The General of the Dead Army

by Ismail Kadare

  They ate lunch in the vehicles, then went to have coffee in the co-operative club. The room was very smoky and there were almost no tables to be had. A little radio was shrieking its head off, the volume turned full up. The villagers were all chattering at the tops of their voices. It was easy to see, from their sun-bleached hair and their creased skins, that they were plain-dwellers. Also, the timbre of their voices was different from that of the mountain people - gentler, more melodious.

  As he sipped his coffee, the general let his eyes wander round the walls, trying to read the slogans blazoned there in bright red print. All he could make out were the words “imperialism”, “revisionism”, “plenum”, and the name Enver Hoxha at the bottom of a brief quotation.

  After a short while, the expert rejoined them in the club. He was accompanied by a young man wearing a very wide-ribbed corduroy jacket. Both men came over to the table where the general was sitting and the expert did the introductions.

  The young man fixed his grey, slightly astonished eyes on the foreigner for a moment, then turned back to the expert.

  “It’s very simple,” the latter began. “This week we expect to be doing exhumations in the two military cemeteries outside your village. We have our own workmen of course, but to get the job done quicker we should appreciate some help from you as well, if it’s possible.”

  The young man paused for a moment in what appeared to be embarrassment before replying:

  “The fact is our men are rather busy just at the moment. It’s right in the middle of ploughing for one thing, and also our tobacco and cotton aren’t doing too well this year. And apart from that … “

  “But it would only be for a few days,” the expert broke in. “And of course all the co-operative workmen we use will be properly paid. These people” (and the expert indicated the general and the priest with his eyes) “are prepared to pay thirty new leks for every grave opened and fifty for each opened grave that proves to contain one of their men.”

  “We pay well.” The general emphasized the point.

  “It’s not a question of that,” the head of the co-operative said. “I’m wondering whether this kind of work is authorized by the government…. I mean, if…”

  “Oh, you can set your mind at rest on that score,” the expert interrupted him again. “I have a permit from the Presidency offices. Take a look.”

  The young man read the document held out to him, then thought for a moment.

  “As far as I’m concerned, I can let you have ten men for three or four days.”

  The general thanked the young man and the visitors rose to go.

  No one in the village had even heard of the existence of the two Blue Battalion soldiers who had been killed and buried in the area.

  The general spent over an hour with the Albanian expert trying to work out, with the help of the information on the map, the precise location of the graves. Finally they succeeded. The spot turned out to be inside the co-operative’s calfshed. Accompanied by a group from the co-operative, they made their way there, and having cleared the animals away from the presumed burial areas they began digging. The calves gazed at the intruders with their beautiful, tranquil eyes, and the pleasant smell of hay hung in the shed.

  Before nightfall the remains of the pilot and the two soldiers had been recovered. Those of the pilot had been found without difficulty, but before unearthing those of the two soldiers they had been obliged to open up trench after trench, and when the general finally departed the floor of the calf shed looked as though it had been under heavy shellfire.

  The workmen filled in the trenches without hurrying; they were going to sleep in the village. The general, the priest, and the expert, however, had decided to spend the night in a small town about thirty kilometres away.

  It was already dark when they set out. Their car started off slowly, avoiding the ruts, its headlights sometimes lighting up the poplars lining the road, sometimes a cart coming in from the field or a farmyard with its fence of tall reeds.

  “Stop!” the priest cried suddenly, just as they were driving back past the part of the cemetery where their own soldiers were buried.

  The driver braked.

  “What’s up?” asked the expert.

  The priest pointed out to the general an inscription on the little wall bounding the cemetery.

  As soon as the car was stationary he got out. The general followed, slamming the car door violently behind him. The expert also climbed out.

  “What is the meaning of that?” the general cried, pointing at the low wall.

  Scrawled in charcoal, in big, badly formed capitals, were the words: Such is the fate of our enemies!

  The expert shrugged.

  “It was done this afternoon,” he said. “There was nothing there this morning.”

  “We are aware of that,” the general said. “What we should like to know is what the purpose of your government is in inciting its people to shameful provocations of this kind.”

  “I can’t see anything shameful in it,” the expert said calmly.

  The priest had pulled out his notebook, apparently in order to copy down the words written on the wall.

  “Nothing shameful?” the general exploded. “Words like that scrawled on the wall around our dead! I shall report the matter. It is a serious provocation, a contemptible insult.”

  The expert turned back angrily to face him.

  “Twenty years ago you scrawled your Fascist slogans on our comrades’ chests before you hanged them, and now you pretend to be appalled by a few simple words like that, probably put there by a schoolchild.”

  “We are not talking about what happened twenty years ago,” the general interrupted him.

  “It still applies, nevertheless.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with what happened twenty years ago!”

  “You are always talking about the Greeks and the Trojans. Why shouldn’t we talk about what happened twenty years ago?”

  “Talk like this will get us nowhere,” the general concluded. “This is not the place for it”

  All three walked quickly back to the car. The doors slammed furiously behind them, one after another, like guns firing, and the driver set off again. But in less than five minutes they were forced to stop again.

  Outside the village, just over a wooden bridge, the road was blocked by a cart that had just shed a wheel. Two peasants were at work on it.

  Without breaking off his struggle to get the wheel back on, the villager asked the expert:

  “Where are you from?”

  The expert told him.

  “This morning we were told why you’re here,” the man said. “All the women in the village are talking about nothing else. They started the moment they saw your car and lorry driving in.”

  “Push, can’t you, damn it!” the other peasant grunted as he strained on his side to get the wheel back on.

  “They said you’re going to get all the foreign soldiers up out of their graves and take them back to their own country,” the first peasant went on unperturbed. “And that you’re going to dig up all the ballistes1 along with them, and take them away too, into a foreign country beyond the sunset. Is that true?” The expert began to laugh.

  “That’s the story they’re telling,” the peasant persisted. “So that even now they’re dead they’ll still be with the enemy, just the same as when they were alive. Collaborators yesterday, collaborators today. That’s what they’re saying in the village.” The expert laughed again.

  “Well, it’s not true,” he told the man. “No one is going to bother with the dead ballistes.”

  “Hey, push, will you, I say!” the other peasant shouted again.

  The wheel wouldn’t stay on. There were dogs barking in the distance. Someone was approaching from the fields carrying a lantern. The light from it quivered, as though it was afraid.

  “One of your wheels playing up then?” the new arrival asked, then lifted his lantern to gaze with astonishment at
the strangers and their car.

  After standing there for a further moment observing them, the man in the cowsheds wished them a good night and moved on. The light from his lantern threw pale patches onto the haystacks standing in a silent row along the edge of the road. The dogs were still barking.

  “Do you always do this kind of work?” the peasant asked the expert.

  The expert nodded.

  “Yes, I’ve been doing it for quite a while now,” he said a moment later.

  The peasant gave a deep sigh.

  “Not a very happy job to be doing.”

  The driver began whistling a recent popular song. “Come on! One and two and push!” The wheel was back on at last.

  “Good night!” The cry had come from a group of villagers returning across the darkening plain, hoes over their shoulders.

  “Goodnight!”

  At last the cart was pulled clear of the road and the car continued on its way towards the main road ahead.

  The October night had now descended over the plain. The moon, having given up its vain attempts to break through, was pouring its brightness down into the spongy layers of cloud and mist, which now seemed to have become saturated with its pale light and were slowly, gently, evenly letting it drift down onto the horizon and the vast open plain. The sky above them had acquired a fecund glow, and the horizon, the plain, the road, all seemed to be covered with pools of milky light.

  There were those autumn nights when the sky was possessed by an aspect of strange brightness, wholly steeped in the indifferent, haunting light of the moon. And lying on the ground, on our backs, every one of us must surely have said to himself: “My God! What a skyl”

  1 Albanian nationalists, sometimes accused of collaborating with the occupying Italian and German forces.

  6

  THE CAR DREW UP OUTSIDE the Albtourist Hotel. In the rain-soaked streets, in front of the neon-lit shop windows, the occasional passer-by was still to be seen. But the cold night wind was sharp as a knife flaying your face, and the travellers hurried into the shelter of the hotel lobby. There were plenty of rooms available because the tourist season was over.

  The general went over to the window and pulled back the curtains. Across the plain the same troubling brightness was seeping down from the moon. He closed the curtains again and lit a cigarette.

  The priest knocked at the door.

  “The lieutenant-general we met two weeks ago up in the mountains is downstairs, in the restaurant,” he said.

  The expert, who was waiting for them in the bar, had the same news: “I can only assume that they have some exhumations to do in the town.”

  Two weeks before, they had been driving along a road running beneath the flank of a vast plateau when the general, sitting silent in his corner and fitfully dozing, suddenly noticed something very odd.

  Up on the mountainside a group of what looked, from their blue overalls, like municipal roadworkers were busy digging holes in four or five separate spots. Further on, in the road stood a car with a canvas-covered lorry parked behind it. The two vehicles were identical with their own. A man in uniform, tightly belted into his raincoat, was standing beside the green car. Another man, dressed in black, was standing with his back to the road.

  What is this mirage? the general asked himself, his mind still half asleep. Am I dreaming? He felt it must be himself, the priest, and their own workmen he was looking out at. He screwed up his eyes and lifted his arm to wipe away the mist obscuring the glass. It wasn’t a mirage.

  “Just take a look over there,” he said quietly to the priest. And the latter, turning in the direction indicated, made a gesture of surprise.

  “Would you stop here, please,” the general said to the driver.

  The man brought the car to a halt The general wound down the window on his side and pointed over to the right.

  “Take a look at those men up there,” he said to the expert.

  The man turned his head and screwed up his eyes.

  “Who are they? What are they up to?” asked the general.

  “Evidently just what we’re doing: digging.”

  “How is that possible? They have no right to excavate without informing us.”

  “It is their own soldiers they are looking for,” the expert said.

  “Heavens! Anyone would think I’m having halluciations.”

  “It is over a year since our government signed the contract with theirs, but their preparations took them longer than they expected and they did not begin work until this past summer.”

  “Ah! Now I understand. Is he a general too?”

  “Yes, a lieutenant-general. The other man is the mayor of one of their cities.”

  The general smiled and said:

  “All we need now is a general with a hodja in tow.”

  “There would be nothing very surprising in that. The Turks may well come to fetch their dead back one day.”

  While this exchange was taking place between the general and the expert, the two strangers standing on the side of the road had turned around and were looking towards the newcomers with curiosity.

  “Let’s get out,” the general said, opening his door. “They are colleagues of ours. It might be as well to get to know them.”

  “What for?” the priest said.

  “We can pool our experience, since we’re all in the same profession,” the general said with a laugh.

  As he walked closer he noticed that the other general had had his right arm amputated. In his remaining hand - the left one - he was holding a fat black pipe. The civilian was a corpulent, bald man.

  The introductions over, they conversed for a while in bad English while the two lorry drivers lent each other a hand on some small matter.

  Ten minutes later, having taken leave of their new acquaintances, the general and the priest set off again.

  And this was the first time they had run into them again since that day.

  “There they are,” the general said as he and the priest entered the restaurant.

  They acknowledged one another with nods of the head.

  The newcomers sat down and ate in their turn, mostly in silence. The expert and the priest did exchange a few words now and then, but the general, a hint of a scowl on his face, seemed put out about something. As soon as they had finished eating the expert went up to his room.

  The general and the priest left the restaurant and went out into the lounge where the other general and the mayor were sitting smoking.

  “We sit here like this every evening,” the mayor said. “We’ve been in this town a good week now, and this is how we’ve spent all our evenings. Where is one to go? They tell us that the place is very pleasant in summer, that there are various places of entertainment open; but at this time of year there are no foreign tourists, and also there’s this icy wind blowing off the river day and night.”

  “We could have come here before,” the one-armed general said, “but the football championship was still going on, and they wouldn’t give us permission to excavate inside the stadium boundary until all the championship matches were over.”

  “Can you imagine a more bizarre obstacle to have put in your way?” the mayor asked.

  “Oh, it was reasonable enough really,” the other put in. “I know we could perhaps have begun by digging around the edges, not touching the actual field; but it wouldn’t have been very pleasant.

  Imagine listening to all those spectators cheering their heads off at every goal while we were hunting for bones.”

  “And what about the spectators?” the general said. “I don’t suppose they would have enjoyed the sight of graves gaping everywhere during the match.”

  “Perhaps not,” said the one-armed general, “but I wouldn’t risk my hand in the fire on it.”

  The general’s eyes dropped to the hand, the remaining hand, with which the other was holding his pipe. Then to the empty coat sleeve tucked into the right pocket.

  Odd expression, he thoug
ht. And then: The arm must have been amputated at the elbow by the look of it.

  “I don’t understand how they were allowed to build a football stadium on top of a military cemetery,” the priest said. “It is contrary to all the international agreements. You ought to have put in a protest.”

  “We have,” the lieutenant-general told him, “but apparently our men’s bodies weren’t buried by the locals but by our own forces. And what’s more the job was done during the night. So no one knew anything about it.”

  “I must say, however, that I don’t really believe that explanation,” the mayor put in.

  “It doesn’t exactly convince me either,” the lieutenant-general said, “but again, I wouldn’t risk my hand in the fire over it.”

  The general stared at the empty sleeve again.

  “We have been fortunate. We have never encountered anything of that kind,” he said.

  “Where are you excavating at the moment?” the mayor asked.

  The general told him the name of the village. “You have extremely accurate lists at your disposal, I believe. Whereas ours are based solely on verbal testimony.”

  “You might say that we are hunting in the dark,” the mayor put in.

  “Difficult for you.”

  “Extremely,” the lieutenant-general said. “We shall probably find no more than a few hundred or so sets of remains. And even then we shan’t be able to identify most of them.”

  “Identification must indeed be a problem without accurate lists.”

  “You, I assume, have full details as to the height and dentition of each of your bodies?”

  “Yes,” the priest said.

  “And moreover all your soldiers wore a medallion, isn’t that so?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “Whereas our lists do not even give the heights of the dead we are looking for, and that scarcely facilitates our task.”