The Concert by Ismaíl Kadaré Page B

while she did her best to avoid copying the older woman, she didn’t feel guilty about it. She liked everything about Silva - her face, her way of dressing and doing her hair, the way she spoke on the telephone, the atmosphere around her and the relations she created with everyone, from her fellow secretaries to her superiors. Linda also admired Suva’s relationship with her husband, and had even, on the basis of just a few glimpses, taken a liking to the husband himself, with his stern-looking and yet not forbidding face, and the deeply etched lines on his forehead that seemed signs of youth rather than age.
    â€œâ€˜I got married during the blockade,’“ she repeated, smiling. Would she herself get married during this second blockade? She turned towards a shop window so that no one would see her smiling to herself. She certainly liked doing as Silva did, even at the risk of seeming like a pale imitation of her friend. Anyhow, mightn’t anything happen during a blockade? Hadn’t Silva got married, while her late sister got divorced in order to marry Besnik Struga, and Struga himself, a person still shrouded in mystery for Linda, had broken off his engagement? She’d met Struga, Suva’s former brother-in-law, only once, by chance, in the corridor, when he’d come to the ministry to see Silva. But — perhaps because Linda had heard so much about him
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he’d made a strong impression on her. Most of the people Silva knew were somehow out of the ordinary: her brother, the tank officer, who’d come to see her two days ago, looking distraught; Skënder Bermema, the writer, an old family friend who’d had a rather enigmatic relationship with Suva’s sister; and other cousins and acquaintances whom Linda had met or whose voices she’d heard when they’d called in at or rung up the office to speak to her friend. All were interesting; almost all had something in their lives - some phase, some act or some episode
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that was connected with the Soviet blockade. Linda was growing more and more fascinated by that period, and by anyone who’d been directly involved in it.
    And why shouldn’t I too get married during a blockade? she joked to herself as she made for the Makina Import building. Bet thee she’d have to find someone to marry. And furthermore, was this really a genuine blockade? By all accounts the other one had weighed down on everyone like lead: a period harsh in itself had been slashed through as by an icy abyss. But it was still hard to say how serious the present crisis might prove. You needed to be a code-cruncher to deduce anything from the articles in the press. But things might not turn out so badly as that: there mightn’t be a blockade at all. And detecting a tinge of regret in this thought, as if she could only get married if there was a blockade, she smiled at her own absurdity.
    â€œIf anyone suspected the idiotic notions that go through my mind!” she thought. It was a good thing Tirana was big enough for one to daydream as one walked along without bumping into people one knew. Then, paradoxically, she had a feeling someone was watching her. She turned, and thought she recognized a face. The man just nodded vaguely. Where have I seen that ravaged face before, she wondered. And then she remembered. It was in the cafeteria at the ministry.
    Linda smiled at him. They both walked on a little way. Then he spoke.
    â€œYou’re Suva’s friend, aren’t you? We’ve met before, if you remember.”
    â€œYes, indeed!” Linda exclaimed. But he didn’t take the hand she’d half extended.
    â€œHow did that business about the X-ray turn out?” she asked, laughing.
    But he remained serious.
    â€œNo developments,” he said. “Nothing.”
    â€œReally?”
    She gave him a sidelong look, and her own smile faded. If she’d met anyone else in the street like this, she would have