The Accident by Ismaíl Kadaré

affair, which was at that moment ending, with the beginning of something else. It was her taste, and yet not hers at all. She was his, but not his. She was a stranger, yet familiar in every nuance. Actual and ineffable. Faithful and elusive.
    Ever since their last meeting, his mind had harked back continually to everything to do with that feeling. His dream of resurrection certainly had something to do with it. As a student at the university, he had studied Albanian folklore, with its motifs of rediscovery. Now for the first time he wondered at their mysteriousness. The bridegroom in his marriage bed who recognises by a birthmark that his bride is his sister. Or conversely, the bride who recognises her brother. The father who returns from exile and takes his son for his enemy, or his enemy for his son, and so forth, all these stories of incest which were thought to be fiction, but very probably were not. All these violations of taboos, obscure desires within the tribe, which out of shame or horror were passed on as legends, floated to the surface of his memory.
    “You’re no longer my master. I won’t stand your tyranny any longer. I’ve had enough.”
    Besfort turned his head to the window, as if Rovena’s voice on the telephone two years ago, racked by sobs, now came to him from outside.
    The crowd of demonstrators was now close to the prime minister’s office, and their shouts were clearly audible.
    “It’s not about property, or Çamëria,” said the waiter, also looking out of the window.
    The placards were mainly pink.
    “I think they’re the ‘alternatives’,” said someone at the next table. “That’s what the gays and lesbians are called now.”
    Rovena’s voice on the phone was no longer recognisable. Taken aback, he was stuck for words. He interrupted her, “Calm down, listen to me.” But she snapped back, “No, I won’t calm down, I won’t listen to you.”
    He hung up in fury, but she called back at once.
    “Don’t hang up like you always do. You’re no longer . . .”
    “That’s enough,” he shouted back. “You’re not in your right mind.”
    “Really?” she said. “Is that how you think of me? Now listen. Get ready to hear something very serious.”
    You aren’t what you were to me any more. I love someone else. Amidst the deafening crackles and abrupt silences of the telephone line, those were the words he expected. But amazingly, something else came down the wire.
    “You’ve ruined my sex life.”
    “What?”
    The thought that her mental health was not good suddenly took priority over everything else. Everything she had said, her insults, even her possible infidelities meant nothing. He tried to handle her gently. “Rovena, my dear, calm down. It must be my fault, no doubt about it, my fault, only mine, are you listening?”
    “No, I’m not listening. And I don’t want to. And don’t think that you’re as frightening as you seem.”
    “Of course I’m not, and I don’t want to seem frightening.”
    “Really?”
    “You think I’m trying to scare you? You think I’m like an American Indian, tattooing my face to look fierce?”
    Amazingly, she laughed. He even thought he caught the word “darling” smothered by her laughter, as so often when she liked one of his jokes. But she was quiet only for a moment. Her voice rose stridently again, and he thought, oh God, she’s really not well.
    The next day she seemed more relaxed on the phone, if a bit tired. She had been to the doctor, who had asked some tactful questions. She explained that she had quarrelled with her lover. The doctor had given her tranquillisers and some advice: most importantly to break off all contact with the source of the trouble, in other words with him. A long silence followed.
    “Are you going to ask the same old question, is there anybody between us?”
    “No, I’m not,” he answered.
    “You say not, but you’re thinking it. Because you still don’t understand that I’m no longer