The Successor by Ismaíl Kadaré Page A

little lounge on the second floor and lit cigarettes. People everywhere were now saying that no autopsy had been carried out earlier not by oversight but intentionally. They were going so far as to mention names of probable culprits. Suspect number one was Adrian Hasobeu.
    “What good news!” Suzana said, and jumped up to give her brother a kiss. She realized almost immediately that, as a result of her morning caresses, she must have left her blouse unbuttoned.
    He lit another cigarette and puffed at it energetically, as if he was gasping for air. He was staring at a fixed point on the ceiling, his pupils immobile.
    “What’s wrong?” she inquired gently. “You were going to say something, and now you seem to have fallen into deep thought.”
    He smiled at her vaguely.
    “Nothing wrong … I just wanted to say that from now on we should be prepared.” “Prepared for what?”
    “Don’t you remember Aunt Memë’s final piece of advice? — ‘Be prepared, know your words.’“
    “Know what we will say … You mean, about the night of December 13? But we’ve already told them everything we know!”
    “The old woman wasn’t referring to the investigators.”
    “What did she mean, then?”
    His breathing became labored.
    “She meant Papa. Know what you are going to say to him when he appears before you. That’s what she was talking about.”
    “Are you trying to scare the living daylights out of me?” Suzana complained.
    “There’s no reason for you to be afraid. The old woman’s mind works the same way as people’s did two thousand years ago. For the ancients, encounters with the dead were unavoidable. It didn’t matter so much where the encounter took place — it could be in a dream, in the hereafter, or in our own conscience …”
    “I dreamt of him twice, but wasn’t able to speak to him.”
    “One day you will. You, me, Mama, we all need to know what we will say to him.”
    He took his time trying to describe, in the least lugubrious terms possible, the wasteland that, in the imagination of the Ancients, separated this world from the shadow world. Where, as on some station platform or in an airport arrivals hall, the dead by the thousands stand around in little groups waiting for their nearest and dearest. Some are overwhelmed with longing to clasp in their arms those from whom they have been separated, but there are others who with somber and resentful visage display their wounds, waiting for an explanation. As they hold open the gashes in their bodies, so they turn the pages of law books, gospels, proclamations, the
Kanun
, autopsy reports, and ancient hymns.
    Suzana lightly touched the back of her brother’s hand. “Brother dearest, that’s enough of such horrors! Don’t we have enough crosses to bear in this world?”
    But he shook his head. One day they would appear before their father, and they had to know what they would tell him. “You first of all,” he said, turning to Suzana, “you, the most innocent of us all! The purest! Trampled on more than anyone else. If ever he dared …”
    “No!” she shouted. “I don’t want to speak about it anymore. I’ve forgiven him.”
    “I’ll take you at your word,” he replied. “Your encounter with him might turn out to be just a nostalgic embrace. You might even be able to do without words. But things will be different for Mama.”
    Suzana did not raise her eyes.
    “‘You, my wife, you who couldn’t get a wink of sleep for three whole months, how do you account for having sunk into deep slumber on the very night of December 13?’ He’s bound to ask that. And I must say I can’t imagine what she’ll reply. What pills will she claim to have taken? What medical prescription will serve as her defense?”
    There was a long pause. But when he resumed in a barely audible undertone, as if afraid to awaken her, and said, “As for me, it will be even harder …” Suzana’s weary eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
    “Don’t