The Fall of the Stone City Read Online Free Page B

suspicion and conclude this long history of carefully hidden rivalry.
    After settling accounts with Little Dr Gurameto, people returned, as was to be expected, to the central issue. As they gazed adoringly at Big Dr Gurameto’s brightly lit house, the music
coming from it sounded divine and the ancient building itself resembled less a house than a cathedral.
    The old curiosity about the secrets of the city’s ladies now quietly revived, if feebly after such a long abeyance. Was it true that Mrs Gurameto and her daughter were waltzing with the
Germans, whose commanding officer, Baron von Schwabe, wore a mask?
    This curiosity was bound sooner or later to settle again on the first, unavoidable question. What was this occasion really about? Some still called it the “dinner of shame” but
others referred to it as the “resurrection dinner”. The secret was finally coming out, conveyed through mysterious channels, perhaps carried by servants or the dispatch riders who came
and went all night.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    And what happened was this: on the afternoon that preceded the dinner, after the tanks and armoured vehicles had rumbled and rattled their way into the town, there stepped out
from one of the military cars onto the city square Colonel Fritz von Schwabe, commander of the German division and bearer of the Iron Cross. His legs still stiff, he stood surveying the scene and
announced, “Gjirokastër. I have a friend here.”
    His aides thought he was joking but the colonel went on in the same tone of voice, “A great friend, from university, my closest friend, more than a brother to me.”
    His aides expected laughter to follow this statement. “I was joking,” he would surely say, and explain himself.
    But nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary, he gave his aides a look of the kind they had never seen and told them his friend’s name. He mentioned the college in Munich where they
had studied together and his address. “Big Dr Gurameto. Der grosse Doktor Gurameto, 22 Varosh Straße, Gjirokastër, Albanien.”
    The aides heard their commander order this Albanian to be found and brought to him at once.
    Four soldiers mounted two motorcycles with sidecars. Armed with machine guns, they sped off with the address of the man they were looking for.
    At this point the town’s inhabitants still had not emerged from the shelters, so nobody saw the soldiers knock at Dr Gurameto’s gate and escort him away.
    At the city square the colonel’s aides finally believed what he had told them, but as they noticed how anxiously he waited for the man he claimed to be his friend, their suspicions were
roused again. Was he really a great friend, closer than any brother, or someone wanted for arrest? They waited to see whether this famous doctor would be given a medal or shot for some crime, of
what sort nobody could say.
    The motorcycles returned, first one, then the other. All eyes were now focused on the mysterious doctor. Apparently the man would be neither decorated nor executed. This was something harder to
credit: a sentimental reunion, as if from the last century or even the age of chivalry.
    At first the doctor stood nonplussed and failed to recognise his college friend. Perhaps it was the passage of time, his military uniform or the two scars on his face. But then the meeting went
as it should.
    The doctor and the colonel embraced and their tears of emotion finally dispelled every shred of doubt. Such a touching encounter, so . . . no, no, it couldn’t be of that kind. Neither of
them seemed that sort. And yet there was something behind this. Colonel von Schwabe, although young and of relatively modest rank, had strong connections in Berlin, the capital of the Reich. He
might know things that nobody else did, for instance that this doctor was about to be appointed the governor of Albania.
    The emotional reunion continued, as touching as the discovery of a lost brother in an old ballad.
    “Like the