Broken April (23 page)

“That's not important,” Ali Binak said. “What is needed is action.”

The priest and Ali Binak conferred with each other.
Bessian heard Ali Binak say, “Then I'll go with you,” and he took courage from that. In the crowd you could hear the words, “The priest is going there, together with Ali Binak.”

The priest walked off, followed by Ali Binak. After taking a few steps, Ali turned around and said to the crowd, “Stay where you are. They might shoot.”

Bessian felt that he was still being held by his arms. What is happening to me? he groaned inwardly. It seemed to him that the whole world was empty; all that was left was two forms in motion, the priest and Ali Binak, and the tower of refuge to which they were going.

He heard voices around him, like the distant whistling of a wind that was coming from another world. “They can't shoot the priest, since he is protected by the
Kanun
, but there's nothing to stop them from killing Ali Binak.” “No, I don't think they'll fire at Ali Binak either. Everyone knows who he is.”

The two men were halfway along when, suddenly, Diana appeared at the gate of the tower. Bessian could never remember clearly what happened at that moment. He remembered only that he had striven with all his strength to go to her, that his arms were gripped violently, and that voices said: Wait until she has come a bit farther, and she reaches the white stones. Then, again, he saw for a fleeting moment the figure of the doctor; he made another attempt to free himself and he heard the same voices trying to calm him.

At last Diana reached the white stones, and the men who were holding Bessian let him go, although one of them said, “Don't let him go—he'll kill her.” Diana's face was white as a sheet. There was no sign of terror in it, nor pain, nor shame—only a frightening absence, especially in
her eyes. Anxiously, Bessian looked for a tear in her clothing, a bluish stain on her lips or her neck, but he saw nothing of that kind. Then he heaved a sigh, and perhaps he would have felt relieved if there were not that emptiness in her eyes.

In a gesture that was not violent but not gentle either, he seized his wife's arm, and walking ahead of her he drew her towards the carriage, and they got in one behind the other, without a word and without a wave to anyone.

The carriage rolled swiftly on the highroad. How long had they been travelling in this way—a minute, a century? At last Bessian turned to his wife.

“Why don't you say something? Why don't you tell me what happened?”

She sat motionless on the seat, looking straight ahead, as if she were somewhere else. Then he seized her by the elbow, violently, harshly.

“Tell me, what did you do in there?”

She did not answer, she did not try to draw away her arm that he was squeezing like a vise.

Why did you go there, he cried out within him. To see all the horror of the tragedy with your own eyes? Or to look for that mountaineer, That Gjorg. . . . Gjorg. I'll search for you in tower after tower, eh?

He repeated those questions aloud, perhaps in other words though in the same order, but there was no answer, and he was sure that all those reasons together were responsible for that action. Suddenly, he felt a weariness such as he had never known.

Outside, night was falling. The twilight, together with the fog, spread swiftly along the road. Once he thought he saw beyond the window a man riding a mule. The traveller with the wan face whom Bessian thought he recognized
followed the carriage for a short time. Where is the steward of the blood going in the dark, he wondered.

And you yourself, where are you going? He asked himself that question a moment later. Alone in these alien highlands, in the dusk peopled with phantoms, where are you going?

Half an hour later, the carriage stopped in front of the inn. One behind the other, they climbed the wooden stairs and went into the room. The fire was still alight and the water-bucket, which the innkeeper had certainly filled again, was still there, black with soot. An oil lamp gave out a wavering light. Neither troubled with the fire or the bucket. Diana undressed and lay down, lying on her back, one arm drawn over her eyes to keep the lamplight from them. He stood by the window, his eyes on the window-pane, turning only momentarily to look at that fine arm with the silken strap that had slipped from her shoulder, covering the upper part of her face. What had they done to her, the half-blind Cyclops murderers in the tower? And he felt that the question might fill up all of a human life.

They stayed at the inn that night and all the next day without leaving their room. The innkeeper brought them their meals, surprised that they did not ask to have the fire lit in the fireplace.

In the morning of the following day (it was the seventeenth of April) the coachman put their bags in the carriage, and the two, having paid the innkeeper, said goodbye coldly and set out.

They were leaving the High Plateau.

*
A colorless kind of spirits flavored with aniseed, distilled and drunk under many names in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

On the morning of the seventeenth of April, Gjorg was on the highroad that led to Brezftoht. Although he had been walking since dawn without a stop, he reckoned that it would take him at least another day to reach Brezftoht, while his
bessa
came to an end at noon today.

He raised his head in order to find the sun; the clouds, high in the sky, covered it over, but one could tell its position. It's near to midday, he thought, and he turned his eyes to the road again. He was still dazed by the light overhead, and the road seemed to him to be strewn with reddish glints. While walking, he thought that if his
bessa
were over in the evening, walking very swiftly he might have been able to reach home around midnight. But, like most of the truces granted, this one was over at noon. It was well understood that if the man protected by the
bessa
was killed on the very day it expired, people would look to
see in what direction lay the shadow of the dead man's head. If the shadow was towards the east, that meant that he had been killed after midday, when the truce was no longer in force. If, on the contrary, the shadow was towards the west, that would show that he had been killed before the truce had expired, a cowardly act.

Gjorg raised his head again. His business, on this day, was linked with the sky and the motion of the sun. Then, as before, he lowered his dazed eyes to the road, which seemed to be drowning in the light. He turned his head and saw, spread everywhere, that uninterrupted brilliance. Apparently, the black carriage that he had looked for in vain for three weeks on all the roads of the High Plateau, was not going to appear on this last morning of his life as a free man either. How many times had he thought he had seen it loom up before him—but on each occasion the carriage seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Someone had seen it on the Road of Shadow, at the Manor Houses of Shala, on the Grand Road of the Banners, but despite his efforts he had not managed to find it. As soon as he came to the place where people said they had seen it, he found that it had just departed, and when he retraced his steps so as to intercept it on the road at some crossing where it might chance to go by, it had given him the slip again, having taken another, unforeseen direction.

Momentarily, he would forget about it, but the road itself reminded him of it, even though he had lost all hope, or nearly, of finding it again. In fact, even if the carriage were to wander forever through the High Plateau, he would very soon immure himself in the tower of refuge, and it would not be possible for him to see it; and then, even if the impossible came to pass and he were to come out one day, his eyes would be so weakened that he would
be able to see no more of it than a dim spot, like the bouquet of crushed roses that the sun drew today against the background of the clouds.

Gjorg dismissed its image in his mind and began to think of his family. They would be waiting for him anxiously before noon, but he could not get there in time. Towards midday he was going to have to break off his journey and hide somewhere to wait for nightfall. Now he was a man stained with blood, and he could travel only by night and never on the main roads. The
Kanun
, far from regarding that precaution as a sign of fear, held it to be a sign of prudence and courage, for not only did it preserve the life of the murderer, but also hindered his moving about too freely and driving the family of his victim wild. While feeling satisfaction that he had done his duty, the murderer must also feel a sense of guilt before the world. In any case, at noon he would have to find a hiding place to hole up in until nightfall. These last days, in the inns where he had stopped to spend the night, more than once he had had the impression that he had seen the fleeting shape of a member of the Kryeqyqe family. Perhaps it was an illusion, but perhaps he had seen aright, and someone was on his heels in order to kill him as soon as his
bessa
was over, at a time when he had not yet become fully aware of the need to protect himself.

Whatever I do, I must be careful, he thought, and for the third time he lifted his eyes towards the sky. At that very moment he thought he heard a sound in the distance. He stopped, trying to find where it came from, but he could not. He walked on, and he heard the sound again. It was a muffled rumbling that alternately swelled and sank. It must be the sound of a waterfall, he thought. And that was indeed what it was. As he came nearer, he stopped, fascinated.
In all his life, he had never seen a more wonderful waterfall. It was different from all those he had ever seen. Without throwing up foam or spurting, it flowed evenly along a dark-green rock, like thick massed tresses, that reminded Gjorg of the hair of the beautiful traveller from the capital. Under the sun's rays you could easily mistake one for the other.

He stayed a while on the small wooden bridge, under which the waters that had fallen from the rock kept on flowing, but now the current was jumbled and without majesty. Gjorg's eyes were fixed on the waterfall. A week ago, in an inn where he had spent the night, he had heard someone say that there were some countries in the world that drew electric light from waterfalls. A young mountaineer told two of the guests that he had been told that by a man who had heard it from some other one, and the guests listened to him while saying over and over, “Making light out of water? You're off your rocker, friend. Water isn't petroleum, you know, to make light with. If water drowns fire, how could it kindle fire?” But the mountaineer persisted. He had heard it explained just as he had told them, he wasn't inventing anything. They made light by means of water, but not with just any old water, because water is as different as men are. You could only do that with the noble water of waterfalls. “The people who told you that one are pretty crazy, and you're crazier still for having believed them,” the guests said. But that didn't keep the mountaineer from saying that if that were to happen, if that were to happen on the High Plateau, then (once again according to what the man had told him, and who had received the information from yet another source) the
Kanun
would become somewhat more gentle and the
Rrafsh
would be rinsed somewhat of the death that
flowed through it, just as poisoned lands got rid of their salt when they were irrigated. “Fool, you fool,” said the guests, but Gjorg himself, God knows why, believed what the unknown source had said.

With an effort he turned his back on the waterfall. The road stretched away endlessly, almost in a straight line, and at either extremity it was lightly tinted with purple.

Again, he looked up at the sky. Just a little while now and his
bessa
would be over, he himself would be leaving the time of the
Kanun
. Leaving time, he said to himself. It seemed strange that someone could leave his time. Just a little while now, he said, looking at the sky. Now the crushed roses beyond the clouds had grown a little darker. Gjorg smiled bitterly, as if to say, There's no help for it!

Meanwhile, the coach that was carrying Bessian and Diana was rolling along the Grand Road of the Banners, the longest of all those roads that furrowed the High Plateau. The peaks half-whitened by the snow receded farther and farther, and Bessian, looking at them, was thinking that at last they were leaving the kingdom of death. Out of the corner of his right eye, he could sometimes catch sight of his wife's face in profile. Pale, rigid in a way that was heightened rather than lessened by the jolting of the carriage, she was frightening to him. She seemed strange to him, mad, a body that had left its soul in the high country.

What the devil was I thinking of when I decided to take her to that accursed High Plateau? he said for the hundredth time. She had had just one brush with the High Plateau, and that had been enough to take her away from him. It had been enough for the monstrous mechanism merely to touch her, to ravish her away, to take her
captive, or at best to make her a mountain nymph.

The squeaking of the carriage wheels were appropriate music for his doubts, his conjectures, his remorse. He had put his happiness to the test, as if he had wanted to find out whether he deserved it or not. He had directed that fragile happiness from its first spring season to the gates of hell. And it had not withstood the test.

Sometimes, when he felt calmer, he told himself that no other attachment, no third person would ever be able to change in the slightest Diana's feeling for him. If that had really come about (Lord, how bitter those words were: really come about), it had nothing to do with any third person, but that something grand and terrible had intervened. Something dark, having to do with the ordeal of millions of souls during long centuries, and for that very reason seemingly irreparable. Like a butterfly touched by a black locomotive, she had been stricken by the ordeal of the High Plateau, and had been overcome.

Sometimes, calm in a way that frightened him, he thought that perhaps he had had to pay that tribute to the High Plateau. A tribute because of his writings, for the fairies and mountain nymphs that he had described in them, and for the little loge where he had watched the play in which the actors were a whole people drowned in blood.