The Concert by Ismaíl Kadaré

electronic brain, give part of your own brain. But wait - that’s nothing compared with what I’ll ask you for next. For you’ll have to give your Party too! I know how unacceptable that may sound to you; how barbarous and sinister, I realize it’s your dearest, most inviolable and undisputed possession, and that you’ve based all your security, your present and your future upon it. I know all that. But wait: I may be an old man, but I’m not so stupid as to ask you to violate the inviolable or question the unquestionable. No, not at all Far be it from me to do such a thing! Besides, what good would it do me? Without your Party your whole country would go down the drain and I’d lose you for ever. You’d move away, you’d drift off. So I wouldn’t dream of entertaining such an idea. We must act with the Party, always with the Party, my pets - but with a Party that’s slightly more…what shall I say?… more open! Wait — hear me out! It’s not as bad as it may sound. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve got a flag with a two-headed eagle on it, haven’t you? So why should the idea of a Party with two lines strike you as so terrible? It’s unacceptable and barbarous, you say? Very well, let’s say no more about it - well think of something else. We’re not short of symbols, thank God.
    He’d discussed it with Zhou Enlai. He himself had made a few suggestions, and Zhou had met one of their ministers, a general, and was preparing to get in touch with various important elements in the Albanian economy. Zhou had come round to his own way of thinking: you couldn’t do anything in Albania without the Party, In fact, you had to start with it. And if you managed to mould it, to manipulate it a bit, everything else would follow. Things would take a new course, the ramparts of the citadel, as they liked to call their country, would be no more than camouflage, and their pride would turn into its opposite, their disobedience into docility. And from then on out they would never again dream of writing a letter to oppose an invitation to an American president.
    For a few seconds Mao lost the thread of his thoughts, but then he managed to find it again. All right, keep your Party thee, he said aloud, but on one condition: make a few alterations, I’m not asking anything very difficult
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just a bit of a change, a little mutation, as the scientists say. You refuse? In that case the factories will stop going up, the blast furnaces will go out, the dams will crumble, everything will shrivel up into a skeleton. Usually, when a country is reduced to rubble, it’s because of a war, but in your case it will be the débris of peace, than which nothing is more horrible: bodies unburied, souls on the scrap-heap, epidemics, death itself…And Tartar hordes, wolves and jackals with scraps of fur and women’s finery in their jaws…
    Mao Zedong let himself burst out laughing at last, and went on stroking the wall of the cave as if he was trying to wheedle it. The time was now ripe for blackmail Our people on the spot could exploit the situation. According to reliable sources, China had open or covert supporters inside the Albanian government, on the Central Committee even. The “sleepers” could finally emerge from their slumbers. The real game was about to begin. Now you’re going to pay all your outstanding debts. I’m going to tighten the screw -slowly, week after week, month after month, season after season. Sometimes I’ll pretend to slacken off for a bit, so that it’ll hurt all the more when I tighten up again. And so it will go on until you’re at your last gasp, and you yourselves offer me more than I’ve ever asked of you. Ha ha!
    Unhurriedly, as if savouring a good wine which one keeps in one’s mouth as long as possible to enjoy the bouquet, Mao imagined the future Sinization of Albania. First the abolition