The Traitor's Niche

by Ismail Kadare

Ugh, went Tundj Hata for a second time, as he felt the carriage wheels leave the bridge behind. He leaned into the back of his seat, and only when it was fully daylight did he breathe on the windowpane to see where he was. We must be out of Albania, he thought. He looked abstractedly at the frost-covered earth. It was hard to find anything else in the world that was so ordinary yet so widespread. At least let snow cover the earth, he said to himself, and why wasn’t snow black, like the veils of women? After all, the soil is nothing but a fertile woman. An old whore. That was why high officials went even crazier for land than for women.

  The old whore, Tundj Hata almost said aloud, staring at the frost that lay like white powder over the sleepy surface of the field. He felt exhausted. The thought slid snail-like through his mind that his second fit, towards dawn, had worn him out completely. It had been too much, he said to himself. It was like mounting a woman in the morning. Now he felt that his mind not only lacked the strength to forge ahead, but was trapped in his skull and unable to rise to the simplest thought. Tundj Hata was benumbed, seized by a frightening insensibility. At these moments, his face looked more terrifying than it did during his most savage agitation, as when he took part in mass executions or flirted with severed heads. He stared at the wintry landscape, or rather it passed icily into his field of vision. Small muddy towns, villages that from a distance looked embalmed, churches, tall minarets, the yellow house of an estate-owner, a leper colony, lime pits, bridges, a town under quarantine because of the plague, bare poplars, roadside inns – all these lurched past, close or distant, boiled together as if in some thick glue. For him this entire world was something mummified. At one point, near a crossroads, he saw a wedding party with the bride veiled and on horseback. His imagination wandered between her legs, to her genitals irritated by the saddle, and he chuckled. In fact he merely thought he chuckled … nothing in his expression moved. His laughter, like some tiny beetle deep underground, would have miles to burrow before emerging at the surface.

  Tundj Hata shook off his apathy to some degree at the third change of horses, where he had to buy snow for the head. He had hoped to find snow on the hillsides along the road, but there was only a thin slush, impossible to gather. Real snow, like some great lady in white, looked down disdainfully from hundreds of yards further up. He haggled with the peasant over the price, and called him a leech for sucking a man’s blood for a handful of snow that he might collect himself if he had time. But the man told him that the weather was warm, and that he’d soon be begging for even a little hoar frost. Then Tundj Hata would pay for a handful of snow with its weight in silver. ‘It’s not summer yet …’ Tundj Hata retorted. Summer seemed a long way off, and he believed it would never come.

  He repacked the head before the peasant’s astonished gaze. It looked like one of the snowmen that children build in the winter holidays. He took care when covering the most delicate parts of the face, especially the eyes.

  The carriage moved off again, followed by the derisive stare of the peasant, who seemed to be saying, see you in the summer, mister courier. From the rear window of the carriage, Tundj Hata watched the peasant as he emptied the remaining snow on the ground and stamped on it, as if scared that someone else might use it.

  Above the grey plateau stretched a sky as broad as the land itself, with a bald red sun, shorn of its surrounding rays.

  They had left Albania behind a long time ago and were approaching the territories that had been stripped of their nationality: Provinces Two, Six and Seven. Together these formed the broad region under Caw-caw, usually marked in pale pink on the maps of the empire.

  Tundj Hata, totally stupefied, pressed his head against the carriage window to look; his temples felt the shaking of the glass.

  This is how he always remembered the endless plateau of the Caw-caw region, with a perpetually cold sun that was dull red like sealing wax, as if the sovereign had decreed that its days should look like this.

  The featureless road stretched endlessly ahead. Here even the milestones had no figures. Numbers must have been erased along with letters when these parts were stripped of their language.

  Whenever he took this route, Tundj Hata did all he could to pass the time sleeping but, amazingly, it was precisely here, in the empire’s most somnolent region, that sleep eluded him. He stared at the monotonous road, waiting for the approach of the next milestone. It would gleam in the distance, a mere dot, and then quickly grow larger until it passed the carriage, rinsed by the rains and bleached by the sun, with no number or other marking. Then Tundj Hata would heave an involuntary sigh and wait for the next stone.

  He was shaken out of this daze when, shortly before noon, the first village deputation stepped out in front of the carriage. The four men had been sitting by the roadside, cowering against the cold, bundled up in sleeveless and collarless tunics like grey felt sacks, such as all the inhabitants of the degraded territories were forced to wear. They told the Tatars that they had seen the carriage in the distance from their village, which was barely visible on a mountain spur, and had hurried down the slope to meet them.

  When Tundj Hata opened the door painted with the royal arms, the four bowed almost to the ground.

  ‘There is a head,’ said Tundj Hata loftily, not even glancing down. He looked to one side in a direction where there was nothing to be seen. They bowed even lower, perhaps to the dead man as well. But Tundj Hata did not even get out of his carriage. He knew that the words ‘there is a head’ had a magical effect. When there was no head, Tundj Hata himself would smile at them, as if begging pardon. He would enquire about their health and their crops, assure them that next time he would come bearing something, and even produce from his chest his travel order, passing it around. They would stare in silence at the yellow seals, which enclosed death, and tell him they would look out for him again. But now that there was a head, Tundj Hata sat in lofty silence, as if to create the impression he had cut this head especially for them. They waited in vain for him to ask them about their flocks and their ailments. He knew that any chatter of this kind would devalue the show. Still he sat in the carriage, staring to one side. Finally, he announced in a metallic voice, giving every word equal weight:

  ‘The head of Ali Tepelena, governor of Albania, a pasha of the highest rank, a member of the Council of Ministers.’

  They froze on the spot. Their felt jackets barely contained their shaking shoulders. They glanced at each other, and then tried to catch the courier’s eye. But they could not.

  ‘Well,’ Tundj Hata said at last. ‘How much will you give?’

  Two or three opened their mouths to speak, but only one managed to shape a few words.

  ‘Mister courier … this year we … this year … one disaster after another … Mister courier … this year … because … you see why …’

  ‘What?’ Tundj Hata howled. ‘Are you trying to tell me you want to see heads more cheaply? Or heads not worth a decent price?’

  Two peasants bowed to kiss the running board where the courier would place his foot. But Tundj Hata did not get out.

  ‘Speak up!’ he said from above, but to himself he cursed them. ‘You think these heads are easy to find, like cuts from some slaughterhouse? You don’t deserve one. Not this one, which is a head surpassing all others, nor even the head of some mean scribe who made a mistake copying a document. You don’t deserve the head of a banker or a curse-giver. All you deserve is the head of some thief or sodomite or adulterous wife. The sort you find in prison yards. That’s all you deserve.’

  They were now visibly shaking. Finally one of them showed the palm of his hand, on which lay some pebbles. Tundj Hata studied them. The peasants did not know numbers, and this was the only way they could tell him what price they offered.

  ‘Seven pounds,’ said Tundj Hata, raising his eyebrows in surprise. ‘For the four of you,’ he added … ‘What?’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘For the whole village?’ His hennaed beard looked as if it would catch fire in the wind. ‘Se
ven pounds to see the head of Ali Pasha, the great sultan’s rival? You must be crazy.’

  Terrified that he would stalk away, the four set aside their caution and began chattering among themselves, clumsily interrupting each other with as much vigour as their halting patois permitted. They said that mister courier should try to show a little understanding, that this winter had been truly disastrous for them, that anthrax had attacked their livestock, wolves had eaten two shepherds, their baker had come back as a vampire three days after his death, and if all this were not enough (here they lowered their voices) it was said that the priest’s middle daughter was pregnant, and a horrible thing had happened to the old woman Xune, the like of which nobody in the village and perhaps the entire district could remember: she had received a letter in the post. Surely this letter had been sent by the devil himself, so the whole village had assembled, led by their imam, to spit on it and burn it and scatter its ashes into the air. The more they rambled on with their trivia, the more Tundj Hata was convinced they were in thrall to his showmanship. He couldn’t remember which head he had shown them last time, but it must have been an exceptionally alluring one, to dazzle them to this extent. It would be hard to find such dedicated spectators even at the entrance to the royal circus in the capital city, even when the famous Tor Djanaydini was performing.

  They had now raised their offer, but Tundj Hata had already decided what he would do. Without casting them a glance, he slammed the carriage door shut before their very noses. The wretched creatures ran after the carriage wheels, shouting ‘Wait! Wait!’ but Tundj Hata did not even turn his head. He knew that next time they would pay triple the price without a whimper, to see some quite insignificant head.

  That afternoon, Tundj Hata came across the next deputation, which, seen through the window clouded with the courier’s breath, resembled a bunch of rags flapping in the wind. When Tundj Hata called out, ‘I have a head,’ the people fell to the ground. A price was hurriedly agreed. Tundj Hata told them that his time was precious and they set off towards the village on a puddle-strewn, potholed road. Some of the people pushed the carriage forward and tried to kiss the wheels.

  The village stood between a ravine and a stretch of burned woodland, its huts and hovels so tightly packed in the midst of the endless plain as to resemble a flock of sheep huddled in fear.

  Panting, the deputation told how they had been watching the road all week, and just when they were losing hope, the carriage appeared and they had hurried to intercept it.

  Tundj Hata listened to their tale with indifference. This person who was so unaffected by their story, which they had racked their brains all week to devise, must really be an important gentleman.

  The streets were totally deserted as they entered the village. The population had gathered under the porch of the mosque. This was a large, extremely cold portico, and the people stood motionless in expectation, without a whisper. Tundj Hata climbed the steps to the mosque, taking the leather bag from the Tatar who was carrying it and leading the way under the porch. His assistants followed him and they took their places behind a wooden bench in front of the crowd. Tundj Hata looked at the unmoving heads of men, women, old people and children, and it struck him that they looked so frozen that if they had to be transported they wouldn’t need snow or salt or even the Regulations for the Care of Heads that all the couriers carried with their travel papers.

  Tundj Hata laid the bag on the wooden bench and announced in a resounding voice:

  ‘Ali Tepelena, Black Ali, governor of Albania, a pasha of the first rank, and member of the Council of Ministers.’

  As he uttered the last word, he put his hand in the bag and, gripping the head by the hair, drew it out in a swift movement. It resembled less a head than a packed chunk of snow, through which strands of grizzled hair were intermittently visible. Tundj Hata began to pick off the snow. First he exposed the right eye, and then the nose, the cheeks, the other eye, the eyebrows and the full face, a wan grey.

  The silence, already total, deepened, as if within this silence a gate to some abyss had opened.

  The head was establishing its rapport with the crowd. Its glassy eyes sought human eyes. Death hung in the air, transparently visible. As the cold tightened its grip, the spectators felt drawn closer to the frontier of death, almost touching it. In a few moments the crowd and death would congeal in a waxen, translucent unity.

  This happened at all the shows. Tundj Hata knew that for remote, buried hamlets, this spectacle was at the same time their literature, theatre, art, philosophy and perhaps love. (He could not forget the shout of ‘Oh, how young he is!’ from a girl, as he was wiping the snow from the head of the ‘blond pasha’. It was the only human voice he had ever heard during a showing.)

  Tundj Hata looked at the drawings on the walls of the mosque, behind which the choirs of Christian saints, roughly effaced, could still be discerned. The building itself, if you looked at it carefully, preserved the shape of a church. It had swallowed the old chapel without digesting it. He had noticed that churches that were turned into mosques came back as soon as they could in a shadowy form, like the shape he had once seen of a woman drowned in a pond, which emerged as the water cleared.

  During these shows, Tundj Hata had noticed that as much as he tried to turn his thoughts back to practical things, such as the money he might earn by the end of the journey, he could not escape the intimation of death. The most universal, immaterial things passed through his mind. Perhaps this was the very reason why these lost souls gave him money, to stir up their thoughts for a few moments. It was as if their minds, like fat chickens, could not take flight without being startled by something, in this case by death.

  Tundj Hata thought they had seen enough. He reached out to the chunks of snow that surrounded the head like a torn collar of white fur, and this gesture instantly broke that fragile intersection of life and death, more delicate than anything else in this world. Tundj Hata’s hands deftly separated death from life again as he covered the head with snow. First one eye vanished, then the cheeks, then the other eye, and soon the head was turned back into an icy lump. Grasping it with both hands, he put it in the bag, and at the same moment the crowd filling the mosque porch moved, as if released from some hook that had kept them suspended above an abyss. Tundj Hata took the money and hurried away. At the carriage, he gave half a sovereign to each of the three Tatars. They leapt into their seats and the vehicle set off. Tundj Hata stared at the milestones, some upright, some tilting where the soil had slid or a cart had struck them.

  After the third show, Tundj Hata looked thoughtfully at the sky. Dusk was falling and a fourth show was unlikely. Not because of the light – on the contrary, in the evening, a display by torchlight could have twice the impact – but because there wasn’t enough time. They were already hurrying to make up the lost hours, but they could only go so fast. If he were late for no reason, a file might be opened to investigate him, and that would be his end.

  As the Tatars urged on the horses, Tundj Hata looked back at the village for the last time. It lay huddled and cowed in the open plain, with a long and troubled night ahead of it.

  Fine rain began to fall. The milestones grew fainter, and soon they would have to light the lanterns. The previous night they had travelled without them, because the sky, although moonless and starless, had been suffused with a kind of vestigial glow. But tonight the sky was unyielding.

  Night had long fallen when they encountered the last deputation. The peasants emerged from the darkness like large beetles. One of them held a torch, which he raised and lowered to help him see. From inside the carriage, Tundj Hata watched the patches of jaundiced light that flickered from the puddles on the road to the carriage wheels and the backs of the Tatars. He heard scattered voices, muffled and terrified, and shouts of ‘Is there a head?’ The rattling carriage ploughed through them without stopping, as if through a nightmare.

  After this they met nobody. The earth and sky stretched ahead,
indifferent in their immensity. Tundj Hata felt the night was attempting to envelop the whole empire. But it couldn’t. The empire was larger than the night. People said that when dusk fell at one end, dawn rose at the other. The blanket of night was not large enough to cover the whole body of the state. Either its head or its feet would be left outside. The head or the feet, he thought, and unconsciously felt for the sack with his hand. If the head were Albania, the feet would be near the border of Hindustan, or the other way round. No, he thought. The empire resembled least of all a human body. Like most states, it had its head in the centre. Listlessly, he tried to call to mind some creature with its head in the middle of its body, but could not do so. Beasts such as the lion or dragon, whose images appeared on many state emblems and seals, all had their heads at one end of their body. Aha, he almost exclaimed aloud. There was one creature with its head in the middle, the octopus. He hurriedly pictured in his mind all the gates to government buildings he had ever passed through but could not remember a single one carved or painted with the emblem of an octopus. Scared that he might have entertained a sinful thought, he banished the image from his own head, which at once, as if freed from a final burden, sank forward between his shoulders.

  He dozed for a short time. But then he was jolted as if slapped by an invisible hand. He pressed his forehead to the window and stared out into the darkness. He could tell that it was coming. As always, when the exaltation approached, his breath quickened. Then his entire being surged forward, straining to race ahead of the carriage, the horses, the Tatars, and even his own body with its sheath of skin, its eyes, ears and its weight. His physical body fell behind him, as if drowning in chaos. He felt he was shedding it forever. He leaned to the right and his temples touched the icy locks of the head. He recoiled from the touch and the first involuntary gulps escaped him: ‘Huhuhu, hahaha.’ Then everything repeated itself as on the previous night. His brain resembled some clinging creature with the inner luminescence of a glow-worm, whose slime smeared the domes of mosques and mausoleums, banknotes, and the wombs of women awaiting insemination.