The Concert by Ismaíl Kadaré Page A

number. Silva and Linda exchanged glances. At each tern of the dial, the boss’s laughter grew less. Finally, as before, they heard a phone ringing at the other end of the line, but again there was no reply. Simon’s face, though anxious, still wore its previous blissful expression. It looked as if it had been left there by mistake. At length he hung up.
    â€œSo what did he do then, this Victor?” said the boss. “That is his name, didn’t you say?”
    Simon Dersha was still sitting there as if trying to make his way into the others’ universe, but the unwonted expression on his face prevented Silva from speaking freely. She made an effort and made some comment on Victor’s plight, at which the boss began to laugh louder than ever. Stealing a glance at Simon, she thought she now saw a tinge of irony in his happiness.
    He slipped out of the room unobtrusively when the boss’s hilarity was at its height.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with him, wandering around all morning like a sleepwalker?” said Linda, not even bothering to lower her voice.
    â€œDon’t pay any attention.”
    â€œNo, but did you take a good look at him? I’ve never noticed that navy blue suit before, and I think it makes him look very weird!”
    Silva nodded.
    The boss sighed, as he usually did after he’d been laughing. Then the whole office lapsed once more into silence.
    â€œYou think you’re so wonderful, don’t you?” said Simon Dersha inwardly in the neighbouring office. And he indulged in a condescending smile. As recently as yesterday the laughter still ringing in his ears would have made him feel lonely and excluded. But now the mirth, the larking about that had once tortured him like something precious for ever beyond his reach, seemed tarnished and worthless. He felt completely free from the inferiority complex he’d always suffered from in relation to his colleagues. And this miracle had come about in a single night, like something out of a fairy tale.
    If they only knew where I was yesterday evening, he thought. All morning he’d been tore between the desire to tell them where he’d dined the previous day and a kind of inexplicable reticence. He’d seen from the way they looked at him that they were wondering what was the matter. And at the thought that what had happened to him was beyond anything they could possibly have imagined, he was filled once again with delight.
    The previous evening he’d been to dinner with one of the best-known members of the government. It was like a dream; sometimes he couldn’t even believe in it himself. Perhaps that was why, this morning, he’d tried three times to phone the friend who’d introduced him to the minister in the first place, and then taken him to the dinner party: he just wanted to exchange a few words with him about it, in order to convince himself that the miracle really had happened. But as ill-luck would have it, he hadn’t been able to get through.
    The miracle had taken place in stages. It had begun a week before with a phone call from a man with whom Simon had remained on friendly terms since they’d worked together in a commercial firm, and who had since risen to become a vice-minister. The man had told him that one of these days -- he’d tell him the exact date in due course - he’d take him to dinner in a place he’d never even dreamed of. When the two of them had eventually met for coffee and the other man had said what that place was, Simon had been dumbstruck. Was it really possible, he kept stammering, that an ordinary pen-pusher like him, a person of no importance…?
    â€œBut that’s just it,” the other had replied. “Ordinary people, honest unassuming workers, are the very backbone of both the Party and the State. Do you see, Simon?”
    Then, lowering his voice:
    â€œI don’t mind admitting I don’t know myself why the minister