Three Arched Bridge

57

MEANWHILE, as if not caring about what was happening throughout the Balkans, travelers whose road brought them this way, or rich men journeying to see the worlds paused more often at the bridge. This had become so common recently that the landlord of the Inn of the Two Roberts had placed a kind of notice at both his gates, written in four languages: “For those guests desiring to see the famous Three-Arched Bridge, with the man immured within’ the inn provides outward and return journeys at the following rates …” (The tariff in various currencies followed.)

A large cart drawn by four horses and equipped with elevated seats carried the guests to and from the bridge two or three times a day and sometimes more often. Loudmouthed and boorish, as idle travelers usually are they swarmed around and under the bridge, noticing everything with curiosity, touching the piers, crouching under the approach arches, and lingering by the first arch where the man was immured. Their polyglot monotonous, and interminable chatter took over the site, I went among them several times to eavesdrop on this jabbering, which was always the same and somehow different from the previous day’s. The flow of time seemed to have stood still. They talked about the legend and the bridge, asked questions and sought explanations from each other, confused the old legend with the death of Murrash Zenebisha, and tried to sort matters out but only confused them further, until the cart from the inn arrived, bringing a fresh contingent of travelers and taking away the previous one. Then everything would start again from the beginning. “So this whole bridge was built by three brothers?” “No, no, that’s what the old legend says. This was built by a rich man who also surfaces roads and sells tar. He has his own bank in Dürres.” “But how was this man sacrificed here, if it’s all an old legend?” “I think there is no room for misunderstandings sir. He sacrificed himself to appease the spirits of the water, and in exchange for a huge sum in compensation paid to his family.” “Ah, so it was a question of water spirits; but you told me it had no connection with the legend.” “Pm not saying it has no connection, but… the main thing was the business of the compensation.”

And then they would begin talking about the compensation whistling in amazement at the enormous sum, calculating the percentages the members of his family would earn from the bridge’s profits, and converting the sums into the currencies of their own principalities, and then into Venetian ducats. And so, without anyone noticing, the conversation would leave the bridge behind and concentrate on the just-arrived news from the Exchange Bank in Durres, particularly on the fluctuating values of various currencies and the fall in the value of gold sovereigns following the recent upheavals on the peninsula, And this would continue until some traveler, coming late to the crowd, would say: “They seemed to tell us that it was a woman who was walled up, but this is a man. They even told us that we would see the place where the milk from the poor woman’s breast dripped,“ “Oh,” two or three voices would reply simultaneously, “Are you still thinking of the old legend?”

And it would all go back again to the beginning.