Elegy for Kosovo

by Ismail Kadare

  More shouts came from Prince Lazar’s tent as a horde of Serbs on horseback came thundering past. The soldiers following them told the minstrels the reason for the jubilation: the horses’ hooves were covered in honey and rice — the Christian army had cut so deep into Turkish lines that it had reached its rear guard and crushed the barrels containing their provisions.

  Here and there shouts of triumph could be heard, but Gjorg Shkreli could not shake off his apprehension. And always that harsh. Intoxicating light that would not leave him in peace.

  He soon noticed that he was not the only one to be uneasy. The horses of the heroes who had just been cheered seemed suddenly to slow down, hobbled by the honey as they stumbled back in the direction from which they had just come.

  He stared again at the swirling banners over the swarm of soldiers. And it was in the sky that he thought he noticed the first sign of disaster. The silk of the banners was faltering and the crosses and the ornate lions and the crowned eagles no longer showed their former conviction. But the Ottoman crescents were rising with greater force. He could not escape the childish, illogical thought of how these lunar crescents, so undaunted by the blinding sun, would really come into their own as night fell.

  There was a clamor to the right of Prince Lazar’s tent, but with his attention focused on the battlefield Gjorg did not manage to turn around in time. It was only when he heard someone shout — “The commander in chief is moving out!” — that he realized what had happened.

  “What about us?” Vladan, the Serbian minstrel, called out, “What are we supposed to do?”

  The prince was not setting out on a glorious counterattack. He was relocating his camp, but nobody was prepared to tell the minstrels what this meant,

  Gjorg tried to bolster himself with the idea that a commander in chief’s relocation during a battle was nothing out of the ordinary, but his anxiety did not diminish,

  The prince’s empty tent was filled with the wounded. The cries grew ever louder. The minstrels began running about in panic, clutching their instruments, which had suddenly become a burden,

  “I’m going to see if I can find my Walachians!” one of them shouted,

  The other minstrels immediately began scouring the battlefield, searching for their banners,

  Vladan’s eyes filled with tears. It came as no surprise that people should be left behind in this confusion, he thought, but surely not a Serb of his distinction, who had stood outside the tent of Prince Lazar.

  Gjorg, like the other minstrels, was also peering at the banners, looking for the Albanian eagles. He cursed himself for not having watched Count Balsha’s troop movements on the plain, or at least those of Jonima. Now it was too late to find them.

  The drums of the two sides were still beating. Gjorg finally made out the Albanian banners, but their black and white eagles seemed harried, as if chased by a thunderstorm.

  “Protect us, Mary Mother of God!” he silently prayed.

  He started retreating like the others, without knowing where to. Someone shouted: “The Turks are attacking from this side!” Others shouted words that might have been taken for orders but quickly changed into laments. Again he lost sight of the banners with the Albanian eagles, but still he continued moving. “What a calamity!” someone shouted. “Turn back!” another yelled, but no one knew anymore which way was forward and which was back. King Tvrtko’s banner veered to the left of the battlefield. Then for an instant Prince Lazar’s banner appeared in a dust cloud right next to the menacing crescents.

  Everyone ran. Unknown men, short swords in hand, glared with wild eyes. Gjorg had lost all hope of finding his Albanians.

  His mind a blank, he turned back to where he had just come from, to the abandoned tent of the commander in chief. He came face to face with Vladan. Vladan was sobbing, tearing at his hair: “Prince Lazar has been captured! Serbia is dead!”

  “Jesus Christ protect us!” Gjorg said, and held out his hand to Vladan to steady him. They made their way through the total confusion, Vladan ranting deliriously. “I’ve lost my gusla! Perhaps I threw it away myself! I thought, what do I need it for! If Prince Lazar has been taken prisoner, we’re all finished! Where are your Albanians?”

  “I have no idea,” Gjorg answered. “I can’t even see our banners anymore!”

  “There’s no point looking for them! They’ve all fallen! Throw away your lahuta, brother! You won’t want to be singing with the Turks!”

  “Holy Mary!” Gjorg said. “I have never seen such a calamity in my life!”

  Soldiers ran in all directions, gasping, stumbling over dead bodies. Men who had thrown away their weapons crouched down by corpses to snatch up their swords, only to throw them away again a few steps later. From all around men shouted: “Stop!” — “Where are you going?” — “Which side are you on?”

  Through all the mayhem, shreds of violent news were heard. Mirçea of Rumania was heading for the Danube with his Walachians. King Tvrtko, having by now lost his crown, was hurrying back to Bosnia. The Catholic Albanians were following Count Balsha to the foggy mountains of western Albania, while the Orthodox Albanians were following Jonima down to the Macedonian flatlands. Everyone but the dead was trying to escape from the cursed plain,

  “I had a premonition in my heart!” Vladan murmured. “For days now, I have had a premonition in my heart of this great disaster!”

  “Then why,” Gjorg wanted to ask him, “why did you bring bad luck upon us, you wretch!” But he was too exhausted even to move his lips.

  Hoarse voices came from far away: “Come back everyone! Good news! The Turkish sultan has been killed!”

  Strangely enough, everyone kept running. They heard the news but had forgotten it in an instant. The day was coming to an end. It was too late to do anything. For a moment the fugitives glanced back at the wide plain, as if to sense where the sultan might have died, then right away, exhausted, they realized that his death, like everything else, had come too late.

  Darkness fell quickly. There was a feeling that this day, with its harsh, morbid brightness, could engender only an all-engulfing darkness. Through this darkness trudged officers who had torn off their insignia, now doubly hidden, and soldiers, cooks, carriers of secrets that no longer served a purpose, keepers of the official seal, assassins who had not been able to ply their trade, army clerics whose terror had driven them insane, and madmen whose terror had brought them back to sanity.

  Twice Gjorg was tempted to throw away his lahuta, but both times he had thought he was going mad and changed his mind. If he could keep a clear head until morning, he would not go insane. The third time he thought of throwing away his lahuta, the instrument’s single string gave off a mournful sound, as if to say, “What have I done to you?“

  The fugitives made their way through the darkness like black beetles. Someone had lit a torch, and in its light the men’s faces looked even more frightening. Dogs were licking the hooves of a fallen horse, “Lord in Heaven!” Gjorg muttered, “It is the honey we were cheering this very morning,”

  “We are dead, brother!” he heard Vladan’s voice say, “Do you believe me now, that we are nothing but spirits?”

  II

  They had been walking for four days and no longer knew where they were. The throng of fugitives would swell and then thin out again in sorrow. Tagging along at times were Hungarian soldiers whose language nobody understood, Walachians desperately looking for the Danube, Jews who had come from God knows where. Just as suddenly as they had appeared, they disappeared again the following day, as if snatched away by some dream. A Turkish subaltern also tagged along for part of the way, the only Turk, it seemed, who had thrown in his lot with the Christians. He stared at everything in amazement, and every time they stopped to rest he would ask the others to teach him the correct way of crossing himself.

  In a stupor, Gjorg heard snippets of conversation. “I think we’ve left Albania, we’ve been walking so many days now” — “I think so too” — �
��This isn’t Serbian land” — “What do you think?” — “I’d say this isn’t Serbia” — “What? Not Serbia, not Albania?” — “Let me put it to you this way, my friend: some say this is Serbia, some say Albania. The Lord only knows which of the two it really is. So who owns this accursed plain where we spilled our blood, the Field of the Blackbirds, as they call it? It was there, my brother, that the fighting started — a hundred, maybe even two hundred years ago.”

  Gjorg opened his eyes and thought he saw the Cursed Peaks. They were crowned by the snow and the sky he knew, but the villages at their foot were different. His eyes filled with tears at the thought that he might never see them again.

  Gjorg had lost sight of his traveling companions, including Vladan. Two Albanians he met outside a village told him that they were on their way to Albania, but that they couldn’t take him along. They were military couriers, and had to get there as fast as possible by whatever means they could — boat, cart, horses. They had to find their lord, Count Balsha, as soon as possible and hand him a message.

  Gjorg didn’t understand. The calamity must have driven them mad, for what kind of message could they be delivering now that the war was lost? And if it were such an urgent matter, then why were they dozens of miles astray, and how were they going to find the count? How did they even know he was alive, and what could the point of such a message be, now that everyone was dead?

  They listened coldly to his questions and told him that they were military couriers, that they were not permitted to question or doubt. It had been in the course of that horrifying afternoon that they had been ordered to deliver this message to Count Balsha from one of the flanks of the Albanian army — that was why they hadn’t managed to get to him. Everything had collapsed before their eyes, the count’s tent kept moving farther and farther away, and the torrent of soldiers had ended up carrying them in the opposite direction. Now, no matter what the cost, they intended to accomplish what they had thus far been prevented from doing: they would find the count, and if they did not find him, then his grave, and there at the grave, even if they were the last men standing, they would deliver their message,

  Gjorg followed them with his eyes as they disappeared in a cloud of dust, and an instant later he was convinced that they had been merely an illusion. His spirit was filled with sorrow.

  Outside a large village, Gjorg came across a crowd of fugitives moving toward them. He recognized them by their tattered army tunics and the distinctive darkness of their features. They were surprised that in a single day the sun of the Plains of Kosovo had spared their tousled heads but had completely blackened their faces.

  Disgraced as they were, they seemed even darker. In three or four languages they hurled curses at the peasants who would not let them into the village, at fate, even at heaven.

  “We went to war to save that cross!” they shouted, pointing to the belfry of the village church. “And you won’t even give us a crust of bread and shelter for the night! A curse upon you!”

  The villagers watched them silently with cold, distrustful eyes. Only the dogs, still tied up, barked and tried to hurl themselves at the strangers.

  “May you never live a happy day under your roofs, and may a thornbush blossom by your door!”

  Gjorg turned to see who had uttered the curse. He would have recognized Vladan’s voice, whether speaking or singing, among dozens of others, but the curse had been uttered somewhere between speech and song.

  “Vladan!” he shouted, when he realized it might well have been him.

  And it really had been Vladan, his eyes burning with rage, now even gaunter than two days before when they had lost each other during their trek.

  Vladan turned around and lifted his hand.

  “You see how they treat us!” he said. “These damned spineless, these vile —”

  “Hurl curses at them, brother! Hurl curses!”

  a Hungarian stammered. “Curse them; you know how to curse better than anyone!”

  “He knows how to curse because he is a minstrel,” said a man in a tattered tunic, “It is his trade both to curse and to exalt.“

  “Is that so? In this disaster, we Hungarians, more than anyone else, get the short end of the stick! Insults, that’s all we get are insults. Yesterday I came across a man, an Albanian I think, who was eating a piece of bread, so I wished him, ‘May you get some often!’ and do you know what he did? He punched me in the face! As Heaven is my witness, we might have killed each other over these words that offended him. He must have thought they were shameful words and become furious, thinking I was making some improper suggestion!”

  Three or four men burst out laughing.

  “I think we should head along a different road,” the man in the torn tunic said. “You can’t expect to see eye to eye with these idiotic peasants.”

  “They don’t want us here,” another man said. “But when there is a war to be fought for them, then they want us! When they need to be defended from the Turk or from the devil knows who, then they want us — but ask them for a piece of bread or shelter for the night, and they turn into rabid dogs!”

  Vladan continued cursing. He tapped himself, as if fumbling for something.

  “You were too quick to throw away your gusla,” Gjorg said to himself.

  “Let’s go,” said the man with the torn tunic, not taking his eyes off the dogs.

  The fugitives decided to tag along. A little way from the village they sat down to rest beneath some trees.

  “You are a minstrel also?” the Hungarian asked Gjorg, eyeing the lahuta slung over his shoulder.

  Gjorg nodded.

  “Both of us sang in the prince’s tent,” said Vladan, who lay stretched out next to him. “Yes, on the eve of the battle.“

  “I have never seen a prince’s tent,’ the Hungarian said. “Tell us what it was like.”

  Vladan’s eyes clouded with pain.

  “What can I tell you, Hungarian? They were all there — our Prince Lazar, may he rest in peace, and King Tvrtko, and the lord of the Walachians, and the counts of Albania. They reveled and drank, and sometimes laughed as they listened to our songs.”

  “But why? Why did they laugh at you?” two or three men asked.

  “Not at us,” Vladan said sullenly. “No man has ever dared laugh at a minstrel.. . . They were laughing at something else.... It is a tangled matter. A Serb or Albanian can understand, but for you it would be too hard. ... You tell them, Gjorg.”

  “No, you tell them,” Gjorg answered.

  Vladan took three or four deep breaths, but then shook his head. It was impossible to explain, he told them, especially now, after the calamity on the Plains of Kosovo. But he continued speaking. “For hundreds of years the evil persisted; what I mean is that Serbian and Albanian songs said exactly the opposite thing . . . particularly when it came to Kosovo, as each side claimed Kosovo as theirs. And each side cursed the other. And this lasted right up to the eve of the battle. Which was why the princes in the big tent laughed at the songs, for the princes had come together to fight the Turks while the minstrels were still singing songs against one another, the Serbs cursing the Albanians and the Albanians the Serbs. And all the while, across the plain, the Turks were gathering to destroy them both the following day! Lord have mercy upon us!“

  Gjorg wanted to tell him that quarrels were always started by those who came last, that when the Serbs had come down from the north, the Albanians had already been there, in Kosovo. But now all of that had become meaningless.

  Vladan looked at him as if he had read his mind.

  “We ourselves have brought this disaster upon our heads, my brother! We have been fighting and slaughtering each other for so many years over Kosovo, and now Kosovo has fallen to others.”

  They looked at each other for a few moments without saying anything, trying to fight back their tears. Now that they were far away from Kosovo, it was as if they had been set free from its shadow. Now their minds could finally shed their fe
tters, and after their minds, their spirits.

  Vladan stared at Gjorg’s lahuta.

  “Can I try it, brother? My spirit is burning to sing again.“

  Gjorg stiffened for a moment. He did not know if it was a sin for him to give his lahuta to a Serbian guslar. His memory told him nothing, but the sorrow in the other man’s eyes erased his doubts. As if numb, he slipped the strap of his lahuta from his shoulder. Vladan’s hand trembled as he took hold of the instrument.

  He held it in his hands for a few moments, then his fingers timidly stretched to pluck the single string. Gjorg saw him hold his breath. He was certain that one of two things would happen: either Vladan’s hand would not obey the foreign instrument, or the instrument would not obey the foreign hand. The metallic string would snap, or Vladan’s fingers would freeze. A split second could bring calamity, and yet, on the other hand, it could also bring harmony.

  “This is madness,” Gjorg said to himself, as if he were glad. He thought he saw beads of cold sweat on Vladan’s brow.

  He wanted to tell him not to torture himself this way, or simply to shout, “Don’t!” But Vladan had already plucked the string.

  For an instant isolated, sorrowful notes rose up. Then came the words. Gjorg saw Vladan’s face turn spectral white. And the words, heavy as ancient headstones, were filled with sorrow. “Serbs, to arms! The Albanians are taking Kosovo from us!“

  He sang these words, and then dropped his head as if he had been struck. “I cannot! I must not!” he muttered, gasping in despair.

  The other fugitives looked at each other, wondering what had happened.

  “How wretched we are!” Gjorg said to himself, and yet in his painful words there was a spark of uncertainty. “No, how blessed we are!” And he cried deep inside.