Broken April (14 page)

She shrugged her shoulders, as if to say, “How would I know?”

“At least the tower of Orosh is the
kulla
of a prince, and I think they will put us in the same room,” he went on softly, almost conspiratorially

He looked sidelong at her face, and his expression was like the insinuating caress of his voice. But she kept her eyes before her and did not answer. Unsure whether to be offended or not, he relaxed his arm somewhat, and he would surely have taken it away completely if at the last moment, perhaps because she had guessed his intention or perhaps by accident, she had not asked him a question.

“What?”

“I asked you if the prince of Orosh is a blood relation of the royal family.”

“No, not at all,” he replied.

“Then how is it that he is called a prince?”

Bessian frowned a little.

“It's rather complicated,” he said. “To tell the truth, he's not a prince, despite the fact that they call him one in certain circles and the people of the High Plateau call him “
Prenk
,” which means prince exactly. But mostly they call him
Kapidan
, even though. . . .”

Bessian remembered he had not smoked a cigarette for quite a while. Like all those who smoke only now and then, it took some time for him to take the cigarette from the pack and the match from the little box. Diana felt that he did this whenever he wanted to put off a difficult explanation. And indeed the explanation he began to give her about the
Kulla
of Orosh (an explanation that he had left unfinished in Tirana, when from the prince's chancellory, in stilted language—really rather strange—an invitation to the
Kulla
of Orosh had reached him, saying that he would be welcome at any season of the year and at any hour of the day or the night) was no clearer than the one he had cut off then in Tirana, drinking a cup of tea, seated on the sofa in his studio. But perhaps that came from the fact that there was something unclear in everything that had to do with the
kulla
where they would soon be guests.

“He's not exactly a prince,” Bessian said, “and yet, in a way, he's more than a prince, not only because of his lineage, much older than that of the royal family, but chiefly because of the way he rules over all the High Plateau.”

He went on explaining that the prince's power was of a
very special kind, founded on the
Kanun
and unlike any other regime in the world. Time out of mind, neither police nor government had had any authority over the High Plateau. The castle itself had neither a police force nor governmental powers, but the High Plateau was nonetheless wholly under its control. That had been true in the time of the Turks, and even earlier, and that state of affairs had gone on under the Serbian occupation and the Austrian occupation, and then under the first republic, and the second, and now under the monarchy. Some years ago a group of deputies tried to put the High Plateau under the authority of the national government, but the attempt failed. The partisans of Orosh had said that we should act so that the
Kanun
would extend its sway over the entire country instead of trying to uproot it in the mountains, though of course no power in the world could achieve that.

Diana asked Bessian a question about the princely origins of the master of the
Kulla
, and he had the feeling that she did that in the naive way that a woman tries to find out if the jewelry someone is about to give her is really gold.

He told her that he did not believe in the princely origins of the lords of Orosh. At the very least, that matter had not been established. Their origins were lost in the mists of time. According to Bessian, there were two possibilities: either they were descendants of a very old but not very distinguished feudal family, or else they were a family that, generation after generation, had dealt in interpreting the
Kanun
. It was well known that a dynasty of that kind, which was rather like a temple of the law, an institution halfway between oracles and repositories of legal tradition, could in time amass great power, until their origins were quite forgotten and they exercised absolute dominion.

“I said that the family interpreted the
Kanun
,” Bessian went on, “because to this day, the
Kulla
of Orosh is recognized as the guardian of that very
Kanun
.”

“But isn't the family itself outside the Code?” Diana asked. “I think you told me that once.”

“Yes, that is the case. It is the only family that is not under the jurisdiction of the
Kanun
.”

“And there are all sorts of grim legends about it, aren't there?”

“Yes, of course. Naturally, a castle as old as this is bound to have an atmosphere of mystery.”

“How interesting,” Diana said, gaily this time, cuddling up to him as before. “It's so exciting to be visiting there, isn't it?”

He took a deep breath, as if after some great exertion. He pulled her close again, and he looked at her with a mixture of tenderness and reproof, as if he were telling her, why do you torment me by removing yourself so suddenly and so far, when you are so close to me?

Her face was lit once again by that smile that he could see only from the side, and that was almost entirely directed straight before her, into the distance.

He put his head to the window.

“It will be night soon.”

“The tower must not be far now,” Diana said.

Both were trying to find it, each looking out through the window nearest them. The late-afternoon sky was set in a heavy immobility. The clouds seemed to have frozen forever, and if some sense of motion still persisted around them, its locus was not the sky but the earth. The mountains filed by slowly before their eyes, at the same speed as their rolling carriage.

Holding hands, they searched the horizon to find the tower. The mystery of it brought them closer still. Several times they cried out almost simultaneously, “There it is! There it is!” But they knew at once that they were mistaken. It was only the mountain peaks with shreds of cloud clinging to them.

All around them was empty space. One would have thought that other buildings and life itself had withdrawn so as not to disturb the solitude of the
Kulla
of Orosh.

“But where is it?” Diana said plaintively.

Their eyes sought the tower at every point on the horizon, and it would have seemed just as natural to see it appear high in the sky, among the tattered clouds, as somewhere on the earth, among the rocky peaks.

The light of the copper lamp carried by the man who was leading them up to the third storey of the
kulla
wavered mournfully on the walls.

“This way, sir,” he said for the third time, holding the lamp away from him the better to light their way. The floor was made of wooden boards that seemed to creak louder at that hour of the night. “This way, sir.”

In the room, another lamp, also of copper, its wick scarcely turned up, shed a feeble light on the walls and on the pattern of the carpet on a deep red ground. Against her will, Diana sighed.

“I'll bring your suitcases at once,” said the man, and he went away quietly.

They stood there for a moment, looking at each other, and then they looked around the room.

“What did you think of the prince?” Bessian asked in a low voice.

“It's hard to say,” Diana replied, almost in a whisper. At any other time she would have admitted that she did not know what to make of him; he was not very natural, any more than the style of his invitation, but she felt that long explanations were out of place at that late hour. “It's hard to say,” she repeated. “As for the other one, the steward of the blood, I think he's repulsive.”

“I do too,” Bessian said.

His eyes, and then Diana's, rested stealthily on the heavy oak bed and its heavy red woolen coverlet with a deep nap. On the wall, above the bed, there was a cross of oak.

Bessian went to one of the windows. He was still standing there when the man came back, holding his copper lamp in one hand and the two suitcases in the other.

He set them down on the floor and Bessian, his back to the man and his face pressed to the window-pane, asked, “What is that, down there?”

The man walked over with a light step. Diana watched them both for a moment, leaning on the window-sill, looking down as if into a chasm.

“It's a sort of large room, sir, a sort of gallery, I don't know what to call it, where you take in the people from all parts of the
Rrafsh
when they come to pay the blood tax.”

“Oh,” Bessian said. Because his face was right against the pane, his voice sounded strange to Diana. “That's the famous murderers' gallery.”

“
Gjaks
, sir.”

“Yes,
gjaks
. . . . I know. I've heard of them.”

Bessian stayed by the window. The servant of the castle withdrew a few steps, noiselessly.

“Good night, sir. Good night, madam.”

“Good night,” Diana said, without raising her head that was bent over the suitcase that she had just opened. She went through her things languidly, without deciding to choose this or that. The evening meal had been heavy, and she felt an unpleasant weight in her stomach. She looked at the red woolen coverlet on the broad bed, then turned again to her suitcase, hesitating about putting on her nightgown.

She was still undecided when she heard his voice.

“Come see.”

She got up and went to the window. He moved to make room for her and she felt the icy coldness of the glass go right through her. Outside, the darkness seemed to hover over an abyss.

“Look down there,” Bessian said faintly.

She looked into the darkness, but saw nothing; she was penetrated with the vastness of the black night and she shivered.

“There,” he said, touching the glass with his hand, “down there, don't you see a light?”

“Where?”

“Down there, all the way down.”

At last she saw a glimmer. Rather than a light it was a feeble reddish glow on the rim of the abyss.

“I see,” she said. “But what is it?”

“It's the famous gallery where the
gjaks
wait for days and sometimes weeks on end to pay the blood-tax.”

He felt her breath come faster by his shoulder.

“Why do they have to wait so long?” she asked.

“I don't know. The
kulla
doesn't make paying the tax
easy. Perhaps so that there will always be people waiting in that gallery. You're cold. Put something over your shoulders.”

“That mountaineer back there, at the inn, he must have come here, too?”

“Certainly. The innkeeper told us about him. Don't you remember?”

“Yes, that's right. It seems that he came here three days ago to pay the blood tax. That's what he told us.”

“Just so.”

Diana could not suppress a sigh.

“So he was here. . . .”

“Without exception, every killer on the High Plateau goes through that gallery,” he said.

“That's terrifying. Don't you think so?”

“It's true. To think that for more than four hundred years, since the building of the castle of Orosh, in that gallery, night and day, winter and summer, there have always been killers waiting there.”

She felt his face near her forehead.

“Of course it's frightening, it couldn't be otherwise. Murderers waiting to pay. It's truly tragic. I'd even say that in a certain way there is grandeur in it.”

“Grandeur?”

“Not in the usual meaning of the word. But in any case, that glimmer in the darkness, like a candle shining on death. . . . Lord, there really is something supremely sinister about it. And when you think that it's not just a matter of the death of a single man, of a candle-end shining on his grave, but infinite death. You're cold. I told you to put something over your shoulders.”

They stood there awhile, not turning their eyes from
that light at the foot of the
kulla
, until Diana felt chilled to her marrow.

“Brr! I'm freezing,” she said, and moving away from the window she said, “Bessian, don't stay there, you'll catch cold.”

He turned and took two or three steps towards the centre of the room. At that moment, a clock on the wall that he had not noticed struck twice with a deep sound that made them both start.

“Goodness, how frightened I was,” Diana said.

She knelt down again to her suitcase. “I'm taking out your pyjamas,” she said a moment later.

He murmured a few words and began to walk up and down the room. Diana went over to a mirror that stood on a chest of drawers.

“Are you sleepy?” she asked.

“No. Are you?”

“Me neither.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette.

“It would have been better not to have had that second cup of coffee.”

Diana said something, but since she had a hairpin in her mouth, he could not make out the words.

Bessian stretched out now, and leaning on his elbow, looked on distractedly at his wife's familiar gestures before the mirror. That mirror, the chest, the clock, as well as the bed and most of the other furniture of the
kulla
, were related, as their lines showed, to a baroque style, but simplified in the extreme.

As she combed her hair in the mirror, Diana watched out of the corner of her eye the wreaths of smoke floating over Bessian's abstracted face. The comb moved ever
more slowly through her hair. With an unhurried gesture she put it down on the chest, and watching her husband in the mirror, quietly, as if she did not want to attract his attention, she walked with light steps to the window.

Beyond the glass was anguish and night. She let their tremors pass through her while her eyes searched insistently for the tiny lost glimmer of light in the chaos of darkness. It was there down below, in the same place, as if suspended above the chasm, flickering wanly, about to be swallowed up by the night. For a long moment she could not take her eyes from the feeble red glow in that abyss of darkness. It was like the redness of primeval fire, a magma ages old whose pallid reflection came from the centre of the earth. It was like the gates of hell. And suddenly, with unbearable intensity, the guise of the man who had passed through that hell was present to her. Gjorg, she cried out within her, moving her cold lips. He wandered forbidden roads, bearing omens of death in his hands, on his sleeve, in his wings. He must be a demigod to face that darkness and primal chaos of creation. And being so strange, so unattainable, he took on enormous size, he swelled and floated like a universal howling in the night.