The General of the Dead Army (17 page)

“Shall we go down again,” the general said. “The wind is cold up here.”

H
AVING LEFT THE ROAD
and advanced for a while through fields the two vehicles were now skirting vineyards.

The general, map spread on his knees, glanced out occasionally through the window, knowing that at the same moment, in the cabin of the lorry behind with his copy of the self-same map also spread on his knees, the expert was probably glancing out of his window in exactly the same way, thus ensuring that there was no chance of their missing the precise spot at which they were supposed to stop.

On the right there is a line of tall poplars. Looking towards them you see the farm buildings beyond, and then further on still, a mill. The place is at the foot of the trees. So as to be able to locate the graves again more easily later we dug them in a V formation, the point towards the sea. Five on one side, five on the other, then the lieutenant at their head
.

“Tell him to drive towards the poplars,” the general said. The priest translated the order to the driver. As they stepped out of the car the tops of the tall trees were quivering in the wind. The priest set off towards the site of the graves slightly ahead of the rest of the group, and uttered a cry of surprise.

“What is it?” the general asked as he caught up with him.

“Look,” the priest said, “look over there.”

The general turned his eyes in the direction indicated.

“What does it mean?” he said angrily.

At the foot of the poplars were two rows of opened graves forming a V. The trenches had presumably been dug some ten or fifteen days before, since the recent rains had half filled them with water.

“I just can’t understand it,” the priest said.

“Someone has come and opened these graves before us,” the general said. His voice quivered as he spoke.

“Here is the expert,” the priest said. “We shall see what he has to say.”

“What is it?” the expert asked in his turn as he approached.

Without a word the general gestured with one hand towards the trenches. The expert looked at them for a moment then shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s strange!” he said in a low voice.

“These graves have been opened without our authorization, without our knowledge,” the priest said. “What have you to say?”

Once more the expert shrugged.

“When will these provocations end I should like to know?” the general cried. “I shall take the matter to the highest authority immediately.”

“At the moment I can give you no explanation,” the expert said, “but I hope to be able to clear the matter up without delay. If you will only have a little patience.”

“Of course, of course,” the general said, fuming with fury.

The workmen and the two drivers had by now caught up and were also staring stupefied at the graves.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to us before,” the oldest one said.

The expert counted the graves for the second time as he rolled up his map.

“Listen,” he said turning to the lorry driver. “Drive over to that farm and bring someone back with you. Anyone you can find.

Tell them we’re from the government and that it’s an urgent matter.” Turning back to his interlocutors, he added, “I can’t offer you any explanation for the moment. I can only assure you that if someone did in fact commit such an action as a deliberate and calculated outrage, then he will be punished in accordance with our own laws.”

“Whatever the intention,” the priest said, “it is still a serious profanation.”

Meanwhile, standing looking down at the graves the workmen were expressing astonishment at their odd arrangement.

“It’s the first time we’ve come across a cemetery like this. In aV.”

“It’s strange!”

“That’s how the storks fly,” the old workman said. “Haven’t you ever seen them in the autumn?”

The sound of the returning lorry’s engine could be heard in the distance. There was someone sitting up in the cab beside the driver.

“I hope that everything will be cleared up now,” the expert said.

The driver got down then went round and opened the other door for the newcomer. The latter, having clambered down, stared at them all attentively one by one.

“Do you work on this farm?” the expert asked him.

“Yes.”

“Do you know anything about these military graves?”

The man glanced over at the trenches.

“Only what everyone else round here knows,” he said. “Which is?”

“Well, they’re the graves of foreign soldiers, aren’t they? And they’ve been there over twenty years now.”

“Then how do you explain …”

“And ten days ago they were opened up again.”

“Ah, now that’s just what we want to know about,” the expert said. “Who was it who opened them up again ten days ago?”

The man stared round once more at the workmen, the general, the priest, then the two vehicles.

“Did you see them with your own eyes, the people who opened these graves?” the expert tried again.

The man seemed reluctant to reply. Then he suddenly burst out:

“Are you trying to make a fool of me?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“You know the answer as well as I do.”

The expert was visibly taken aback. They all stood around in silence, obviouslydazed.

“Please. Can you tell us quite simply who opened these graves ten days ago?”

The man from the farm glared at the expert angrily.

“You opened them, you know that,” he said curtly “All of you,” the man went on, and his pointing finger swung round to include the workmen, the general, the priest, and the two drivers.

They all stared at one another in bewilderment.

“Where did you manage to find this one?” someone muttered to the lorry driver.

“Listen,” the expert said to the man, “it is really not in very good taste for you to…”

“I don’t want to hear any more!” the man interrupted him, his eyes flashing with anger. “If you think you can get me all tied up with your clever talk you’re wrong! You think just because you’re educated you can just laugh up your sleeves at ordinary people, don’t you?”

He gave the expert a last scornful glare then turned his back on him and set off back towards the farm.

The old workman shouted after him:

“Hey, wait a moment, comrade!”

“Hey you, stop! Come back!” the lorry driver called after him. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” the man grumbled as he halted and turned back. “Do you take people for idiots? Do you think no one saw you or something, when you were here ten days ago? You must have known someone was bound to see you, you were all day digging away here.”

“This is the last straw,” the priest murmured. “Us? You’re talking about us?”

“Yes, who else? You were here with that same green car and that lorry with the cover over the back.”

“Ah, now wait a minute,” the expert said suddenly. “Were you actually here, on this spot, when the graves were being opened?”

“No, but we could see you from a distance.”

The expert nodded.

“I think I understand now,” he said. “There isn’t much doubt, it must be those others. What a mess-up!”

“What do you mean? What happened?”

“That one-armed general and his companion must have got here before us.”

“And you think they did this?”

“I’m quite certain they did, for my part. What other explanation can there possiblybe?”

The man from the farm was explaining something to the workmen and the drivers that involved a great deal of gesticulation.

“How is it possible?” the general said.

“They have no maps. Nor any detailed information about their graves. They may perhaps have taken these to be some of theirs!”

“But they could have questioned the people who live nearby.

And besides, there are the medallions,” the priest protested

“Yes, that’s what puzzles me,” the expert said, biting his lower lip.

“It is a serious profanation,” the general mumbled.

“It isn’t the first time they’ve been involved in something like this,” the expert went on. “Somewhere in the south, so I was told in Tirana, they opened the graves of two
ballistes
by mistake.

And in another place they began excavating in an old Moslem cemetery.”

“And did they remove the remains?”

“Oh yes, it appears so.”

“It’s fantastic,” the general said. “Are they in their right minds, those two? What could have got into them to behave in such away?”

“Perhaps they had a motive,” the expert said musingly. “And I suspect I know what it was.”

“What? What motive?” The expert was obviously unwilling to reply. “I can’t say any more. Please excuse me.”

“Perhaps they’ve found their work so difficult without maps and so on that they’ve just taken to robbing any graves they happen to come across.”

“They said themselves that they were hunting in the dark.”

“And the worst part of it is that the remains they collect are despatched overseas immediately,” the expert said. “That’s the limit!” grumbled the general.

“You mean we shan’t be able to get these eleven back from them?”

“It will be difficult - if the remains have already left the country.”

“In other words, our soldiers’ remains are going to be handed over to families in some other country instead of their own!” the general cried. “It is enough to drive one mad!”

“One can only assume that they had entered into some kind of contract,” the priest said. “How else is one to explain their hurry to send off the remains they find?”

“Yes, and when they can’t find any of their own they just make off with any that happen to be around. A pretty way to carry on!”

The general was beside himself with fury.

“Let’s get on!” he said suddenly. “There’s nothing we can do here now.”

They climbed back into their two vehicles and set off towards the sea, in the direction the little V-shaped cemetery was pointing.

T
HE SHORE LAY DISMAL
and deserted. Small concrete lookout forts jutted up from the damp sand, most of them ravaged by time or human activity. Rusty iron struts stuck out through cracks, like ribs.

There was a cold wind blowing off the sea.

The general turned his eyes to the north, where beyond the forts there lay the first of the villas fringing the resort, then the little stations of the narrow-gauge railway for the summer visitors, the row of rest homes and the big hotels, most of them closed at this time of year.

The priest and he had come here looking for the remains of their country’s soldiers who had lost their lives on the first day of the war. All that week they had done nothing but rush up and down the coast pausing briefly at all the landing sites, each of which had its own little cemetery.

He could remember it well, that first day of war in the spring of 1939.
²
He had been in Africa then. That evening the news had come over the wireless: the Fascist army, it said, had landed in Albania, and the Albanian people had greeted the glorious divisions bringing them civilization and happiness with peaceful waves and even flowers.

Then the first newspapers had arrived, followed by magazines crammed with pictures and on-the-spot-reports of the landings.

There were descriptions of how wonderful the spring was that year, of Albania’s dazzling sea and sky, its beaches, its healthy air, its beautiful and amorous girls, its colourful costumes and graceful popular dances. Not a day went by without some kind of story appearing in at least one paper or magazine, and at night all the soldiers dreamed of being posted to Albania, to that pretty seaside paradise nestling in the shade of its eternal olive trees.

The general remembered that he too, at the time, had felt the desire for an Albanian posting, for later on. And it is now that I have been called upon to fight it, over this difficult terrain, at a time when all the rest of the world is at peace.

He had never been able to decide whether it had worked out in his favour or to his detriment.

After throwing their tools onto the crates, the workmen climbed into the lorry.

The two vehicles moved off.

They drove past the villas which lined the beach, cold and dismal looking with their blank shutters, then on in front of the new hotels and summer restaurants, all long closed now. The terraces of the bathing establishments jutted out towards the sea, their tables and chairs stacked up in big piles in one corner, abandoned vestiges of summer pleasures.

“Blockhouses everywhere,” said the general.

“The Albanians are always only too eager to tell one that their country is a citadel perched on the shores of the Adriatic,” the priest said.

The general turned to look at the shore.

“You once told me the sea has brought the Albanians nothing but misfortunes. That they hate it because of that.”

“Yes, it’s true,” the priest said. “The Albanians are like animals that are afraid of water. They like clinging to rocks and mountains. They feel secure then.”

The line of the road was moving further and further from that of the shore, and now the little narrow-gauge stations and the scattered white villas were concealed from their sight.

“Of the soldiers killed that first day of the war only one now remains to be found on the coast, the last,” the general observed. “If the very first grave is along here, as I think it is, then it must be that poor wretch, the one mentioned by the old men on the corner, who dragged all the rest after him by the leg … “

“A soldier of the very first day,” repeated the priest. “After that, if I’m not mistaken, we’ll still be left with another difficult trip in an area in the foothills.”

“Quite right,” the general agreed. “Then there’ll be two more.

Then the penultimate. Then the last … “ He gave a deep sigh.

“It’s much too early to think of going home. Yes, just too soon.”

The priest nodded his agreement. You just can’t wait, the general thought. Because there’s someone waiting for you.

“It’s a long time since we last saw those two,” he went on aloud.