Three Arched Bridge

25

JUST AT THIS TIME, for two successive nights, a strange monk named Brockhardt stayed in our presbytery on his way back to Europe from Byzantium’ where he had been sent on his country’s service,

I was reading in the last light of the fading day when they came to me and said that a person resembling a monk had crossed the river on the last raft and was asking for something in an incomprehensible tongue, I told them to bring him to me.

He was very sharp-featured, long-limbed, and unbelievably dust-covered*

“I have never seen such a long highway,” he said, pointing to himself with his finger^ as if his journey weighed on his body like a yoke. “And almost the whole of it under repair,”

I studied his muddied appearance with some surprise and hastened to explain.

“It is the old Via Egnatia, which a road company is restoring,” I said. He nodded and removed his cloak, shaking dust everywhere, “The very same people as are building the stone bridge,”

“Yes,” he said, “I saw it as I arrived.”

He looked even taller without his cloak, His limbs were so scrawny that if he had crossed those arms of skin and bone, he would have resembled a warning of mortal danger.

“One fork of the road takes you to the military base at Vlore, doesn’t it?” he said.

He must be a spy, I thought.

“Yes,” I replied.

After all, what did it matter to me if he asked about the Vloré base? It belonged to somebody else now.

I invited him to sit down on the soft rug by the fire and laid the small table.

“Sit down, and we will eat. You must be hungry.”

1 uttered these words in an unsteady voice, as if worried that I would find it impossible to fill all that boniness with food. As if reading my mind, he grinned from ear to ear and said:

“I am a guest. The Slavs say gost’s and have derived this from the English word ghost.” He smiled. “But like every soul alive, I need meat, ha-ha-ha!”

He laughed in a way that could not fail to look frightening. I tried not to look at his Adam’s apple, whose movements seemed about to cut his throat.

“Eat as if in your own home,” I said.

He went on chuckling for a while, not lifting his eyes from the table. The thought that I had the opportunity of spending the evening with one who knew something about the study of languages gave me a thrill of pleasure.

“And what news is there?”1 asked, saving the subject of languages for later.

He spread his arms, as if to say, Nothing out of the ordinary.

“In Europe, you know, war has been going on for a hundred years,” he said. “And Byzantium seethes with schemes and plots.”

“As always,” I said.

“Yes. As always. They have just celebrated the anniversary of the defeat and the blinding of the Bulgarian army. Since then, they all seem to have lost their heads. As you may know, in that country everybody looks for excuses for excitement.”

“The blinding of the Bulgarian army? What was that?”

“Don’t you know?” he said. “It was a terrible thing, which they solemnly celebrate every year.”

Brockhardt told me briefly about the Byzantine emperor’s punishment of the defeated Bulgarian army. Fifteen thousand captured Bulgarian soldiers had had their eyes put out. (You know that is a recognized punishment in Byzantium, he said.) Only one hundred and fifty were left with their sight intact, to lead the blind army back to the Bulgarian capital. Day and night, their faces pitted with black holes, the blind hordes wandered homeward.

“Horrible,” Brockhardt said, swallowing chunks of meat. “Don’t you think?”

It seemed to me that the more he ate, instead of putting on flesh, as he had jokingly said, the thinner and paler he became.

“Great powers take great revenge,” he said. We talked for a while about politics. He shared my opinion that Byzantium was in decline and that the main danger of our time was the Turkish state,

“At every inn where I stopped,” he said, “people talked of nothing else.”

“And no doubt everybody indulged in vain guesswork over who had first brought them out of their wilderness, and nobody had the least idea how to stop the flood.”

“That is right,” said Brockhardt. “When people do not want to fight against an evil, they start wondering about its cause. But this is an imminent danger for you too, isn’t it?”

“They are on our doorstep,’ “Ah yes, you are where Europe begins.” He asked about our country, and it was apparent at once that his knowledge about it was inaccurate. I told him that we are the descendants of the Illyrians and that the Latins call our country Arbanum or Albanum or Reg-num Albaniae, and call the inhabitants Arbanenses or Al-banenses, which is the same thing. Then I told him that in recent years a new name for our country has grown up among the people themselves. This new name is Shqiperia, which comes from shqiponjé, meaning “eagle.” And so, our Arberia has recently become known as Shqiperia, which means a flight or community or union of eagles, and the inhabitants are known as shqiptare, from the same word.

He listened to me closely, and 1 went on to explain to him a Serbian list of names of peoples, with features of totemism, that a Slovene monk had told me about. In it, the Albanians were characterized as eagles (dohar), the Huns as rabbits, the Serbs as wolves, the Croats as owls, the Magyars as lynxes, and the Romanians as cats.

He nodded continually and, when I told him that we Albanians, together with the ancient Greeks., are the oldest people in the Balkans, he held his spoon thoughtfully in his hand. We have had our roots here, I continued, since time immemorial The Slavs, who have recently become so embittered, as often happens with newcomers, arrived from the steppes of the east no more than three or four centuries ago. I knew that 1 would have to demonstrate this to him somehow, and so I talked to him about the Albanian language, and told him that, according to some of our monks, it is contemporary with if not older than Greek, and that this, the monks say, was proved by the words that Greek had borrowed from our tongue,

“And they are not just any words,” I said, “but the names of gods and heroes.”

His eyes sparkled. I told him that the names Zeus, Dhemetra, Tetis, Odhise, and Kaos, according to our monks, stem from the Albanian words ze, “voice,” dhe, “earth,” det,“sea,” udhe, “journey,” and haes, “eater.” He laid down his spoon.

“Eat, ghost,” I said, staring almost with fear at his spoon, which seemed to be the only tool binding him to the world of the living.

“These are amazing things you say,” he said.

“When someone borrows your words for gods, it is like borrowing a part of your soul,” I said after a pause. “But never mind, this is no time for useless boasting. Now the Ottoman language is casting its shadow over both our languages, Greek and Albanian, like a black cloud.”

He nodded.

“Wars between languages are no less fateful than wars between men,’ he said.

I was saddened myself by the topic I had embarked on,

“The language of the east is drawing nearer,” 1 repeated after a while. We looked deep into each other’s eyes, “With its ‘-Ink’ suffix,’ I went on slowly, “Like some dreadful hammer blow,”

“Alas for you,’ he said,

I shook my head in despair,

“And nobody understands the danger,’ I said,

“Ah,’ he said, and with a sudden movement, as if freeing himself from a snare, he rose from the table.

He was now free to become a ghost again.