Free The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare

their ostensible function, had a different purpose that was more important.
    “Don’t stare like that. There’s no great mystery here,” said a newly arrested engineer to his two cellmates. They were all in prison for sabotaging ditches.
“It’s the same old story. It goes back to the Babylonians. That’s where tyranny began, they say. Either too much water, or too little. Water wanted in one place, but not in
another.”
    Two sensational items of news, about the start of the Cold War and Tito’s treachery, seemed to have something to do with the ditches. Other questions, including some of a purely mental
nature, however remote they might appear, were also related.
    Farewell to wandering thoughts, to whatever crossed your mind – ancient decrees, women’s private parts – to any thought either elevated or shameful. It became clearer every day
that you had to think about some things a lot and others much less, if at all.
    One of the things in the latter class was the famous dinner with the Germans. It was as if it had never happened. In fact anyone mentioning it even in passing was firmly rounded on. “What,
you still believe those old tales about the German and the doctor being old school friends and all that blah-blah?” Yet this did not stem the rumours that somewhere, at a secret level you
didn’t dare think about, the dinner was still being investigated. Indeed, the recently appointed chorus master at the House of Culture was suspected of being one of two undercover
investigators. You would never guess the other in a thousand years, although it was generally known that this person had planted the suspicion that there had never been any dinner at all. He
claimed that the gramophone had played to an empty room and a secret meeting in the guise of a dinner had taken place somewhere else, in order to leave no evidence behind.
    A SEQUENCE OF SEASONS
    It was winter. A few weeks before, the Cold War had started. This was no longer the laughing matter it had been at first (Eskimos etcetera), but nor was it as frightening as it
later became (silent and as frigid as death). It was something to be worried about, like the Iron Curtain, invented by an English lord.
    In order to demonstrate that it was possible to live with these fears, and even cheerfully, the number of festivals increased. Sports days were the favourite: they were cheap and needed no
preparation. You gathered a few dozen time-wasters with itchy feet and all it took was a sign reading “Spring Cross-Country” for them to pelt off like lunatics. Along the road others
would join in and then they would stop in some square to catch their breath and cheer, “Long live . . . ” and just as often “Death to . . . ”, for there were as many things
that had to live as to die, and the quicker the better.
    Almost as frequent were concerts, races, inaugurations and, in particular, award ceremonies. These latter were often of an unusual nature. For instance in the first week of April there were
celebrations for Big Dr Gurameto’s twelve-thousandth operation.
    As one can imagine, the little doctor was not forgotten although, as a lesser light, he had barely reached his nine-thousandth. That afternoon and evening old memories revived of the time when
these two rivals had been the centre of attention. As in the old days, one was weighed against the other. This was a hard task because everybody knew that their relative status still depended
primarily on the international situation.
    After its defeat in the war Germany had been divided into a bad part and a good part, leaving Big Dr Gurameto roughly neutral. Italy was not as bad as West Germany, but not as good as East
Germany, so he and Little Dr Gurameto were more or less quits. In short, they had emerged from the global upheaval fifty-fifty, as the English say.
    The wave of affection for Big Dr Gurameto was all the stronger because of the memory of the rivalry between the two doctors, which had