Three Arched Bridge

23

ONE OF THE NOVICES attached to the presbytery woke me to tell me that something had happened by the bridge, Even though he had gone as far as the riverbank himself, he had been unable to find out anything precisely.

I jumped out of bed immediately. As often when I heard news or saw dreams, I automatically turned my head toward the mountains. This was a habit left over from childhood., when my grandmother used to say to me, “Any sign you may receive, for good or ill, you must first tell to the mountains.”

One could sense that it was snowing in the mountains, although they themselves were invisible. When we arrived at the riverbank, the sight was indeed incredible. As the novice had told me, the builders had stopped work, a thing that had never happened. Those whom neither sleet nor hail, nor even the Ujana e Keqe itself, had succeeded in driving from the bridge had left their work half done and were scattered in groups on the sandbank, some looking toward the bridge, and some toward the river, as if seeing these things for the first time.

As we drew closer, 1 noticed other people, who had clambered onto the scaffolding and beams and looked like vultures, Among them, close by the recently formed central arch, I recognized from a distance the master-in-chief and his two assistants. Together with the others they crouched by the stone bridge, saying something to one another, bending again, stretching their heads down to study the piers, and then huddling together once more.

“Gjelosh, what happened?” someone asked the idiot, who was hurrying away from the site. “Has the bridge developed a bulge?”

“The bridge, br, bad, very bad, bridge, pa, pa, fright,” he answered.

Only a few hours later we learned the truth: the bridge had been damaged in several places during the night. Several almost inexplicable crevices, like scratches made by claws, had appeared in the central piers, the approach arches, and especially on the newly completed span. As pale as wax, the master-in-chief s assistants tried to imagine what kind of tools could have done such damage. The master-in-chief, wrapped in his cloak, stared with a glacial expression at the horizon, as if the answer might come from there.

“But these aren’t marks made by tools, sir,” one of the masons said at last.

“What?” the master-in-chief said.

“These aren’t hammer marks, or chisel marks, or —”

“Well then, what are they?” the master-in-chief asked.

The mason shrugged his shoulders and looked around at the others. Their faces had turned the color of mud.

“The bards,” one of them muttered, “a few weeks ago at the Inn of the Two Roberts, said something about naiads and water nymphs —”

“That’s enough of that,” the master-in-chief howled, and abruptly crouched again by the damaged arch to study the cracks. He looked at them for a long time, and when he too saw that they really did not look like marks made by hammers, picks, or crowbars, he no doubt shivered in terror like the rest.