Free The File on H. by Ismaíl Kadaré Page B

with great care. Actually, the spy went on to say, the visitors did not seem particularly concerned about hiding the cards; quite the opposite, in fact, since they used thumbtacks to fix some of the cards and especially maps to the walls, to the extent that within fifteen minutes there was not a bare space on any of the partitions or even on the inside of the door.
    The governor skipped the pages where the informer described in every detail the testing of the tape recorder, the sound of which he was hearing for the first time in his life. According to Dull, the Irishmen had recorded their own voices, though the playback had a different tone from that of a natural human voice. This difference notwithstanding. Dull continued, he was able, by dint of his vast experience, to satisfy himself that it was indeed the foreigners own voices, since the distortion made by the machine was identical to the alteration of a voice overheard from behind sheet metal, down a chimney, or through a decrepit wall.
    What a sleuth! thought the governor.
    He decided that the passage in Dull’s report about the maps pinned to the wall was the part most worth mentioning in his own report to the minister. “The present author,” Dull had written, “after having fulfilled the duties required of him in his posting under the eaves, managed to get a clearer view, from several angles, of the maps and of the markings made on them,"
    The governor reread several times the passage describing the maps. According to Dull, they looked like weather maps, such as he had seen on the only occasion that he had been to Tirana airport, when he was entrusted, as the governor will perhaps recall, with the surveillance of Mme. Maria M----, traveling to Malta and suspected of taking with her two ancient icons from the great church of Shkodér as well as a secret missive from Monsígnor S----.
    â€œThere’s really nothing this lad doesn’t know,” the governor said to himself with something approaching admiration. “Nothing escapes him; he only has to see something once, or, even more, to hear something, and hes got it. If he lived a hundred years, two hundred years. Dull would still have it all stored up in his memory. He is more precious than a great library, than the National Archives or the British Museum, and all other such things.
”
    According to Dull’s thorough description, the maps were marked with a host of arrows, some of them circled, some curved, some straight, similar to the signs that indicate rain and wind in meteorology. Above or below the arrows were letters, or numbers, or both: A, CRB, A4, etc. On some of the maps, roads were marked by unbroken lines, as were the built-up areas alongside them. Even the Yugoslav border was marked on two maps.
    Hmm. That’s serious, the governor thought. These customers could not even be bothered to camouflage their game. Either they still think we are fools, or else … or else there’s something even more important underneath.
    Dull went on to give even more interesting clues. According to the spy, some of the maps were marked with large circles labeled “epic zone A” or simply “epic zone" or “authentic epic zone”; there were even areas labeled “epic subzone” and “semi-epic zone".
    It was all extraordinarily precise. The governor would have liked to copy this part of the report word for word, but he was reluctant to do so. It was not just a matter of pride — after all, nobody would ever know that he, the all-powerful governor of the town of N—, had plagiarized the report of a mere informer — but something of much greater weight: he was afraid of making a blunder. All these facts were laid out in the open, as if they were being displayed precisely in order to be seen. What if that was merely a trick designed to divert suspicion?
    â€œHmm …,” he said aloud. For a moment he was quite still, hesitant,