Three Arched Bridge

28

IWAS SUMMONED in haste to our count. Everyone was gathered there: the emissaries of the road owners, the master-in-chief, and our liege lord’s scribes. Their expressions were despondent, We waited for the count to arrive.

I could not at all imagine why this meeting was being held. Would there really be a decision to abandon the works? It would be difficult for our liege lord to pay — back even a small percentage of the money he had received. They did not really know his ways.

The delegation sat as if fixed to their high seats. The stooped man who had been so powerfully cursed by old Ajkuna was among them.

These meetings were beginning to irritate me. So in particular was the road owners, garbled language, which made my head ache for two days after translating it. Both sides, the water people and the road people, were equally unknown to me, but at least the water people spoke clearly and precisely. But an hour’s talk with the road people seemed to coat the table with the dust of their slovenly language, just as they littered the land where they built,

I will do what I can today, I said to myself, but next time I will find an excuse not to come.

The visitors glanced repeatedly at the door through which the count would enter. In fact, his delay showed that he was not pleased at this meeting. The visitors seemed increasingly on tenterhooks. They stared into space, at their hands, or at some pieces of parchment scribbled with all kinds of sketches.

At last the count arrived. He nodded a frosty greeting and sat down at the table.

“I’m listening,” he said.

Evidently the tall, bent man would speak first. He cleared his throat two or three times as if in search of the right pitch and was about to say something, but then hesitated and seemed to abandon the idea.

“Pm listening,” I translated for the count a second time.

The head of the deputation also cleared his throat, then said in a dry voice:

“Someone is damaging our bridge.”

The count’s eyebrows rose. They expressed surprise, but more expectation, and a hint of mockery.

“It is not the spirits of the water who are damaging our bridge, as rumor has it, but men,” the visitor continued.

The count’s face remained petrified.

The foreigners, representative studied the notes in front of him.

“We may state from the start whom we suspect,” he went on.

Our count shrugged, as if to say that it was no concern of his whom they suspected. The visitor apparently misinterpreted the gesture, and hastened to add:

“Please do not misunderstand me. We don’t suspect your own people in the least.” He gulped. “Nor do we even suspect the Turks. Our suspicions lie elsewhere.”

“Fm listening,’ Stres Gjikondi said for the third time.

The scratching of the quills of the count’s two scribes made the silence even more painful.

“The ‘Boats and Rafts’ firm is trying to bring down our bridge,’ said the foreigners, representative. His piercing eyes transfixed the count. His bent spine put even greater suspicion into his glare.

The count confronted his gaze calmly. It was obvious at once that he was barely interested in this matter. He had been worried all the time about the breach of relations with his Turkish neighbors, and he did not even want to know about what was happening at the bridge.

“It is obvious that they have been and still remain opposed to the construction of bridges, because of reasons that may be imagined., in other words questions of profit,’ the foreigner continued. “They put forward the idea of destroying the bridge, and then they took action against it. With the help of paid bards, they spread the legend that the spirits of the water will not tolerate the bridge and that it must be destroyed.”

His head, bent low over the table, turned left and right to gauge the impression his revelation made on us all. I believed him at once. In fact, I had suspected something of the sort before. If the bridge builders, whose representatives were here before us, could at the very start pay an epileptic and a wandering fortune-teller to be the first to advance the idea of building a bridge, then was it not possible that “Boats and Rafts, ’ could pay two wandering bards to launch the idea of its destruction?

“You must realize, my lord count,” the foreigner went on, “that it is not the spirits of the water who cannot endure the bridge but the grasping spirits of the directors of this gang of thieves called ‘Boats and Rafts/”

“Ha, ha!” the count laughed, “They say the same about you,”

Small reddish spots appeared on the brow of the leader of the delegation,

“We have never sunk any of their boats,” he said. “Nor have we damaged any of their jetties.”

“That is true,” our liege lord said. “At least, I have never heard of such a thing,”

“Nor will you,” the other man interrupted. “But those others, my lord! You know yourself that they are doing their utmost to obstruct the building of this bridge, And when they saw they were not succeeding, or in other words, when their despicable schemes were scotched by your lordship, they then produced the idea of destroying the bridge, First they placed their hopes in the fury of the river, but then, when nature did not help them, they sent their people to damage our bridge,”

He paused again briefly, as if to let his audience take in what he said. It was clear, as I had suspected, that the water people would not give up the struggle easily, They were paying the road people back in their own coin, Apparently a battle over money was more savage than that fight between the crocodile and the tiger that the Dutchman had told me about.

“And that, my lord count, is in short the history of the matter,”

Our count stared on imperturbably at the stooped delegate. At last, when the man had apparently had his say, he spoke:

“So what do you want of me, gentlemen?”

The leader of the delegation fixed his gaze on the count’s eyes once again, as if to say. Do you really not understand what we want?

“We want the culprits punished,” he said in a perfectly dry tone.

Our liege lord spread his arms. A bluish light filtered through the stained glass of the upper portion of the window, seeming to dissolve you and carry you far away. The count kept his arms open.

“It’s no use asking that from me,” he said finally. “I have never meddled in your business, and I have no intention of doing so now.”

“And so shall we do the murder ourselves?”

“What?”

The pens of the scribes scratched disconsolately in the silence. The dim bluish light seemed to take your breath away.

“What?” said the leader of the delegation, hunched, almost fallen on the table.

The master-in-chief, s red poll was opposite him, like a cold fire.

“You mentioned a murder,” the count said.

Their eyes were again fixed on each other.

“A punishment,” the visitor said.

“Ah yes, a punishment.”

The silence continued after the scratching of the quills ceased, when any silence becomes unbearable.

Everybody expected the words of our liege lord to fill this lull. His voice came, weary and indifferent as if from beyond the grave.

“If it is true, as you say, that your enemies have hit upon the idea of destroying the bridge with the help of legend, then you in turn could use the same means of punishing the culprits…. In other words …”

The count left the phrase unfinished, which happened extremely rarely.

The strangers’ eyes burned feverishly.

“I understand, my lord count,” their leader said at last.

He raised his body from the seat, although his back and head remained hunched over the table, as if they could not be detached from it. It was apparently not easy for him to move his back, and he remained thus for a very long time, while the others turned their heads toward the master-in-chief, almost as if he, who knew the secrets of bridges, could help to lift that arched backbone.

The man finally succeeded in standing up, and after bidding the count farewell, the delegation left one by one. I left too.

It was bad weather outside. The north wind froze my ears. As I walked, I could not stop thinking of what they had talked about with the count. Something ominous had been discussed in a mysterious way. Everything had been carefully shrouded. I had once seen the body of a murdered man on the main road, two hundred paces from the Inn of the Two Roberts. They had wrapped him in a cloth and left him there by the road. Nobody dared to lift the cloth to see the wounds. They must have been terrible.

The thought that I had involuntarily taken part in a conspiracy to murder disturbed my sleep all night. My head was heavy next morning. Outside, everything was dismal Old, iron-heavy rain fell. Oh God, I said to myself, what is the matter with me? And a wild desire seized me to weep, to weep heavy, useless tears, like this rain.