Three Arched Bridge

24

THE NEWS that the bridge had been damaged led folk to appear on both banks of the Ujana, just as in the days after the flood, when everybody hurried to collect tree stumps for firewood.

The surface of the waters was now a blank. People watched for hours on end, and there were those who swore that they had discerned beneath the waves, if not naiads themselves, at least their tresses or their reflections. They then recalled the wandering bards, remembered their clothes and faces, and especially strove to recall the verses of their ballads, distorting their rhymes, as when the wind bends the tops of reeds.

“Who would have thought their songs would come true?” they said thoughtfully. “They weren’t singers, they were wizards.”

The Ujana e Keqe meanwhile flowed on obliviously. Its banks had been damaged and torn since its unsuccessful onslaught, so that in places it resembled a gully, but it had not hung back. It had finally succeeded in crippling the bridge.

At night, the bridge lifted blackly over the river the solitary span that had been so cruelly wounded. From a distance the mortar and fresh lime of the repaired patches resembled rags tied around a broken limb. With its injured spine, the bridge looked frightening.