Three Arched Bridge (2 page)

In the hall were the count, one of his scribes, our bishop, and two unknown houseguests dressed in tight-fitting jerkins, in fashion who knows where.

The count looked annoyed. His eyes were bloodshot for lack of sleep, and 1 remembered that his only daughter had recently fallen ill. No doubt the two strangers were doctors, come from who knew where*

“I can't get through to them at all,” he said as soon as I entered. “You know lots of languages. Maybe you can help.”

The new arrivals did indeed speak the most horrible tongue. My ears had never heard such a babble. Slowly I began to untangle the strands. I noticed that their numbers were Latin and their verbs generally Greek or Slav, while they used Albanian for the names of things, and now and then a word of German, They used no adjectives,

With difficulty 1 began to grasp what they were trying to say. They had both been sent by their master to our liege lord, the count of the Gjikas, with a particular mission. They had heard of the sign sent by the Almighty for the construction of a bridge over the Ujana e Keqe, and they were prepared to build it — or in other words he, their master, was — if the count would give them permission. In short, they were prepared to build a stone bridge over the Ujana e Keqe within a period of two years, to buy the land where it would stand, and to pay the count a regular annual tax on the profits they would earn from it. If the count agreed, this would all be laid down in a detailed agreement (item by item and point by point, as they put it) that would be signed by both sides and confirmed with their seals.

They broke off their speech to produce their seal, which one of them drew from inside his strange jerkin.

“We must heed the sign of the Almighty,” they said, almost in one voice.

The count, with weary, bloodshot eyes, looked first at the bishop and then at his own secretary. But their gaze appeared somewhat blurred by this mystery.

“And who is this master of yours?” our liege lord asked.

They started off again with a tangle of words, but the threads were this time so snagged that it took me twice as long to comb them out. They explained that their master was neither a duke, nor a baron, nor a prince, but was a rich man who had recently bought the old bitumen mines abandoned since the time of the Romans, and had also bought the larger part of the equally ancient great highway, which he intended to repair. He has no title, they said, but he has money.

Interrupting each other, they noted down on a piece of paper the sums they would give to buy the land and the sum of the annual tax for the use of the bridge.

“But the main thing is that the sign sent by the Almighty must be obeyed,” one of them said.

The sums noted on the paper were fabulous, and everyone knew that our liege lord's revenue had recently declined. Moreover, his daughter had been ill for two months, and the doctors could not diagnose her malady.

Our liege lord and the bishop repeatedly caught each other's eye. The count's thoughts were clearly wandering from his empty exchequer to his sick daughter, and the bridge these strangers were offering was the sole remedy for both.

They started talking again about the heavenly message conveyed by the vagrant. In our parts, they call that wretch's ailment moon-sickness, one of them explained, whereas here, as far as I can gather, it is called earth-sickness. However, it is virtually one and the same. These very names show clearly that everywhere they consider it a superior disorder, or divine, as one might say.

Our count did not think matters over for long. He said that he accepted the agreement, and gave the order to his scribe to put it down in writing, in Albanian and Latin. He then invited us all for luncheon. It was the most bitter luncheon I have ever eaten in my life, and this was because of the houseguests, whose speech became more and more tangled, while I had to unravel it for hours on end.

I
N THE AFTERNOON
I had the misfortune to accompany the strangers as far as the bank of the Ujana, I consoled myself that I was at least not obliged to translate the confusion that issued from their mouths. 
This road bad because non maintain, mess complete. Water smooth itself, road non, routen need work, we has no tales, has instruct, we fast money, give, take. Water different, boat move itself graciosus, but vdrug many drown, bye-bye, sto dhjavolos, Funebrum, he, he, road no, road sehr guten but need gut repair…

Fortunately, now and then they shut their mouths. They followed with their eyes the flight of the thrushes. Then' seeing the granaries^ they asked about the quantity of wheat and the cattle that were taken to market and the route they took

I noticed that as we drew nearer to the river, not only their desire to talk but their spirits declined precipitously As they waited for the raft that was to carry them across, they did not conceal their terror of the waters, This was evident from their faces' without their saying,

Dusk was falling when they finally left. I stared after them from the bank for a short while. They were explaining something to each other,, making all kinds of hand signs and pointing to each bank of the river in turn. It was cold. In the fast-falling darkness, they looked from a distance like a few black lines scrawled on the raft, as mysterious and incomprehensible as their inhuman gabble. And suddenly, as I watched them disappear^ a suspicion crept into my mind, like a black beetle: the man who had fallen in a fit on the riverbank, the wandering fortuneteller who had been close by him, and these two clerks with their tight jerkins were in the service and pay of the same master,…

A
S EXPECTED
, the news of the bridge to be built over the Ujana e Keqe spread rapidly. Bridges had been built now and then in all sorts of places, but nobody remembered any of them causing so much commotion. They had been built almost in silence, with a noise of tools to which the ear became accustomed^ because it scarcely differed from the monotonous croaking of the nearby frogs. Then' when they were finished., they did their duty in similar obscurity until they were carried away by high water, were struck by lightnings or still worse, until they decayed to the point that a traveler, having taken a first step on the rotten planks, would stand hesitating to take a second, and turn back in search of a nearby raft or ford by which to cross, This was because all these had been wooden bridges' while the one to be built would be a real bridge with piers and strong stone arches,, perhaps the first of its kind in the whole land of Arberia.

People responded to the news with a feeling between fear and elation. They were pleased that they would have no more dealings with the disgraceful ferrymen, who were always on the other bank when you wanted them on this one,, were sometimes not to be found at all or,, even worse, were to be found drank, with the exception of the most recent hunchbacked ferryman, who neither pestered the women nor drank but was so gloomy in his expression that he seemed to be carrying you to certain death by drowning, The rafts were filthy and damp and spun around in the water, making you want to throw up, while the bridge would always be there, at all times of the day or night, ready to arch its stone back under your feet without swaying or playing tricks. They would have no more trouble with the river either, which sometimes swelled and wreaked havoc, and sometimes sank to the merest thread, as if about to give up the ghost, People were glad that the Ujana e Keqe, which had been such a trial to them, would finally be pinned down by a clasp of stone. But this very thing, besides causing joy, also scared them. It was not easy to saddle a kicking mule, let alone the Ujana e Keqe* Oh, we will see, we will see how this business will fare, they said.

And as always before such events, people began to move more among each other's scattered houses; they even went farther afield, to the Poplar Copse, where few had been since the duke of Gjin had been ambushed there, shortly before the betrothal with the house of our liege lord was broken off. There were others who went to the wild pomegranates by the Five Wells, from where they could indirectly emerge at Mark Kasneci's clearing; they would then roll up their breeches to cross the quagmire and come out at the great highway, There, if the news really was such that they could not keep it to them-selves^ their legs of their own accord ate up the road down to the Inn of the Two Roberts. There, everybody knew what happened: words took wing.

Among those who were not at all pleased about the bridge and even became hostile to it was the old woman Ajkuna. She prophesied nothing but ill for it. It is Beelzebub's backbone^ she said, and woe to any with the audacity to climb upon it!

A
T THE END OF MARCH
, one bitter morning (it was one of the three days that mark the tail end of winter), they again summoned me urgently to the count, 1 was seized with trembling lest those crazy jabberers had come back, I would have found it easier to interpret for woodpeckers, 1 was ashamed of myself when, dozing in the cart, I found myself repeating to myself as if crazy the ancient ditty, “Oh March wind, oh brother mine, dry the loudmouths on the washing line,” However, this time it was not them but the people from “Boats and Rafts,” There were three men; one of whom, tall and pale and with a pointed beard, spoke little. Judging by the respect shown to him by the other two, he was one of the main directors of “Boats and Rafts,” and perhaps their great master's deputy. All three spoke perfect Latin. They had brought with them some black leather bags, full of all kinds of documents,

This time the count brought us into his study. Heavy oak bookshelves occupied part of the walls, and I strained my eyes to read the titles of the books from a distance, in the hope of asking for one of them some time, should the opportunity arise,

“We fail to understand what complaint the noble count might have against us,” said Pointed Beard, not raising his eyes from his bag, “As far as I am aware, we have always fulfilled every item in our agreement,”

Our liege lord's cheeks, pale since his daughter first fell ill, blushed above the cheekbones,

1 had acted as interpreter for several conversations between the count and “Boats and Rafts,” and I knew well that it was always “Boats and Rafts” that complained about our lord, and not the other way around. There had been continual complaints about the delayed repayment of sums borrowed by our liege lord from “Boats and Rafts” since the time of the unfortunate campaign against the duke of Tepelene. The bank of “Boats and Rafts” had twice reduced the interest rate, from fourteen to nine and then to six percent, and had finally agreed to postpone the repayment of the loans for five years without interest, They were forced into this against their will, because they did not want to create an open breach between themselves and the count, from which they would emerge the losers, since the count could profit from the quarrel and refuse to pay back a single penny, Most princes did this now and then, and everybody knew that there was no power that could force the count to honor an agreement with a bank, even with one of the largest in Dürres, such as the bank of “Boats and Rafts,”

So when Pointed Beard mentioned the question of a complaint, our liege lord blushed, because he thought this was subtle mockery.

“What complaint?” he cried, “Who has been complaining about you?”

His tone seemed to be sayings Have you grown so big-headed as to imagine 1 would make the effort to make complaints against endless moaners like yourselves?

The man from “Boats and Rafts” eyed him frostily,

“There is no question of a direct complaint, my noble count,” he said.

“Then speak clearly,” the count said.

The representative of “Boats and Rafts” stared at him fixedly. His beard, coating the lower portion of his jaw, appeared to carry the entire weight of his head.

“Sir, it is a question of a bridge,” he said finally.

“Ah,” the count said. The exclamation seemed to escape him involuntarily, and we all — who knows why? — gazed at one another.

“A bridge, no less,” Pointed Beard repeated, as if doubting we had understood correctly. His piercing eyes never left the count.

“So that's the problem,” the count said. “And what concern of yours is it?”

The “Boats and Rafts” representative took a deep breath. It seemed that he needed something more than air to shape the required words of explanation. He began to speak slowly and, phrase by phrase, stated his opinion with increasing baldness. In the end he put it bluntly. “Boats and Rafts” was against the construction of the bridge, because it severely damaged the company's interests. It was not just that the raft across the Ujana e Keqe would fall out of use. No, it was something extremely serious, which harmed the entire system of ferries, or what the Latins called water transportation, which had used rafts and barges since time immemorial and was now concentrated in the hands of “Boats and Rafts.”

Our liege lord listened with an expression of indifference. The “Boats and Rafts” emissary spoke in well-prepared phrases. I was able to translate his pure Latin with ease, and even had plenty of time left over to think about what I heard. The visitor claimed that this stone bridge would be the first injury (his exact words) ever brutally inflicted on the free spirit of the waters. Then others could be expected. Nothing but disaster would come of putting rivers in such horrible chains, as if they were convicts.

The count's eyes became thoughtful, and he glanced at me for a moment. The men from “Boats and Rafts” appeared to notice this, because they leaned in my direction throughout the rest of the conversation. They began to talk about bridges not only with contempt but as if they were dangerous things.

Clearly the demon of the waters, in the person of “Boats and Rafts,” was in bitter enmity with the demon of the land, who built roads and bridges.

“Forbid them to set foot on our land,” Pointed Beard said, “and we will be ready to make a new agreement with you about the old loans.”