“Oh?”
“Yes, the dead men were manning a checkpoint on the road.
I’m in two minds: why not leave it for next year? It can’t be much fun clambering about up there in this weather.”
There was the sound of an engine outside. The priest went out to investigate.
“What is it?” the general asked when he reappeared. “Nothing,” the priest said. “Just the new stock of disinfectant sprays arriving.”
The general took out their thermos flasks. They lunched frugally and silently on dry rations. Then the general lay down on his camp bed. The priest took up a book and began reading. A book, the general mused as though he had just noticed the most absurd object imaginable. He too had tried reading but had not succeeded… Take a few books with you, his wife had said the day before he left. Only, no glum stories. Soothing books. Love stories, maybe? he had asked her with a chuckle. Why not, she’d replied. As for crime novels, you’ll probably get all you need!
What did the priest get up to with the colonel’s widow, the general wondered, his eyes fixed on the sloping tent-canvas. How charming she was! he thought, his hands clasped behind his head, eyes fixed on the canvas quivering gently above him. The rain had started to fall again. The sky was blue, totally blue, he thought to himself as he gazed at the slope of mauve canvas above his head. And that woman, under that sky, she was so pretty you’d have sworn there could be nothing in the whole world as graceful as her.
He had the feeling that the vision he was seeing must come from much further back in his past, that he couldn’t have been seeing it as recently as last August, on that flaming late afternoon with the sun going down red like a huge tired eye, and here and there on the horizon, still pale and uncertain, the first glimmering of evening. The promenade along the sea front was always full at that hour, and they had been sitting with all their usual companions on the terrace of their hotel to watch the sunset, and the boats, and the gulls out to sea. They came there every day, to admire the evening sky, and they always waited until the sun had sunk finally into the sea and the big hotel signs had lit up, interspersed with the small, vertical ones of the night clubs, all around the bay, before they left their chairs to walk with the children on the beach.
That afternoon the terrace was packed, and the beams of the westering sun struck red-tinged reflections from the glasses on the tables. What did they talk about? He found it difficult to remember. It was one of those trivial conversations that fade with the daylight itself, and leave nothing behind but empty bottles on the tables.
Then suddenly he had the feeling that he was being stared at insistently from a nearby table. He turned slowly round and his eyes met that woman’s gaze for the first time, then that of an old lady, then the eyes of a man, and lastly those of a second man. Clearly these people were talking about him. After exchanging a few nods of the head they began staring at him again, with the same insistence. And it was then that the young woman began to smile. After a moment one of the men suddenly stood up, walked over, and said with a slightly embarrassed air: “General, sir!”
That was how he had come to make the acquaintance of Colonel Z.’s family. They had all come to that resort for the sole purpose of meeting him: that pretty woman, the colonel’s still young widow, the old lady, his mother, and his two first cousins. “We were informed that you had been charged with this holy and sublime mission,” the old lady said, “and we are happy to know you.”
“Indeed, that was our reason for coming here.”
“We tried endlessly to have him found, right up till the end of the war,” the old lady went on. “Three times I sent people to look for him and all three drew a complete blank. The fourth man I sent was a con man. He pocketed the money and disappeared. When we heard that you were going out to that country our hopes were renewed. Oh yes, my child, we have placed all our hopes, all our great hopes, in you now!”
“I shall do my best, madame. I shall spare no effort, I assure you.”
“He was so young, you know. And he had every virtue!” the old woman went on, her eyes filling with tears. “Everyone thought he had the makings of a military genius. Those were the words the Minister of War used himself, when he came to offer us his condolences. It is a great loss, a very cruel loss for us all, he said. But he was my son, and so the loss naturally hits me the hardest. Oh, you too, Betty, of course, I’m sorry, my dear. Do you remember that last time he came back from Albania? For those two weeks of leave? Only two weeks and we had to celebrate your marriage in such a rush, because time was so precious. His duties were so important he couldn’t stay away from that accursed country anylonger. Do you remember, Betty?”
“Yes, mother, how could I forget?”
“Do you remember how you cried and cried up on the landing while he was putting on his uniform, how I tried to comfort you and keep myself calm, and then suddenly there was that telephone call? It was from the War Minister. The plane had to take off in half an hour. Our poor darling hurtled down those stairs, barely touching them, kissed us both, and left. Oh, do forgive me,” the old lady said, “I do beg your pardon for pouring it all out like this, but I do feel things so, I always have.”
During the days that followed they became even better acquainted, and the colonel’s family became part of their group. They played tennis, swam, took boat trips, and went dancing together in the night clubs along the front. The general’s wife didn’t find this new friendship very much to her taste, but as was her custom she kept the fact to herself. Inwardly, however, she was decidedly chagrined to see her husband walking so often with Betty along the water’s edge, and his whole attitude to this woman vexed her.
“I should very much like to know what you two find to talk about all the time you’re together,” she remarked one day.
“About the colonel,” he answered. “What else?”
“Oh, come! I’m prepared to accept that his old mother talks about him non-stop all day, but that his widow has no other subject of conversation either, well … “
“That’s not very nice of you,” he interrupted her. “These people are in distress and they’ve asked me to help them. And after all, it’s the least I can do to show willing.”
“Show willing!”
“I don’t follow your sarcasm. Indeed I find it quite out of order, in the circumstances, with death stalking the whole time.”
“All right, all right. Such exaggerated attachment to a husband who’s been dead twenty years, and with whom she lived for only two weeks, can be explained in only one way.”
“Oh, I know what you’re going to tell me: the old countess and her fortune, what she has to leave. Well, that’s enough. I don’t want to listen to gossip of this kind. It is my duty to bring back the colonel’s remains. And that’s all there is to be said about it.”
Then Betty suddenly disappeared for two days, and when she returned the general noticed a certain coldness towards him combined with a great lassitude.
“Where have you been?” he asked her when he met her outside the hotel.
She was in a bathing costume and wearing sunglasses that masked her face. He could not prevent himself noticing that she had blushed under her tan as she spoke the name of the chaplain.
She told him that her mother-in-law had begged her to go immediately to the priest, on her behalf, and ask him to do his best in helping to find her son, that she had finally succeeded in locating him, that her mother-in-law’s mind was now at rest, etc…
But he wasn’t listening to her. He was gazing in a sensual stupor at her scantily covered body, and it was then that he wondered for the first time what her relationship with the priest really was.
Then the days sped by, soaked with sunlight. The colonel’s old mother continued to hold forth on the virtues of her son - who according to her had been the entire War Office’s blue-eyed boy - and on the antiquity of her family. Betty, meanwhile, would disappear from the beach from time to time; and when she came back - always with that same tired and distant air - the general always asked himself the same question. Their group would spend the whole afternoon on the hotel’s main terrace. A film star, the group’s latest addition, said to him:
“You know, general, there is no one on this beach quite so strange as you. There is a veil of mystery all around you, and when I think that after these splendid days spent here basking in the sun you are going off to hunt for dead bodies over there, in Albania, I feel a shiver of horror. You remind me of the hero in that ballad by the German poet - his name escapes me at the moment but we had to study him at school. Yes, you’re just like him, the hero who rose up out of his tomb to ride through the moonlight. I feel sometimes that you are going to come knocking at my window in the night. Oh! What a terrifying thought!”
The general laughed obediently, his mind not really there, while his companions all gazed in silent wonder at the setting sun. Except for the colonel’s mother, who must needs refer everything to her son and therefore remarked:
“Oh, how he would have loved this. He was so sensitive to beauty of every kind!” And she wiped away a tear with her handkerchief.
Betty was still as seductive and as enigmatic as ever, the sky still as blue - only, from time to time, here and there, the horizon was beginning to be darkened by black clouds, heavy with rain, sailing slowly eastwards, towards the Albanian coast….
The general got to his feet. There was no one else in the tent.
The noise of rain on canvas had stopped. Presumably work had begun again. He stepped outside. The mist, still as thick as ever, lay in a blanket over the scree. For a moment he followed the low flight of the sparrows, then it seemed to him that the blanket of mist was moving north-east, towards where the monument should be rising, and the telephone poles, with their wires stretched taut in space.
T
HE PRIEST LIT THE PARAFFIN LAMP
and placed it on the small table. His shadow and that of his companion wavered, bent in the middle, against the sloping sides of the tent.
“Brrr! How cold it is!” the general said. “With this damned humidity it soaks right into your bones.”
The priest began opening a tin. “We shall last out till tomorrow, I expect.”
“Well, I wish I was already in tomorrow, that’s all I can say. So that we could get the hell out of here. I’ve had enough of living like a savage. And I need a bath.”
“It might be bearable without the cold.”
“It’s a job that should have been done in summer,” the general said. Though in fact, he thought to himself, there was no possibility of that: in spite of everything he found some relief in venting his ill-temper, so it seemed to him.
“It’s true it’s hardly the best of weather for such an undertaking,” the priest said. “The negotiations went on too long at the time. The government always has its reasons …”
“Needs must when the devil drives would be nearer the mark, I’d say!”
The general had unfolded their large-scale map of the cemetery and was pencilling in marks of some sort on it.
“And those other two, where are they, I wonder?”
“Perhaps they’re still back there digging up that football field where we last sawthem.”
“Well, their task is no easier than ours. And they do seem to be very badly organized.”
“Whereas with us everything goes like clockwork. We are the most up-to-date grave-diggers in the world.” The priest didn’t reply.
“Though admittedly we are also very dirty ones,” the general added.
Outside there came the sound of a song through the darkness.
Beginning quietly, supported by deep, dark-toned voices, it rose steadily in pitch, increased in volume, and finally hurled itself against their tent in a fierce onslaught, just as the rain and the wind were perpetually doing all through those autumn nights.
And it was almost as though the canvas, physically affected by the weight of sound, had quivered as the song struck.
“The workmen are singing,” the general said, raising his eyes from the map.
They both listened for a moment.
“It is a very common custom among the Albanians of certain regions,” the priest said. “As soon as there are three or four of them together like that they begin singing together. It’s a very old tradition.”
“Perhaps they’re singing because it’s Saturday evening.”
“It’s quite possible. They were paid today of course, and they must certainly have brought a bottle of raki from some passing villager.”
“I’d noticed they like a drink or two now and then,” the general said. “I suppose they find this work depressing too. They’ve been away from their homes a long time!”
“When they drink they generally start telling one another stories,” the priest said. “The oldest one tells them stories about the war.”
“Was he a partisan?”
“I think so, yes.”
“So this job must bring back a lot of wartime memories for him.”
“It’s bound to,” the priest said. “And at moments like this singing is a spiritual need for these men. Can you conceive of any greater satisfaction for an old soldier than that of pulling his old enemies back up out of their graves? It’s like a sort of extension of the war.”
The melody of the song was drawing itself out, languishing, and the accompanying chorus seemed to be winding round and round it, like a soft, warm, outer garment protecting it from the dark and the wet of the night outside. Then the chorus faded, and from its quiet heart a single voice sprang up in isolated song.
“That’s him,” the general said. “Do you hear him? But what is he singing?”
“It is an old song of war,” the priest answered.
“It’s a sad song. Can you make out the words?”
“Yes, quite clearly. It’s about an Albanian soldier who has been wounded in the Arabian desert. When their country was under Turkish rule, you know, the Albanians had to do military service all over the Ottoman empire.”
“Ah, yes, I remember your telling me about it.”
“If you like I could try to translate it for you.”
“Please do.”