Spring Flowers, Spring Frost by Ismail Kadare

Author:Ismail Kadare [Kadare, Ismail]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Literary
ISBN: 9781611454734
Google: Xq7lWPy_wRwC
Amazon: 1611454735
Barnesnoble: 1611454735
Goodreads: 14521312
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2000-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The foreigners showed up at 3:00 P.M. precisely. There were two Germans, one Dutchman, and an Albanian guide. First they had coffee at the Arts Center, then they asked to see the surrounding area. They wanted to visit a convent that had been reopened after being left to its own devices for the fifty years of Communist rule, and a kulla, or Tower of Refuge, of the highland folk.

The director climbed into the foreigners’ car; Mark, with the head of the music section, got into the next, an aged Russian-made all-terrain vehicle originally leased to the ministry of the interior and then handed to the Arts Center after the fall of the old regime.

The bush-lined dirt road climbed on and on up into the mountains. There were not many towers, but they stopped at each one that came into sight. The Albanian guide — a tall lad with a sloping right shoulder beneath his check jacket — gave a commentary in German. The Accursed Mountains could just be made out on the far horizon. The cold air made the Germans’ straw-colored hair look even thinner. The head of the music section, who stayed with Mark at the back of the party, twisted his head this way and that as if looking for something he had lost.

Mark thought he could hear a wolf howling in the distance, but no one else seemed to worry about it. It must have been the wind in the hills. He tried to imagine which steep path his girlfriend’s fearsome uncle would take when he came down from the northern plateau.

“Listen, Mark,” said the musician. “I don’t know why, but I’ve got a strong feeling that the path to the storage depot of the Secret Archives is somewhere around here.”

“Do you think so?” said Mark. “I’ve heard people say that sort of thing, but I thought it was just gossip.”

“Well, no, it’s not just another tall tale. It’s true they could have been moved since then, but in 1985, when Hoxha died, the archives really were in these parts.”

The area was undoubtedly suited to the role. A remote little spot at the foot of the Accursed Mountains: you couldn’t have dreamed of a more inaccessible hole.

“The cave must be somewhere nearby, I swear,” the music section head went on. “One of my cousins who worked for the Interior told me a very odd story about that.” He slowed his pace so as not to catch up with the main party. Mark was staring hard at him. “In April 1985, three days after the death of the tyrant, the first thing his successor did, just as soon as he had been sworn in, was to make a secret visit to B——.”

“No kidding?”

“It’s what my cousin told me at the time. It was the most discreet flying visit ever. Just two cars, so as not to attract attention.”

“That’s very odd,” Mark mumbled.

“Well, the next part is even odder,” the musician added. Although they were now way behind the visiting foreigners, they slowed their pace even more.

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