“Oh no,” Suzana pleaded, “don’t say that. Dearest heart, please don’t say such things. Just this morning you were so full of hope, and I was too. What’s happened to you?”
He said he was sorry. He hadn’t changed. Nor had he had any bad news. It was just his nerves giving way.
He smoothed down her hair and uttered words of comfort, words of hope. All the signs remained as favorable as before. Even the appearance of Aunt Memë wasn’t necessarily a bad omen. Whether the old woman was really a Sigurimi officer in disguise or a shadow that had gotten out of a country graveyard, she was altogether preferable to the nothingness that had been their lot up to then, to that deathly hush unbroken by any knock on the door, a door as silent as the stone lid of a burial chamber.
Suzana calmed down and went back inside. In the corridor she thought she heard her mother’s bedroom door being slowly pulled closed. She had the impression that her mother had been looking very worried recently whenever she caught sight of Suzana and her brother deep in conversation.
She awoke on the stroke of midnight. She got up to make a complete tour of the house, a recent habit. An ice-pale moon shone through the windowpanes. To her great surprise, the door to the first-floor lounge looked as if it was ajar. She hurried toward it. Yes, it was. Probably the investigators had left it like that in the morning. It was the first time they had forgotten to close that door since December. But maybe it was no accident. Maybe it was the result of the general change in the atmosphere.
Her hand went toward the light switch, but pulled back. There were guards outside who were probably spying on every movement inside the house. Anyway, there was no need to switch on the light. Moonlight streamed into the room, making it look as if it was full of mist. Tears came into her eyes. The room was as unreal as it was in her imagination. Unbearably convincing morsels of the memory of her engagement party sprang up before her eyes. By the marble mantelpiece, her fiancé sipping champagne with two of his comrades. A little farther away, with his back turned, was her father in his dark suit. Then a newcomer, holding a bunch of red flowers, at the head of a merry group. Flashbulbs crackled. Someone saying, “But where is Suzana?” — then, once again, she saw the architect, weeping with emotion. Then everyone going stiff, and voices whispering, “The Prijs! The Guide is coming!” Then as soon as he had come into the room, everything went rigid again, but this time it was with the brittleness of glass, sparkling all the more brightly for the complete silence that fell on the party.
“Didn’t I tell you he was almost blind?” Suzana jerked her head to the side as if to shake off the secret her brother was telling her.
Despite the efforts he made to hide it, the Guide’s blindness was obvious from his every movement. Even his voice seemed affected by his infirmity. “My best wishes! May the happy couple prosper and multiply!” had been said in his deep-throated tone as he looked around for the betrothed. Suzana stood stock-still, unable to decide whether it was easier to bear a clouded gaze than one that was too piercing.
Before he left, the Guide had embraced her father again. They must have been having a heartfelt conversation, as they seemed unable to part from each other; they both seemed to be swaying on their feet together, waving like reeds caught in a gust of wind. When finally they let each other go, Suzana noticed that there were teardrops in the blind man’s eyes; but just as she was pondering how all eyes secrete the same kind of tears, her mother’s high-pitched voice broke in with a “Would you like a tour of the house?”
Every time Suzana had thought back on it she felt the same malaise about the Guide’s slow progress toward the antechamber.
She now followed the same route. In the milky light of the moon, the lounge looked enchanted. The finest room in the house: That’s what all their family and friends who’d been to visit recently had said. Whereas her brother, looking at the room from the doorway on the eve of her engagement party, had answered her question — “Doesn’t it look wonderful?” — with, “Sure it does. Maybe more than it should.”
Suzana hastened to join the tour group as if she had been prodded. The Guide’s overlong black cloak partly muffled the irregular sound of his footsteps. Suzana could hear her mother’s harsh voice, sharp as a cleaver, doing the honors: “And here is the antechamber; everyone agrees it is the best room in the house.” What’s gotten into you, Mama? Suzana murmured to herself. Her eyes suddenly met the architect’s. They were like burning coals, and it seemed astonishing to Suzana that their jet-black hue made them even more incandescent than if they had been flaming red. Alongside the sparkle and the anxiety caused in turn by the hope of flattery and the fear of deprecatory remarks, there was something else in those eyes that moved between both emotions and diluted them.
As always, her mother’s thin and steely voice managed, most oddly, to break through the general hubbub. She was explaining how the lights in the lounge were controlled by a special kind of switch that was the first of its kind in Albania. “Not that, Mama!” her daughter quaked once more. But the Guide had stopped in front of the switch that the mistress of the house was pointing out to him. The black cloak that up to then had masked his fumbling steps could not now hide his groping hands. He moved closer to the wall, and, in movements characteristic of the poorly sighted, felt for the switch with his hand. Silence had suddenly fallen all around, but when he had managed to turn on the light and make it brighter, he laughed out loud. He turned the switch further, until the light was at maximum strength, then laughed again, ha-ha-ha, as if he’d just found a toy that pleased him. Everyone laughed with him, and the game went on until he began to turn the dimmer down. As the brightness dwindled, little by little everything began to freeze, to go lifeless, until all the many lamps in the room went dark.
Each time she thought back on that turning out of the lights, which had amused the company at the time, she felt overcome with anxiety. Sometimes it seemed to her as if that had been the precise moment when the wind had turned.
Suzana felt worn out again and silently went out of the lounge. Her anxiety seemed to be nearing its end. Such great inner turmoil was only a symptom of its imminent lifting. Among other signs, that the lounge and its antechamber, which had been under seal for so long, were now left open confirmed that the end was nigh.
FOUR. THE FALL
She was almost aware of being once again in a dream. The doorway was low, its lintel overhung with a peaceful, almost drowsy creeper, and she still could not work out why she was there. She put out her hand toward the iron ring, but she thought she heard herself knocking even before she had grasped it. Well now, she thought, although she did not feel any great surprise. It was fear that overcame her instead.
She took one step forward, but the knocking, far from halting, came louder and louder. The thuds were coming from the other side, sounding now far away, now very close. “Diabolical door!” Suzana yelled out loud, and woke up with a start. It was almost the same dream she had had two weeks ago, except that the knocking was now even louder than in her dream …
What’s making them knock like that? she wondered, not without a pang of anxiety. They had the keys and could come and go as they pleased any day of the week.
It was obvious that they could come as they pleased, and they often did. Suzana put the pillow down over her head like a thatch roof and figured she would be able to get back to sleep. The knocking had in fact stopped, but now she could hear feet tramping up the stairs. She also thought she could hear her mother’s voice. Suzana pulled her head out from under the pillow. Yes, that was her mother’s voice. But she wasn’t so much talking as screaming.