Broken April (11 page)

The grey daylight found its way only sparingly into the carriage, and in addition the velvet upholstery absorbed part of it, deepening the gloom. Bessian thought that he might be in the early stage of a coming defeat, at the moment when one cannot tell if the savor is pleasant or bitter—for he thought himself sufficiently acute to see defeat where others would still see victory.

He smiled to himself and realized that he was not in the least unhappy. After all, she had always found him somewhat remote, and there was no harm if she were to become a little aloof herself. Perhaps she would seem even more desirable to him.

Bessian was surprised that he fetched a deep breath. Other days would come to them in their life together; by turns one would be a riddle to the other, and certainly he would recover the lost ground.

Lord, what ground have I lost that I must recover? He laughed at himself, but his laughter did not show in any part of his body, and it rolled along hollowly within him. And, to persuade himself that his doubts were foolish, once again he looked secretly at his wife's face in the hope that they would be weakened. But Diana's handsome features offered him no reassurance.

They had been travelling for some hours when their carriage halted at the side of the road. Before they had had time to ask why they had stopped, they saw the coachman come up to the window on Bessian's side and open the door. He said that this was a place where they might have lunch.

Only then did Bessian and Diana notice that they had stopped in front of a steep-roofed building that must be an inn.

“Still another four or five hours to the Castle of Orosh,” the coachman explained to Bessian. “And I think that there is no other suitable place for refreshment between. Then, the horses need a rest, too.”

Without answering, Bessian stepped down and stretched out his hand to his wife to help her. She stepped
down nimbly, and still holding her husband's hand she looked towards the inn. Several people had come to the threshold and were staring at the new arrivals. Another man, the last to emerge from the inn door, approached them with a halting step.

“What can we do for you?” he said respectfully.

It was clear that this man was the innkeeper. The coachman asked him whether they could eat lunch at the inn and whether there was fodder for the horses.

“Certainly. Do come in, please,” the man replied, pointing to the door, but looking at a different part of the wall where there was no door nor any kind of entrance. “Enter, and welcome.”

Diana looked at him astonished, but Bessian whispered, “he's squint-eyed.”

“I have a private room,” he explained. “It so happens that the table is taken today, but I'll arrange another one for you. Ali Binak and his assistants have been here for three days,” he added proudly. “What did you say? Yes, Ali Binak himself. Don't you know who he is?”

Bessian shrugged.

“Are you from Shkoder? No? From Tirana? Oh, of course, with a carriage like that. Will you stay the night here?”

“No, we're going to the
Kulla
of Orosh.”

“Oh, yes. I thought as much. It's more than two years since I saw a carriage like that. Relatives of the prince?”

“No, his guests.”

As they passed through the great hall of the inn on the way to their private room, Diana felt the stares of the customers, of whom some were eating lunch at a long, grubby oak table, while others sat in the corners on their
packs of thick black woolen cloth. Two or three, sitting on the bare floor, moved a little to let the small group through.

“These past three days we have had a good deal of excitement because of a boundary dispute that is to be settled nearby.”

“A boundary dispute?” Bessian asked.

“Yes, sir,” said the innkeeper, pushing open a dilapidated door with one hand. “That's why Ali Binak and his assistants have come.”

He said these last words in a low voice, just as the travellers crossed the threshold of the private room.

“There they are,” whispered the innkeeper, nodding towards an empty corner of the room. But his guests, now used to the innkeeper's squint, looked in another direction, where at an oak table, but smaller and somewhat cleaner than the one in the public room, three men were eating lunch.

“I'll bring another table right away,” the innkeeper said, and he disappeared. Two of the diners looked up at the newcomers, but the third went on eating without lifting his eyes from his plate. From behind the door, there came a grating noise punctuated by thumping sounds, drawing nearer and nearer. Soon they saw two table legs, then part of the innkeeper's body, and then the whole table and the innkeeper grotesquely entangled.

He set down the table and left to fetch their seats.

“Please be seated,” he said, arranging the stools. “What would you like?”

After asking what there was, Bessian said at last that they would have two fried eggs and some cheese. The innkeeper said, “At your service” to everything, and for a while he was busy coming and going in all directions,
trying to serve the new guests without neglecting the earlier ones. While hurrying from one group of his distinguished guests to the other, he seemed to be at a loss, obviously unable to make up his mind which was the more important. It looked as if his uncertainty worsened his physical handicap, and it seemed that he wanted to direct some of his limbs towards one group and some towards the other.

“I wonder just who they think we are,” Diana said.

Without raising his head, Bessian glanced sidelong at the three men who were eating lunch. It was apparent that the innkeeper, while bending down to wipe the table with a rag, was telling them about the new arrivals. One of them, the shortest, seemed to be making as if he were not listening, or perhaps he was in fact not listening. The second, who had colorless eyes that seemed to go with his slack, indifferent face, was looking on as if bewildered. The third man, wearing a checked jacket, could not keep his eyes off Diana. He was obviously drunk.

“Where is the place where the boundaries are to be established?” Bessian asked when the innkeeper served Diana her fried eggs.

“At Wolf's Pass, sir,” the landlord said. “It is a half-hour's walk from here. But if you go by carriage, of course, it will take less time.”

“What do you say, Diana, shall we go? It should be interesting.”

“If you like,” she said.

“Has there been feuding over the boundaries, or killings?” Bessian asked the innkeeper.

The man whistled. “Certainly, sir. That's a strip of land greedy for death, studded with
muranës
time out of mind.”

“We'll go without fail,” Bessian said.

“If you like,” his wife said again.

“This is the third time that they have called on Ali Binak, and still the dispute and the blood-letting have not ended,” the landlord said.

At that moment the short man got up from the table. From the way the other two rose immediately after him, Bessian surmised that he must be Ali Binak.

That man nodded towards them, without looking at anyone in particular, and led the way out. The two others followed. The man in the checked jacket brought up the rear, still devouring Diana with his reddened eyes.

“What a revolting man,” Diana said.

Bessian gestured vaguely.

“You mustn't cast the first stone. Who knows how long he's been wandering through these mountains, without a wife, without pleasure of any kind. Judging by his clothes, he must be a city man.”

“Even so, he might spare me those oily looks,” Diana said, pushing away her plate; She had eaten only one egg.

Bessian called the innkeeper for the bill.

“If the gentleman and the lady want to go to Wolf's Pass, Ali Binak and his assistants have just started out. You could follow them in your carriage. Or perhaps you need someone to accompany you. . . .”

“We'll follow their horses,” Bessian said.

The coachman was drinking coffee in the public room. He rose at once and followed them. Bessian looked at his watch.

“We have a good two hours in which to see a boundary settlement, haven't we?”

The coachman shook his head doubtfully.

“I don't know what to say, sir. From here to Orosh is a long way. However, if that's what you want to do. . . .”

“We'll be all right if we reach Orosh before nightfall,” Bessian continued. “It's still early afternoon, and we have time. And then, it's an opportunity not to be missed,” he added, turning to Diana, who was standing beside him.

She had turned up the fur collar of her coat and was waiting for them to make up their minds.

Ten minutes later, their carriage overtook the horses of Ali Binak's small party. They stood to one side to let the carriage pass, and it took a while for the coachman to explain to them that he did not know the way to Wolf's Pass, and that the carriage would follow after them. Diana was ensconced in the depths of the coach so as to avoid the annoying looks of the man in the checked jacket, whose horse kept appearing on one or the other side of the vehicle.

Wolf's Pass turned out to be farther away than the innkeeper had said. In the distance they saw a bare plain on which some people appeared as moving black specks. As they drew nearer, Bessian tried to recall what the
Kanun
said about boundaries. Diana listened calmly. Bessian said, “Boundary marks shall not be disturbed, any more than the bones of the dead in their graves. Whosoever instigates a murder in a boundary dispute shall be shot by the whole village.”

“Are we going to be present at an execution?” Diana asked plaintively. “That's all we needed.”

Bessian smiled.

“Don't worry. This must be a peaceful settlement, since they've invited that—what's his name again? Oh, yes, Ali Binak.”

“He seems to me to be a very responsible man,” Diana said. “I wouldn't say as much for one of his assistants, the man in the clown's jacket—he's repulsive.”

“Don't pay any attention to him.”

Bessian looked straight ahead, impatient as it seemed, to reach the plain as swiftly as possible.

“Setting up a boundary stone is a solemn act,” he said, still staring into the distance. “I don't know if we'll have the good fortune to be present at just such a ceremony. Oh, look. There's a
muranë
.

“Where?”

“There, behind that bush, on the right.”

“Oh, yes,” Diana said.

“There's another.”

“Yes, yes, I see it, and there's another one further on.”

“Those are the
muranës
that the innkeeper mentioned,” Bessian said. “They serve as boundary marks between fields or property lines.”

“There's another,” Diana said.

“That's what the
Kanun
says. ‘When a death occurs during a boundary dispute, the grave itself serves as a boundary mark.' ”

Diana's head was right against the window-pane.

“The tomb that becomes a boundary mark cannot, according to the
Kanun
, ever be displaced by any person to the end of time,” Bessian continued. “It is a boundary that has been consecrated by bloodshed and death.”

“How many opportunities to die!” Diana said those words against the window-pane, which promptly steamed over, as if to cut her off from the sight of the landscape.

In front of them the three horsemen were dismounting. The carriage halted a few paces behind. As soon as Bessian and Diana stepped down from the coach, they felt that everyone's attention was directed at themselves. Assembled all around them were men, women, and many children.

“There are children here, too, do you see?” Bessian said to Diana. “Establishing the boundaries is the only important event in the life of a mountaineer to which the children come, and that is done so as to preserve the memory of it for as long as possible.”

They went on talking to each other, supposing that it would allow them to face the curiosity of the mountain people in the most natural-seeming way. Out of the corner of her eye, Diana looked at the young women, the hems of whose long skirts billowed with their every movement. All of them had their hair dyed black and cut in the same style, with curls on their foreheads and straight hair hanging down on each side of their faces like curtains in the theatre. They looked at the newly arrived couple from a distance, but taking care to conceal their interest.

“Are you cold?” Bessian asked his wife.

“A bit.”

In fact it was quite cold on the high plateau, and the blue tints of the mountains all around seemed to make the air even colder.

“Lucky it's not raining,” Bessian said.

“Why would it be raining?” she said in surprise. For a moment she thought of the rain as being a poor beggar-woman, out of place in this magnificent alpine winter scene.

In the middle of a pasture, Ali Binak and his assistants were carrying on a discussion with a group of men.

“Let's go and see. We're sure to find out something.”

They walked on slowly through the scattered people, hearing whispers—the words themselves, partly because they were mumbled and partly because of the unfamiliar dialect, were almost incomprehensible to them. The only words they did understand were “princess” and “the
king's sister,” and Diana, for the first time that day, wanted to laugh aloud.

“Did you hear?” she said to Bessian. “They take me for a princess.”

Happy to see her a little more cheerful, he pressed her arm.

“Not so tired now?”

“No,” she said. “It's lovely here.”

Without being aware of it, they had been approaching Ali Binak's group. They exchanged introductions almost spontaneously because the mountain people seemed to be pushing the two groups of new arrivals together. Bessian told them who he was and where he came from. Ali Binak did the same, to the astonishment of the mountaineers who believed him to be famous throughout the world. As they talked, the crowd of people around them grew, staring at them and especially at Diana.