Three Arched Bridge

6

AS EXPECTED, the news of the bridge to be built over the Ujana e Keqe spread rapidly. Bridges had been built now and then in all sorts of places, but nobody remembered any of them causing so much commotion. They had been built almost in silence, with a noise of tools to which the ear became accustomed^ because it scarcely differed from the monotonous croaking of the nearby frogs. Then’ when they were finished., they did their duty in similar obscurity until they were carried away by high water, were struck by lightnings or still worse, until they decayed to the point that a traveler, having taken a first step on the rotten planks, would stand hesitating to take a second, and turn back in search of a nearby raft or ford by which to cross, This was because all these had been wooden bridges’ while the one to be built would be a real bridge with piers and strong stone arches, perhaps the first of its kind in the whole land of Arberia.

People responded to the news with a feeling between fear and elation. They were pleased that they would have no more dealings with the disgraceful ferrymen, who were always on the other bank when you wanted them on this one, were sometimes not to be found at all or, even worse, were to be found drank, with the exception of the most recent hunchbacked ferryman, who neither pestered the women nor drank but was so gloomy in his expression that he seemed to be carrying you to certain death by drowning, The rafts were filthy and damp and spun around in the water, making you want to throw up, while the bridge would always be there, at all times of the day or night, ready to arch its stone back under your feet without swaying or playing tricks. They would have no more trouble with the river either, which sometimes swelled and wreaked havoc, and sometimes sank to the merest thread, as if about to give up the ghost, People were glad that the Ujana e Keqe, which had been such a trial to them, would finally be pinned down by a clasp of stone. But this very thing, besides causing joy, also scared them. It was not easy to saddle a kicking mule, let alone the Ujana e Keqe* Oh, we will see, we will see how this business will fare, they said.

And as always before such events, people began to move more among each other’s scattered houses; they even went farther afield, to the Poplar Copse, where few had been since the duke of Gjin had been ambushed there, shortly before the betrothal with the house of our liege lord was broken off. There were others who went to the wild pomegranates by the Five Wells, from where they could indirectly emerge at Mark Kasneci’s clearing; they would then roll up their breeches to cross the quagmire and come out at the great highway, There, if the news really was such that they could not keep it to them-selves^ their legs of their own accord ate up the road down to the Inn of the Two Roberts. There, everybody knew what happened: words took wing.

Among those who were not at all pleased about the bridge and even became hostile to it was the old woman Ajkuna. She prophesied nothing but ill for it. It is Beelzebub’s backbone^ she said, and woe to any with the audacity to climb upon it!