A Girl in Exile

      Copyright © 2009 by Ismail Kadare

      Copyright © 2010 by Librairie Arthème Fayard. All rights reserved

      English translation copyright © 2016 by John Hodgson

      First published in Albanian as E penguara: Rekuiem për Linda B.

      by Onufri © 2009. All rights reserved

      First Counterpoint edition: 2018

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

      Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or

      reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations

      embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Kadare, Ismail.

      Title: A girl in exile : requiem for Linda B. / Ismail Kadare.

      Other titles: E Penguara. English | Requiem for Linda B.

      Description: First Counterpoint hardcover edition. | Berkeley, CA :

       Counterpoint Press, 2018.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017038420 | ISBN 9781619029163

      Subjects: LCSH: Suicide victims—Fiction. | Dramatists—

      Fiction. | Communism—Albania—Fiction. | Albania—

      Social conditions—Fiction.

      Classification: LCC PG9621.K3 E213 2018 | DDC 891/.9913—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038420

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      Dedicated to the young Albanian women who were born, grew up and spent their youth in internal exile.

      1

      Until he reached the end of Dibra Street, it seemed to him that he had succeeded in thinking of nothing at all. But when he found himself next to the Tirana Hotel on the north side of Skanderbeg Square, he felt a sense of urgency, even panic. Only this square lay between him and the Party Committee building. Now he could no longer pretend to be more composed than he was, or reassure himself with the thought that his conscience was clear. He had only to cross this square, and however huge it might be, it was too short a distance for anyone who had been summoned to the Party Committee without explanation.

      With frenzied repetition, as if this were the only way he could make up for lost time, he rehearsed the two possible issues that might, unknown to him, have got him into trouble: his latest play, which he had been waiting two weeks for permission to stage, and his relationship with Migena.

      At any other time the second matter would have worried him more than the first. As he drew near the National Bank, the final scene of their quarrel replayed itself in his mind with excruciating clarity. The setting had been the same as that of their previous spat: the corner in his apartment where his bookshelves met the window. They had exchanged almost the same words and her tears had been the same. In fact, it was the tears that had scared him. Without them he might have broken off their relationship two weeks earlier. He would have taken her for an overexcited girl from the Art College, who herself didn’t know what she wanted. Every time she wept, he hoped to find out what her tears concealed, if anything. He had been sure that this was his last chance. “What’s the matter?” he had asked hoarsely. “At least tell me.” “I can’t. I don’t know myself,” she replied. “You don’t know yourself? Really? You think you’re so complicated? With all those Marlene Dietrich messages—I love you, I don’t love you? Is that what it’s all about?”

      He felt she was not in control of herself. “Listen, you’re not complicated at all. You’re only . . .” An airhead from the provinces, he wanted to say, but restrained himself. “You’re just schizophrenic, or a spy . . .”

      He bit his tongue, but the word was out.

      “No,” she replied, yet less sharply than he’d expected. “I’m neither of those things.”

      “Then out with it. What the hell’s got into you? Tell me, and don’t keep saying you don’t know.”

      He had stretched out his hand as if to seize a girl by the hair two or three times in his life, but he had never actually done it. Now it happened with unexpected ease. He thought his grip would loosen at once and he would let go of those strands as if they were flames, but his hand did not obey him and angrily he pushed that lovely head, which he had caressed so sweetly only a short time ago, against the bookshelves. A comb fell, and after the comb a pile of books whose names for some reason forced themselves up onto his frantic eyes: Scott Fitzgerald, Toponyms of Albania and Kosovo, Plutarch.

      It was a mere forty seconds to the door of the Party Committee, but enough time for him to realize that, if she had reported him, he couldn’t care less. In fact he would prefer a denunciation by her, even with the word spy in it, to any hitch to his play.

      He chided himself as a hopeless idiot, unable to see how dangerous a denunciation could be. But this denunciation not only failed to worry him, it seemed to him that he secretly desired it.

      As he crossed the threshold of the main entrance, he understood the reason: he hoped that, whatever trouble it caused him, it might bring its own consolation, as they say every evil does. It might enable him to fathom something that had tortured him now for weeks—the enigma of that girl.

      The U-shaped table was familiar to him, but this was the first time that he had sat down alone on its right-hand side. The second secretary and an unknown man had taken their places at the section that connected the two arms of the U. What was this summons about? Why no prior explanation? There was no question of a glass of water or a coffee, but they might at least have said, We’re sorry to trouble you, or asked irritating, vapid questions, like: How’s the creative process?

      He braced himself against the chair back, bristling with the obscure sort of anger that at least helps you keep your dignity, as his friend Llukan Herri would say.

      As if reading his mind, the second secretary spoke without preamble and said that the Party valued his work