Three Arched Bridge (12 page)

S
PRING WAS EXCEPTIONALLY CLEAR
. The Ujana e Keqe brimmed with melted snow, Though full and renewed, the river mounted no attack on the bridge. It seemed not to notice it anymore. It foamed and roared around the stone piers and under the feet of the dead, but as it flowed on it spread out again, as if pacified by the sight of the victim. A wicked, mocking glint remained only in the cold crests of the waves.

All spring and at the beginning of summer, work continued busily. The third arch was almost finished, and work began on the right-hand approach arch,

Throughout its length the bridge echoed to the sounds of masons' hammers, chisels, picks, and the creaking of the carts. Amid the constant din of the building work and the roaring of the river, Murrash Zenebisha stood, coated as ever with plaster, solitary, white, and alien. Whether the flesh of his face had decayed under his plaster mask, or whether it had hardened like mortar, nobody could tell

His family came as always, but gradually reduced the length of their visits. Some days after his immurement, stunned by everything that had happened, they remembered that they had not even managed to weep for him according to custom. They tried to do so later, but it was impossible. Their laments stuck in their throats, and the words that should have accompanied their weeping somehow would not come. Then they tried hiring professional mourners, but these women too, although practiced in weeping under all kinds of circumstances, could not mourn, try as they might. He does not want to be wept for, his parents said*

Some time had passed since his death, and at times it seemed a source of joy to his family that they would have his living form in front of their eyes, but sometimes this seemed the worst curse of all Now they no longer came together, His wife would come alone with her baby in her arms and, when she saw the others approaching, would leave, People said that they had quietly begun to quarrel over sharing the compensation,

The investigators also came less frequently. It seems that the count had other worries and would have liked to close the inquiry. However, this did not prevent the fame of Murrash Zenebisha from spreading farther every day* It was said that he had become the conversational topic of the day in large towns, and that the grand ladies of Dürres asked each other about him, as about the other novelties of the season.

Many people set off from distant parts with the sole object of seeing him. Sometimes they -came with their wives, or even made the journey a second time. This was no doubt why the Inn of the Two Roberts had recently doubled its business.

T
HE WEATHER DETERIORATED
. The count, together with his family, returned from the mountain lodge where he had spent the summer. At the bridge, the left-hand approach arch was being finished.

One day at the beginning of September the count's daughter came to see the immured victim. I had not seen her for some time. She had grown and was now a fine girl. I thought she would not be able to bear the sight of the dead man, but she endured it. As she left the sandbank, thin and somewhat woebegone, people turned their heads after her. They knew that the powerful Turkish pasha, whom ill fortune had recently made our neighbor, had quarreled with our liege lord because of this dainty girl.

Perhaps because she had spent her girlhood in such troubled times as recent seasons had been, no tales had been woven around her, such as those about knights crossing seven mountain ranges to meet a girl in secret, and the like, which are usually told about young countesses and the daughters of nobles in general. In place of such tales of love, there was only an alarming sobriquet attached to her, which, I do not know why, spread everywhere, They called her “the Turk's bride.” I often racked my brains to explain such an irrational nickname. It was quite meaningless, because nothing like that had happened. It was the opposite of the truth, but the nickname clung to her. It could not conceivably have been created out of goodwill, or even malice, and so perhaps resembled a truth and a lie at the same time. The girl did not go to the Turks as a bride, but the nickname remained, as if it were unimportant whether the wedding took place or not, and the main thing was the proposal and not its acceptance. And so she was called “the Turk's bride” simply because the Turks had asked for her, had cast their eyes this far, and had brandished from a distance that black veil with which they cover their women.

The nickname made my flesh creep. Why was it still used, and why did it not perish the moment the Turk's proposal was rejected? What was this perpetual danger, this offer of marriage, that still floated on the wind? Sometimes I told myself that it was a chance nickname, more ridiculous than alarming, and not worth becoming upset about, but it was not long before my suspicions were aroused again. Did it all not extend beyond the fate of the noble young lady? Did popular imagination in some obscure, utterly vague way perhaps foresee a generally evil destiny for the girls of Arberia? This horrible nickname could not have arisen for nothing, still less have stuck to her like a burr.

I said these things to myself, and thought: If only that young girl knew what I was thinking as she walks along the bank with her nurse, her slight figure almost translucent!

H
ASTE WAS EVIDENT EVERYWHERE:
in the works on the Ujana, in the pace of the heralds, and even in the flight of the storks, which, having pecked at the beams of the bridge for the last time, set off on their distant migrations that no rivers or bridges obstructed.

Even the news coming from the Orikum base was gathered in haste and was contradictory. It was said that the aged Komneni was dead but that his death was being kept secret because of the situation at Orikum. All kinds of other things were whispered. It was said that the great Turkish sultan had withdrawn into the interior of Asia to meditate in complete solitude about the general affairs of the world, and that this was the reason why the Turks seemed to have fallen asleep.

There was no sign of them. But one
day
, at the end of the week, another dervish was seen, wandering across the cold plain' a solitary figure amid the winds. Like all itinerant dervishes, he was barefoot and dust-covered, and perhaps for this reason seemed to have ash-colored rags instead of hair' and hair instead of rags. He paused at the first arch of the bridge, fell on his face in front of the victim, and intoned an Islamic prayer in a deep and mournful voice. Then he disappeared again, I do not know where, across the open plain,

A
FEW DAYS
before the final work on the bridge, one of the master-in-chief's two assistants, the fat one, fell ill with a rare and frightening disease: all the hairs on his body fell out, They shut him in a hut and tried in every possible way to keep his sickness secret, but there was no way it could be concealed. People gossiped about it all day, some with pity, some with fear, but most with mockery. Wolves molt in summer, they said, just like him. Mad Gjelosh wandered all day around the hut, putting his eye to cracks in the wall to see what he could. Then he emerged from the other side, nodding his head as if in understanding, Old Ajkuna said that this was only the beginning of God's punishment. Everybody who has taken part in this cursed business will lose first his hair, she said, then his eyes, nose, and ears, and in the end the flesh will fall from his bones piece by piece.

Meanwhile the workmen, always in haste, scrambled day and night among the mesh of scaffolding, scurrying everywhere like beetles, with pails, whetstones, and stone slabs in their hands, It seemed that they were cladding the sides because^ in contrast to the stones of the piers and arches, this was soft limestone' easy to smooth and therefore called female stone* It was said that in some buildings in which it had been used long ago it oozed a white juice resembling milk, as if it were a woman's breast.

A
T DAWN ON THE MORNING
of the first Sunday of the month of St. Dimiter, the bridge over the Ujana e

Keqe' which had in these two years brought us more troubles than the river itself had brought stones and tree stumps, stood complete.

Everyone knew that it was almost finished, but its appearance on that morning was quite amazing. This was because the day before much of it had still been half hidden behind the confusion of planks, and they had only begun removing the scaffoldings as if peeling the husk from a corn cob, just before dusk. They had perhaps planned it this way, so that at the dawn of day it would stand clear, as if emerging from the womb of the gorge.

The hammers had echoed all night' dislodging the wooden wedges that fell crashing down. In their sleep, people thought they heard thunderclaps^ turned heavily in their beds, and cursed or were afraid. There were many who thought that the laborers, repenting or following an order from who knows where, were demolishing what they had built.

In the morning they were right not to believe their eyes. Under the clumsy light of day' between the turbid waters and the gloomy sky, it soared powerfully from one bank, sudden, dazzling, like a voicelike scream, and hung in suspense directly over the watery gulf as if about to launch itself in flight. But as soon as it reached midway over the river, its trajectory fell, like a dream of flying, and it gently bent its back until its span touched the opposite bank and froze there. It was lovely as a vision. The veins of the stone seemed both to absorb and emit light, like the pores of a living body. Thrust between the enmity of water and earth, it now seemed to be striving to strike some accord between the separate elements of its surroundings. The frothing wave crests seemed to soften toward it, as did the wild pomegranate bushes on the opposite hill, and two small clouds on the horizon.

They all strove to make room for it in their midst. Here is its shape: Three arches firing and the cross t that marked the place of sacrifice.

People stood in awe on both sides of the Ujana and gaped at it openmouthed, as if it were a thing of wicked beauty. Nevertheless nobody cursed it. Not even old Ajkuna, who came at midday, could curse it. The stone has taken my mouth away, she seemed to say as she departed. In their total absorption in the spectacle, nobody paid the least attention to the throng of laborers preparing to leave. It was incredible that this mass of men and equipment, this pig run, this gang of vagrants that had tried the patience of wood and stone, this filth, this pack of stammerers, liars, boozers, hunchbacks, baldheads, and murderers, could have given birth to this miracle in stone.

On one side, as if feeling themselves that they had suddenly become alien to their own creation, they gathered their paraphernalia, tools, mortar buckets,, hammers, ropes, and criminals, knives. They heaved them helter-skelter onto carts and mules, and as I watched them scurrying about for the last time, I felt impatient, wanting them to leave, I wanted to be rid of them as soon as possible, and never hear of them again*

T
HE LAST CONTINGENT
of workmen left three days later. They loaded on carts the heavy tools, great mortar barrels, and all kinds of scrap iron and wheels that creaked endlessly. They lifted the architect's sick assistant onto a covered cart, hiding him from people's view, because they said that his appearance was not for human eyes.

The deserted sandbank resembled a ruin, an eyesore with half-destroyed sheds stripped of everything of value, fragments of plank thrown anywhere, traces of mortar, piles of shattered stones, carelessly discarded broken tools, ditches, and lime pits half filled with water. The right bank of the Ujana looked disfigured forever,

Before he boarded his cart, the master-in-chief, who seemed to notice that I was watching their departure, left his people and came up to me, apparently to bid farewell He said nothing but merely drew a piece of card from his jacket, Scribbling some figures on it with a bit of lead, he began to explain to me, I do not know why, the balancing forces that held the bridge upright, My eyes opened wide, because I had not the slightest knowledge of such things,, while he went on in his broken language, thinking that he was explaining to me what the forces and opposing forces were.

Late that afternoon the last cart left, and a frightening silence descended, 1 still had in my hand the draftsman's card, covered with lines and figures, which perhaps did show the forces that kept the bridge upright and those trying to bring it down. The setting sun gleamed obliquely on the arches, which at last found a broken reflection in the waters, and at that moment the bridge resembled a meaningless dream, dreamed by the river and both riverbanks together. So alien, dropped by the river-banks into time, it looked totally solitary as it gripped in its stone limbs its only prey, Murrash Zenebisha, the man who died to allay the enmity of land and water.

W
HAT WAS THIS?
They had gone, and an unendurable silence reigned everywhere, A horrible calm, Almost as if plague had struck,

No one crossed the bridge. Not even mad Gjelosh. Chill winds blew upon it, passing in and out of its arches. And then the winds dropped, and the bridge hung in air, a stranger, superfluous. Human travelers who should have headed for it avoided the place, turning aside, back, or away, looking for the ford, calling softly to the ferryman; they were ready to swim across the river or freeze in its rapids and drown rather than set foot on the bridge. Nobody wanted to walk over the dead.

And so the first week passed and the second began. The great mass of stone waited expectantly. The empty arches seemed about to eat you. The bowed spine above waited for someone to step on it, no matter who — vagrants, women, a barbarian horde, wedding guests, or an imperial army marching two, four, twenty-four, one hundred hours without rest.

But nobody set foot on it. Sometimes it made you want to cry out: Had so much sweat, so much effort, and even … blood been expended for this bridge, never to be used for anything?