Three Arched Bridge

27

THE BRIDGE’S MASTER-IN-CHIEF left unexpectedly one morning before dawn, Nobody knew where he went or why; it was understood that he himself had given no explanation, On the previous day he had struck his two assistants with a whip of hogshair, accompanying the blows with various strange insults: dog, telltale, liar, mangy cur, arch-asshole, He then threw away his whip and was seen no more.

Work on the bridge proceeded more sluggishly than even Gjelosh wandered miserably around the master-in-chief s hut, repeatedly putting his eye or ear to the keyhole. The punished assistants turned up here and there with the whip marks on their faces. One of them, the lean one, was bitterly angry, as outraged as a man could be at the marks of the lashes, while the other man, the stocky one, seemed pleased and seized every opportunity to show off his black welts, almost as proud of them as if they had been a certificate of commendation.

Meanwhile, in the absence of the master-in-chief, work on the bridge slackened daily, Everybody was convinced that he would never return and that nothing now remained but the decision to pull down the bridge, or at least abandon it to the mercy of the waters.

But the master-in-chief returned as unexpectedly as he had left. A group of official persons accompanied him, They had barely arrived before they went to the site of the damage, where they remained for hours on end. They examined the scratches and the dislodged stones, shook their heads, and made incomprehensible gestures. One of them, to everybody’s amazement, stripped off and dived into the water, apparently to inspect the damage below the water line.

The same thing happened on the second and third days. The inspection team was headed by a tall, thin, extremely stooped man. He seemed to have some kind of cramp in his neck, because he could barely move his head. Judging by the respect shown to him by everybody else, including even the master-in-chief, who was no respecter of persons, people supposed that he must be one of the principal proprietors of the roads and bridges.

“Look how God has bent that cursed one double,” old Ajkuna said when she saw him. “That’s how he’ll twist everyone who wants to build bridges. He’ll bend them double like the bridges themselves, so that their heads touch their feet. Our forebear was right when he said, ‘May you be bent double and eat your toes, you who stray from the path!”,