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rain-slick statue of Lenin commanding the empty storefront windows crammed with the ghosts of a million longings, dust, and the dim recollection of hope. Clanking and aimless, two dilapidated automobiles crawled wetly amid whirring streams of grim-lipped bicyclists glumly churning their way on plodding errands, damp, drab souls underneath their bright slickers, while pedestrians trudged in shabby dress beneath wall posters shrieking at “enemies” and “traitors” in huge block letters that rain and the cheapness of the ink had caused to run in moody red and black streaks. The Interrogator singled out a column of children, two by two in their collarless tunics, as they trooped to the Palace of Culture or some other of the Square’s monolithic museums. They were passing in front of the Dajti Hotel, and for a moment the Interrogator wished that it were June and he were sitting at the Dajti’s sidewalk cafe tasting beer and the plentiful assortment of snacks that went well with a tango or
The Blue Danube
rasping thinly through the cafe’s outdoor speakers into the tired evening air.
    Vlora furrowed his brow. The children had stopped. What were they gaping at? Something below and out of view. And now other pedestrians stood and stared. Silent and motionless in the drizzle, they sprouted from the curbs like dead gray souls. The Interrogator’s knee joints cracked as he rose to scan the glistening streets below. And then he saw it: in the middle of a sopping intersection, drenched in blood and dirty rain, lay the crumpled body of a Jesuit priest with pewter skin and sightless eyes still searching for the answer to an interrupted prayer. While confined in a labor camp he had baptized a newborn infant, and, tried and found guilty of this offense, he’d been shot by a firing squad that morning. Now his corpse, wrapped in clerical robes and trussed like butcher’s meat, had been dumped into the street where it would lie for three days to teach the people God’s reach was shorter than a bullet’s.
    The Interrogator’s eye caught a blur of motion, a tight, quick, furtive signing with the hand. Someone in the crowd had blessed himself. Blood pounded at the scar slashing Vlora’s lips and, furious, he wheeled and rushed from his office down to the sodden streets below without hat, without coat, and without companion except for his rage and the scar’s bright ache, but once outside the Security Building he found only lifeless streets and the rain and, beneath the reckless, teeming sky, the body of the man who had purchased death on the cheap with a few sprinkled droplets of water. Two Chinese men in Mao-style uniforms emerged from the Dajti Hotel beneath the shelter of glistening black umbrellas that were hemmed with tiny yellow dragons. They ambled to the curb and gawked at the dead man, at first, and then they turned and stared at Vlora as his booted feet sloshed forward until he was standing by the body of the priest. But for the two unblinking Chinese,the streets were deserted, nothing stirred; but Vlora knew that they were there. The watchers. They were hiding. He could feel their wounded stares like burning sins upon his back. “Do you think this pig was a hero?” he bellowed. The words echoed damply in the concrete emptiness. “Do you think that he loved you at all? Don’t you know that his lies are what have kept you so poor and your children so ignorant and sick? Do you believe in the Devil still? Well,
there
is your Devil! He is
there
!” He had flung up his arm in accusation at the corpse and he wheeled around pointing and shouting “
He is there!”
until at last a great weariness weighted his legs and he faltered, his arm limply sagging to his side. The two Chinese turned their gaze to him in-curiously, then grinned as he met their stares. Aware of nothing but the largeness of their top front teeth, Vlora slowly turned away and bowed his head, and, with his clothes soaked through, his throat raw, he stood