Broken April

CHAPTER VI

The Vorpsis went on with their trip. Bessian looked at his wife from the side. Her features were somewhat drawn, and she was a little pale, which made her look only the more desirable, as had happened a few days ago. She is tired out, he thought, even though she won’t admit it. Actually, during all those days he had been waiting to hear her say at last the words that would have been so natural, “Oh, I’m so tired.” He had waited for those words impatiently, feverishly, the remedy for their trouble, but she had not said them. Her face pale, she looked out at the road in silence, or very nearly. As for her expression, which even when she was angry or humiliated had always seemed understandable to him, he now found that he had no clue to what it might mean. If only her eyes expressed annoyance, or worse, coldness. But there was something else in her eyes. In some way her look was empty at its center and only the edges were still there.

Seated side by side, they rarely spoke. Sometimes he tried to create a bit of warmth, but fearing that he might put himself in a position of inferiority, he did that with great discretion. The worst of it was that he felt quite unable to be angry at her. In his relations with women he had noticed that anger and quarrelling could at times bring about a sudden resolution of static situations that had seemed hopeless, as a storm can clear away an oppressively humid atmosphere. But there was something in the way that her eyes were set that defended her against anyone else’s anger. Something like the eyes of pregnant women. At one moment he even wondered — almost aloud — can she be expecting a child? But his mind, mechanically, reckoned up the time that had passed, and this disposed of his last hope. Bessian suppressed a sigh that he did not want her to hear, and he went on looking at the countryside. Night was falling.

For a little while that mood stayed with him, and when he began to think actively again, his mind brought him back to the same place. If only she would tell him that she had no heart for this trip, that she felt terribly disappointed, that his notion to spend their honeymoon on the High Plateau had proved to be idiotic, that they would do well to go back at once, this very day, this instant. But when he made a vague allusion to their leaving early, so as to give her a chance to express that wish, she said, “As you like. But in any case, please don’t feel troubled on my account.”

Of course the idea of breaking off their trip and going home tormented him more and more, but he entertained a vague hope that something might still be saved. Indeed, he felt that if something were to be saved, that could only happen while they were on the High Plateau, and that once they went down there would be no chance of a remedy.

Now it was full night and he could not see her face. Two or three times he leaned towards the window, but he could not tell where they were. A little later the moon shed its light on the road and he put his head close to the glass. He stayed a long while in that position, and the vibration of the cold pane entered his forehead and went all through his body. In the moonlight the road looked like glass to him. The silhouette of a small church slid off to his left. Then a water-mill loomed up, and one might think that in this waste it had been built to grind snow rather than corn. His hand sought his wife’s hand on the seat.

“Diana,” he said softly, “look out there. I think this is a road protected by the bessa.”

She put her face to the windowpane. Still speaking softly, using few words, and imposing upon them an order that seemed to him less and less natural, he explained to her what a road protected by the bessa was. He felt that the icy moonlight helped him with his task.

Then, when his words were spent, he moved his head towards her neck and kissed her timidly. The moonlight grazed her knees a number of times. She did not move, she came no closer nor did she draw away from him. Her body gave off still the odor of the perfume that he loved, and with an effort he repressed a groan. His last hope was that something would let go inside her. He hoped to hear a sob from her, if only a faint one, or at least a sigh. But she did not relinquish her strange attitude, silent but not completely, desolate as a field strewn with stars might be desolate. “O Lord,” he said to himself, “what is happening to me?”

The sky was only partly overcast. The horses trotted lightly on the ill-paved road. It was the Road of the Cross. From behind the glass, Bessian looked out on a landscape grown familiar to him. Except that this time, here and there, in places close to him and far away, it lay under a bluish coverlet. The snow had begun to melt, it wore away from the bottom up, from its contact with the soil, leaving above the hollow thus formed a kind of crust that scarcely melted at all.

“What day is it?” Diana asked.

Surprised, he looked at her for a moment before he replied.

“The eleventh.”

She seemed about to say something. Speak to me, he thought. Please speak. Hope invaded him like a hot vapor. Say anything, but speak to me.

Her lips that he was watching out of the corner of his eye moved again to say in a different way perhaps the words she had not spoken.

“Do you remember that mountaineer we saw the day that we were on our way to the prince?”

“Yes,” he said, “of course.”

What did that “of course” mean, spoken so naturally? For a moment he pitied himself, without knowing why. Perhaps because he had been so eager to keep this exchange going at any cost. Perhaps, too, for a different reason that he could not specify just then.

“The truce he had been granted was to end around mid-April, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said, “something like that. Yes, that’s right, just in mid-April.”

“I don’t know why that came to mind,” she said, still looking out of the window. “It just came, for no good reason.”

“For no good reason,” he repeated. Those words seemed to him to be dangerous as a ring with poison in it. Somewhere inside him a knot of rage was forming. So you did all that for no good reason? For nothing, just to torture me? But the wave of anger toppled and broke at once.

Two or three times in these last days she had turned her head to look at the young mountaineers that they passed on the road. He understood that she thought she had recognized the young man who had been at the inn, but he attached no importance to that. And now that she had mentioned him, he still felt that way.

The carriage stopped suddenly, interrupting his train of thought.

“What is it?” he said, to no one in particular.

The coachman, who had climbed down from the box, appeared a moment later near the window. His arm extended, he was pointing at the road. Only then did Bessian see an old mountain woman squatting by the roadside. She was looking at them, and she seemed to be muttering something. Bessian opened the carriage door.

“There’s an old woman over there by the roadside. She says that she can’t move,” the coachman said.

Bessian stepped down from the carriage, and after taking a few steps for the sake of his stiff legs, he went over to the old woman, who now and again was crying out softly while clasping her knee with her hands.

“What’s the matter, good mother?” Bessian asked.

“Oh, it’s this accursed cramp,” the old woman said. “I’ve been rooted here since morning, my child.”

Like all the mountain women of that district, she wore a cloth dress decorated with embroidery, and a scarf on her head that showed a few wisps of grey hair.

“I have been waiting since morning for one of God’s creatures who could help me away from here.”

“Where are you from?” the coachman asked her.

“From the village over there.” The woman stretched out her arm, pointing uncertainly. “It’s not far, just along the highway.”

“Let’s take her with us,” Bessian said.

“Thank you, my son.”

With the coachman’s help, he lifted her up carefully, supporting her under her arms, and the two men led her to the carriage. Diana watched from inside the vehicle.

“Good day, daughter,” the old woman said when she was in the carriage.

“Good day, good mother,” Diana said, moving in order to give her room.

“Ah,” the old woman said as the carriage moved off, “I spent the whole morning all alone by the roadside. There wasn’t a living soul to be seen anywhere. I thought I was going to die there.”

“It’s true,” Bessian said, “this road is almost deserted. Your village is a big one, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s big,” the woman said, her face darkening,

“It’s big all right, I should say so, but what good is that?”

Bessian was looking attentively at the old woman’s features and their somber expression. For a moment he thought he detected signs of hostility towards the people of her village, because no one had come by to help her and everyone had forgotten her. But the emotion that had clouded her face was something much deeper than momentary annoyance.

“Yes, my village is quite big, but most of the men are cloistered in the towers. That’s why I was all alone, abandoned on the road, and almost died there.”

“Cloistered because of blood-vengeance?”

“Yes, my son, for blood-vengeance. Nobody has ever seen anything to match it. Well, of course people have killed one another within the village, but never anything like this.”

The old woman took a deep breath.

“Of the two hundred households of our village, only twenty are not involved in the blood-feud.”

“How can that possibly be?”

“You’ll see for yourself, my boy. The village looks as if everything had turned to stone, as if the plague had struck it.”

Bessian put his head near the window, but the village was not yet in sight.

“Two months ago,” the mountain woman said, “I myself buried a nephew, a boy beautiful as an angel.”

She began to talk about that boy, and to tell how he had been killed, but as she spoke — and this was strange — the order of the words in her sentences began to change. And not only their order but the spaces between them, as if a special atmosphere was clothing them, painful and disturbing. As happens with fruit before it is fully ripe, her language changed from its ordinary condition to quite another condition, the prelude to song or lamentation. It would seem that this is how the songs of the bards come about, Bessian thought.

He was looking fixedly at the old mountain woman. That state of feeling that preceded song was accompanied by corresponding changes in the expression of her face. In her eyes there was lamentation, but no tears. And they seemed all the more disconsolate.

The carriage entered the village, followed by the echoing clatter of its wheels on the empty road. On either side stone kullas rose up, seeming even more silent in broad daylight.

“This kulla belongs to the Shkreli, and that one, farther along, to the Krasniq, and the blood-vengeance that must be carried out is so mixed up that no one really knows which clan is the one that is supposed to take vengeance now, so much so that both families are holed up in their towers. That tower over there, the one that is three storeys high, belongs to the Vithdreq, who are feuding with the Bunga, whose kulla you can hardly see from here — the one whose walls are made partly of black stone. And those are the towers of the Karakaj and the Dodanaj, who are feuding, and each of those families has carried out two coffins through their doors this spring. As for those other kullas over that way, in the same line and facing each other, they belong to the Ukas and the Kryezeze, but since they are within rifle-shot, not just the men of each house but even the women and the young girls open fire on one another from inside their walls and do not go out.”

The mountain woman went on talking in this way while the two outlanders turned to this window and that in an attempt to grasp the meaning of this strange form of civic life governed by the blood-feud as she described it to them. There was no sign of life in the heavy silence of those kullas. The pallid sunlight falling obliquely on their stonework only emphasized their desolate air.

They set down the old woman not far from the center of the village, and they accompanied her to her own kulla. Then the carriage started off again through that stone kingdom, that looked as if it were under a spell. And just imagine that there are people behind those walls and their narrow loopholes, Bessian thought. There are ardent young women and young wives. And for a moment it seemed to him that despite that stiff carapace he could feel the pulsing of life, fearfully intense and beating against the walls with Beethovian power. The outside, however, the walls, the rows of loopholes, the pallid sunlight falling upon them, gave nothing away. And suddenly he cried out to himself, what is all that to you? You’d better concern yourself with your wife’s unyielding stiffness. He felt rage rising swiftly in him, and he turned to Diana to break that unbearable silence once and for all, to speak to her, to demand an explanation to the very last detail, of the mute riddle of her conduct towards him.

It was not the first time that he had been on the point of doing that. Dozens of times he had rehearsed what he would say, from the most gentle appeal, Diana, what’s the matter? Tell me what’s troubling you, to the harshest reproofs, of the kind one can’t compose without the word “devil”—what the devil is wrong with you? What the devil do you mean by that? Oh, go to the devil! In these cases, he found, that word was irreplaceable. And right now, in that haze of rage that was upon him, it was the first word that occurred to him, ready to be a part of any sentence whatever, glad to be of use, eager to take part in the argument. Well, just as in all those other times, not only could he not use that word against her, but like a man who has made a mistake and means to make amends and be responsible for the consequences, he used it against himself. He was still turned towards her, and instead of speaking harshly to her, he said to himself, what the devil is wrong with you?

What the devil is wrong with me? Just as on those other occasions, he avoided giving himself an answer. Later. Later, perhaps, the opportunity would present itself. He had not understood until now just why he had not demanded an explanation. Now he felt that he did know why; it was that he was afraid of what she might answer. It was a fear akin to what he had experienced one winter night in Tirana in the course of a spiritualist seance at a friend’s house, when they were preparing themselves to hear the voice of one of their group who had died some time ago. Bessian did not quite know why, but he could only imagine that Diana’s explanation would be of the same kind, delivered as if from behind a curtain of smoke.

It was a long while since the carriage had left behind it that doomed village, and he told himself again that the only reason that he had put off having it out with his wife was fear. I’m afraid of what she might say, he thought, I’m afraid, but why?

The feeling that he was to blame had become even stronger during their journey. In fact that feeling had arisen much earlier, and perhaps he had undertaken this tour in order to rid himself of it. Well, the contrary effect had manifested itself. And now, apparently, the possibility that Diana’s response might have some connection with that feeling of culpability on his part was enough to make him tremble inwardly. No, it would be better that she keep silent all through this dreadful trial, that she turn into a mummy, and that he never hear her say to him the things that would give him pain.

At some places the road was full of holes, and the carriage lurched violently. As they were going by some pools of water formed by the melting snow, she asked him, “Where are we going to have lunch?”

He turned his head, astonished. Those simple words gave him a warm feeling.

“Wherever we can,” he said. “Do you have an idea?”

“No, no, that’s fine,” she said.

He was about to turn his whole body towards her, but he felt a strange misgiving, as if he had beside him a fragile glass object that kept him motionless.

“We might even stay the night in some inn,” he said, without turning his head.

“If you wish.”

He felt a wave of warmth flooding his chest. Couldn’t all this be quite simple, and he, with his habit of complicating things, had he not seen the beginning of a tragedy where perhaps there was only the fatigue of the trip, an ordinary headache, or something of that sort?

“In some inn,” he said, “the first one we come to.”

She consented with a nod.

Perhaps it will be really much better that way, he thought happily. They had been spending their nights in the houses of strangers, with friends of friends, or more accurately, with the links of a chain of friends who had a single origin: the person with whom they had spent the first night of their journey, the only person they had known before. And every night there was a repetition of more or less the same scene — words of welcome, conversation in the living room around the fireplace, topics such as the weather, cattle, the government. Then dinner, accompanied by the most carefully considered phrases, then coffee, and the next morning, their departure, attended by the traditional escort who accompanied them to the borders of the village. In sum, all that could get to be pretty tiresome for a young bride.

“An inn!” he cried out in his thoughts. An ordinary inn beside the road, that was where salvation lay. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? How stupid I am, he told himself happily. An inn, even a dirty one that smelled of cattle, would bring them closer together by surrounding them, if not with the kind of comfort it could not possibly provide, then with its dire poverty in whose depths there gleamed ten times more bright the happiness of temporary guests.

An inn loomed up beside the road sooner than they had expected. It rose in the midst of a barren stretch of land at the crossing of the Road of the Cross and the Great Road of the Banners, where there was no village to be seen nor any other sign of life.

“Do you serve meals?” Bessian asked as soon as he had passed the threshold.

The innkeeper, a tall, ungainly fellow with half-closed eyes answered between clenched teeth, “Cold beans.”

On seeing Diana and the coachman, who was carrying a travelling bag, the innkeeper became somewhat more lively, and he grew quite attentive when he heard one of the carriage horses neighing. He rubbed his eyes and said in a hoarse voice, “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! We can give you fried eggs and cheese. I have raki* too.”

They sat down at the end of a long oak table that, as in most of the inns, took up the greater part of the common room. Two mountaineers, seated on the floor in one corner, looked curiously in their direction. A young woman was sleeping, her head resting on her baby’s cradle. Close by her, on a heap of many-colored bags, someone had set down a lahoute.

While waiting for the innkeeper to bring them their meal, they looked about them in silence.

“The other inns were more lively,” Diana said at last. “This one is very quiet.”

“Better that way, don’t you think?” Bessian looked at his watch. “Though at this time of day….” His thoughts were elsewhere and his fingers kept up a drumming on the table. “But it doesn’t look too bad here, does it?”

“That’s true, especially from outside.”

“It has a steep roof, the kind you like.”

She nodded. Despite her weariness, her expression was softer.

“Shall we sleep here tonight?”

As he said the words, Bessian felt his heart pounding, as if in secret. What is happening to me? he said to himself.

When she was still unmarried and she had come to his place for the first time, he had been less stirred than he was now, when she was his wife. It’s enough to drive you crazy, he thought.

“If you like,” she said.

“What’s that?”

She looked at him in surprise.

“You asked me if I would like it if we slept here tonight, didn’t you?”

“And you would?”

“Yes, of course.”

That’s marvellous, he thought. He wanted to kiss that much-loved head that had been torturing him all these past days. A wave of warmth, of a kind he had never felt before, flooded through him. After so many nights of being separated, they would sleep together at last, in this isolated mountain inn, among these desolate roads. It was lucky, really, that things had happened this way. If not for that, he would never have known the sensation that few men have had occasion to experience — to re-live one’s first embrace of a loved woman. She had become so distant in these days that now he felt that he was rediscovering her as she had been when he had known her before they were married. More, this second discovery seemed to him even sweeter and more unsettling. People are right to say it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good.

He sensed something moving behind him, and all at once, right under his eyes, as if coming at him from the world of the commonplace, were certain circular objects that gave off a piquant smell and were quite useless: the plates of fried eggs.

Bessian looked up.

“Do you have a good room for tonight?”

“Yes, sir,” the innkeeper said confidently. “One with a fireplace at that.”

“Really? That’s splendid.”

“Oh, yes,” the innkeeper went on. “There’s no room like it in all the inns of the district.”

I’m really in luck, Bessian thought.

“I’ll take you to it as soon as you’ve had your lunch,” the innkeeper said.

“Splendid.”

He had no appetite. Diana did not eat her eggs, either. She asked for some cream cheese, but she left it in the dish because it was dry and hard. Then she asked for yoghurt, and at last for eggs again, but boiled this time. Bessian ordered the same thing, but he ate nothing.

Right after lunch, they went upstairs to see the room. The chamber that, according to the innkeeper, was the envy of all the inns in that district of the High Plateau, was the plainest imaginable, with two windows, both with wooden shutters, facing north, and a large bed covered by a thick woolen counterpane. It did indeed have a fireplace, and there were ashes on the hearth.

“It’s a fine room,” Bessian said, looking questioningly at his wife.

“And can one have a fire?” she asked the landlord.

“Certainly. Right away if you wish.”

For the first time in a long while, Bessian thought he saw a gleam of pleasure in Diana’s eyes.

The innkeeper went away, and came back with an armload of wood. He lit the fire in a clumsy manner that showed it was something that he did very rarely. Both of them looked on as if it were the first time in their lives that they were looking at a fire kindled in a fireplace. He left at last, and Bessian, alone with his wife, felt again the secret pounding within his chest. Several times his eyes slid over to the large bed, with its counterpane the color of milk, which made it look warm. Diana was standing by the fire, her back turned to her husband. Timidly, as if he were drawing near to a stranger, Bessian took two steps towards her and put his arms around her shoulders. Her arms crossed, she did not move while he began to kiss her neck and then to kiss her near her lips. At times, from the side, he caught a glimpse of the red glow of the flame reflected on her cheek. Then, as his caresses grew more pressing, she said gently, “No, not now.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too cold. Besides, I have to have a bath.”

“You’re right,” he said, planting a kiss on her hair. Without saying anything more, he moved away from her and left the room. The lively sound of his footfalls on the stairs showed his pleasant mood. He came a few moments later, carrying a large iron bucket full of water.

“Thank you,” Diana said with a smile.

As if he were drunk, he set down the bucket on the fire, and then, looking as if he were thinking of something quite definite, he bent down to look under the mantelpiece, repeated that several times while keeping the sparks away with his hands, and found what he had been looking for, it seemed, since he called out, “There it is.”

Diana too, bent down, and she saw the end of a pot-hook black with soot, hanging above the fire as in most of the fireplaces of the countryfolk. Bessian picked up the bucket, and supporting himself with one hand on the masonry of the fireplace, tried to hang it on a notch of the pot-hook.

“Careful,” Diana said, “you’ll burn yourself.”

But the bucket was already in place, and Bessian was blowing gaily on his slightly reddened hand.

“Did you burn yourself?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

Someone was coming up the stairs. It was the coachman, bringing them their bags. Watching him with an abstracted smile, Bessian was thinking that those people who were coming and going on the stairs, bringing wood or their luggage, were arranging things so that he might be happy. He could scarcely keep still.

“What if we go downstairs for coffee until our room and the water are warmed up?”

“Coffee? If you like. But maybe it would be better to take a walk. I’m still a little dazed with travelling.”

A moment later they went down the stairs, that creaked under their tread, and Bessian told the innkeeper to take care of the fire because they were going to take a walk.

“Can you tell me if there’s a picturesque spot in the neighborhood, some place really worth seeing?”

“Something worth seeing in the neighborhood?” He shook his head. “No, sir. These parts are pretty much a desert.”

“Really?”

“Yes, except…. Wait a bit. You have a carriage, don’t you? That makes a difference. A half-hour, three quarters of an hour at most if your horses aren’t tired, you can get to Upper White Water to see the Alpine lakes.”

“Upper White Water is only a half-hour ride by carriage?” Bessian asked in surprise.

“Yes, sir. A half-hour, or three-quarters of an hour at most. Foreign visitors who come by this way never miss the opportunity to go there.”

“What do you think,” Bessian said, turning to his wife. “It’s true that we are tired of riding in the coach, but still it’s really worth seeing that village. Particularly for the famous lakes.”

“We learned that in geography class,” she said.

“The air is wonderful up there. And then, all the while our room will be warming up….” He broke off to look meaningfully at her.

“Fine, let’s go,” she said.

The innkeeper went out to call the coachman, who came in a few moments later, looking not too pleased. He had to harness the horses once more, but he was careful not to say anything against it. Climbing into the carriage, Bessian told the innkeeper yet another time to see to the fire. At the last minute, he wondered, just for an instant, if he had not been wrong in leaving behind so easily the room at the inn that he had been at pains to secure, but he was reassured at once by the thought that after a pleasant tour, Diana would be feeling better in every respect.

The afternoon sun shone gently on the moorland. A crimson tint, with no apparent source, put a touch of warmth into the air.

“The days are getting longer,” Bessian said, and he thought, Don’t I find the most interesting things to say! The weather is still fine. The days are getting longer.

These were things that people who have nothing to say to each other cling to in order to fill the emptiness of their conversations. Had they become strangers to each other so that they must have recourse to phrases of that sort? That’s enough, he thought, as if dismissing something regrettable. It’s already done.

A half-hour later, Upper White Water did in fact come in sight. In the distance, the towers looked as if they were covered with moss. In places the snow had not yet melted, the patches of bare earth looked all the darker.

The carriage followed the road towards the lakes, along the edge of the village. As they stepped down, they heard the bells of a church ringing. Diana was the first to stop. She turned in order to find where the sounds were coming from, but she did not see the belfry. All she could see were the patches of black earth alternating bleakly with the sheets of snow. She turned away from them, and leaned on her husband’s arm. They were walking towards one of the lakes.

“How many are there?” Diana asked.

“Six, I think.”

They walked side by side on the thick dark brown carpet formed by successive layers of dead leaves, here and there richly rotten, as if suffering a luxurious disease. Bessian felt that his wife was getting ready to say something to him. She appeared uneasy, but the sound of the leaves underfoot seemed to relieve her in part.

“There’s another lake,” she said suddenly, on seeing the shoreline through the fir trees, and when he turned his head in that direction, she went on: “Bessian, surely you’ll write something better about these mountains.” He turned as if something had stung him in the back. He almost said, “What?”, but at the last instant he stifled that exclamation. It would be better not to hear that suggestion again. He felt that someone had pressed a white-hot horseshoe to his forehead.

“After this trip,” she said gently, “it would be natural if…. something truer….”

“Yes, of course, of course.”

The glowing horseshoe was still pressed against his forehead. Part of the mystery was dispelled. The mystery of her silence. In fact it had never been that. He had been waiting, almost as a certainty, for her to say those words before the first night of their new love, as the price of their understanding, of their pact.

“I understand, Diana,” he said in a voice that was strangely weary. “Of course, it’s hard for me, but I understand—”

She interrupted him. “This is really a wonderful place. How right we were to come here.”

Bessian walked on, his thoughts elsewhere, and so they came to the second lake, and then they began to retrace their steps. On the way he got hold of himself; he was thinking of the room with the fireplace that was waiting for them, all warm, at the inn.

They came to the place where they had left their carriage, but instead of getting in they turned towards the village. The coach followed them.

The first persons they met on the way, two women carrying casks of water on their heads, slowed their steps and looked at them for a moment. In contrast, with the beauty of the countryside, the towers, close up, seemed especially gloomy. The village streets and especially the little square in front of the church were filled with people. Those tight trousers of heavy wool, milk-colored, with its black stripe, oddly like the symbol of an electrical discharge, that ran down their sides, expressed all the agitation that marked their bearing.

“Something must have happened,” Bessian said.

They watched the people for a moment, trying to imagine what might have occurred. But, apparently, what had happened must have been something rather peaceful and solemn.

“Is that tower the one that is the tower of refuge?” Diana asked.

“Probably. It looks like one.”

Diana slowed her step to look at the tower rising somewhat apart from the others.

“If the truce that was granted to that mountaineer we saw — you know, the one we talked about today — if the truce ended in the last few days, he would certainly have taken refuge in a tower of that sort, wouldn’t he?”

“Oh, certainly,” Bessian said, still looking at the crowd.

“And if, at the expiration of the truce, the murderer is on the highway, far from his own village, he could take shelter in any one of those towers of refuge?”

“I think so. It’s the same as with travellers overtaken by night who go into the first inn they find on the road.”

“So that he could very well have sought refuge in this very tower?”

Bessian smiled.

“It’s possible. But I don’t think so. There are many towers, and besides, we met that man a long way from here.”

Diana turned her head once more towards the kulla, and, in the depths of her stare and the corners of her eyes, Bessian thought he detected something like a gentle yearning. But in that instant he saw in the crowd someone who was waving at him. A checkered vest, some familiar faces.

“Take a look at who’s over there,” Bessian said, with a gesture of his head in their direction.

“Well, Ali Binak,” Diana said in a low voice that expressed neither satisfaction nor annoyance.

They met in the center of the square. The surveyor seemed to have drunk one glass too many this time, too. The doctor’s pale eyes, and not his eyes alone but all of the delicate skin of his face, were sorrowful. As for Ali Binak, one could just make out, behind his customary coldness, a mournful weariness. The group of experts was attended by a small knot of mountaineers.

“You are going on with your journey through the High Plateau?” Ali Binak asked them in his sonorous voice.

“Yes,” Bessian said. “We shall be in this district a few days more.”

“The days are getting longer now.”

“Yes, we’re in the middle of April. And you, what are you doing in these parts?”

“What are we doing here?” the surveyor said. “As usual, running from one village to another, from one Banner to another. Portrait of a group with bloodstains….”

“What?”

“Oh, I just wanted to use an image — how shall I say — well, borrowed from painting.”

Ali Binak darted a cold glance at the speaker.

“Is there some dispute here that you must arbitrate?” Bessian asked Ali Binak.

The latter nodded.

“And what a dispute!” the surveyor interposed again. “Today,” he said, with a jerk of the hand to indicate Ali Binak, “he has pronounced judgment in a way that will go down in history.”

“One mustn’t exaggerate,” Ali Binak said.

“It’s no exaggeration,” the surveyor said. “And this gentleman is a writer and we really must describe to him the case that you settled.”

In a few minutes the case for which Ali Binak and his assistants had been called to the village had been related by several speakers at once, particularly the surveyor, and they interrupted, amplified, or corrected one another. Things appeared to have happened in this fashion:

A week ago the members of a certain family had put to death one of their girls, who was pregnant. There was no doubt that they would promptly kill as well the boy who had seduced her. In the meantime, the boy’s family learned that the baby whom the young woman had not been able to bring into the world was a male child. The family forestalled their adversaries by declaring that they were the injured party in regard to the young woman’s kin, and argued that while the young man was not connected with the victim by marriage, the male child belonged to him. In so doing, the boy’s family made the claim that they were the ones who had a transgression to avenge, and that accordingly, it was their turn to kill a member of the young woman’s family. In that way, they not only protected their guilty boy against the punishment that awaited him, but also, by tying the hands of the adverse party, prolonged the de facto peace at their convenience. It goes without saying that the other family vigorously contested this view of the case. The business was brought before the village council of elders, who found it very hard to resolve. The parents of the young woman, devastated by their misfortune, were understandably outraged by the notion that they owed a victim to their adversaries when it was precisely a boy of that house who had brought about the death of their daughter. They insisted that another solution had to be found. And what further complicated the situation was that, according to the Kanun, a male child from the moment of conception belonged to the family of the boy, and must be avenged on the same principle as one avenges a man. The council of elders, declaring themselves unable to pronounce on the question, appealed to the great expert on the Kanun, Ali Binak.

The case had been considered an hour ago (just when we were walking on the banks of the lakes, Bessian thought). The judgment, as in all matters arising from the Kanun, was rendered promptly. The spokesman for the boy’s family had said to Ali Binak, “I should like to know why they spilled out my flour [meaning the baby that had been conceived].” And Ali Binak answered him at once: “What was your flour looking for in someone else’s flour sack [meaning the womb of the young stranger woman, not bound properly by marriage].” Both parties were thus non-suited, and both were declared blameless and not bound to seek vengeance.

Impassive, with never the quiver of a muscle in his pale face, not speaking at all, Ali Binak listened to the noisy account of how he had pronounced judgment.

“There’s nothing for it — you’re a wonder,” the surveyor said, his eyes wet with drunkenness and admiration.

They began to walk aimlessly around the square.

“When all is said and done, if you think about it calmly, these are really simple matters,” said the doctor, who was walking along with Bessian and Diana. “Even this last case, which seems so dramatic, is really a question of the relation of creditor to debtor.”

He went on talking, but Bessian was scarcely paying attention. He had another concern. Didn’t a discussion of this kind tend to have a bad effect on Diana? During the last two days they had rather neglected matters like these, and her face had begun at last to look less troubled.

“And what about you? How did you happen to settle on the High Plateau?” Bessian said in order to change the subject. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

The doctor said, with a bitter smile, “I was one. Now I’m something else.”

His eyes showed his deep distress, and Bessian thought that light-colored eyes, even the ones that seem at first sight almost colorless, can reflect an inner pain more fully than any other kinds of eyes.

“I studied surgery in Austria,” he said. “I was among the first and only group of scholarship students that was sent there by the monarchy. Perhaps you have heard what became of most of those students when they returned from foreign parts. Well, I’m one of those. Absolute disappointment, no clinical practice, no possibility of working in my profession. I was unemployed for some time, and then, just by chance, in a café in Tirana, I met that man—” and he motioned with his head towards the surveyor—“who suggested I take up this peculiar trade.”

“Portrait of a group with bloodstains,” said the surveyor, who had just come up to them and was following their conversation. “You’ll always find us wherever there is blood.”

The doctor ignored those words.

“And is it as a doctor that you assist Ali Binak in his work?” Bessian asked.

“Of course. Otherwise he would not take me with him.”

Bessian looked at him in surprise.

“There’s nothing to be surprised at there. In judgments made in accordance with the Code, particularly when it is a question of blood-letting, and most of all in the matter of wounds, the presence of someone with an elementary knowledge of medicine is always necessary. Naturally, there is no need for a surgeon’s services. I would even say that the irony of my situation is precisely that I perform work that can be done quite well by the most junior kind of nurse, not to say anyone at all who has a rudimentary knowledge of the anatomy of the human body.”

“Rudimentary knowledge? Is that enough?”

The doctor smiled the same bitter smile.

“The trouble is that you are sure that my function here is to dress and cure wounds — isn’t that so?”

“Yes, of course. I can understand that, for the reasons you’ve mentioned, you gave up your profession as a surgeon — but you can still treat wounds, can’t you?”

“No,” the doctor said. “There would be some compensation in that. But I have nothing to do with things of that kind. Do you understand? Nothing at all. The mountaineers have always treated their wounds themselves, and they are still doing that to this very day, with raki, tobacco, in accordance with the most barbaric practices, as, for example, dislodging a bullet with another bullet, etc. So they will never call on a doctor for his services. And I am here to fulfill a very different function. Do you understand? I am not here as a doctor but as the assistant to a judge. Does that seem odd to you?”

“Not entirely,” Bessian said. “I have some knowledge of the Kanun myself, and I can imagine what you are dealing with.”

“I count the wounds, classify them, and do nothing else.”

For the first time Bessian had the feeling that the doctor was getting irritated. He turned to Diana, but their eyes did not meet. There was no question that this discussion would not make a good impression on her, but he told himself, too bad; provided that this comes to a stop as soon as possible, and we can get away from here.

“Perhaps you know that, according to the Kanun, the wounds inflicted are paid for by fines. Each wound is paid for individually, and the price depends on the part of the body in which the wound is situated. The compensation for head wounds, for example, is twice as high as that for wounds on the trunk, the latter being divided into two further categories, according to whether they are about or below the waist, and there are further distinctions. My work as an assistant consists of this only — to determine the number of the wounds and where they occur.”

He looked at Bessian and then at his wife, as if he wanted to be sure of the effect of his words.

“Wounds present problems when it comes to rendering judgment — rather more problems than outright killing. You must know that by the terms of the Kanun, a wound that has not been compensated for by the payment of a fine is regarded as the equivalent of half of a man’s blood. A wounded man, accordingly, is considered to be half-dead, a kind of shadow. In short, if someone wounds two persons in a family, or the same person twice, he becomes, by virtue of that fact — if he has not paid compensation for each of the two wounds considered separately — a debtor to the extent of all of one man’s blood, which is to say a human life.”

The doctor fell silent for a moment to give them time to absorb the meaning of his words.

“All that,” he went on, “gives rise to extremely complicated problems, principally economic ones. You are looking at me as if you are surprised, aren’t you? There are families that are unable to pay the compensation for two wounds, and they choose to discharge the debt by taking a human life. There are others that are ready to ruin themselves, to pay for as many as twenty wounds received by the victim, in order to keep the right, once their victim is well again, to murder him. Strange, isn’t it? But here’s something that puts all that in the shade. I know a man from the Black Ravines, who has supported his family for years on the indemnities he has received for the wounds his enemies have inflicted. He has escaped death several times, and he is convinced that, thanks to the training that he has had, he can escape dying by any bullet whatsoever, and without a doubt he is the first man in the world to create in some sense this new trade — that of making a living from his wounds.”

“Horrible,” Bessian muttered. He looked at Diana, and she seemed to him to be even more pale. This conversation must stop as soon as possible, he thought. Now the room at the inn, the fireplace, and the kettle of hot water hanging on the crane seemed far away. Let’s get away from here, he said to himself again. Let’s get away right now.

The people in the square had broken up into small groups, and Diana and Bessian were alone with the doctor.

“Perhaps you know,” the doctor went on — and Bessian was on the point of interrupting him and saying, I don’t know and I don’t want to know—“that according to the Kanun, when two men fire at each other point-blank and one of them dies while the other is merely wounded, the wounded man pays the difference, as it were for the surplus blood. In other words, as I told you right at the beginning, often, behind the semi-mythical décor, you have to look for the economic component. Perhaps you’ll accuse me of being cynical, but in our time, as with everything else, blood has been transformed into merchandise.”

“Oh, no,” Bessian said. “That’s a somewhat simplistic way of looking at things. Of course economics plays a part in many things, but it won’t do to go too far in that direction. And on that subject, I’d like to ask if you aren’t the person who wrote an article on the blood-feud that was banned by the royal censor.”

“No,” the doctor said shortly. “I supplied the facts, but I was not the author.”

“I think I remember reading in that article the same phraseology — blood has been turned into merchandise.”

“That is an incontestable truth.”

“Have you read Marx?” Bessian asked.

The doctor did not reply. He just looked at Bessian as if to say, “And you who are asking me that question, have you read him?”

Bessian glanced swiftly at Diana, who was looking straight before her, and he felt that he must argue with the doctor.

“In my opinion, even your explanation of the murder that you gave judgment on today is much too simplistic,” he said, hoping to find something that he could contradict.

“Not at all. I said it and I’ll repeat it. In every aspect of the events that were discussed today, it was purely a question of settling a debt.”

“Yes, a debt, certainly, but a debt of blood.”

“Blood, precious stones, cloth, it makes no difference. To me, it concerns a debt, and that is all.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“It’s exactly the same thing.”

The doctor’s tone had become harsh. His delicate skin reddened as if it were burning. Bessian felt deeply offended.

“That is much too naive an explanation, not to say a cynical one,” he said.

The doctor’s eyes turned icy.

“You’re the one who’s naive, naive and cynical at the same time — you and your art.”

“You needn’t raise your voice,” said Bessian.

“I’ll yell my head off if I please,” the doctor said, though he lowered his voice at the same time. But, coming through his lips as if he were whistling, his voice sounded all the more threatening. “Your books, your art, they all smell of murder. Instead of doing something for these unfortunate mountaineers, you help death, you look for exalted themes, you look here for beauty so as to feed your art. You don’t see that this is beauty that kills, as a young writer said whom you certainly do not care for. You remind me of those theaters built in the palaces of Russian aristocrats, where the stage is large enough to accommodate hundreds of actors, while the living room can scarcely accommodate the prince’s family. That’s it. What you remind me of is those aristocrats. You encourage a whole nation to perform in a bloody drama, while you yourselves and your ladies watch the spectacle from your loges.”

At that moment Bessian noticed Diana’s absence. She had to be somewhere ahead of him, perhaps with the surveyor who would be sticking close to her, he thought, half-dazed.

“But you,” he said, “I mean you personally, you who are a doctor, who claim to understand things in the right way, why do you take part in this hoax? How about it? Why do you take advantage of that situation to earn your living?”

“When it comes to what I do, you’re absolutely right. I’m just a failure. But at least I understand what I am, and I don’t infect the world with my books.”

Bessian was looking for Diana, but he did not see her. From one point of view it was just as well that she had not heard those morbid opinions. The man went on talking and Bessian tried to listen, but as he himself was about to speak, instead of answering the doctor he said, as if he were talking to himself, “Where’s my wife?”

Now he was looking for her among the people who were still walking slowly to and fro in the church square.

“Diana!” he called, on the chance that she might hear him.

A number of people turned towards him.

“She may have gone into the church out of curiosity, or into a house to go to the bathroom.”

“That’s possible.”

They kept on walking, but Bessian was uneasy. I shouldn’t have left the inn, he thought.

“Forgive me,” the doctor said in a mild tone. “Perhaps I overdid it.”

“That’s nothing. Where can she have gone?”

“Don’t worry. She must be right in the neighborhood. Do you feel ill? You’re very pale.”

“No, no. I’m all right.”

Bessian felt the doctor’s hand take hold of his arm, and he wanted to move away, but he forgot to do it. Some children were keeping close to the nearest group of people, the one that included Ali Binak and the surveyor. Bessian felt his mouth go bitter. The lakes, he thought, for a second only. That old carpet of leaves, hopelessly rotten, covered over with that deceptive gold.

He was striding swiftly towards the group around Ali Binak. Is she drowned, he wondered while still some distance from them. But their faces were petrified. There was nothing in their expression that could give him reassurance.

“What is it?” he asked in panic, and unconsciously, perhaps because of the expression of those faces, instead of saying, “What has happened to her?” he said, “What has she done?”

The answer came with great difficulty from pitilessly clamped jaws. They had to repeat it to him several times before he could understand: Diana had gone inside the tower of refuge.

What had happened? Not at that moment, and not later, when the witnesses started to describe what they had seen (people felt immediately that it was one of those happenings that had an element of reality and at the same time an element of mist that separated it from normal life, and therefore that it was a happening that lent itself to the legendary), not at that time nor afterwards, then, could anyone establish precisely how the young woman from the capital had managed to get into the tower, where no stranger had ever set foot. And what was even more unlikely than the fact that she had entered there, was that no one had noticed it, or rather that if someone remembered that she had drawn away from the group, that she had wandered in the neighborhood, no one except for some children had paid enough attention to keep their eyes upon her. And she herself, perhaps, if she were questioned about the way in which she had gone down the road that far and had succeeded at last in entering, might she have been unable to explain anything at all? To judge by the few words that she had left behind her on the High Plateau, she would have felt at that moment something like detachment from everything, a kind of loss of gravity, which had lightened for her not only the idea of entering the tower but her going itself — all the way to the gate. And then, it should not be ignored that that very circumstance might help to turn people’s attention from her, and so allow her to take the fateful step. In fact, as some persons remembered thereafter, she had drawn away from the people in the square and approached the tower as lightly as a moth fluttering towards a lamp. She was flying, as it were, and carried along in that way like a leaf in the wind, she had gone inside — or rather, fallen across the threshold.

Bessian, his face ashen, understood at last what had happened. The first thing he did was to dart out to take his wife from that place, but strong hands seized both his arms.

“Let me go!” he shouted in a hoarse voice.

Their faces were aligned around his, unmoving as the stones of a wall. Among them was the pale face of Ali Binak.

“Let me go!” he said to him, though Ali was not one of those who were restraining him.

“Calm yourself, sir,” said Ali Binak. “You cannot go over there; no one can enter there, except for the priest.”

“But my wife is inside there,” Bessian cried. “Alone among those men.”

“You are quite right. Something must be done, but you may not go there. They could fire at you, you see. They might kill you.”

“Then have someone send for the priest, or for the Devil knows who, just so one can get inside.”

“The priest has been notified,” Ali Binak said.

“He’s coming! Here he is!” several voices said.

A small group had gathered around them. Bessian recognized his coachman, who was looking at him with eyes that seemed to be popping out of their sockets, expecting an order from him. But Bessian looked away.

“Move away!” Ali Binak said in a commanding tone. Some persons took a few steps only, and then stopped.

The priest came up, out of breath. His flabby face, with its heavy pockets beneath his eyes, looked very much alarmed.

“How long has she been inside?” he asked.

Ali Binak looked around questioningly. A number of persons spoke at once. One said half an hour, another an hour, and someone else a quarter of an hour. Most of those around shrugged their shoulders.

“That’s not important,” Ali Binak said. “What is needed is action.”

The priest and Ali Binak conferred with each other. Bessian heard Ali Binak say, “Then I’ll go with you,” and he took courage from that. In the crowd you could hear the words, “The priest is going there, together with Ali Binak.”

The priest walked off, followed by Ali Binak. After taking a few steps, Ali turned around and said to the crowd, “Stay where you are. They might shoot.”

Bessian felt that he was still being held by his arms. What is happening to me? he groaned inwardly. It seemed to him that the whole world was empty; all that was left was two forms in motion, the priest and Ali Binak, and the tower of refuge to which they were going.

He heard voices around him, like the distant whistling of a wind that was coming from another world. “They can’t shoot the priest, since he is protected by the Kanun, but there’s nothing to stop them from killing Ali Binak.” “No, I don’t think they’ll fire at Ali Binak either. Everyone knows who he is.”

The two men were halfway along when, suddenly, Diana appeared at the gate of the tower. Bessian could never remember clearly what happened at that moment. He remembered only that he had striven with all his strength to go to her, that his arms were gripped violently, and that voices said: Wait until she has come a bit farther, and she reaches the white stones. Then, again, he saw for a fleeting moment the figure of the doctor; he made another attempt to free himself and he heard the same voices trying to calm him.

At last Diana reached the white stones, and the men who were holding Bessian let him go, although one of them said, “Don’t let him go — he’ll kill her.” Diana’s face was white as a sheet. There was no sign of terror in it, nor pain, nor shame — only a frightening absence, especially in her eyes. Anxiously, Bessian looked for a tear in her clothing, a bluish stain on her lips or her neck, but he saw nothing of that kind. Then he heaved a sigh, and perhaps he would have felt relieved if there were not that emptiness in her eyes.

In a gesture that was not violent but not gentle either, he seized his wife’s arm, and walking ahead of her he drew her towards the carriage, and they got in one behind the other, without a word and without a wave to anyone.

The carriage rolled swiftly on the highroad. How long had they been travelling in this way — a minute, a century? At last Bessian turned to his wife.

“Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

She sat motionless on the seat, looking straight ahead, as if she were somewhere else. Then he seized her by the elbow, violently, harshly.

“Tell me, what did you do in there?”

She did not answer, she did not try to draw away her arm that he was squeezing like a vise.

Why did you go there, he cried out within him. To see all the horror of the tragedy with your own eyes? Or to look for that mountaineer, That Gjorg…. Gjorg. I’ll search for you in tower after tower, eh?

He repeated those questions aloud, perhaps in other words though in the same order, but there was no answer, and he was sure that all those reasons together were responsible for that action. Suddenly, he felt a weariness such as he had never known.

Outside, night was falling. The twilight, together with the fog, spread swiftly along the road. Once he thought he saw beyond the window a man riding a mule. The traveller with the wan face whom Bessian thought he recognized followed the carriage for a short time. Where is the steward of the blood going in the dark, he wondered.

And you yourself, where are you going? He asked himself that question a moment later. Alone in these alien highlands, in the dusk peopled with phantoms, where are you going?

Half an hour later, the carriage stopped in front of the inn. One behind the other, they climbed the wooden stairs and went into the room. The fire was still alight and the water-bucket, which the innkeeper had certainly filled again, was still there, black with soot. An oil lamp gave out a wavering light. Neither troubled with the fire or the bucket. Diana undressed and lay down, lying on her back, one arm drawn over her eyes to keep the lamplight from them. He stood by the window, his eyes on the window-pane, turning only momentarily to look at that fine arm with the silken strap that had slipped from her shoulder, covering the upper part of her face. What had they done to her, the half-blind Cyclops murderers in the tower? And he felt that the question might fill up all of a human life.

They stayed at the inn that night and all the next day without leaving their room. The innkeeper brought them their meals, surprised that they did not ask to have the fire lit in the fireplace.

In the morning of the following day (it was the seventeenth of April) the coachman put their bags in the carriage, and the two, having paid the innkeeper, said goodbye coldly and set out.

They were leaving the High Plateau.

* A colorless kind of spirits flavored with aniseed, distilled and drunk under many names in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.