The Successor by Ismaíl Kadaré Read Free Book Online Page B

vice-minister’s typist was to go to the Opera, generally thought to be the most prestigious of the venues, whereas the vice-minister himself had been summoned to a classroom in the Agricultural College, in which he had never before set foot. However, that was only the first surprise. Once they were at their respective meeting places, the participants found other causes for astonishment. Unlike all other occasions of this kind, no long table stood on the podium, there was no red tablecloth on it, and no flowers either. All they could see was a chair by a plain square table on which a tape recorder stood. Even that was nothing compared to the shock caused by the seating plan. Office workers, professors, truck drivers, graying female party activists, members of the Politburo, and government ministers silently suffered inner dramas as they checked, and checked again, the seat number printed on their invitation before they finally sat down beside each other. Some occasionally felt a sudden wave of joy at having such high officials sitting next to them, but these feelings of pride metamorphosed almost instantly into dread, for reasons no one could quite explain.
    An hour and a half later, as they came out, people seemed as if they had been struck dumb. By means of the tape recorder, they had just heard the Guide’s speech to the Politburo, the same speech that had been intended for the evening of December 13, in the presence of the Successor, which had had to be postponed, given the lateness of the hour, to the next day, December 14. And it was in the interval between the evening of the thirteenth and the dawn of the fourteenth that the Successor’s suicide had occurred.
    The Guide’s speech began by making you think that the Successor, aware that he stood to be attacked next morning, had lacked the courage to wait for the hour of his punishment and so anticipated it by taking his own life. But lo and behold, to everyone’s surprise, the speech ended with the announcement of the Successor’s pardon. That sufficed to reverse the sequence of events in people’s imagination.
    Thousands of the inhabitants of the capital felt the same disturbance, identical to what had been felt some time previously by Politburo members on the morning of December 14. In living memory, no one could recall such a brutal stop being put to the working of the clock. Because of this interruption, the twelve hours that had elapsed, most of them night hours topped with the beginning of sunrise, had been completely swallowed up. It had thus been a sudden Tuesday, though endowed with a secret dose of clemency that Monday had given it. The Guide’s soft and at times almost liquid voice, coming close to a gurgle, cut through total silence. He addressed the Successor by his first name, as he had in the past: “And now, when you have had time to think again during the night, I am absolutely certain that when we gather again tomorrow in this same room, you will have an even clearer understanding of your mistake and you will at last be with us once again, with your comrades who love you, and as precious to the Party as you have ever been.”
    The morrow had come for everyone, except for the Successor. So it had been laid down that these words would never be heard by their addressee. The extension of the plenum — this delay that had prompted the Guide to say, “All the comrades on the Politburo have expressed themselves, now it’s my turn to speak, but since it’s so late, I think it’s preferable for me to leave my speech until tomorrow morning” — had therefore turned out to be fatal for the Successor.
    The adjournment, that isthmus of time between Monday and Tuesday, the furrow that the Successor had been unable to stride over, had tipped him into the abyss. Everybody had been present at his pardon except the man pardoned.
    People in the meeting halls began by stages to feel a great sadness. How was it that a man who had put up with anxieties and