Spring Flowers, Spring Frost

by Ismail Kadare

  “A holdup at the National Bank?” Mark sounded as though he could not believe it. “Are you sure?” “Oh, yes, quite sure.”

  “A heist, a bank robbery,” he muttered, as if talking to himself. “Strange-sounding words … Our ears aren’t used to them, are they?”

  “Yes, that’s what I felt when I heard the story, too.”

  She asked him for a cigarette, and as he brought his hand nearer to light it for her, he could see she was trying hard not to smile.

  “Maybe it’s a terrible thing to say,” she said, “but when I heard that word, it seemed, like, how can I put it — it sounded really smart, like something from the West.”

  Mark burst out laughing.

  “That’s true enough! Our ears are accustomed to something quite different!”

  He could have added, Such as “sheep rustling,” “stealing a rug,” or even “damage to the socialist heritage” but all of a sudden the notion that her leaving him would be a catastrophe cut his train of thought off sharp, as with a kitchen knife.

  For a while now, ever since he had gotten it into his head once and for all that everything having to do with her was facing forward, toward the future, and everything relating to himself was turned backward, toward the past, conversations of this sort frightened him.

  He went back to the bed where she was still lying naked, and whispered into her ear:

  “And if I gave up painting, would you still…”

  He said “love me” so quietly that she only heard the last syllable, and even that was almost completely muffled.

  She almost bit her lower lip. When she had come into this studio for the first time, three years ago, a shy girl though not a virgin, she didn’t hide the fact that she had been attracted above all by Mark’s fame as a painter. She realized in due course that he wasn’t as well known as she had imagined, but she had remained no less attached to the man.

  Mark did his best to mask his newfound fear of her leaving him, since he was convinced that if she noticed it, she really would dump him on the spot. For the time being, he felt she was the only gangplank he had toward the future, and that if the plank were to break, he too would collapse in a heap.

  “I asked you a question,” he said with his mouth close to her ear, as if he were concerned to have his message travel the shortest distance possible. Now he felt surprised at having dared broach a subject that terrified him above all else.

  She kept her eyes lowered, and as Mark looked at her eyelids it struck him that, of all the parts of the human body, the tips of the eyelashes gave by far the most reliable reading of guilt.

  “Yes, of course,” she answered. “And even … maybe” (Good Lord! she too was skirting around the fatal word), “maybe even more than …”

  In any other situation her answer would have troubled him. What was this “maybe” that referred to his art? Maybe it would be better if his art ceased to exist? Maybe it would be better if it were just a mistake, a source of misunderstanding, an obstacle between them?

  At a different time, the same thought might perhaps have occurred to him, but he had in his mind’s eye the still-sharp image of the disappointment he’d felt just a moment ago when she’d said, “Don’t you want to do any work today?” So he persuaded himself that her vague answer to his question didn’t warrant his doubting her right now.

  He kept on stroking her between the legs, and she did so too, with an uncharacteristic lack of inhibition. And it was she who took the initiative, pulling him on top of her, so that Mark didn’t have time to remind her once again that it was Sunday and that the offices downstairs were closed. She launched immediately into a deep-throated groan to which he was quite unaccustomed.

  COUNTER-CHAPTER 1

  STRANGE TO SAY, no one could remember what offense the girl’s family or clan had committed. The terrible offense that could only be redeemed by her sacrifice.

  When her father had summoned her to the guest room to speak of it, she bowed her head as she waited for the sentence. It is hard, he warned her a second time, but for the second time, she replied, “Whatever it is, I shall obey, Father.” She had resolved to submit, whether it meant being shut up in a nunnery, marrying a ninety-year-old, or, worst of all, being walled up in the foundations of a new bridge.

  She had made her decision…. Even so, when she heard the actual sentence, she went as white as a sheet. What did you say, Father? I am to marry a snake? The hope of having misheard evaporated on the spot. Yes, she was indeed committed to becoming the spouse of a snake. Not of a man so named because of his treachery, his looks, or for some other reason. She would be the wife of a real, an actual snake.

  In mid-October the news of this monstrous union shook people more than the north wind. They were stunned. It’s one thing to commit something so outlandish, they said, but why make it public? Others, who knew that publication of the strange marriage was a formal part of the agreement, kept their mouths shut.

  The girl’s house echoed day and night with knocks on the door. People had all sorts of reasons for dropping in: to commiserate, to turn the knife, or just to find out more about the case…. Some came with questions: So why did you accept? So why didn’t you ask me about it first? And others with advice: Break your promise! … No, don’t break it, because there is worse…. There are even more fearsome things….

  By stages, fewer and fewer people remained in a state of shock. When all is said and done, the whole business should be treated more calmly, people said. Of course, hearing about it was enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck, but when you thought about it more carefully, it wasn’t such a dramatic affair after all. What was called a marriage with a snake could be seen as something rather different. You could take it as a commitment to keep a snake in the house. An insane commitment, of course, but did that make it so special in this crazy world of ours? Keeping a snake in one’s home was not especially unusual, in any case. The very saying, “I’ve nourished a snake in my bosom,” proved that the custom had once been quite widespread in Albania. Not to mention countries like faraway China or India, where people bring up snakes in their homes like we raise chickens. No, no, the business should not be taken in such a tragic vein. A commitment of this kind was just a kind of punishment, or a mark similar to those that Jews and convicts used to be obliged to wear; in other words, a tax or tribute that had to be paid to redeem some serious offense. An offense that might otherwise have required the sacrifice of a human life…

  What many people had called a sinister whim, or a frantic desire to crush the Other, or an example of Albanian lunacy, or a misshapen fantasy, or a compound of shame and horror, was in the end carried out. Like the publication of the engagement, the wedding ceremony was one of the necessary conditions. The marriage rites were thus celebrated in the normal manner, except that the church kept a clearly disdainful distance, and that instead of the bride going to the groom’s house, the groom was brought to his bride.

  The snake came in a wicker basket lashed to the back of a horse, with an escort of armed paranymphs led by their chief, as for a real wedding. Then the wedding verses were sung, shots were fired, and finally the paranymphs left as they came, on horseback. Night fell, and the newly wedded wife, known henceforth as “the snake’s wife,” was led to the nuptial chamber, where her spouse awaited her.

  You can imagine what sort of a night the household spent. And the horrors were not those of the immediate family alone. No one in the whole village slept a wink. Everyone waited to hear a scream of misfortune or despair. The scream of the young wife bitten by her husband. Or else the wailing of the family as it discovered its daughter dead. Or a scream of God knows what in the face of such a monstrous error.

  But the night passed without incident, and dawn when it came was just as calm. As they were sure that the new day would recompense their long wait, people allowed themselves to drop off for a bit in the small hours of the morning. To their considerable surprise they learned that curiosity, if it is
allowed to go too far, tends to become painful.

  The sun rose. Villagers flocked gingerly toward the house; then, abandoning their initial timidity, they knocked on the door. After all, they were from the same village, and had no reason to pretend they were unconcerned about what had gone on between those walls.

  When the family showed them all in with a smile, the villagers were dumbfounded, and remained speechless when, before they had expected it, the young wife appeared, looking quite resplendent. Her face and hair were still made up for her wedding; as she moved about the house, she radiated contentment.

  They could not take their eyes off her. Her face glowed gently, as if caught in the reflection of unseen mirrors, her lips formed just the beginning of a smile, and her eyes seemed bathed in dew. She was a resilient girl and had managed to hide her distress the whole summer long. Now it was not sadness but joy that she was failing to conceal.

  She had obviously lost her wits. She had put up with that abomination as best she could, but in the end she had broken like a glass. Poor thing!

  That was the first reaction that could be read in people’s eyes. But then, with furrowed brows, they worked out a different explanation: the family must have killed the snake during the night. That was why they appeared to be free of anguish.

  With that understanding in their heads, and expressing tacit approval with their eyes, the villagers left the house, feeling just as relieved as they imagined the family to be. So that was how it had turned out. Of course it was the only solution. They had thought of it often themselves but had never dared say it aloud for fear of committing a sin.

  Toward the end of the afternoon the snake’s masters reappeared in the village. They were out of breath, and had a menacing air about them.

  “The husband!” they yelled from the doorstep. “We want to see the husband!”

  The bride’s father had been expecting this visit. He asked the men in, and took them up to the newlyweds’ bedroom.

  The serpent lay there peacefully, all coiled up, at the end of the conjugal bed. The men went closer, inspected the reptile with all due care, then offered their apologies to the master of the house for having doubted him without reason. These days the world had become so evil and twisted…. Horrible suspicions had been whispered….

  “No matter, no matter,” their host replied. “There’s nothing surprising about that. Is not the world itself a doubting without end?”

  As week followed week and month followed month, the villagers’ curiosity fell off, like the yellowing leaves that fell to the ground and rotted away. The weather turned cold, the rains came, and fires were once again lit in the hearths. As they always did at the onset of winter, people kept themselves wrapped up indoors.

  In the house that the snake had entered as a bridegroom, life went on as if everything was normal. The young wife grew more beautiful by the day. Not her eyes alone, but her whole body expressed joy. Her breasts, which had been small, grew larger, and her hips swung with a new vitality. All that remained was for her to say to her lord and master: Thank you, Father sir, for having got me a husband. Though she never put it in words, her looks expressed the thought unmistakably.

  When evening came, she would stand at her mirror for a good long while arranging her hair, putting on her makeup, and then going up to the nuptial chamber. In the morning she would rise looking weary, but just as splendid as the day before.

  So that’s the way of this world, people used to say. One day you think everything is quite hopeless, and then all of a sudden you find a way to salvation.

  So we should get used to snakes? others objected. Oh, no, no, no! She can carry on if she wants, but not us, never!

  The womenfolk got even more excited when they realized that the young bride could even go to church or to a dance with her husband, like any other married woman.

  But wait a minute, hold your horses, you women! the men would protest. Don’t take things so dramatically! Haven’t you ever seen a groom that turned out to be a hunchback? Or a bride who turns out to be blind when the veil is lifted? This one, at least, didn’t hide the fact he was a snake! He was honest enough to show himself in the form that God gave him!

  The story of the marriage with the reptile, which had begun in mid-October, seemed to come to an abrupt end on the night of the following January 17. That evening, as if she had foreseen that it would be her last night in the company of her snake-spouse, the young bride spent even longer than usual primping and arranging her hair. Then she lit the fire in the fireplace and took a saucer of milk up to her husband in the bedroom before having her own dinner with her parents, as was her custom.

  Early next morning she came out of the bedroom looking deathly pale, with tears streaming down her waxen cheeks. Her parents rushed to her, looking for the trace of a snakebite, or else strangulation marks, signs that they had pretended to banish from their minds but which in their anguish they had never ceased to fear seeing on her.

  She shook her head, trying to explain what had happened, but without success. When her parents finally accepted that nothing untoward had happened to her, they at last asked her about her husband. She replied, “He has vanished.” And then: “He dissolved.” And lastly: “He melted away.”

  They went into the bedroom, looked for the snake everywhere, looked for him or for his remains, or at least his skin. Nothing to be found. They examined all the openings through which he might have gone, the windows, the door, the shutters. The night, like all nights in January, was a cold one, and everything had been shut tight. The only route by which he could have escaped was the chimney, but as the embers of the evening fire were still glowing bright, he could not imaginably have gotten out that way.

  That night, and all the days and weeks that followed, the young bride, now widowed, did not offer a word of explanation. She just said over and over: He melted, he dissolved, he vanished … regurgitating the same phrases to the investigators and to the masters of the snake when they returned, just as somber and threatening as on their first visit.

  The young woman’s sorrow and the way she began to wilt soon put an end to any suspicions of an intentional disposai of the snake-husband. She was fading away with grief, in a manner not often seen in new brides. Under the black veil that she wore in accordance with the custom for widows, she looked no more than a shadow when she walked to church on Sundays. Thenceforth she was known only as “the snake’s widow,” but these words were said without malice, and she took no offense at them.

  In the spring, her hand was asked in marriage not once but twice, and both times the proposal was rejected. It turned out to be an eventful season. Criers went out to announce in every village that the prince had resolved to outlaw from that day on any form of marriage with a beast, tree, or bird, as well as the use of pressure to make people suffer such humiliation. The word snake was not heard in the proclamation, but everyone knew that it was the snake business that had prompted the order — just as it raised puzzling queries about the old Code of Laws, whose mantle of authority seemed to be wearing ever thinner. It had seemed tempting very often to set down in writing the prohibition on breaking any of the rules of the Code, but the idea was eventually abandoned. It seemed like a sacrilege to write down anything about it. But then tribes that the Romans called “Slaves” poured down into the North, into the great Plain of Arberia, and that seemed an extra reason to strengthen the authority of the old Kanun.

  In the autumn the young woman was once again asked in marriage, and once again the request was made in vain. It turned out to be the last time anyone would ask to marry her. It became generally accepted that she had decided never to wed again.

  Her decision, together with the measures taken by the prince, failed to put an end to a story that was now no longer very fresh; on the contrary, they seemed to give it new life. What in fact was the mystery that had taken place there, right before everyone’s eyes? Well, they had all seen fine and famous fellows leaving widows, the sort of husbands
you could not imagine being forgotten; all the same, long after the death of the great man, they had all seen the widows — with head held low and eyes full of tears, to be sure — agreeing, almost reluctantly, but agreeing all the same, to marry a second time. Whereas the snake’s widow obstinately refused to do anything of the sort.

  There was an intolerable enigma at the bottom of this story. Something obscure that, paradoxically, through its very absence, blinded. What had happened on that first night of marriage, the previous October? And what actually happened on the night of January 17?

  There were only three wells from which a drop of the truth might possibly be drawn: the bride herself, the priest who took her confession, and the doctor. The woman’s lips were sealed on the matter, the priest’s even more so. The only thing that had been squeezed out of the doctor when he was in his cups concerned the bride’s virginity. Like any self-respecting newlywed, she had lost it. That piece of information left everyone bewildered, as it would not have done for any other newly wedded woman.

  But one fine day morbid curiosity got the upper hand. The priest and the bride had given nothing away, but something else came along to betray them. The snake’s widow fell ill with a high fever, with bouts of delirious speech. And that is how she let it all out.

  So this is what had really happened on that wedding night, when the household had fallen silent. The bride’s parents, crossing themselves as they went, took their daughter to the threshold of the nuptial chamber, asked her once more to forgive them for the decision they had made, and then closed the door on her.

  The bedroom was well heated. There were two candles that cast a faint light on each side of the bed. The snake was coiled up in a corner of the conjugal bed, quite still. With jerky, doll-like movements, the bride took off her wedding dress, lay down on the sheets, and waited. The moment that had now come seemed sometimes more, and then sometimes less, terrifying than she had imagined. Apparently, the slight inebriation she had allowed herself to suffer had slightly dulled her senses. Now she prayed only that it should all be over as quickly as possible, that the bite be like lightning, and death just as instantaneous. It was all she hoped for. Otherwise she would have to submit to the crudest and most unimaginable ordeal: being made love to by a snake.