own eyes he’d have said they were cold as ice. Sleep with a blind man and you wake up cross-eyed. Where had he heard that saying?
He looked at the wall between his room and C–V—’s. We may be in the same hotel, thought Skënder, but I’m as far away from him as ever. And leagues away, light-years away from this Chinese Milky Way. So you may think, said a voice inside him. But your novel’s dead, just the same.
He began pacing frantically round the room, not only his expressions and gestures but everything about him reflecting his exasperation. He felt as if the death of his novel had completely destroyed his equilibrium. People talked about lack of vitamins and shortage of red or white corpuscles, but how did you feel when a work you’d been carrying for months in your body and mind was removed?
He was still flinging about when there was a knock at the door. It was C–V—.
“So you’re up, are you?” he asked, poking his head into the room. “Coming down to breakfast?”
Skënder looked at him as if he were a murderer.
“I don’t want any breakfast,” he said.
“Suit yourself,” said C–V—, shutting the door.
Skënder growled. The room felt too small for his pacings. This trip, he thought. Before they’d left, the secretary of the Writers’ Union had said, “There may be some friction between you, but I’m sure all that will be forgotten. I hope the trip will bring you together.”
Skënder growled again. This cursed trip.
Every day the relations between the two of them grew colder. The offer of a cigarette or a lighter, some word exchanged in the car, might seem to ease things for a bit, but by the evening, when they went to their separate rooms, the tension would be worse than ever.
I should never have come, he told himself again. Or at least not with him. He’d thought he’d be able to put up with him. For years he’d despised him, but that was all. ln China his feelings had started to intensify. He’d thought that despite their different views about things, the fact of being thrown together into that great ocean of Chinamen would bring them together. But precisely the opposite had happened.
It had become obvious with Skënder’s first attempts to talk to C–V— about the silly things they came up against everywhere they went. He’d known C–V— had a soft spot for anything Chinese, but he’d never have thought his admiration was such that he wouldn’t listen to a joke about the crass stupidities even the Chinese themselves must be ashamed of. That was Skënder’s last attempt to get closer to his travelling companion. It’s ridiculous! he grumbled, going back to his room at nine in the evening when he’d have liked to talk with someone till dawn in this strange hotel thousands of miles from home. He couldn’t forgive C–V— for being so unapproachable. It would be easier to communicate with an ape! Then he calmed down, reflecting that it was only natural. Given that C–V— was so fascinated by everything Chinese, he was bound to be against any kind of dialogue. And perhaps after all it was better so. Heaven only knew what construction he might have put on what Skënder said to him, and he might well send in a report about it to the Party committee when they got back to Albania, Skënder thought of the day when he’d glanced through the open door of C–V—’s room and seen a lot of papers on his desk. “What are you writing?” he’d asked. “The same as you,” C–V— had answered spitefully.