Three Arched Bridge

by Ismail Kadare

  That is what people are like. It sometimes occurred to me that if the bridge were conscious, it would be more disgusted than amused by us and would take to its heels like a frightened beast. A rainbow, the bridge’s model and perhaps its inspiration, is something that, thank God, nobody yet knows how to build, and still less to chain in fetters; but is it not also something frightening, fragile, and incomprehensible to people?

  52

  AT THE END OF THE WEEK the two representatives of the bridge owners, mounted on mules, turned up again after being absent for so long* People gaped at them openmouthed when they arrived, as if they were seeing shades. People’s eyes followed them, as if asking, Still on this earth?

  They themselves did not show the slightest curiosity in glancing at the bridge, not even at the dead man in the first arch, but applied themselves immediately to the task for which they had come, They dug two holes, one at the entrance and the other at the end of the bridge, fixed iron stakes in them, and fixed metal signs on the stakes, like those that “Boats and Rafts” had once used. It was understood at once that these were tables of tolls for crossing the bridge, Everything was set out in detail; the toll for individuals, reduced rates for whole families and clans, the toll for the crossing of each head of livestock, reductions for herds, the toll for individual carts, reductions for caravans, and so forth.

  People looked at the sign as if to say. We turned our noses up before at crossing for free, and now we have to pay!

  The two employees of the road and bridge company did not leave after erecting the signs but took over the ferryman’s small abandoned lodge, which, it seems, the company had bought some time before. They began to do duty at the bridge in turns.

  Surprisingly, people began to cross the bridge more and more often after the toll was imposed.

  53

  AVENETIAN MONK on his way to Byzantium brought more bad news from the Vloré base. A Turkish imperial decree had just been issued, removing the base’s old name of Orikum and renaming it Pasha-Lima, This was a terrifying and in any event an extraordinary name, since in Turkish it meant “port of ports,’ “chief port,’ or “pasha of ports.” It was not hard to imagine what a military base with such a name would be used for. This was a great harbor opened by the Ottomans on Europe’s very flank.

  As the monk told me, Albanian and Turkish soldiers provoked each other daily at the boundary dividing the base. Dim-witted as he was, Balsha II could easily fall into a trap.

  After the monk left, I went for a long walk on the banks of the Ujana e Keqe, and my thoughts were as murky as its waters. Time and again, that music of death I had heard weeks previously on the border came to my mind. Yes, they were trying to shackle our feet with that attenuated music. And after halting our dances they would bind our hands, and then our souls,

  The hunger of the great Ottoman state could be felt in the wind. We were already used to the savage hunger of the Slavs, Naked and with bared teeth like a wolfs, this hunger always seemed more dangerous than anything else. But in contrast, the Ottoman pressure involved a kind of temptation. It struck me as no accident that they had chosen the moon as their symbol Under its light, the world could be caressed and lulled to sleep more easily.

  As I walked along the riverbank, this caress terrified me more than anything else. Dusk was falling. The bridge looked desolate and cold. And suddenly, in its slightly hunched length, in its arches and buttresses, and in its solitude, there was an expectancy. What are you waiting for, stone one? I said to myself. Distant phantoms? Or an imperial army and the sound of nameless feet, marching ten, twenty, a hundred hours without rest? Cursed thing.

  54

  NEWS FOLLOWED HARD ON NEWS, as frequent and grim as clouds in a dark season. The Turks had launched a major diplomatic offensive. More than half the Balkan peninsula was now under the Ottoman crescent Three of the eleven lords of Arberia had also accepted vassalage, Throughout the Balkans, Turkish armies were on large-scale maneuvers in order to strike fear into those princes and dukes who still hesitated, The famous “Arbanon Line” of seven fortresses from Shkodér to Lezhé, which defended Byzantium from the Slavs, was crumbling. Byzantium itself had lost its vigor, The Balkan nobles — Albanians, Croats, Greeks, Serbs, Romanians, Macedonians, and Slovenes — sent their couriers sometimes to Venice and sometimes to Turkey, and sometimes in both directions simultaneously, to choose the lesser of the two dangers. They said that messengers left by one door, while at another entered drawers of straws and especially readers of shoulder blades, as people had recently called those who predict the approach or retreat of war by the color of a ram’s shoulder blade. It is said that immediately after one dinner, at which the reader of the shoulder blade was horrified by the reddish tinge of the bone, the count of the Skurajs sent messengers to the sultan. The Muzakas were also wavering, The stand of the Dukagjins was unknown. They had withdrawn into the depths of the mountains, as they usually did at such times, and were brooding behind the mists. There is always time to die, their forebear had said. However, the phrase has been considered ambiguous; it is not clear which is considered death, the acceptance of war or of vassalage. They had never been sycophants, but nevertheless at such times you must prepare yourself for anything.

  Increasingly I remembered their emblems, with all their lions, manes, fangs, claws, and cockspurs, as if to determine the stands they would take* … Just as often I remembered the laughter of the two countesses on the bank of the Ujana e Keqe, when they flirted with the name of “Abdullahth,” and then their gossip about their sister-in-law Katrina, or “the queen” as they sarcastically called her, because her husband Karl Topia was a pretender to the long-vacant throne of Arberia, I remembered all these things and became as frightened of these dainty women as of the Turkish yataghan. I was frightened of the gifts and silks with which the Ottomans were so generous, and which the ladies coveted so much.

  Some time ago, when the count of Kashnjet and the duke of Tepelené had been the first to accept vassalage, they had mocked those who had predicted disaster. You said that the Turks would destroy us and strip us and disgrace us, they said. But we are still masters of our lands.

  Our castles are still where they were; our coats of arms, our honor, and our possessions are untouched. If you don’t believe us, come and see with your own eyes,

  That is how they, and their ladies especially, wrote to other nobles. In fact it was true in a way. The Turk did not touch them. Nothing had changed, except for something that seemed tiny and unimportant, … This was the matter of the date at the head of their letters. Instead of the year 1378, they had written “hijrah 757,” according to the Islamic calendar, the adoption of which was one of the Ottomans’ few demands.

  How unlucky they were, They had turned time back six hundred years, and they laughed and joked, How terrible!

  55

  NEVER BEFORE had so many travelers stayed at the Inn of the Two Roberts. They also brought news, most of it, alas, bleak.

  The Muzakas had sent back the Ottomans, third deputation. The two barons Gropa and Matranga, on the contrary, had declared their vassalage. So had two Serbian kings in the frontier regions and another Croatian prince. It was not yet known what Nikollé Zaharia and his vassals had decided, nor the Kastriotis. There were whispers about an alliance between the two most powerful nobles, the great count Karl Topia and Balsha II, but this could just as well be wishful thinking as the truth. The question of the crown, to which Topia was a pretender, was an almost insuperable obstacle to such a pact. Others said that Topia had sent his own messengers to forge an alliance with the king of Hungary, As for old Balsha, he had withdrawn to the mountains like the Dukagjins, and besides, he was too old to lead a campaign. Nevertheless, singly and in wretched isolation some in twos or occasionally in threes, the majority of the Albanian nobles prepared for war. Count Stres, our liege lord, also called on all his vassals and knights to stand by.

  We were on the brink of war, and only the blind could fail to s
ee it. Since the Ottoman state became our neigh, bor, I do not look at the moon as before, especially when it is a crescent, No empire has so far chosen a more masterful symbol for its flag. When Byzantium chose the eagle, this was indeed superior to the Roman wolf, but now the new empire has chosen an emblem that rises far higher in the skies than any bird. It has no need to be drawn like our cross, or to be cut in cloth and hoisted above castle turrets. It climbs into the sky itself, visible to the whole of mankind, unhindered by anything. Its meaning is more than clear: the Ottomans will have business not with one state or two states, but with the whole world. Your flesh creeps when you see it, cold, with sometimes a honey-colored and sometimes a bloody tinge. Sometimes I think that it is already bemusing us all from above. There is a danger that one day, like sleepwalkers, we will rise to walk toward our ruin.

  Last night as I prayed, I unconsciously replaced the words of the holy book, “Let there be light,” with “Let there be Arberia!” almost as if Arberia had in the meantime been undone…

  I myself was terrified by this inner voice. Later, when I tried to discover from whence it came, I recalled all kind of discussions and predictions now being made about the future of this country, Arberia will find itself several times on the verge of the abyss. Like a falling stone, it will draw sparks and blood. It is said that it will be made and unmade many times before it stands fixed for all time on the face of the earth, So’ let there be Arberia!

  56

  DESPITE THE GREAT FROST, there are Turkish troop movements on the borden The drums are inaudible, but their banners can be discerned from a distance.

  One morning’ sentries of the principality appeared at both ends of the bridge. Our liege lord’s estrangement from the neighboring pasha had deepened.

  The armed guards remained at the bridge day and night’ next to the signs with the tolls. We thought this must be a temporary measure, but after three days the guards were not withdrawn but reinforced.

  Dark news came from all sides. Old Balsha had gone completely blind’ night coming to his eyes before his soul. As the saying goes, “May I not see what is to come!”

  57

  MEANWHILE, as if not caring about what was happening throughout the Balkans, travelers whose road brought them this way, or rich men journeying to see the worlds paused more often at the bridge. This had become so common recently that the landlord of the Inn of the Two Roberts had placed a kind of notice at both his gates, written in four languages: “For those guests desiring to see the famous Three-Arched Bridge, with the man immured within’ the inn provides outward and return journeys at the following rates …” (The tariff in various currencies followed.)

  A large cart drawn by four horses and equipped with elevated seats carried the guests to and from the bridge two or three times a day and sometimes more often. Loudmouthed and boorish, as idle travelers usually are they swarmed around and under the bridge, noticing everything with curiosity, touching the piers, crouching under the approach arches, and lingering by the first arch where the man was immured. Their polyglot monotonous, and interminable chatter took over the site, I went among them several times to eavesdrop on this jabbering, which was always the same and somehow different from the previous day’s. The flow of time seemed to have stood still. They talked about the legend and the bridge, asked questions and sought explanations from each other, confused the old legend with the death of Murrash Zenebisha, and tried to sort matters out but only confused them further, until the cart from the inn arrived, bringing a fresh contingent of travelers and taking away the previous one. Then everything would start again from the beginning. “So this whole bridge was built by three brothers?” “No, no, that’s what the old legend says. This was built by a rich man who also surfaces roads and sells tar. He has his own bank in Dürres.” “But how was this man sacrificed here, if it’s all an old legend?” “I think there is no room for misunderstandings sir. He sacrificed himself to appease the spirits of the water, and in exchange for a huge sum in compensation paid to his family.” “Ah, so it was a question of water spirits; but you told me it had no connection with the legend.” “Pm not saying it has no connection, but… the main thing was the business of the compensation.”

  And then they would begin talking about the compensation whistling in amazement at the enormous sum, calculating the percentages the members of his family would earn from the bridge’s profits, and converting the sums into the currencies of their own principalities, and then into Venetian ducats. And so, without anyone noticing, the conversation would leave the bridge behind and concentrate on the just-arrived news from the Exchange Bank in Durres, particularly on the fluctuating values of various currencies and the fall in the value of gold sovereigns following the recent upheavals on the peninsula, And this would continue until some traveler, coming late to the crowd, would say: “They seemed to tell us that it was a woman who was walled up, but this is a man. They even told us that we would see the place where the milk from the poor woman’s breast dripped,“ “Oh,” two or three voices would reply simultaneously, “Are you still thinking of the old legend?”

  And it would all go back again to the beginning.

  58

  IT WAS MARK HABERI who was the first to bring the news of the Turks, “commination” against Europe from across the border, Pleased that the event seemed so important to me, he looked at me with eyes that reminded me of my displeasure at his change of surname, almost as if, without that Turkish surname, he would not be able to bring news, in other words habere, from over there.

  Indeed, his explanation of what had happened was so involved that while he talked, he became drenched with sweat, like a man who fears to be taken for a lian Speak clearly, I said to him two or three times, because I cannot understand what you are trying to say. But he continued to prevaricate. I can’t say it, he repeated. These are new, frightening things that cannot be put into words.

  He asked for my permission to explain by gestures, making some movements that struck me as demented. I told him that the gesture he was making is among us called a “fig,” and indicates at the same time contempt, indifference, and a curse. He cried, “Precisely, Father. There they call it a ‘commination,, and it is of state importance.”

  I did not conceal my amazement at the connection between this hand movement, which people and especially women make in contempt of each other, somewhat in the sense of “may my ill fortune be on your head,” with the new Ottoman state policy toward Europe, of which Mark Haberi sought to persuade me.

  He left in despair to collect additional data, which he indeed brought me a few days later, always from the other side. They left me openmouthed. From his words and the testimony of others that I heard in those days, I reconstructed the entire event, like a black temple.

  The Commination against Europe had taken place in the last days of the month of Michaelmas, precisely on the Turkish-Albanian border, and had been performed according to all the ancient rubrics in the archives of the Ottoman state. Their rules of war demanded that before any battle started, the place about to be attacked, whether a castle, a wall, or simply an encampment, had to be cursed by the army’s curse maker.

  It was said that the old archives described precisely, even with the help of a sketch, the gesture of the curse. The palms of the hand were opened and moved forward, as if to launch the portentous curse on its flight. This gesture was repeated three times, and then the curser’s back was turned on the direction in which the curse was headed.

  Their chronicles told of the cursing of castles and the domains of rebellious pashas, and even whole states, before an attack began; but there was no case of an entire continent being cursed. It was perhaps for this reason that even the most important curse maker in the state, Sukrullah, who had arrived on the empire’s extreme border the previous nighty,was slightly shaken, as those who saw him reported.

  The sky was overcast and damp, and the whole plain around the small temporary minaret erected specially for the pur
pose was swathed in mist.

  The curse maker climbed the little minaret and stared for a while in our direction, toward where, in Turkish eyes, the accursed continent of Europe began, The weather was indeed extremely bad, and almost nothing could be seen in the fog. The small group of high dignitaries who had accompanied Sukrullah from the capital to the border stood speechless, Down below, at the foot of the minaret, the imperial chronicler had opened a thick tome to record the event.

  Sukrullah raised his arms in front of him, so that they emerged from the wide sleeves of his half-clerical, half-laic gown. Everybody saw that the palms of his hands were exceptionally broad. However, nobody was surprised at this, because he was not the state’s foremost curse maker for nothing,

  He studied his hands for a while and, turning his eyes toward the ash-colored distance, raised his palms in front of his face to the level of his brow, His palms paled as the blood drained from them, He held them there for a time until they were as white as the palms of a corpse, and then thrust them violently forward, as if the evil were in the form of a bubble he was dispatching into the distance,

  He did this three times in a row. The commination was complete.

  In silence, without a word’ he climbed down first from the minaret, followed immediately by his escorts. Together with the other officials, they accompanied him to his carriage, whose doors were embellished with the emblem of the Great Royal Commination. He climbed into the carriage together with his assistants and guards, and as the vehicle departed through the winter cold in the direction from which it had come, the curse traveled in the opposite direction, toward us toward the lands of Europe. It went (or rather came) through the fog like some bird of ill omen, like a herald or a sick dream.