The File on H. (10 page)

“Do we have mice?” Max suddenly asked aloud, raising his eyes to the ceiling.

Bill, who was unfolding a map of the Balkans, stopped and looked up as well

“I don't think so.”

He looked at the map, on which the mountain ranges looked like horses' ribs strewn in disarray on the flagstones of a slaughterhouse. The lettering over them read: “Northern Albania," "Rrafsh,” “Kosovo,” “Old Serbia.”

For more than a thousand years, Albanians and Slavs had been in ceaseless conflict in this area. They had quarreled over everything — over land, over boundaries, over pastures and watering holes — and it would have been entirely unsurprising had they also disputed the ownership of local rainbows. And as if that were not enough, they also squabbled over the ancient epics, which existed, just to make things completely intractable, in both languages, Albanian and Serbo-Croatian. Each of the two peoples asserted that it had created the epic, leaving the other nation the choice of being considered either a thief or a mere imitator.

“Did it ever occur to you that whether we like it or not, our work on Homer plunges us into this conflict?” Bill said without raising his eyes from the map.

“Do you think so?”

“It's virtually inevitable. What we are trying to prove is that the material from which Albanian epic poetry is made is Homeric in origin; that would not be possible if the Albanians had not been here since classical times; and what arouses the jealousy and anger of the Serbs is precisely the question of historical precedence in the occupation of the Balkan peninsula,"

“I see Jealousy …,” Max muttered.

The rows he had had with his wife in New York just before leaving had been utterly depressing. “Buzz off, the two of you, go wherever you want with your mistress. Clear out, I said! Run off with that skirt-chaser Bill Norton! Only don't try to pull the wool over my eyes with all that Homeric nonsense! Don't you realize just how ridiculous you are?”

“Are you listening?” Bill asked,

“Sure, sure … You were saying something about jealousy….”

“Right. The Serbs just can't accept that the Albanians were here before they were. Throughout the Balkans, local nationalisms like this give rise to absurd and morbid passions, but since this one relates to the Kosovo question, it also has a concrete political implication.”

Bill, still poring over the map, looked worried.

“A thousand-year war,” he said dreamily. “That's an awfully long time, isn't it?”

“Too long. But it's war that gives birth to epic poetry,” said Max, turning toward the trunks. “It's bloodthirsty stuff.”

For a moment they stared at the cold and gleaming metal cases. The task they had set themselves was to pack into those trunks the entirety of the epic poetry spread around the high plateau of the Rrafsh.

“The Germans called this a racial war.' Max said. “They even made it plain they considered the Albanians the superior race.”

“I grant you we're dealing with a nasty conflict/” Bill concurred. “But when I hear people talk of race, and especially of superior and inferior races, well, I just blow up. To me that stinks of Nazism.“

“All the same, it's a very fashionable concept these days.”

They fell silent.

“The others also wanted to take their epic away from them,” said Bill finally, turning from his map.

“Of course,' said Max. “When you take over a whole house, you aren't squeamish about stealing all the treasures it contains.”

“Epic poetry is murderous stuff!” Bill exclaimed, and he stared again at the trunks as if the epic itself were inside, about to brim over at any minute.

“It's chilly,”said Max, rubbing his hands.

He put down his notes and wrapped himself in the big blanket. Then Bill did the same. They were shivering, and gradually they yielded to a feeling of numbness.

Bill propped his head on the pillow and tried to imagine the Slavs' first incursion into the Balkans, Albanian epics occasionally mentioned it, alluding to the countless waves of men from the north and northeast, and the slow retreat before them, mile by mile, of the longer-standing populations of the peninsula. It seemed the Slav tide would never stop; unlike the Roman invasions the conquest was achieved without armies, flags, or treaties. It must have been an unending straggle of women and children moving forward to the muddled sounds of yelling and squalling, a cohort obeying no orders, leaving no milestones or monuments, more like a natural disaster than a military invasion. That was the shock that disturbed the Balkans most, he figured, especially the Albanians of yore. All of a sudden they were in the midst of a Slavic sea: a gray, unending, anonymous Eurasian mass that could easily destroy all the treasures of a land where art had flourished more than anywhere else on earth. So what had to happen happened: the people who had lived here for centuries took up arms and bloodied the shores of the ocean. And the waves were held back at the very shores of Kosovo.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” said Max.

It was Shtjefen, with an armful of firewood.

“Would you like me to light a fire?” he asked. “The cold is really coming on.”

“Oh, thank you! We were chatting about the enmity between Serbs and Albanians. Are things as bad as people say?”

“They are probably even worse than you think,” Shtjefen said as he laid the logs on the hearth. “Do you know what an Albanian poet wrote? 'We were born to mutual anger...'”

“A poet wrote that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“‘We were born to mutual anger,'“ Bill repeated. “There's that word
anger
, or
resentment
, again, just like at the beginning of the
Iliad
. …

The memory of the Albanian diplomat in Washington flashed across their minds.

“Are there any mice here?” Max asked distractedly. “That's not the first time it seemed to me that.

“We disinfested the inn especially for you, sir.”

The fire blazed up quickly. Shtjefen left and the two scholars continued talking, pacing up and down the room or standing with their backs to the fireplace, their hands spread out to catch the warmth.

They spent the whole afternoon sorting out their notes and file cards. Outside,, the light was failing by the minute, and there came a time when their conversation flagged. On this late winter's afternoon, they felt completely cut off, swaddled in silence, in a faraway inn. Would every day be the same?

Max was the first to think how to shake off the encroaching glooms he lit the oil lamp, whose beam kept at bay the somber dusk that had now covered the face of the world outside like a death mask.

T
HE FIRST RHAPSODE
put in at the Buffalo Inn four days laten Windswept rain rattling the shutters had been getting on the Irishmen's nerves.,When Shtjefen appeared in the doorway, they realized from the expression on his face that their keenest wish had been granted.

"He's downstairs,” the innkeeper whispered, as if imparting a secret.

The rhapsode was on his way to a different part of the country on personal business; he would come back by the same route in a fortnight; if Shtjefen had understood the scholars correctly, this was exactly the kind of circumstance they were seeking in order to record twice over the singing of the same bard.

“Lahuta players are not easygoing people,” Shtjefen continued," and it wasn't simple to persuade this one to stay. ‘It's dreadful weather,' I told him, 'and it's getting late. Believe me, I have no stake in this, and of course you'll get free lodging. five got only one request to make …,' and that's when I told him about you two.“

In the common quarters on the ground floor, there sat a handful of highlanders, all soaked to the skin. Before making out which of them was the rhapsode, the scholars noticed the
labuta
propped against the wall Then Shtjefen put his hand on the shoulder of one of the men (just at the spot where the cut-off ribbons were sewn to his cloak), and the man turned around. They reached agreement on the spot. The rhapsode looked hard at one of the foreigners for a long moment, seemingly to remove a doubt from his mind. The Irishmen had rarely seen eyes so fair or so piercing, with what seemed like a crack running through them, as if they were staring through a broken mirror. The innkeeper kept talking to the rhapsode, who did not appear to be listening, but then he lowered his head sharply, a gesture signifying yes. In accordance with ancient custom, he would not accept any reward. It was understood only that he would not pay for his night at the inn.

Getting the tape recorder downstairs was a troublesome business, just as getting it up to the room in the first place had been. The highlanders watching from the ground floor were intrigued.

Night had fallen, and Shtjefen lit the tall oil lamp, the one used for important occasions. There was a special, party atmosphere at the inn this evening. Only the rhapsode, who was aware of being the hero of the night, stood aside, looking calmly at the tape recorder. Bill kept glancing at him, trying to imagine what feelings this ultramodern device aroused in the rhapsode: bewilderment? apprehension? guilt about betraying his predecessors, the singers of yore? In the end, he concluded that the rhapsode's calm masked inner turmoil. It would be the first time that the sound of his voice and of his
labuta
would not be lost to the air. as sounds had always been, but instead would be collected inside this metal box, like rainwater in a cistern or like … He suddenly feared that the rhapsode might change his mind.

Bill was reassured by the sight of the company, sit. ting in a semicircle, mostly on the floor. The ritual had already begun, and nothing and nobody would halt it now.

At last the rhapsode took up his
labuta
. It made a monotonous sound that seemed to draw the listener on into some all-embracing dream. Bill and Max glanced at each other. The rhapsode began to sing, in a voice quite unlike his speaking voice. It was unnatural, cold, unwavering, full of an anguish that seemed to come from another world. It made Bill's spine tingle. He tried to follow the meaning of the words, but the monotonous delivery of the singer made that impossible. It felt as if he were being emptied from inside, as if his guts were being drawn out of him, as if his inner being were slowly being wound along a woolen thread turning on a distaff. The rhapsode's voice had the ability to hollow you out. If he went on much longer, everyone here was going to dissolve on the spot. But the
labuta
stopped in time.

In the sudden silence, the tape machine's soft purring could be heard, and it was Max who reached out a hand to switch it off. Then the crowd came back to life, as if emerging from a trance. Congratulations came from every side. Bill and Max chimed in with their thank-yous in Albanian, but they sounded weak indeed alongside the ritual formulations the highlanders lavished on the rhapsode.

Before the rhapsode began his second song, Max checked the quality of the recording. When the machine reproduced the rhapsode's voice a little more resonant that it had seemed on first hearings everyone was struck dumb. The man was there, with his mouth shut and his
lahuta
at rest' yet you could hear the sound of his voice and of his instrument. There was something quite horrifying about this disconnection this removal of a man from the attributes that gave him his distinct and independent existence.

They all huddled around the machine and gaped at the two reels turning like a pair of grinding wheels. Their eyes were full of questions they did not dare to put into words. So the voice was now stored inside the box, but in what form?

After a short interval the rhapsode sang a second ballad.

“Won't the two songs get muddled inside there?" one of the traveling highlanders asked in the end pointing to the machine.

Bill tried not to laugh aloud.

It was late at night before they switched off the tape recorder and thanked the rhapsode.

“In a fortnight"' Shtjefen told him, “when you pass by here again, you'll sing the same songs. As I told you that's what interests these gentlemen. They want to make comparisons and I'm not sure what else. Besides you gave me your word as a man, and you'll keep it.”

“Fear not," said the singer in a somber tone.

“So the voice can be kept in there for a fortnight?” asked one young Highlander. “It doesn't rust?”

“Not a bit,” Bill replied, “It can stay in there for months, even years.”

The
labuta
player was staring hard at the case of the recorder. From the glow in the man's eyes, Bill reckoned that there was something troubling him. What if he changes his mind? Bill wondered anxiously. What if he has found it a bad omen to leave his voice locked and trapped in a box?

The two foreigners bade good night to all and went back up to their room. Shtjefen, for his part, put out the oil lamp and left the large room in darkness.

Bill felt as if the troubled and fitful sleep of the ground-floor guests had followed the two of them upstairs. Tomorrow, he thought — as if he needed to fasten his mind on something clearer and more logical in order to dispel a profound sense of fear caused by he knew not what — tomorrow we'll have our work cut out! He wrapped himself in his blanket and gave a deep sigh.

Bill woke several times in the night, thinking it was dawn, but each time sunrise seemed to be ever further off. When finally he woke up properly, it was quite late.

Going downstairs, the Irishmen discovered with surprise that the main quarters of the inn were entirely deserted.

“They've gone,” Shtjefen said when he noticed their amazement. “Highland folk get up very early.” Through the open door you could see the dark, rain-heavy sky.

"And just think." the innkeeper continued, “they're traveling in that weather!”

The clack of Martin's clogs could be heard, then the lad himself appeared at the back door, a bucket of water in each hand.