Both sides, “Boats and Rafts” and the road company, used ancient legend in their savage contest. The former used it to stir up the idea of destroying the bridge, and the latter to plot a murder.
My exhausted brain contained an idea as dismal as it was wearyingly plain. I thought that, like all the affairs of this world, this story was both simpler and more involved than it appeared, … They had come from far away. One side came from the water, and the other from the steppes, to accomplish before our eyes something that, as their collector of customs said, could still not be understood for what it was: a bridge or a crime, For it was still unknown which of the two would survive longer on this earth and which would be eroded by the seasons. Only then would we understand which was the real edifice and which the mere scaffolding that helped in its construction, the pretext that justified it.
At first sight, it seemed that the newcomers had calculated everything, but perhaps that too was only a superficial view. Perhaps they themselves imagined they were building a bridge, but in fact, as if in delirium, they had obeyed another order, themselves not understanding whence it came. And all of us, as fickle as they, watched it all and were unable to discern what was in front of us: stone arches, plaster, or blood.
Holy Blessed Mary, forgive me these sins, I prayed silently. I succeeded in calming my soul, but my brain would not rest. It raced to the legends. These people had revived legend like an old weapon, discovered accidentally, to wound each other badly. It was nevertheless early to say whether they had really enlisted it in their service. Perhaps it was legend itself that had caught them in a snare, had clouded their minds, and had thrust them into the bloody game.
40
DURING ALL THOSE DAYS nobody talked of anything but the immurement of Murrash Zenebisha. People told the most incredible stories about what he supposedly said at the moment when they walled him in, and his last wish for a space to be left for his eyes so that he could see his year-old child. Some substituted the bridge itself for the child, and some tied his last wish not only to his family but to their duty, to the gods, and to the entire principality,
There was a constant crowd of people by the arch of the bridge where the victim was immured. The guards placed by the count watched over the body from morning to night, and there came a moment when the investigators assigned to probe the incident, after making their inquiries, themselves stood petrified in front of the dead man. His face, that white plaster mask, had undergone no change in the last few days. Now that the plaster was dry and they were no longer coating him, the whiteness of that face was unchanging. They said that if you looked at it by moonlight, you could lose your speech.
His family —his elderly parents, his brothers and their wives, and his young widow with the baby whose mother’s nipple always missed his mouth — came every day and stood stock-still for whole hours, never taking their eyes off the victim. His open eyes with their crust of plaster had the silence and unresponsiveness of that “never ever” that only death can bring. During the first week his parents aged by a century, and the features of his brothers and their wives and even their infants seemed furrowed for life. But he, leaning against the arch of the bridge as if against a stone pillow, entirely smoothed over, studied them all beyond the plaster barrier that made him more remote than a spirit.
Whenever the crowd thinned or dispersed, mad Gjelosh would arrive at the site of the sacrifice. He was quite stunned by the scene, and his inability to understand what had happened mortified him considerably, He would walk slowly up to the body, approaching it sidelong, and softly whisper, “Murrash, Murrash,” in the hope of making the man hear. He would repeat this many times and then disconsolately depart,
Old Ajkuna came on the seventh day, the day when it is believed that the dead make their first and most despairing attempt to break the shackles of the next world. She stayed for hours on end by the first arch, without uttering a word. That was something that could find no parallel in the experience of even the most elderly. A few more days passed, and then whole weeks, and the fortieth day was approaching, the day on which it was believed that a dead man’s eyeballs burst, and then everybody realized what a great burden an unburied man was, not only on his family but on the entire district, It was something that violated everything we knew about the borders between life and death. The man remained poised between the two like a bridge, without moving in one direction or the other. This man had sunk into nonexistence, leaving his shape behind him, like a forgotten garment.
People came from all parts to see the unburied body: the curious from distant villages, and wayfarers who lodged at the inns on the great highway; even rich foreigners came, as they traveled idly to see the world together with their ladies. (Such a thing had come into fashion recently, after the dramatic improvements to the highway.)
They stood in awe by the first arch, noisy, waxen-faced, talking in their own languages and gesticulating. You could not tell from their gestures whether they blessed or cursed the hour that brought them to the bridge. Beyond all their hubbub, solitary, cold, vacant, aloof, and covered with lime, Murrash Zenebisha seemed to stand in silence like a bride.
It was the beginning of April The weather was fine, and work proceeded on the bridge more busily than ever before. The dead man seemed to spur the work forward. The second span was now completely finished, and the vault of the third was being raised. Last year’s filthy mud, which had dirtied everything round about, had gone. Now only a fine dust of noble whiteness fell from the carved stones and spread in all directions. It coated the two banks of the Ujana, and sometimes on nights of the full moon it shone and glittered in the distance.
On one of these moonlit April evenings I ran into the master-in-chief on the riverbank, quite by accident. I had not seen him for a long time, He seemed not to want to look me in the eye. The words we exchanged were quite meaningless and empty, like feathers that float randomly, lacking weight and reason. As we talked in our desultory way,1 suddenly felt a crazy desire to seize him by the collar of his cape, pin him against the bridge pier, and shout in his face: “That new world you told me about the other day, that new order with its banks and percentages, which is going to carry the world a thousand years forward, it is founded on blood too.”
In my mind I said all this to him, and even expected his reply: “Like all sorts of order, monk.” Meanwhile, as if he had sensed my inner outburst, he raised his head and for the first time looked me in the eye. They were the same eyes that I now knew well, with rays and cracks, but inflamed, as if about to burst, almost as if it was the fortieth day not for the dead man at the bridge but for himself….
41
SPRING 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, altho
ugh 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.
42
THE 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!
43
HASTE 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,
44
AFEW 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.
45
AT 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*
46
THE 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.
Three Arched Bridge Page 9