The Accident by Ismaíl Kadaré Read Free Book Online Page A

memory of the first morning, for instance, when she had woken up in love with Besfort. No doubt the best part of every love story. Towards dawn, alone, in front of your new master. In other words, the tyrant you have fashioned for yourself. The curtains of the room, and your hair on the pillow, the longing in your breasts, all these things that he took one by one into his custody, were transformed.
    She could not summon that day to mind, or rather did not want to. A messed-up day like this one called for different memories, of triumph and the spicy taste of revenge, of Lulu’s soft lips as they first kissed in the car, of the music to which she freely allowed the Slovak student to caress her on the dance floor. The first time in her life that she had kissed a woman, and the first time she had been with another man since she met Besfort.
    Some vague fear kept her from concentrating. The direction her memories had taken was not a good omen. They say that memories become more intense before a break-up.
    She knew this, but there was nothing she could do. She could not endure this fear, with its threat of emptiness. It was worse than the fear when Lulu had first warned her against him. “Listen, darling, and don’t think I am just jealous. I really am jealous, and I’m not hiding it, but jealousy would never make me warn somebody that they might be murdered. I know you don’t believe me, but from all you say he has all the marks of a murderer. That is what murderers are like these days, all sorts of surprising people. You can be murdered by the last person you expect, your financial adviser or piano tuner, or the priest who says mass on Sunday. Don’t be misled by his white shirts, his ties and those briefcases with the EU logo. Darling, I’m not paranoid, believe me. I know from experience what they are like. That special whiteness of your skin scares me. It tempts that sort of person.”
    Lulu only hinted at what she meant by this, for all Rovena’s questioning. According to her, there was a kind of lustrous pallor which was particularly attractive to unstable minds.
    The door creaked and she opened her eyes. He was no longer by the window. He must have gone down to drink a coffee, something he often did lately.
    Now that he was gone, her mind seemed able to range more freely.
    She imagined him sitting pensively at the corner of the bar, as he had done long ago at the café in the Palace of Culture. She had recognised him from a distance on one of his visits to the university over that problem that seemed to drag on without end, but this was the first time that she had looked at him calmly, as he sat with his coffee cup.
    This time it had been Rovena who explained to her girlfriend, with whom she was sitting and eating ice cream, the mystery of this man who had got into trouble over Israel, or rather over a chess tournament that he was not supposed to play, or not supposed to lose, she wasn’t sure. It was a complicated business. Perhaps he wasn’t supposed to win it.
    “You’ve got me confused. Is he a chess player? You said he was going to teach international law. What a blank look he has. It must be because of what has happened.”
    “No, I don’t think he’s a professional player, but I think there are foreigners in the tournaments. You think he has a blank look? It’s that vacancy that I particularly like.”
    “I think he’s got under your skin,” said her friend.
    Rovena replied, “I don’t know. Perhaps he has. But it was so impossible.”
    “What was impossible?”
    “Everything. Starting from his coming to the faculty, where we had all expected him . . .”
    “Of course it was impossible, after that . . . mistake,” said her friend.
    The rattling of the chains dragging the dictator’s statue through the centre of Tirana kept interrupting her thoughts. It was this sound, louder than any earthquake, that divided past from present. Everything that had once been impossible suddenly became real,