Three Arched Bridge

53

AVENETIAN MONK on his way to Byzantium brought more bad news from the Vloré base. A Turkish imperial decree had just been issued, removing the base’s old name of Orikum and renaming it Pasha-Lima, This was a terrifying and in any event an extraordinary name, since in Turkish it meant “port of ports,’ “chief port,’ or “pasha of ports.” It was not hard to imagine what a military base with such a name would be used for. This was a great harbor opened by the Ottomans on Europe’s very flank.

As the monk told me, Albanian and Turkish soldiers provoked each other daily at the boundary dividing the base. Dim-witted as he was, Balsha II could easily fall into a trap.

After the monk left, I went for a long walk on the banks of the Ujana e Keqe, and my thoughts were as murky as its waters. Time and again, that music of death I had heard weeks previously on the border came to my mind. Yes, they were trying to shackle our feet with that attenuated music. And after halting our dances they would bind our hands, and then our souls,

The hunger of the great Ottoman state could be felt in the wind. We were already used to the savage hunger of the Slavs, Naked and with bared teeth like a wolfs, this hunger always seemed more dangerous than anything else. But in contrast, the Ottoman pressure involved a kind of temptation. It struck me as no accident that they had chosen the moon as their symbol Under its light, the world could be caressed and lulled to sleep more easily.

As I walked along the riverbank, this caress terrified me more than anything else. Dusk was falling. The bridge looked desolate and cold. And suddenly, in its slightly hunched length, in its arches and buttresses, and in its solitude, there was an expectancy. What are you waiting for, stone one? I said to myself. Distant phantoms? Or an imperial army and the sound of nameless feet, marching ten, twenty, a hundred hours without rest? Cursed thing.