Broken April (7 page)

The door creaked and the man who had brought the pot of bean soup came in again. He picked up the empty bowls, stirred up the fire as he went by it, and went out again. Gjorg's eyes followed him.

“Are these people the prince's servants?” he asked his neighbor in a low voice.

The other man shrugged his shoulders.

“I can't rightly say. It seems that they are distant cousins of the family who also work as servants.”

“Really?”

“Did you see those buildings round about? A lot of families live in them who have blood ties with the captain. Those people are both guards and officials. Did you see how they dress? Neither like mountain people nor townsfolk.”

“Yes, that's true,” Gjorg said.

“Roll yourself another smoke,” said the other man, reaching him the tobacco tin.

“No, thank you,” said Gjorg. “I don't smoke much.”

“When did you kill your man?”

“The day before yesterday.”

You could hear the sound of falling rain outside.

“This winter's dragging on.”

“Yes, that's true. It's been a long one.”

Far off, from deep within the group of buildings, perhaps from the main tower itself, there came the sharp grating of a gate. It was one side of a pair of heavy gates opening, or closing, and the grating noise went on for a time. It was followed at once by a cry that was like the cry of a night bird, and that might just as well have been a sentinel's cry, or a shout of farewell to a friend. Gjorg huddled deeper into his corner. He could not convince himself that he was at Orosh.

The creaking of the door cut through his drowsiness. For the third time Gjorg opened his eyes and saw the crippled man enter with an armload of wood in his arms. After throwing the wood on the fire, he turned up the wick of the oil lamp. The logs dripped water, and Gjorg thought that it must still be raining.

In the lamplight, Gjorg could see that nobody in the room was sleeping. His back was cold, but something kept him from moving nearer the fire. Besides, he had the feeling that it gave no warmth. The wavering light, splashed here and there with black stains, deepened the silence that hung over the waiting men.

Two or three times it occurred to Gjorg that all these men had killed, and that each had his story. But those stories were locked deep within them. It was not just chance that in the glow of the fire their mouths, and even more their jaws, looked as if they had the shape of certain antique locks. All during his journey to the
Kulla
, Gjorg had been terrified by the thought that somebody might ask
him about his own story. And his fear was at its worst when he had entered this long room, though once he was inside something had persuaded him that he was out of danger. Perhaps he found reassurance in the stiff manner of those who were already there, or even from the log, that the newcomer mistook for a man before realizing his mistake, or on the contrary, took it for a log and then, smiling at what he supposed to be an error, greeted it as a man—only to find out the truth later. And at this point, Gjorg was inclined to think that the log had been put there for just that purpose.

As soon as the wet logs had been thrown upon the fire by the crippled man, they began to crackle. Gjorg took a deep breath. Outside, the night had certainly grown darker. In the distance, the north wind whistled low as it skimmed over the earth. He was surprised to find that he felt the need to say something. But besides that he was surprised by a very strange feeling indeed. It seemed to him that the jaws of the men around him were slowly changing their shape. Their stories were rising in their throats, and they began to chew them the way cattle chew their cud during the cold winter nights. Now their stories began to drip from their mouths. How many days now since the killing? Four. And you?

Little by little the stories came out from under the coarse cloth of their cloaks, like blackbeetles, wandered out quietly, passed one another. What will you do with your thirty-day truce?

What will I do? Gjorg wondered. Nothing.

Sometimes he thought he would be stuck forever in that damp room, by that fire that never really burst into flame, that made you shiver rather than warmed you, and with those black bugs shining on the floor.

When would they call him to pay his tax? Since the time he had come there, only one man had been called out. Would he have to wait for days and days? And what if a week passed and nobody called him out? What if they did not take him in at all?

The door opened and a stranger came in. One could see that he had come from far away. The fire gave a couple of contemptuous flickers, just enough light to show that he was all muddy and drenched to the skin, and left him in the semi-darkness, like all the others.

The man, looking confused and bewildered, found a seat right by the log of wood. Gjorg watched him out of the corner of his eye, to see how he himself had looked when he had come in a few hours ago. The man threw back his hood and let his chin sink to his raised knees. His story, obviously, buried deep inside him, was still far from his throat. Or perhaps it had not entered his body but was still outside, on his icy hands with which he had done murder, and that now stirred nervously about his knees.

*
A tower without windows where a man who has killed may seek permanent refuge, and be maintained indefinitely with food and drink set just inside the door.

*
Plateau, in Albanian.

The carriage went on climbing the mountain road at a lively pace. It was a rubber-tired vehicle of the kind used in the capital for excursions, or as a hackney coach. Its seats were upholstered in black velvet, but there was also something velvety about its very aspect. Perhaps that was why it rolled along on that rather poor mountain road much more easily than one would have expected, and perhaps it would have done so more quietly still but for the panting of the horses and the clopping of their hooves, which the upholstery could do nothing to muffle.

Holding his wife's hand, Bessian Vorpsi moved his head close to the window to make sure that the small town they had left half an hour before, the last one at the foot of the
Rrafsh
, the high plateau of the north, had disappeared from view. Now, before them and on either side there stretched away heathland on a slight slope, a rather strange piece of
country, neither plain, nor mountain nor plateau. The mountains, properly speaking, had not yet begun, but one felt their looming shadow, and it seemed that it was that very shadow which while rejecting any connection between the plateau and the mountain world, kept it from being classed as a plain. So it was a border region, barren and almost uninhabited.

Now and then droplets of rain pearled the glass of the carriage window.

“The Accursed Mountains,” he said softly, with a slight tremor in his voice, as if he were greeting a vision that he had been expecting for a very long time. He felt that the name, with its solemnity, had made an impression on his wife, and he took a certain satisfaction in it.

Her face came closer, and he breathed in the perfume of her neck.

“Where are they?”

He nodded ahead, and then he pointed, but in that direction she saw nothing but a heavy layer of mist.

“You can't see anything yet,” he explained. “We're far away from them.”

She left her hand in her husband's and leaned back into the velvet cloth of her seat. The jostling of the carriage sent the newspaper in which they were mentioned, and which they had bought in the small town a little before their departure, sliding to the floor, but neither of them moved to pick it up. She smiled vaguely, recalling the title of the short piece announcing their trip: “Sensation: The writer, Bessian Vorpsi, and his young bride are spending their honeymoon on the Northern Plateau!”

The article was rather vague. You could not tell whether the author, a certain A.G. (could that be their acquaintance,
Adrian Guma?) was in favor of the trip or was being slightly ironic about it.

She herself, when her fiance had announced it to her two weeks before the wedding, had thought the idea pretty bizarre. Don't be surprised at anything, her friends had told her. If you marry a man who's a bit odd, you have to expect surprises. But at bottom we have to say you're very lucky.

And in fact she was happy. During the last days before the wedding, in the half-fashionable, half-artistic circles of Tirana, people talked about nothing but their honeymoon trip. Her friends envied her and told her: You'll be escaping the world of reality for the world of legend, literally the world of epic that scarcely exists anymore. And they would go on talking about fairies, mountain nymphs, bards, the last Homeric hymns in the world, and the
Kanun
, terrifying but so majestic. Others shrugged their shoulders at all this enthusiasm, hinting discreetly at their astonishment, which was aroused particularly by the question of comfort, the more so since this was a honeymoon trip, something that called for certain conveniences, whereas, in the mountains the weather was still quite cold, and those epic
kullas
were of stone. On the other hand, there were others—few in number—who listened to all those opinions with a rather amused air, as if to say, “Right, go on up north among the mountain nymphs. It will do both of you good, and especially Bessian.”

And now they were heading towards the grim Northern Plateau. This
Rrafsh
, about which she had read and heard so much during her studies at the institute for young ladies named “The Queen Mother,” and especially later during her engagement to Bessian, attracted her and alarmed her
at the same time. In fact, what she had read and heard on the subject, and even Bessian's own writings had not given her any idea of what life was really like up there in the highlands amidst the never-ending mists. It seemed to her that everything people said about the High Plateau took on at once an ambiguous, nebulous character. Bessian Vorpsi had written half-tragic, half-philosophical sketches about the North, to which the press had responded in a rather halfway fashion too: some reviewers had hailed the pieces as jewels of the first water, and others had criticized them as lacking in realism. On a number of occasions it had occurred to Diana that if her husband had decided to undertake this rather strange tour, it was not so much to show her what was so remarkable about the North as to settle something that he felt within him. But each time she had given up the idea, thinking that if that was his object he could have taken that trip long ago, and alone at that.

She was watching him now, and from the way his set jaw made his cheekbones more prominent, and the way he stared through the carriage windows, she felt that he was holding back his impatience—which she found quite understandable. He was certainly telling himself that this part-imaginary, part-epic world that he talked about for days on end was taking its time about showing itself. Outside, on either side of the carriage, the endless wasteland unfolded, without a sign of human presence, its countless grey rocks watered by the dullest downpour in the world. He's afraid that I'll be disappointed, she thought, and several times she was on the point of saying, “Don't worry, Bessian, we've only been travelling an hour, and I'm not so impatient or so naive as to think that all the wonders of the North are going to appear before
our eyes at once.” But she did not say those words; unselfconsciously, she rested her head on his shoulder. She knew that the gesture was more reassuring than any words, and she stayed a long time like that, looking out of the corner of her eye at her light chestnut hair moving upon his shoulder with the motion of the carriage.

She was nearly asleep when she felt his shoulder move.

“Diana, look,” he said softly, taking her hand.

In the distance, beside the road, there were some black figures.

“Mountain people?” she asked.

“Yes.”

As their carriage drew nearer, the dark figures seemed to grow taller. Both the passengers' faces were glued to the window, and Diana several times wiped from the glass the mist made by their breath.

“What are they holding in their hands, umbrellas?” she asked, but very softly, when the carriage was no more than fifty paces from the mountaineers.

“Yes, that's what it looks like,” he muttered. “Where did they get those umbrellas?”

At last the carriage passed the mountaineers, who stared after it. Bessian turned his head, as if to make sure that the things they had in their hands really were old umbrellas with broken struts and ragged cloth.

“I've never seen mountaineers carrying brollies,” he murmured. Diana was surprised too, but she took care not to mention it, so as not to make him angry.

When further on they saw another group of mountaineers, two of whom were laden with sacks, Diana pretended not to see them. Bessian looked at them for a while.

“Corn,” he said at last, but Diana did not answer. Again
she leaned her head upon his shoulder, and again her hair began to slide gently to and fro with the movement of the carriage.

Now it was he who watched the road attentively. As for her, she tried to turn her thoughts to more pleasant things. After all, it was no great misfortune if a legendary mountaineer heaved a sack of corn onto his back, or carried a dilapidated umbrella against the rain. Had she not seen more than one man from the mountains, in the city streets at the end of autumn, with an axe over his shoulder, and crying out plaintively, “Any wood to cut?”, a cry that was more like the cry of a night bird. But Bessian had told her that those people were not representative of the mountain country. Having left, for various reasons, the homeland of epic, they were uprooted like trees overthrown, they had lost their heroic character and deep-seated virtue. The real mountaineers are up there, on the
Rrafsh
, he had said to her one night, lifting his arms towards the celestial heights beyond the horizon, as if the
Rrafsh
were somewhere in the sky rather than on earth.