Broken April (10 page)

“What district are we in?”

He looked outside but did not answer her, merely shrugging his shoulders to indicate that he did not know. She remembered the days before their departure (days that now seemed to have been torn away not from this month of March, but from another March, as far off as the stars), filled with witty sayings, with laughter, with jokes, fears, jealousies, all stemming from their “northern adventure” as Adrian Guma had dubbed it when they had met him at the post office where they were composing a telegram to send to someone who lived on the High Plateau. He had said, That's like sending a message to the birds or to the thunderbolts. Then the three had laughed, and in all the merriment, Adrian had gone on asking, “You really have an address up there? Forgive me, I just can't believe it.”

“A little while longer and we'll be there,” Bessian said for the third time, leaning towards the window. Diana
wondered how he could know that they were approaching their destination, travelling on a road without signposts or milestones. As for Bessian, he was thinking that he did not have time to say more about the cult of hospitality, just as evening was drawing on, and they were drawing nearer and nearer to the tower in which they would spend the night.

“In a little while, this evening, we shall assume the crown of the guest,” he murmured, only just touching her cheek with his lips. She moved her head towards him, her breath came faster as in their most intimate moments, but it ended in a sigh.

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said quietly. “I'm just a little frightened.”

“Really?” he said, laughing. “But how can that be?”

“I don't know.”

He shook his head for a moment, as if her half-smile, close to his face, were the flicker of a match that he must try to blow out.

“Well, Diana, let me tell you that it doesn't matter at all that we are in death's kingdom—you can be sure that you have never been so well shielded from danger or the least affront. No royal pair has ever had more devoted guards ready to sacrifice their present and their future than we shall have tonight. Doesn't that give you a sense of security?”

“That's not what I was thinking about,” Diana said, changing her position on the seat. “I'm troubled by something else, and I don't really know how to explain it. A little while ago you talked about divinity, destiny, fatality. They are all very fine things, but they are frightening, too. I don't want to bring misfortune to anyone.”

“Oh,” he said gaily, “like every sovereign, you find the crown both alluring and frightening. That's quite understandable, since, after all, if every crown is glorious, every crown is woeful, too.”

“That's enough, Bessian,” she said quietly. “Don't make fun of me.”

“I'm not making fun of you,” he said with the same playful air. “I have the very same feeling. The guest, the
bessa
, and vengeance are like the machinery of classical tragedy, and once you are caught up in the mechanism, you must face the possibility of tragedy. But despite all that, Diana, we have nothing to fear. In the morning, we'll take off our crowns and be relieved of their weight until the night.”

He felt her fingers stroking his neck, and he pressed his head against her hair. How shall we sleep there, she wondered, together or apart? And now she asked him aloud, “Is it still very far?”

Bessian opened the carriage door a little to put the question to the coachman, whose existence he had nearly forgotten. The man's reply was accompanied by a blast of cold air.

“We're nearby,” he said.

“Brr, it's cold,” Diana said.

Outside, the afternoon that until then had seemed never-ending, showed the first signs of fading. The panting of the horses now became louder, and Diana imagined the froth of foam at their mouths as they drew the carriage towards the unknown
kulla
where Bessian and herself were to stay the night.

Dusk had not quite fallen when the carriage halted. The couple got down. After the long clop-clapping of hooves, the protracted jolting, the world seemed mute and frozen.
The coachman pointed to one of the towers that rose up a good distance away beside the road, but Bessian and Diana, whose legs were quite stiff, wondered how they would manage to reach it.

For a while they prowled about the coach, climbing in again to take their travelling bags and suitcases, and they set out at last towards the tower—an odd procession, the couple, arm in arm, leading the way, followed by the coachman who was carrying their suitcases.

When they drew near the tower, Bessian let go his wife's arm, and with steps that she thought not very confident, went right up to the stone building. The narrow door was closed, and there was no sign of life at the loopholes, and in a flash a question came to him: Had they received their telegram?

Now Bessian halted before the
kulla
, and he looked up to call out, according to custom, “O, master of the house, are you receiving guests?” In other circumstances, Diana would have burst out laughing to see her husband playing the part of a visiting mountaineer, but now something restrained her. Perhaps it was the shadow of the tower (stone casts a heavy shadow, the old men said) that was putting a weight on her heart.

Bessian raised his head a second time, and to Diana who was looking at him, he seemed small and defenseless at the foot of that cold, thousand-year-old wall to which he was about to call out.

Midnight had long passed, but Diana, who was alternately too cold and too hot under two heavy woollen blankets, had not managed to go to sleep. They had arranged a bed for her on the second storey, right on the floor with the women and girls of the household. Bessian
had been installed on the storey above, in the guest chamber. He too, she thought, could not possibly have fallen asleep.

From beneath her came the lowing of an ox. At first she was terrified, but one of the women of the house who was lying beside her, said in a low voice, “Don't be frightened, it's Kazil.” Diana remembered that animals that chew the cud make that sort of noise when digesting, and she felt reassured. But nevertheless she still could not go to sleep.

Her mind was full of scraps of notions and opinions that came to her confusedly and with no particular emphasis, things heard long ago or a few hours before. She thought that her not being able to sleep came from that very confusion, and she tried to put those things in some kind of order. But it was a difficult task. As soon as she managed to channel one line of thought, another revolted at once, spilling out of its bed. For a while she tried to concentrate on the rest of their trip, as Bessian and she had planned it before their departure. She began to count the days they were to spend in the mountains, the houses that they were to stay in, some of which were quite unknown to her, like the
Kulla
of Orosh, where they were going to be received the next day by the mysterious lord of the
Rrafsh
. Diana tried to imagine all that, but at that very moment her mind wandered. She put her hands to her temples, as if to slow the rapid beating that seemed to come from the excitation of her brain, but in a little while she felt that the pressure seemed to make the giddy sensation worse. So she removed her hands, and for a moment she let her thoughts wander as they would. But that became intolerable. I must think of something ordinary, she said to herself. And she began to call up what they had talked about a few hours earlier in the guest chamber. I'm
going to bring it all to mind again, she thought, like the ox in the stall down there. Bessian would certainly appreciate the image. He had been very attentive to her in the guest chamber a while ago. He had explained everything to her, first asking permission of the master of the house. For in the guest chamber, or the men's chamber, as it was also called, no whispering or private conversation was allowed. All the talk there as Bessian explained to her was on men's concerns, gossip was forbidden, as were incomplete sentences or half-formed thoughts, and every remark was greeted with the words, “You have spoken well,” or “May your mouth be blessed.” “There, listen to what they are saying,” Bessian had whispered. And she found that the conversation did in fact proceed in just the way he had told her it would. Given the fact that an Albanian's home is a fortress in the literal sense of the word, Bessian told her, and since the structure of the family, according to the Code, resembles a little state, it is understandable that an Albanian's conversation will more or less reflect those conditions in its style. Then, in the course of the evening, Bessian had come back to his favorite subject, the guest and hospitality, and had explained to her that the concept of “the guest,” like every great idea, carried with it not only its sublime aspect but its absurd aspect too. “Here, this evening, we are invested with the power of the gods,” he said. “We can abandon ourselves to any kind of madness, even commit a murder—and it is the master of the house who will bear the responsibility for it, because he has welcomed us to his table. Hospitality has its duties, says the
Kanun
, but there are limits that even we, the gods, may not transgress. And do you know what those limits are? If, as I have said, everything is possible for us, there is one thing that is forbidden, and that is to lift the lid of the
pot on the fire.” Diana could hardly keep from laughing. “But that's ridiculous,” she muttered. “Perhaps,” he said, “But it's true. If I were to do that tonight, the master of the house would rise at once, go to the window, and with a terrible cry, proclaim to the village that his table had been insulted by a guest. And at that very moment the guest becomes a deadly enemy.” “But why?” Diana asked. “Why must it be that way?” Bessian shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know,” he said. “I don't know how to explain it. Perhaps it's in the logic of things that every great idea has a flaw that does not diminish it but brings it more within our reach.” While he spoke, she looked about surreptitiously, and several times she was on the point of saying, “Yes, it's true, these things have a certain grandeur, but might there not be a little more cleanliness here? After all, if a woman can be compared with a mountain nymph, she must have a
salle de bain
.” But Diana had said nothing, not at all because she did not have the courage, but so as not to lose the thread of her thought. To tell the truth, this was one of the few cases in which she had not told him just what she was thinking. Usually, she let him know whatever thoughts happened to come to her, and indeed he never took it amiss if she let slip a word that might pain him, because when all was said and done that was the price one paid for sincerity.

Diana turned the other way on her bed, perhaps for the hundredth time. Her thoughts had begun to get mixed up in her mind while she and Bessian were still in the guest room. Despite her efforts to listen with attention to everything that was said, in that room her mind had started leaping from bough to bough. Now, as she listened to the noises of the cattle below (she smiled to herself once again) she began to feel the fearful approach of sleep put to flight
at once by the creaking of a floorboard or by a sudden cramp. At one point she groaned, “Why did you bring me here?” and was surprised by her own cry, because she was still awake enough to hear her voice but she could not make out the words. And now sleep spread before her imagination, looking like the wilderness that they had travelled through, strewn everywhere with pots whose covers must never be removed, and then she performed the forbidden act, reaching out her hand towards them—which was causing all that plaintive creaking.

This is torture, she thought, and she opened her eyes. Before her, on the dark wall, she could see a patch of dim light. For a long moment, as if spellbound, she stared at the greyish patch. Where had it been, why hadn't she noticed it sooner? Outdoors, as it seemed, day was breaking. Diana could not take her eyes from that narrow window. In the depressing darkness of the room, that shred of dawn was like a message of salvation. Diana felt its soothing effect freeing her swiftly from her terrors. Many mornings must have been condensed in that bit of grey light; if not it could never have been so alert, so tranquil, and so indifferent to the terrors of the night. Under its influence, Diana fell asleep quickly.

The carriage was travelling again over a mountain road. The day was grey, and the dull horizon closed down upon the distant heights. The men who had escorted Diana and Bessian had turned back, and the two were alone again, uncrowned guests, showing signs of fatigue from the past night, seated on the velvet-covered bench.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked her.

“Not much. Just towards morning.”

“Me too. I scarcely closed my eyes.”

“I thought as much.”

Bessian took her hand and held it. It was the first time since their marriage that they had slept apart. He glanced at her profile out of the corner of his eye. She seemed pale to him. He wanted to kiss her, but something that he did not understand held him back.

For a while he kept his eyes on the small carriage window, and then, without turning his head, he looked furtively at his wife once again. Her pale face seemed cold to him. Her hand lay inertly in his. He asked her, “What's the matter?” but in fact no word came out. A faint alarm sounded somewhere deep within him.

Perhaps it was not really coldness? It was rather a certain detachment, or the first stage of a kind of estrangement from him.

The carriage rolled along, shaking more or less rhythmically, and he told himself that perhaps it was neither one nor the other. No, certainly not, he thought, neither one nor the other. It was something more simple: taking up the proper distance, that ability to slough one's skin and become a far-off star which every human being has, and was really one of the reasons for her withdrawing. That was what had been emphasized this morning in Diana's case, and what had particularly struck him, accustomed as he was to feeling her very close to him and very understanding.