The General of the Dead Army (25 page)

“Yes, madame,” the general said in a toneless voice, summoning up all his strength to hold his head high before this old woman who filled him with such terror.

The old woman then added a few words that the priest was unable to translate because they were half lost in a noisy murmur from the crowd, and before anyone could make a move to stop her she had pulled the sack from her back, amid terrified shrieks from the women, and thrown it on the floor at the general’s feet.

There was nothing left for the priest to translate; all translation had become superfluous, for everything now had been made clear, and nothing in fact could have been at once more meaningful or more horrible than the sack, covered with great gouts of still damp black mud, that had just thudded down on the floor. The women all drew back in violent alarm, covering their faces with their hands, or in the case of the older ones crossing themselves with horrified gasps.

“She had buried him under her doorstep!” someone cried.

“Oh, Nice! Nice!”

Suddenly the old woman turned her back on them all and left as she had come, drenched and mud-spattered, without it occurring to anyone to prevent her, for what was meant to happen had happened.

The general could not take his eyes from the floor. He felt dazed by the noise, the cries, the horror of the scene. All at once, without his being able to say how or why, a great silence enveloped him. Perhaps in reality there was no silence at all, but the general was nevertheless under the impression that there was. At his feet, as all the guests looked on, lay that sombre and silent shape, that old sack chequered with patches. Someone must attend to it! he thought. And then, in the silence, he slowly bent and grasped the sack by the neck with trembling hands, lifted it as it was, plastered with mud, and let it fall again. Then he put on his coat, took up the sack once more, hoisted it slowly up onto his shoulder, and left that place, bent beneath his burden, mortified, as though he were carrying all the shame and the weight of the earth on his back.

Behind him, somebody could not suppress a sob.

T
HE GENERAL KEPT WALKING
straight ahead, splashing his way through the puddles. The priest followed him. They made their way back along the little street, emerged into the village square, turned along beside the old church, and then, in the darkness, realized they had lost their way. Without a word they retraced their steps, the general still leading the way. They passed the village well, then the club and the side of the church, but still without being able to locate the house where they were supposed to be staying. Twice they found themselves back in the same spot, as they could tell from the dark silhouette of the village bell-tower rising above their heads. And by now the force of the gale was such that they almost expected the wind and rain to set the bells ringing up there with their violence. The hand clasping the sack was quite numb by now.

“How light you seem to me, Betty!” he said to me one evening in the park. We were out walking arm in arm, two nights before we were married. It was an autumn night, warm and exciting. That afternoon it had rained and the park walks were dotted with little puddles. So he carried me in his arms like a little girl, and he kept on saying: “Are you really so light, Betty? Or is it just my happiness that makes me think you are?” And as he splashed his way along the paths without looking, so his big soldier’s boots sent the moons in all the puddles flying up around us in tiny silver drops. “I’d like to hold you in my arms like this all my life, Betty. Yes, just like this.” And as he walked he kept kissing my hair and saying over and over again: “Oh Betty, how light you are!”

And now it’s your turn to be light, the general thought. There is nothing in the world as light as you are now. Six or seven oundsat the most. And yet you are breaking my back!

They continued their wandering for a long time, went all round the village several times, completely lost, like two drunks on their way home, constantly trying to keep as far as possible away from the church, which as constantly kept reappearing beside them, darkening the sky overhead; and they did not stop until they almost stumbled into the bonnet of their car, which was scarcely discernible in the darkness.

They remembered then that the car had been parked exactly in front of the house where they had been given rooms, and the general felt his way to the door, pushed it open and stepped through into the yard. The door banged to behind him; he advanced a few more steps, located and opened the inside door, and as soon as he was inside dropped the sack on the hall floor.

In the feeble glow from his lighter he trudged noisily up the stairs, walked into their bedroom, shed his wet coat onto the floor, then threw himself down fully clothed onto the bed. A moment later he heard the door open and close, then the sound of somebody lowering himself onto the other bed.

The priest, he told himself.

He tried to sleep, but in vain. Then he directed his efforts towards sorting out his jumbled thoughts, but with equal lack of success.

I must sleep, he thought. Sleep, sleep. Keep as still and as quiet as that lorry outside. I must sleep at all costs.

He closed his eyes very hard; but that didn’t help at all. The tighter he squeezed his eyelids the less absolute the darkness under them became; it was invaded by blotches and ribbons of lights, sometimes interspersed with patches of sky or with an expanse of sea seen from a distant beach.

I must have darkness, he thought. I need total blackness, without so much as a speck of light, if I am to sleep.

But the blue and white and violet ribbons, the red and yellow patches refused to fade. They were there in front of him, just a few inches away, in whatever direction he turned his head, always glowing in the heart of the darkness.

He got up, took a Luminal capsule, and lay down again. He had barely begun to doze before he suddenly shot up once more. The drum had begun to beat again, over near the square.

Is that damned feast still going on? he wondered. What can be happening?

He buried his head under the bedclothes so as not to hear. But it did no good. He had a vision of a little gnome, a tiny figure out of a fairy tale, squatting on his brain and playing a little drum like the ones toy soldiers carry. It was no good stopping up his ears, the gnome was still there, sitting cross-legged somewhere inside his head drumming and drumming away, keeping up a relentless unchanging rhythm: boom, boom, tararaboom, boom, boom …

And he had the impression that the drum was beating time to a marching column of soldiers.

It is my victorious army on the march! he thought. Then he sat up abruptly on the bed and said out loud:

“That’s enough!”

Then he lay down again and tried to settle his head on the pillow, but after a few moments he got up again and called over to the priest:

“Father! Hey, father! Colonel, wake up!” The priest woke with a start. “What’s the matter?”

“We must leave this place as soon as possible, get up!”

“Leave? For where?”

“For Tirana.”

“But it’s still the middle of the night!”

“Never mind. We are leaving all the same.”

“But why?”

The floorboards creaked beneath the general’s boots.

“Can’t you hear? Can’t you hear the drum? They are still at it down there, and my mind is full of forebodings.”

“Are you afraid?” the priest asked.

“Yes,” the general admitted. “I have the feeling that at any moment they are going to come to this house and gather round it beating drums, the way they do in some countries to drive away evil spirits.”

The general lit his lighter and began packing his case.

“Very well, let’s go,” the priest said.

The general closed his case.

“A dance,” he murmured. “I simply wanted to dance one dance with them and it almost ended in disaster. Heavens above, what a country!”

We should never have gone, he mused. Never!

“Just one dance. And it nearly turned into a dance of death,” he added out loud. The priest muttered something incomprehensible in reply and they both left the room. The general’s boots drew a variety of cracks and creaks from the wooden stairs. He walked straight out into the yard and over to the outer door. Realizing that the priest was no longer just behind him he turned and saw him emerging from the house carrying something on his back.

Of course, the general thought, the sack!

They walked out into the street. The rain had stopped and the darkness was less intense.

“What time is it?” the priest asked. The general lit his lighter.

“Half-past four.”

“It will soon be dawn.”

Somewhere the first cocks began to crow. An icy wind was blowing down from the mountains all around. A little further on they could make out the black form of their lorry.

They halted beside the car and turned to look for the dawn. It was as though someone was brushing the eastern sky with layers of white paint, absorbent paint that was gradually soaking the darkness out of the sky and diluting it to a wash of cold, wet grey.

“That’s where they said they’d be sleeping,” the priest said with a nod towards the house opposite.

“Go and wake our driver up. Tell him I’m ill and we must leave for Tirana immediately.”

The priest pushed open the house’s outside door. As it opened it set a bell ringing, whereupon a dog began to bark in a yard nearby, then another in answer to the first, and within a few moments all the dogs in the village were in full cry.

But even the chorus of barking did not prevent the general from still being aware of the beating drum and the distant murmur from down by the square.

The yard door grated on its hinges again: it was the priest reappearing with his sack still over his shoulder.

You’re really sticking to that sack, aren’t you? the general found himselfthinking.

“He’s getting dressed,” the priest said. “He’ll be out directly.”

“These dogs!” the general said.

“Yes, it’s always the same in a village. One starts and they all have to join in.”

“Let them bark away,” the general said. “What does a little barking matter after all? If they knew what was in our lorry they’d start up a death howl, and that, yes, that would really be horrible!”

“This accursed wind!” was the priest’s only reply. One by one the dogs ceased their barking. In the distance a cow lowed as though still half asleep. The yard door grated again and the driver appeared in the half-darkness. They exchanged good mornings. The driver unlocked the car doors, coughing as the cold night air got down into his lungs, and the general got in.

“Open the door in front,” the priest requested. The driver did as bidden. “What’s that?”

“A sack. It may come in handy.”

The driver stowed the sack away beside him, pushing it firmly into the corner with his foot, and the priest took his place in the back.

They set off.

The headlight beams slithered along the dark hedges that bordered the road on either side, then fanned out ahead as they turned onto the main road. As soon as the car moved off the general turned up his greatcoat collar, huddled into his corner and closed his eyes. At last he could hear nothing but the gentle purring of the engine, and he had but one desire: to sleep. But he could not stop his brain playing back all that had happened at that feast, down to the last tiniest detail.

I simply must get some sleep, he told himself. I don’t want to remember anything about it. I never want to set foot in that place again.

But in his mind he was still back at the feast. He was taking off his coat. He was sitting down at the table. Everybody was there, as though they had been expecting him. He felt as if this returning among them was the only way he had to be rid of them. For them too, perhaps, to be rid of him.

In a panic he opened his eyes before the dreadful old woman reappeared.

Outside it was still night.

The road, wakened by the sudden onslaught of their lights, was perpetually emerging for an instant from the chaos of night, pale and still half asleep, only to sink back into it as soon as they had passed. Every so often pairs of very white milestones flashed past on either side. Their whiteness was unpleasant. It sent a shiver up the spine. They made the general think of tombstones.

The priest, head lolling forward on his chest, was dozing in his corner.

The driver suddenly braked so hard that the priest was shocked into wakefulness by banging his head against the seat in front.

“What’s happening?” he asked in a daze.

The general, still half asleep, looked out of the window. The car had stopped by the side of a bridge. He could hear the sound of water rushing beneath it.

“Why have you stopped?” the priest asked.

The driver said something about having to look at the engine, then got out and slammed his door behind him.

The beams of their headlights lay parallel between the sides of the bridge. The driver opened the bonnet, leaned in to peer at the engine, then came back to fetch some tool or other. He pushed at the sack, which was in his way, then pulled it out onto the road in order to lift up the seat.

The general opened the door on his side and got out too. He began pacing round and round the car. The priest hadn’t moved. The driver mumbled a swear word and came back to look for something else. The general stumbled for the second time over the sack.

It’s this sack, he thought suddenly. It’s this sack that’s the trouble. It’s almost done for us once tonight. Up until now everything had been going perfectly, but now this sinister sack has forced its way into our lives and everything is going wrong!

“It’s this sack that’s put a jinx on us,” he said out loud. “What did you say?” the priest answered.

“I say that this sack is bringing us bad luck,” the general repeated.

And as he spoke he gave it a vindictive push with his foot. The sack tumbled down the slope and fell with a resounding thwack into the water flowing at the bottom.