Recourse to such flights of fancy was understandable because the inhabitants of the city had lost something that had always been a source of pride to them: their cool heads. Or had they lost their heads altogether?
Nevertheless, with whatever mental powers left to them they hoped they had grasped certain things. For instance they understood that they had exchanged being blown up for a mass shooting but they didn’t yet know who would be the unfortunate people marked out for death. No doubt talks were under way with the Germans about their demands but nobody could work out where these were taking place, or who was talking to whom. Instead, people pricked their ears to catch the scraping sounds of footsteps in the night. Perhaps these were intermediaries, or would-be denunciators who did not know where to go.
Meanwhile another kind of sound was heard. It was more than unexpected. It was incredible, like the story of the man caught in the wolf’s fangs who in despair had prayed, “Oh God, make this a dream!” and whose prayer was answered. The sound was indeed like an answer to prayer, a happy end to an inauspicious beginning. It resembled machine-gun fire of a totally different kind, as if a new sort of weapon had been invented, one which fired music.
“What sort of gun is this? It’s like the music of Strauss,” said the Shamet boys, who played in the municipal band. Moreover, it was apparent at once that this noise, whether gunfire, music or both, did not come from the city’s main square but from the. . from the house of Big Dr Gurameto.
Before they concluded that Dr Gurameto had lost his wits, something else made people catch their breath. It was the feeling of bottomless and boundless remorse that follows an unpardonable oversight: they had forgotten the two doctors.
How had this happened? In all the upheaval of these world-shaking events with the rise and fall of states, broken alliances and changes to frontiers and flags, how had they forgotten the two doctors, who particularly should have been remembered at such a time? Forgetting their rivalry, their points of comparison and the fluctuating authority of each was like losing a compass bearing, forgetting the city’s barometer or thermometer; not to mention the stock-market index and the currency devaluation and the collapse of the Swiss banks that would follow a German invasion. In short, the mainspring that ticks inside every city and whose ticking everyone feels without knowing where it might be had been broken.
And now it seemed that Big Dr Gurameto was taking his revenge. “So you forgot me, did you? Now just see if I don’t drive you crazy!” And in the silence he had turned on his gramophone to wake the heavens. But this supposition, like most speculations that are too hasty, was soon questioned. Revenge was not Dr Gurameto’s style. Everyone knew he stood aloof from all these things.
So what was happening in his house? Any idiot could hear the music. But what it was for, for what occasion or what purpose, nobody could tell.
At once two new theories were put forward. The first claimed that Dr Gurameto’s intention was to cock a snook at the Germans. “So you’re invading us? You think you’ve frightened us and brought us to our knees? Nothing of the sort! Look, in front of your very nose my daughter’s getting engaged and I’m not postponing the party because according to our customs no Albanian will put off even the hour let alone the day of a celebration. So I’m behaving as if you weren’t here at all. You’re even welcome to come if you like. According to our traditions, my house is open to everyone, friend or foe.”
This interpretation showed what a fine man Big Dr Gurameto was and a cheer went up, if a silent one. “Bravo for Big Dr Gurameto, the toast of Gjirokastër!’ Simultaneously everyone derided his counterpart, Little Dr Gurameto. “Down with the little one! To hell with him, a disgrace to the neighbourhood and our whole city!”
But this conjecture proved short-lived. It was next reported that Dr Gurameto was not holding an engagement party. His dinner was not intended as a slap in the Germans’ faces. On the contrary, he was hosting it in their honour. He had invited these foreigners in order to say, “They greeted you with bullets at the gates of the city this morning, but I’ll welcome you with food and wine and music!”
A storm of fury blew up against the doctor. Many people said they had always known he would be unmasked as the Germanophile he was and others cursed him as the Judas of the city. They were correspondingly profuse in their praise for Little Dr Gurameto. At least the little one was cowering in the dark like everybody else, long-suffering but heroic, the pride of all Albania, whether Greater Albania or not!
It was plain to see that not a peep came from the darkened house of Little Dr Gurameto, while the big doctor’s house was ablaze with light, the music grew louder and above its strains the shouts of toasts and cheers in German could be heard.
The big doctor’s supporters, eager to exonerate him from this charge of treason, resorted to the suspicion that his mind had given way. Someone in this story had obviously lost his wits but nobody could tell if it was the doctor, the Germans or both.
Meanwhile, to spite the doctor’s admirers, the anti-Big Gurameto faction, more venomous than ever, asserted that the music was interspersed with machine-gun fire and that hostages were already being killed, not in the city square but in the cellars of the doctor’s house.
Others went even further, claiming that hostages the Germans especially wanted, such as Jakoel the Jew, were being led out of the cellars to be shot then and there in the dining hall, for sport! In other words, shoot them, slice open their bodies on the table, remove the organs for brave German soldiers and raise a toast to Albanian — German friendship.
This extravagant fantasy, especially the vision of Big Dr Gurameto with his surgical instruments cutting up bodies during dinner, brusquely restored people to their senses and the city thereby regained the faculty on which it had prided itself for the last six centuries at least.
It was true, though, that Dr Gurameto’s house was brightly lit and echoed to the sounds of merriment, with Brahms followed by Lili Marlene. And at the same time, machine guns were being lined up in the city square and trained on hostages handcuffed in pairs, who shivered in the dampness of the night. The weather was cold. A bitter north wind blew down the Gorge of Tepelene, as it always did when destiny took a turn for the worse. The hostages stood waiting. No gun had yet fired and the helmeted soldiers now and then lifted their heads in surprise towards the music. But it was the hostages who were the most bewildered and uncomprehending as they listened.
There could be no more extreme opposites than that grim square with its expectation of death and Big Dr Gurameto’s house with its singing and champagne, yet soon, inexplicably, it was assumed that the machine guns and the music, however far apart they might be, were mysteriously linked. But what was the connection between them, and did it promise good or ill?
As the sound of the gramophone slowly faded, so did the anguish of speculation about the dinner. The city could recall many extraordinary banquets of all kinds down the centuries, some joyful and others disgusting: guests had tried to throw themselves from the rooftops in their euphoria, had fired at each other in mid-celebration or attempted to kidnap the lady of the house; dawn had broken to reveal hosts and guests poisoned together. Yet none could be compared to the dinner of this night.
Reaching back deeper into the past, people remembered Christ’s Last Supper, as told by the scriptures, and were sure they would find the answer there. But as soon as they felt they had hit upon the truth, it eluded them again. Clearly, neither Big Dr Gurameto nor any of his German guests were Christ, but it would be going too far to identify either with Judas. With a sigh and a prayer to the Lord to forgive them these sinful thoughts, they tried to empty their minds completely.