Agamemnon's Daughter

Agamemnon's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

Book: Agamemnon's Daughter Read Online Free PDF
Author: Ismaíl Kadaré
inexhaustible supply of emotion for delegates but never failed to exasperate one of our colleagues no end (What unadulterated bull-shit! he would grumble. It’s only his mother who’s dead, his father’s alive and as fit as a fiddle. Given the circumstances, why doesn’t he say the Party is his substitute mommy?), his whole personality and history corresponded in sum to what in relatively polite language is called a pile of shit.
    But that was presumably where the roots of his career were planted. Because a career, as one of my friends often liked to say, is built not just on enthusiasm and energy, but on some special gift that has to be such an integral part of the individual in question as to be barely distinguishable from his genes. That gift, which in others may take the outward appearance of a heart of stone, natural perversity, infinite servility, or God knows what else, manifested itself in dull-witted G. Z. in his ostensible orphan identity, which for reasons unknown persuaded our leaders that there was nothing he was not prepared to trample in the mud if he one day should be asked to do so.
    Indeed he had already covered quite a lot of ground. At the Broadcasting Service to begin with, then at the National Theater, where, people said, he was highly valued. You could see right away that he had an inextinguishable hankering for the higher slopes . . . But one night, one of his relatives was arrested.
    One night, Bald Man fell all the way down to the netherworld . . .
    It had never occurred to me that a nonentity like G. Z. could be the pretext for likening an old folktale to what was, ultimately, an ordinary event in the lives we led. But as our office boss was wont to ask, isn’t it true that repulsive insects bring to mind, more often than you might expect, fine and lofty thoughts?
    After his fall, Bald Man strove with all his might to find the way and the means to clamber back to the upper world. He wore himself out searching every corner, until an old man whispered the solution in his ear. There was an eagle that could fly all the way up by the sheer strength of his wings — but on one condition. Throughout the flight, the raptor would need to consume raw meat. Bald Man didn’t think that would be a problem.
    (What had they asked G. Z. to supply in return for his place in the upper world? Whose flesh had he given?)
    G. Z. was in a state of utter turmoil for days and nights on end. He spent his time going from one office to another poor-mouthing his cousin, repudiating him, swearing he would wring his neck with his own two hands, if only the Party would put him to the test! People who knew him better than I said that the man’s agitation was not just for show. By their account, it sounded more like proof of integrity, which to some extent justified his attitude. But when I heard about it, I thought it a perfect example of the baseness of human nature.
    He traipsed all over the place and wore himself out hunting for a solution: his servility and eagerness to crawl were like a drug. The inexhaustible supply of devotion to the Party that such a person found himself able to summon up may have come as more of a surprise to himself than to anyone else. He raced from corridor to corridor, from office to office, until someone finally showed him how to climb out of the hole he was in. That someone knew someone who ... on one condition . . . G. Z. didn’t think that would be a problem.
    The precise nature of what base act G. Z. had committed was never disclosed.
    In the netherworld. Bald Man obtained a supply of meat before climbing on the eagle’s back, and so the flight back to the upper world began. Now and again in the course of flight the eagle asked to be fed, and so Bald Man cut him a piece of the meat he had brought.
    G. Z. had been banned from publishing his own work, but he was still a member of the National Theater. He’d already told people close to him that his case would soon be resolved. In two or
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