Read Online The Successor by Ismaíl Kadaré - Free Book Online

stroking him so brazenly … “I love to make love, especially this way, like that … you see? … you put me in such a state” … when she suddenly became aware he was not at ease. “Don’t be afraid, I’m not a virgin,” she whispered, thinking she had guessed the reason for his holding back. “Haven’t been for a long while, you know … Come on, my darling,” she began again, in a throaty plea, offering herself to him even more provocatively, almost exasperatedly, as if she was under the sway of some blind rage, whereas he only turned his head to the side, as if he had been found out. No, he couldn’t do it, he started explaining. It was the first time. It had never happened to him before with anyone else.
    She had tried to hang on to the outrage that the words “anyone else” had provoked. Knowing full well she was in the wrong, that she was acting like a spoiled brat, she could not manage to break free of her anger: So, it all went swimmingly with
anyone else
, but what she got was sweet nothing!
    “Listen, will you listen to me” … He tried to explain in straightforward terms that things were not at all as she thought. Not only was that not the reason, it was the opposite of the truth. His incapacity was the direct result of how much he adored her.
    She had meant to interrupt him, to say she’d already heard that old refrain. At school dances, boys in her class were as hot as hell when they brushed up against the other girls, but when they had to partner her on the floor, they went stone cold, as if they were bewitched. Their cheeks turned bright red, to be sure, and their hands were unsteady, but not from temptation, as you might first have thought, but rather from the opposite. From the waist down they became limp. Instead of pressing themselves up to her, they kept a safe distance, but went wild a few minutes later when they were up against other girls.
    It was more or less what he was trying to tell her himself. The daughter of a top leader aroused desire as well as respect and fear, but it was the last that always overcame the other feelings. All the more so in his case, because of the additional factor of his own background. She heard disconnected fragments of sentences about Genc’s father: a seismologist, studied in Vienna under the monarchy, uncertainty forever hovering over the fate of the family …
    She had listened to these paltry excuses with an ironical glint in her eye, for what she could hear herself saying inwardly was like a lament: Why does it have to happen to me? … As her stifled resentment showed no sign of abating, she blurted out harshly a question so sour that she immediately regretted saying it: “Does fear of dictatorship unman you to that extent?”
    The young man bit his lip. She had tried to minimize the effect of her words by adding, in a joking tone, “Are we really so terrifying, my father and I? …”
    The despair that was written on the boy’s face seemed irremediable. She had taken his hand, bent to kiss it, placed it on her breast, then between her legs. Abandoning all modesty made things easier for her. “Don’t look away,” she said sweetly. “Does it look black and threatening to you? More fearsome, more somber than the dictatorship of the proletariat? Say something, darling!”
    He had not responded. Naked as she was, Suzana got up and walked over to the window. She gazed for a while at the empty beach. The sea was cold and gray. In the far distance you could make out the shape of a woman walking along the water’s edge. Had she not known it was her mother, she would not have recognized her. The long shawl draped over her shoulders made her gait look even more eerie. Suzana could feel a grimace distorting her features. She thought of her mother imagining her daughter’s orgasm. Poor Mama, if only she knew! she sighed to herself. A month ago, when she had told her mother about the boy she had just met, the older woman had shown Suzana a degree of