But the general, without allowing him to finish, broke in with a proposal that left him dumbfounded. When he did regain his composure, however, the priest refused to subscribe to the idea.
It was the first time that he had made such a formal show of opposition. But the general nevertheless pointed out to him point blank that he, the general, was the leader of the mission, and made it clear that if he was forced into it he would simply order the priest to accompany him.
“We are proud of our mission, aren’t we? You have told me so often enough. And now we have concluded it, our glorious mission. So this evening I want to enjoy myself, listen to some music, see a play, anything! Wasn’t it you who told me that the wedding feasts in this country are as good as an evening at the theatre? Or was it only funerals you were talking about? It doesn’t matter anyway. The important thing is that I want to enjoy myself a little this evening. If there was a funeral going on then we’d go to that too, you understand? I’m not going to hold back out of some sort of respect for these peasants. And besides, it was you yourself who told me that the Albanians carry hospitality to almost absurd lengths. There is no risk of our not being well received.”
The priest had riveted icy eyes upon him. The general talked on hoping to avoid a silence. But at last the silence came.
“No,” the priest said then, extending an arm in the direction he presumed the marriage feast was to take place. “We must not go. We are in mourning. We must not desert them.”
Don’t desert us. The age-old cry. For a year and a half the general had been hearing it, sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger, from his army. They wanted him near them. For love of them he had renounced his own life. Each time he had tried to leave them, even if only for a few hours, he had heard their muffled murmurs of appeal. He was their general; but this evening he was rebelling.
This thought left him paralyzed - standing up to his whole army! Normally it was quite the opposite: the troops mutinied against their leader. But this general fatefulness left everything topsy-turvy.
The priest’s arm was still extended.
“I’m not deserting anybody,” the general said in a hoarse voice, “I simply want a little relaxation.”
Without waiting for a reply he pulled on his waterproof and walked out.
The priest followed.
20
THE WEDDING FEAST WAS being held in a house at the very centre of the village. Even from quite a distance away the general and the priest could see bright patches of light through which the rain seemed to be falling even more thickly. Despite the bad weather the big double door of the house was wide open and there was quite a crowd under the wide porch. There were people coming and going, and the little street in which the house stood was full of bustle and whispering and every kind of noise.
The two men advanced towards the house, neither of them speaking, swathed in their long, black waterproof capes, and their footsteps echoed back from the narrow lane’s stone walls - the heavy, thudding stride of the general, who splashed his way on through the puddles without even noticing them, and the lighter, livelier tread of the priest.
They paused for a moment beneath the porch, where a few young men in festive costume were smoking and talking quietly together, then went in through the doorway into the hall. The general entered first. The priest followed him inside. The passage was crammed with women and children making a tremendous din. The drum had fallen silent and they could hear the sound of men’s voices from the main room. A little group formed out in the passage, a messenger was sent into the big room, and eventually an old man, looking surprised, emerged from it and came towards them. He placed a hand over his heart in traditional greeting as he approached, then helped them off with their capes, which he proceeded to hang up alongside the villagers’ thick cloaks. He was the master of the house. He led them through into the main room, and at their appearance a general agitation became apparent; all those present seemed to begin murmuring, whispering, turning to one another, craning their necks, like a clump of multicoloured bushes suddenly stirred by a strong breeze.
The general had certainly not expected to be so troubled by the scene that presented itself to his eyes. At first, he was so put out of countenance that for a while after entering he was unable to perceive anything at all except a palette of living, moving patches of colour, just as though he had been given a hard blow on the head and was seeing stars. Someone led him to a table, then someone else helped him off with his coat. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a few mumbled syllables, and eventually he gave way to his bewilderment, simply nodding and smiling at the moving splashes of colour around him.
It was not until the drum began to beat again, and the violin voiced its first piercing invitation to the guests to stand up and dance, that he was able to recover himself slightly. Through the crystalline tinkling of the glasses he heard a voice at his elbow say in his own language: “Will you raise your glass?” and did as he was asked. The same voice then continued to speak, as though it were explaining something to him, but he was still in no state to understand anything that was said, and was himselfastonished at feeling so completely disoriented.
Now the feast seemed to him like a great organism, powerful and amorphous, breathing, moving, murmuring, dancing, and filling the whole atmosphere around him with its warm, disturbing, intoxicating breath.
It was some short while before the general had completely recovered himself. He could feel that the children were staring at him, their eyes bright with silent delight. Pushing their heads together, they were pointing fingers in his direction, as though counting the buttons on his uniform, or the circles of braid round his cuffs, for they then began discussing something and shaking their little heads in evident disagreement.
Then little by little the general became aware of everything else surrounding him. He gazed in turn at the old men with their long moustaches, sitting cross-legged on their benches and exchanging grave comments as they smoked their long Turkish pipes, at the bride in her white dress, so graceful in her shy excitement, at the groom, sweating profusely and hopping here and there the whole time looking after everyone, at the bunches of young girls, all laughing and whispering in the corners as though that was all they knew how to do, their attitude somehow a promise of hidden joys, even though it was never to be fully kept, at the disillusioned look of the young men smoking their cigarettes, at the swarthy musicians soaked in sweat, at all the women scurrying from one room to another with such a business-like air, and lastly at the old women, dressed in black, their faces marked by the years and their eyes heavy with emotion and affection, sitting along the wall like a row of pale icons. Now he was following the agile movements of the dancing legs and the rhythmic tapping of heels on the floor, obedient to the vibrant orders of the drum, the rustling of the white fustanel-las, those fustanellas with their thousands of fine pleats as white as the snows of the mountains they had just returned from, the long and convoluted toasts that seemed to lose all meaning when translated, the rough songs of the men recalling the brief mountain twilights, and the trailing, pathetic songs of the women, songs that seemed to lean on the robuster shoulders of the men’s songs and to make their way submissively, eternally, by their side. The general allowed his gaze to wander all around him without managing to think of anything at all. He simply sat there drinking and smiling, without even knowing himself to whom his smiles were addressed.
I don’t know what army you are part of, because I’ve never been able to recognize uniforms, and I’m too old now to start, but you are a foreigner and you belong to one of those armies that killed my family. That’s clear enough. To judge by your insignia, invading people is your trade and you are one of those who broke my life, who turned me into the unhappy old woman I am, an old woman who has come to a wedding feast that is nothing to do with her and sits in a corner mumbling like this. No one can hear what I am saying because everyone here is merry and I don’t want to spoil the joy of their feast. And i
t is precisely because I don’t want to spoil anyone’s joy that I am staying here in my corner cursing you between my teeth, quietly, oh very quietly, so that no one will hear. I should like to know what made you come here to this wedding feast, and why your legs did not give way under you before they brought you here. You are sitting there, at that table, and laughing like an idiot child. Get up, cant you, throw your coat over your shoulders, go back through the rain to where you came from! Cant you understand that you are not wanted here, accursed man?
The women were still singing. The general felt a warm breath of tender emotion flooding through his breast. He had the sensation of being laved in a delightful bath of sounds and light. And the waves of sound and light pouring over him like the waters of a healing spring were warming him, purifying his body of all that graveyard mud, that foul mud with its unmistakable odour of putrefaction and of death.
Now that his first dazed reaction had passed, the general had regained all his good humour. He felt he wanted to talk, to keep himself from thinking with a flow of words. He tried to catch the eye of the priest, who was sitting one place away down the table on the other side. He was obviously in a state of great unease.
The general leaned over to him. “You see, it’s all perfectly all right.”
The priest didn’t answer.
The general stiffened. He could feel the glances of the people around him falling on him like silent arrows. They were falling on his pockets, on his epaulettes, and occasionally, very occasionally, on his eyes; the dark, heavy arrows of the men, and the nimble, glittering, uncertain arrows of the young girls.
(Like a wounded but indomitable bird, you will fly on …)
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?” he said, addressing himself once again to the priest.
But the priest still did not reply. He merely looked at the general as though to say “Possibly,” then turned his eyes away again.
“These people are showing us respect,” the general said.
“Death commands respect everywhere.”
“Death …? I don’t think it’s written on our faces,” the general retorted. He tried to smile, but failed. “It is a long time since the war was over. The past is forgotten. I am certain that no one at this wedding has a thought for past enmities.”
The priest did not speak. The general decided to cease addressing him - and yet, somehow, a piece of his companion’s cassock, a black patch, seemed to stay dancing in front of his eyes.
The priest obviously feels unwanted, he thought to himself.
And wouldn’t that mean that I was too? It’s very difficult to say But it’s done now. Here we are. Wanted or not wanted, there is no way of leaving. It would be easier to retreat under machine-gun fire than to stand up now, throw our coats over our shoulders, and walk out into the rain.
You know quite well you re not wanted here. You can feel there’s someone at this feast who is cursing you; and a mother’s curse is never voiced in vain. Despite the respect they are showing you, you know well enough that you should never have set foot in this place. You are trying to persuade yourself it isn’t so, but it’s no good, is it? Your hand trembles as you raise your glass, and the shadows that pass across your eyes betray the terror that you feel!
The drum was beating again. A clarinet began to lament, then several violins joined in. A fresh group of belated guests arrived, their cloaks dripping. They had been held up by the rising river and forced to wait for several hours before they could cross it. They went round the room formally greeting all those present, then took their places around the big table. It’s as though a wedding feast represents something really sacred for these people, the general mused, otherwise they would hardly take the trouble to travel on a night like this just for a little share of someone else’s joy. It must be absolutely teeming. On such a night you couldn’t even dig a grave: it would fill with water as you were digging it.
It seems you ve come here to collect all the dead men who came from your country. Perhaps you’ve already dug up a great many, and perhaps you will find a lot more, perhaps you will collect them all, but I want you to know that one of them, yes one of them you’ll never find, never till the end of time, just as I shall never find my little girl or my husband again in all the ages to come. How I should like to speak to you about the one you’ll never find! And if I don t, it’s because I don’t want to bring back all their sad war memories to all these guests. She was my daughter, I was her mother. As our elders used to say: you ve become a mother, evil has befallen you - and so it has, wretched as I am! How it rained that night! Harder even than tonight. The water was streaming everywhere. You couldnt dig a grave because it filled with water as you dug, with water as black as pitch that seemed to well up out of the darkness. And yet I did dig one, I did dig one! But I mustnt tell you about it because I don’t want to spoil other peoples joy, not even yours, curses on you!
The general lit a cigarette, then felt in some strange way that it was too small, that it was pitifully impotent compared with the long, black pipes whose big boxwood bowls the old men were clasping in their brown hands, and on which they drew from time to time as they talked, as though to punctuate the rhythms of their conversation.
The master of the house, the same old man who had greeted them in the passage on their arrival, came and sat by him, his pipe in his fist just like the other old men and a medal on a yellow ribbon dangling from his thick, black homespun jacket. The general knew them well, those medals, from having seen them on the chests of so many other peasants, and it now seemed to him that each one of them bore on its reverse the pale face of a soldier from his dead army. He smiled at the old man’s furrowed face. It made him think of a knotty, cracked tree-trunk but still full of sap. A man sitting beside him, the one who had urged him to drink earlier on, translated the old man’s first words to him. The old man was apologizing to his guest for not having come to speak to him earlier, but the guests were still arriving and he must by custom be there to receive them all.
The general replied with a profusion of polite phrases and much deferential nodding of the head. The old man was silent for a while, then he puffed gently at his pipe and asked the general in calm tones:
“Where are you from?” The general told him.
The old man shook his head in a wondering way that conveyed to the general that he had never heard of such a town - despite the fact that it was a large and very well known one.
“Have you a wife? And children?” the old man then asked.
The general nodded and the other said: “May they enjoy long life!”
The old man drew another puff of smoke from his pipe and the furrows on his brow visibly deepened. He seemed to want to speak, and the general sensed that he was about to say precisely what he was most apprehensive of hearing that evening.
“I know why you have come to our country,” his host went on, still in the same perfectly even tone, and the general felt the words pierce his heart like a dagger.
Ever since the evening began he had been fearing a conversation of this sort, one that might develop into some kind of provocation, and he had studiously obliterated the reason for his presence in that place from his mind, under the illusion that his own forget-fulness would ensure that of others. That evening he would have liked to be nothing more than a simple tourist, taking an interest in the fascinating customs of a people with a long past so that he could talk about them later to his friends, back in his own country. And now at last the accursed subject of conversation had proved unavoidable and the general was sorry he had come.
“Yes,” the old man said, “it is good that you should collect the remains of your dead soldiers the way you are doing. All God’s creatures should rest in the earth from which they sprang.”
The general expressed his acquiescence to this sentiment by bowing his head. The old man shook out his pipe, then rested his eyes on its embers.
“You had poor weather,” he said. Again the general nodded.
The other gave a deep sigh.
“As the saying goes: rain and death are met with the world over.”
The general found the expression enigmatic, but dared not ask that it be interpreted for him.
After a moment more his host gravely rose and excused himself; he had to do the honours of his house to other newly arrived guests.
The general returned to his drink with relief. His good humour had returned once again. The danger of provocation seemed to have passed. He could now follow the development of the wedding feast without uneasiness and drink as much as he liked.
“You see?” he said once more to the priest (his words were already slightly slurred). “They respect us. I told you so. The past is forgotten. What do you say?”
“I have already said that on such occasions it is not easy to make out the exact dividing line between a respect for customs and a respect for persons,” the priest replied.
“Generals always inspire respect.” The general finished off another glass.
“You know something?” he said, pushing his face nearer to the priest’s and speaking with a certain hint of malice. “I’ve had an idea. I wouldn’t mind getting up and dancing with them.”
The priest looked dumbstruck. “You don’t mean that seriously?”
“Yes, why shouldn’t I?”
The priest gave a nervous shake of the head.
“I just can’t understand what’s got into you this evening.”
The general was irritated by the remark.
“You’ve played the nanny long enough now. It’s time you let me be, damn it all! I don’t want anyone keeping tabs on me.”
“Not so loud,” the priest said. “There are people listening.”
“When is it going to be abolished, I’d like to know, this loathsome practice of keeping generals under supervision?”
The priest rested his forehead in the palm of his hand as if to say: “This is all we needed!”
“I’m going to get up and dance, and that’s all there is to it!”
The General of the Dead Army Page 18
