The Concert (46 page)

On many a morning Tchan found himself burying his head in his hands, or clenching his jaw so hard he could scarcely feel it. What was all this clamour? According to the proverb, water must go murky before it can start to clear. Was this the explanation? He shrank from this hypothesis. But Chairman Mao couldn't have made a mistake. It must be the Chinese themselves: they had been getting more wicked lately.

Tchan felt his own attitude hardening daily. He had sent one report to the
Zhongnanhai
via the two envoys, who had jest left N—, and he was now preparing another. When instructions came from the capital, he would strike. And he would strike without mercy, so that the citizens of N— would remember it for generations.

Later on, at the end of the day's work, he pet his report in an envelope, sealed it, and sent it, together with two tapes, to the villa in Peking where foreign delegations were put up. The covering note read as follows: “As none of our staff speaks Albanian, we are sending you, for decoding, some tapes concerning the Albanian delegation which has just left N—.” Tchan was exhausted. He locked up his office and went out to the waiting car, “Home,” he told the driver.

The car had to stop in the Street of the People's Communes. A crowd was blocking the road.

“Now what's the matter?” growled Tchan.

The driver got out to see. He was soon back,

“A pedestrian's been crashed by a bulldozer,” he said, starting up the car again. “A man called Van Mey.”

“Van Mey?”

It seemed to Tchan he'd heard that name before. But by the time the car had left the crowd behind, he'd forgotten it.

10

And so the winter went by, one of the worst director Tchan had ever known, full of work and worry. Far away in Peking the power struggle apparently still went on, though no one could say which of the two sides was getting the upper hand. Now one and now the other was borne upwards. Only the
Zhongnanhai
remained unmoved and unassailable, above the mêlée. Tchan felt his own star was hitched to it from now on.

He'd had to deal with plenty of problems during the winter. Once or twice he'd come quite close to disaster, but in the end chance had been on his side. The microphones were an additional complication. They had become the main cause of tension between him and the other local officials, giving rise to rivalries, intrigues and reversals of alliances. Sometimes Tchan felt he would never struggle free of this imbroglio.

Meanwhile the installation of microphones went on, with the inevitable ups and downs, pleasant and unpleasant surprises. But Tchan was more used to it now; he'd gradually become immunized, as to a poison, by his daily dose, The same thing seemed to be true of the population in general: the rumours about the mikes had died down, as the enYoys from the
Zhongnanhai
had said they would.

But time, though it sometimes hung heavy, was passing by, and Tchan was amazed when, at the first meeting held to exchange information about the
qietingqis, 
one of his subordinates started his speech with the words:

“It was just a year ago that in accordance with direct instructions from Chairman Mao, our town began installing listening devices …”

The meeting was attended by two representatives of the
Zhongnanhai,
 different ones this time, who took down copious notes about everything. The speakers dealt with every aspect of micro-surveillance, exchanging experience, drawing conclusions, and calling attention to successes and shortcomings.

The conference lasted two days, and after it had ended and the
Zhongnanhai
envoys had left, Tchan realized that everything was going to continue just as before. His attention had been caught by one out of the many speeches he had heard at the meeting. It had been delivered by a young technician, who had entitled his paper, “On some changes brought about in the way people speak by the introduction of
qietingqis.”
Tchan had noticed this phenomenon himself some time before, but it was like a revelation to hear it spoken of and see it written down in black and white. As a matter of fact the young man had only touched on the subject and not gone into it deeply. His main point was that the task of those whose job it was to transcribe the tapes was getting more and more difficult, for many of the conversations recorded now required decoding if they were to mean anything.

Tchan had already devoted some thought to this phenomenon, and he now paid it special attention. This was the people's riposte in their duel with him: they were changing the way they talked so that he couldn't understand it. It was no accident that the spies themselves had been complaining lately: “Our ears are perfectly all right — we've just had them tested. But we can't make out a word of some of these conversations. Is this some new kind of Chinese that people are talking?”

Tchan paced back and forth in his office, which was heavy with tobacco smoke. This was more serious than he'd thought. By way of opposition to him, people were gradually inventing a new language, an anti-language. A growing proportion of the tapes was becoming unintelligible. Where would it end? What would happen?

Perhaps nothing would happen, thought Tchan after a while. If you looked at the matter calmly, it wasn't so much a case of covert language changing, as of covert language coming to resemble overt language.

Was he going senile, inventing such ideas? But he couldn't get it out of his head. Hadn't the overt language been gradually filled with and eventually almost taken over by slogans and empty phrases? While the covert language, the one people spoke among themselves, had escaped that process and remained clear and precise. So what was really happening now was that the overt language was gradually infiltrating the covert one, The two were becoming one, and all because of micro-surveillance.

I'm raving, thought Tchan. If I go on like this much longer I'll end up in the madhouse or in jail. I shan't listen to the blasted tapes any more. I'll have a couple of months' peace.

But he knew very well he couldn't do without them for a single day. He was as addicted to them as he was to tobacco, and he'd never succeeded in giving up smoking.

And so winter went by, the second after the coming of the
qietingqis
, and then it was spring again. Director Tchan didn't go crazy, and didn't end up in jail. He was so busy he didn't even notice the arrival of summer, and neither he nor his aides took any leave. One morning some dead leaves were blown against the window, followed by a gust of rain, He looked up from his desk for a moment, It was autumn.

In the same week as the first frost an urgent order came from the
Zhongnanhai:
in the new situation arising out of the cooling off of relations between China and Albania, top priority was to be given to collecting information about alleged acts of provocation committed by Albanian citizens in China, whether students, embassy staff or members of delegations.

11

An hour later, Tchan summoned his aides to his office to tell them about the new instructions.

“Here in N—,” he said wearily, “there aren't any students or foreign embassies. That makes our task easier. As for the only Albanian delegation that ever set foot here as far as I know, I believe we sent the tapes recording their conversations to Peking for decoding, because we didn't have anyone who knew the language?”

“That's right,” said his aide.

“Regarding their contacts with people here, I think we have some reports on the subject. Is there anything in them that's relevant to what this order asks? Some provocative phrase or other?”

“No,” answered his aide, but not very convincingly.

Tchan thought he looked rather uncertain too.

“What?” he said. “It looks to me as if certain things went on that I wasn't told about.”

“No, no,” said the aide nervously. “There isn't anything in the reports. I was thinking of something else.”

Tchan looked him straight in the eye. He squirmed.

“What
were
you thinking of, exactly?”

The aide gave up.

“Perhaps you remember that two years ago we lost a mike,” he stammered, “One of those special mini-mikes…”

“What's that got to do with the present question?”

“There is a connection. Perhaps you also remember that the man whose clothes it was attached to was killed. Van Mey, his name was …”

“Van Mey,” Tchan murmured.

Yes, he did remember. That had been the only mike they lost, and Van Mey's name had been mentioned…Yes, it was all coming back to him. They worried themselves sick about that lost
qietingqi
. The instructions about looking after them had been very strict, especially for the mini-mikes, and they'd had great trouble hushing the matter up.

“So what, then?” said Tchan. “What's it got to do with this?” - pointing to the order.

His aide swallowed.

“The only person to act as guide to the Albanian delegation and exchange a few words with them was Van Mey,” he said, “If that mike hadn't disappeared we'd have a tape of what he and the Albanians said to one another.”

“Really?” said Tchan.

Even after two years he could still remember their agitation about the loss, but he couldn't remember the details. Had they written a report? he asked.

“Of course,” said the other. “Shall I go and get it?”

Tchan nodded.

When the aide came back and started to read out the report, Tchan remembered quite clearly the day he'd been told one of the independent mikes was missing because the person wearing it had been killed a fortnight ago. They hadn't been able to recover the device from his anorak, for the simple reason that the anorak had disappeared. After searching the victim's flat and finding out he'd had neither family nor close friends in N—, they tried the crematorium. Unfortunately, it hadn't been functioning at the time of Van Mey's death because of a fuel shortage: they'd had to bury the body in the old town cemetery, “To hell with him and his mike!” Tchan had cried, “Write a report and bring it to me to sign!”…And so the case had been closed.

“It was my fault,” he admitted now. “Bet how was I to know that our relations with Albania would sink so low, and that that cursed mike…”

“Of course,” said one of his assistants, “How could you have known?”

“What's done is done,' said another. “No point in talking about it now.”

“Wrong!” roared Tchan, “I'll raise that mike from the dead if I have to!”

And he gave the gruesome order.

12

That very evening two lorries stopped outside the old cemetery, now used only for bodies that couldn't be dealt with by the crematorium because of fuel shortages. Tchan and his two assistants got out of one truck, and a few municipal workers out of the other. The sexton was waiting for them at the gate, a lantern in his hand and his face dark with terror.

“Lead the way!” commanded Tchan.

They set off in silence along a path, the man with the lantern leading and the others occasionally shining their torches.

“Here it is,” said the sexton, pointing to a mound of earth.

The torches gathered round and then were switched off, leaving only the faint light of the lantern on the grave.

“Switch on the headlights of the lorries,' ordered Tchan, drawing back a pace or two. “Then get cracking!”

They proceeded almost in silence. The headlamps came on quite suddenly., casting a white light tinged with mauve. The workmen spread a tarpaulin by the side of the grave.

Tchan watched the picks and shovels at work, while the sexton leaned over from time to time, presumably to tell the workers when to stop piling the earth at the side of the grave and start putting it on the tarpaulin. They'd decided to sift the earth that might contain, among the dead man's bones and what remained of his clothes, the lost mike.

Tchan was so obsessed his head was splitting, though he had high hopes of getting his hands on the precious device. He'd show the
Zhongnanhai
what he was made of! Maybe Mao himself would come to hear about it. Tchan looked up from time to time: he hoped it wasn't going to rain! Spadefuls of earth were starting to fall on the tarpaulin. Any one of them might hold the treasure. The sexton couldn't remember Van Mey's funeral now, but he did tell them that when someone died instantly in an accident and didn't go into hospital (the bulldozer had practically cut Van Mey in two), they were usually buried in the clothes they were wearing at the time.

“Careful,” someone called. “You've reached the skeleton.”

The heap of earth on the tarpaulin went on growing. They were going to sift as much soil as possible to be on the safe side. Heaven knows how long this would have gone on if Tchan hadn't suddenly called a halt.

“That'll do,” he said. “No point in digging up the whole cemetery.”

The first drops of rain began to fall, and they hurried to remove the tarpaulin before it got any heavier. As it was it took six of them to lift it on to the lorry.

“Lucky we got away before the storm!” said Tchan as the lorries drew away.

It was raining hard by the time they got back to headquarters. There were lights in the windows of the lab, and the lab assistants were waiting in silence, wearing sinister long rubber gloves. Again it took six men to carry the load upstairs. Then they set about crumbling up the soil.

Tchan stood watching with folded arms. Bits of skeleton and stone were put on one side to be looked at again later if nothing was found in the earth. The skull seemed to be grinding its teeth at them. “Gnash away as much as you like,” Tchan muttered. “You won't stop me finding your Yoke!”

Every so often a chill ran down his spine, either with unnamed apprehension or because it had been so cold and damp in the cemetery.

It wasn't yet midnight when one of the lab assistants came on a button belonging to the anorak. That lifted their spirits. Twenty minutes later they found the mike itself. Only then did they notice that they and everything around them, including the floor and the tables, were covered with mud.