Three Arched Bridge (15 page)

And then they would begin talking about the compensation whistling in amazement at the enormous sum, calculating the percentages the members of his family would earn from the bridge's profits, and converting the sums into the currencies of their own principalities, and then into Venetian ducats. And so, without anyone noticing, the conversation would leave the bridge behind and concentrate on the just-arrived news from the Exchange Bank in Durres, particularly on the fluctuating values of various currencies and the fall in the value of gold sovereigns following the recent upheavals on the peninsula, And this would continue until some traveler, coming late to the crowd, would say: “They seemed to tell us that it was a woman who was walled up, but this is a man. They even told us that we would see the place where the milk from the poor woman's breast dripped,“ “Oh,” two or three voices would reply simultaneously, “Are you still thinking of the old legend?”

And it would all go back again to the beginning.

I
T WAS MARK HABERI
who was the first to bring the news of the Turks, “commination” against Europe from across the border, Pleased that the event seemed so important to me, he looked at me with eyes that reminded me of my displeasure at his change of surname, almost as if, without that Turkish surname, he would not be able to bring news, in other words
habere
, from over there.

Indeed, his explanation of what had happened was so involved that while he talked, he became drenched with sweat, like a man who fears to be taken for a lian Speak clearly, I said to him two or three times, because I cannot understand what you are trying to say. But he continued to prevaricate. I can't say it, he repeated. These are new, frightening things that cannot be put into words.

He asked for my permission to explain by gestures, making some movements that struck me as demented. I told him that the gesture he was making is among us called a “fig,” and indicates at the same time contempt, indifference, and a curse. He cried, “Precisely, Father. There they call it a ‘commination,, and it is of state importance.”

I did not conceal my amazement at the connection between this hand movement, which people and especially women make in contempt of each other, somewhat in the sense of “may my ill fortune be on your head,” with the new Ottoman state policy toward Europe, of which Mark Haberi sought to persuade me.

He left in despair to collect additional data, which he indeed brought me a few days later, always from the other side. They left me openmouthed. From his words and the testimony of others that I heard in those days, I reconstructed the entire event, like a black temple.

The Commination against Europe had taken place in the last days of the month of Michaelmas, precisely on the Turkish-Albanian border, and had been performed according to all the ancient rubrics in the archives of the Ottoman state. Their rules of war demanded that before any battle started, the place about to be attacked, whether a castle, a wall, or simply an encampment, had to be cursed by the army's curse maker.

It was said that the old archives described precisely, even with the help of a sketch, the gesture of the curse. The palms of the hand were opened and moved forward, as if to launch the portentous curse on its flight. This gesture was repeated three times, and then the curser's back was turned on the direction in which the curse was headed.

Their chronicles told of the cursing of castles and the domains of rebellious pashas, and even whole states, before an attack began; but there was no case of an entire continent being cursed. It was perhaps for this reason that even the most important curse maker in the state, Sukrullah, who had arrived on the empire's extreme border the previous nighty,was slightly shaken, as those who saw him reported.

The sky was overcast and damp, and the whole plain around the small temporary minaret erected specially for the purpose was swathed in mist.

The curse maker climbed the little minaret and stared for a while in our direction, toward where, in Turkish eyes, the accursed continent of Europe began, The weather was indeed extremely bad, and almost nothing could be seen in the fog. The small group of high dignitaries who had accompanied Sukrullah from the capital to the border stood speechless, Down below, at the foot of the minaret, the imperial chronicler had opened a thick tome to record the event.

Sukrullah raised his arms in front of him, so that they emerged from the wide sleeves of his half-clerical, half-laic gown. Everybody saw that the palms of his hands were exceptionally broad. However, nobody was surprised at this, because he was not the state's foremost curse maker for nothing,

He studied his hands for a while and, turning his eyes toward the ash-colored distance, raised his palms in front of his face to the level of his brow, His palms paled as the blood drained from them, He held them there for a time until they were as white as the palms of a corpse, and then thrust them violently forward, as if the evil were in the form of a bubble he was dispatching into the distance,

He did this three times in a row. The commination was complete.

In silence, without a word' he climbed down first from the minaret, followed immediately by his escorts. Together with the other officials, they accompanied him to his carriage, whose doors were embellished with the emblem of the Great Royal Commination. He climbed into the carriage together with his assistants and guards, and as the vehicle departed through the winter cold in the direction from which it had come, the curse traveled in the opposite direction, toward us toward the lands of Europe. It went (or rather came) through the fog like some bird of ill omen, like a herald or a sick dream.

So' God on high, there it is! What sort of country is this with which fate has embroiled us? What signs it sends through the air to us! And what will it send after them?

T
HE MONTH OF ST. NDREU
began and ended in fog. Sometimes the fog seemed to freeze stock-still.

Everything half dissolved in it: the riverbanks, the nearby hamlets, the bleak sandbank^ the bridge. On such days of mist the victim immured in the lap of the bridge seemed both more remote and closer, as if he would shortly resolve his ambiguous position and step out toward us, a living man toward the living, or retreat, a dead man toward the dead.

But he remained in between, neither in this world nor in the next, a constant burden to us all Nobody knew what had happened to his flesh inside, but his plaster mask was still the same. His open, vacant eyes, his cheeks, lips, and chin, were the same as before. Sometimes a drop of moisture would appear on his features, as if on the surface of a wall, and leave a mark when it dried.

There were people who stayed for a long time, trying to decipher these signs. There were noisy crowds who chattered under his very nose,, shook their fingers in front of his eyes, and even criticized him. Anybody else suspended in his position would not dream of anything but gathering his own bones in some grave. It was believed that lightning frightened him, while ravens no longer flew low above him.

His family's visits became rarer. They now no longer came in two hostile groups, but in four: his wife and baby, his parents, and his two brothers separately. Their quarrel over sharing the compensation had deepened during the autumn, and the lawsuit they had initiated over its division would be, it seemed, hopelessly protracted.

Each party came and stayed a while by the plaster mask as if before a court, with their own explanations and worries. The man's open eyes stared at them all impartially, while the visitors no doubt imagined that next time they would reach a better understanding with the plaster.

Next time … There were indeed days on which it seemed that he would surmount the plaster barrier and would give to them and take from them. It would be his turn to judge perhaps not only his relatives but people of all kinds.

I have seen statues age, but my mind tells me that this bas-relief, perhaps the only one in the world with the dead man's flesh, bones, and maybe soul inside it, will have a different life expectancy. Either it will burst prematurely, or it will outlive all others. The seasons will deposit their dust on it, the wind will slowly, very slowly erode it, as it erodes all the world, and he, Murrash Zenebisha, who has now donned his protective mask, and for whom the years have stopped, will eventually find old age. But old age will come not by years and seasons. In the normal way of human age, but by centuries. Sometimes I say to myself. Poor you, Murrash Zenebisha. What horrors you will see. For the future seems to me pregnant only with terrible disasters. But sometimes I think to myself. You are fortunate in what you will see, because, whatever will happen, I am sure that like every storm this too will pass, just as every night finds a dawn.

T
HE BLOODSHED
occurred one day before Christmas, at four in the afternoon. Everything took place in a very short time, the bat of an eyelid, but it was an event of the kind that is able to divide time in two. Since that day in the month of St. Ndreu, people do not talk about time in general, they talk about time before and time after.

Until shortly before four o'clock (on that cloudy day, it seemed to have been four o'clock since morning), until just before the fatal moment, there was no ominous sign anywhere. Everything looked empty, when suddenly, God knows how, the chill fog spawned seven horsemen. They were approaching at speed with a curious kind of gallop, not in a straight line but describing wide arcs, as if an invisible gale were driving their horses first in one direction and then in another. When they drew near enough to distinguish their helmets and breastplates, they were seen to be Turkish horsemen.

When our sentries on the right bank saw that the horsemen were coming to the bridge, they blocked the entrance with crossed spears. The horsemen continued their rush toward the bridge in their unusual gallop, describing arcs. Our sentries made signs for them to halt. They were required to stop, even if they had crossed the border with permission and all the more so if they had come without permission, which had often happened recently. But the horsemen did not obey.

To those who witnessed the skirmish from the distance of the riverbank, it resembled a dumb show. Two of the Turkish horsemen were able to rush through our guards and head for the middle of the bridge. A third was brought down from his mount, and a skirmish began around him. One of our guards ran after the horsemen who were racing ahead. Those left behind, Albanians and Turks, crossed spears. Another horseman succeeded in struggling free of the confusion and went on the heels of our guard, who was pursuing the first two horsemen. Meanwhile, our sentries on the left side of the bridge were rushing to the help of their comrades. They met the first two Turkish horsemen in the center of the bridge. An Albanian sentry pursuing the horsemen joined the fight, as did the third Turkish rider, who had pursued our guard.

Yet all this happened, as I said, in total silence, or seemed to, because the raging of the river smothered every sound. Only once (ah, my flesh creeps even now when I think of it), did a voice emerge from the dumb tumult. It was no voice, it was a broken
kra
, a horrible cry from some nonhuman throat. And then that play of shadows again, with somebody running from the middle of the bridge to the right bank, and returning to rescue someone who had fallen. There was a clash of spears, and at last the repulse of the horsemen, and their retreat into the fog out of which they had come, with one riderless horse following them, neighing.

That was all. The horizon swallowed the horsemen just as it had given them birth, and you could have thought they were only a mirage, but… there was evidence left at the bridge. Blood stained the bridge at its very midpoint.

The count himself soon came to the scene of the incident. He walked slowly across the bridge, while the guards, their breastplates scarred with spear scratches, told him what had happened. They paused by the pool of blood. It must have been the blood of the Turkish soldier, whose body the horsemen had succeeded in recovering. As the blood froze, the stones of the gravel made its final gleam more visible.

“Turkish blood,” our liege lord said in a hoarse, broken voice.

Nobody could tear his eyes away. We had seen their Asiatic costume. We had heard their music. Now we were seeing their blood … the only thing they had in common with us.

This day was bound to come. It had long been traveling in the caravan of time. We had expected it, but perhaps not so suddenly, with those seven horsemen emerging from the mist and being swallowed by the mist again, followed by a loose horse.

T
HE MORE THE HOURS PASSED,
the more serious the incident appeared, Nightfall enlarged its significance in an extraordinary way, So did the days that followed. The silence that fell the following week, far from diminishing its importance^ heightened it yet further. Those movements on the bridge that seemed from a distance like the dance of madmen were repeated in everybody's minds in slow motion, as if in delirium. It was like a first sketch for war. It was obvious now that this had not been a chance patrol From the base at Vloré to the mountains of the Dukagjins and the Kastriotis, the Turks had sparked off a series of provocations. You would have had to have less sense than mad Gjelosh not to realize that war had begun.

On Sunday, as I walked late at night on the deserted sandbank (the idiot had wandered cackling over the bridge a short time before), I felt a debility I had never experienced before. The moonlight fell evenly over the plain, freezing everything into a mask. Everything was wan; everything was dead, and I almost cried out: How can you become part of Asia, you, my lovely Arberia?

My eyes darkened, and just as I had seen that pale patch of blood under Murrash Zenebisha's neck, so it seemed to me that now' under that moonlight, I saw whole plains awash with blood, and mountain ranges burned to ash. I saw Ottoman hordes flattening the world and creating in its place the land of Islam. I saw the fires and the ash and the scorched remains of men and their chronicles. And our music, and dances, and costume, and our majestic language, harried by that terrible
“-luk,”
like a reptile's tail, seeking refuge in the mountains among the lightning and the beasts, which will turn it savage. And below the mountains, I saw the plains left without speech. And above all I saw the long night coming in hours, for centuries …