And all this had begun seventy years ago, on a cold October night, when a man had knocked at their door, “Who was that man?” Gjorg had asked as a little boy, when for the first time he had heard the story of the knocking at the door. The question would be repeated many times in their house, at that time and later on, and no one would ever answer it. For no one had ever known who that man was. And even now, Gjorg could not believe that anyone had actually knocked at their door. It was easier for him to imagine that a ghost had knocked, or fate itself, rather than an unknown traveler.
The man, after knocking, had called from the gate and asked for shelter for the night. The head of the house, Gjorg’s grandfather, had opened the door to him. They had welcomed him as was the custom, had brought him food and prepared him a bed, and early next morning, still according to custom, one of the family, his grandfather’s younger brother, had escorted the unknown guest to the outer limits of the village. He had just left the man when he heard a shot. The stranger had fallen, dead, exactly at the border of the village lands. Now, according to the Kanun, when the guest whom you were accompanying is killed before your eyes, you are bound to avenge him. But if he had been struck down after you had turned your back, you were free of that obligation. The man who had been escorting his guest had in fact turned his back before the man had been hit; therefore it was not his responsibility to avenge him. But no one had seen it happen. It was very early in the morning and no one in the neighborhood could testify in the matter. Even so, his protector’s word would have been believed, since the Kanun trusts a man’s word, and it would have been regarded as established that the man who had accompanied his guest had taken leave of him and turned his back by the time the killing had occurred, if another obstacle had not arisen. That was the orientation of the victim’s body. The committee that was formed at once to determine if the duty of avenging the unknown guest fell to the house of Berisha, considered everything minutely, and concluded at last that the Berisha were indeed the ones who must avenge him. The stranger had fallen face down with his head towards the village. For that reason, according to the Code, the Berisha who had given the stranger shelter and had fed him, had had the duty to protect him until he left the village lands, and must now avenge him.
The men of the Berisha family returned in silence from the wood where the commission had debated around the corpse for hours, and the women at the windows of the kulla had understood. Pale as wax, they had listened to the men’s brief words, and had turned paler still. Yet no curse was murmured against the unknown guest who had brought death to their house, since a guest is sacred and, according to the custom, a mountaineer’s house, before being his home and the home of his family, is the home of God and of guests.
On that same October day, it came out who it was that had shot the unknown traveller. It was a young man of the Kryeqyqe family, who had been on the watch for him a long time because the man had done him an injury in a cafe, in front of a woman, also unknown. And so, at the end of that October day, the Berisha found themselves in enmity with the Kryeqyqe. Gjorg’s clan, which had hitherto lived in peace, was at last caught up by the great engine of the blood feud. Forty-four graves had been dug since then, and who knows how many are to come, and all because of the knocking at the gate on that autumn night.
Many times, when he was alone, when he let his mind stray, Gjorg had tried to imagine how the life of his clan would have run, had that late guest not knocked at the gate of their kulla, but at another gate. If, by magic, those knocks could be blanked out from reality, then, oh, then (and on this matter Gjorg thought the stuff of legend to be quite real), one would see the heavy stone slabs lifted from forty-four graves, and the forty-four dead men would rise, shake the earth from their faces, and return to the living; and with them would come the children who could not have been born, then the babies that those children could not bring into the world, and everything would be different, different. And all that would happen if, by enchantment, one could correct the course of things. Oh, if only he had stopped a little farther along. A little farther on. But he had stopped exactly where he had, and no one could change that anymore, no more than anyone could change the direction in which the victim had fallen, no more than anyone could ever change the rules of the ancient Kanun. . . . Without the knocking at the door, everything would be so different that at times he was afraid to think of it, and he consoled himself with the notion that perhaps it had to happen this way, and that if life outside the whirlpool of blood might perhaps be more peaceful, by the same token it would be even more dull and meaningless. He tried to call to mind families that were not involved in the blood feud, and he found no special signs of happiness in them. It even seemed to him that, sheltered from that danger, they hardly knew the value of life, and were only the more unhappy for that. Whereas clans that were in the blood feud lived in a different order of days and seasons, accompanied as it were by an inner tremor; the people were more handsome, and the young men were in favor with the women. Even the two nuns whom he had first passed, when they had seen the black ribbon sewn to his sleeve that meant that he was searching for his death or that his death was searching for him, had looked at him strangely. But that was not the important thing; what was happening within him was the important thing. Something terrifying and majestic at the same time. He could not have explained it. He felt that his heart had leaped from his chest, and, opened up in that way, he was vulnerable, sensitive to everything, so that he might rejoice in anything, be cast down by anything, small or large, a butterfly, a leaf, boundless snow, or the depressing rain falling on that very day. But all that—and the sky itself might fall down upon him—his heart endured, and could endure even more.
He had been walking for hours, but except for a slight numbness in his knees, he was not at all tired. The rain was still falling, but the drops were sparse, as if someone had pruned away the clouds’ roots. Gjorg was sure he had passed the boundaries of his own district and was journeying through another region. The country looked much the same; mountains raising their heads behind the shoulders of other mountains as if in frozen curiosity. He met a small party of mountaineers and asked them if he was on the right road for the Castle of Orosh, and how far off it might be. They told him he was going the right way, but that he would have to hurry if he wanted to arrive before nightfall. As they spoke, their eyes drifted towards the black ribbon on his sleeve and, perhaps because of the ribbon, they suggested again that he quicken his pace.
I’ll hurry, I’ll hurry, Gjorg said to himself, not without bitterness. Don’t worry, I’ll get there in time to pay the tax before nightfall. Without thinking, perhaps because of his sudden anger, or simply following automatically the advice of those strangers, he had indeed picked up his pace.
Now he was quite alone on the road, which crossed a narrow tableland furrowed by old watercourses. Around him the fields were desolate and untilled. He thought he heard the rumbling of distant thunder and looked up. A single airplane was flying slowly among the clouds. Wonderingly his eyes followed its flight for a while. He had heard that in the neighboring district a passenger plane flew by once a week, from Tirana to a far-off foreign country in Europe, but he had never seen it before.
When the airplane disappeared in the clouds, Gjorg felt a pain in his neck, and only then realized that he had stared at it for a long time. The plane left a great emptiness behind it, and Gjorg sighed unawares. Suddenly he felt hungry. He looked around for a fallen tree trunk or stone to sit upon and eat the bread and goat cheese he had brought along, but on either side of the road there was only the naked earth, dried watercourses, and nothing more. I’ll go on a little further, he said to himself.
And after another half-hour of walking, he made out the roof of an inn in the distance. He traversed almost at a run the stretch of road leading to it, stopped for a moment before the door, then went into the building. It was an ordinary inn, like all the others in the mountain districts, with no signboard, the roof steep-pitche
d, smelling of straw, and with a large common room. On either side of a long oaken table with many scorch marks, some customers were sitting on chairs of the same wood. Two of them were bending down to bowls of beans, eating greedily. Another stared vacantly at the planks of the table, his head supported by his hands.
As he sat down on one of the chairs, Gjorg felt the muzzle of his rifle touch the floor. He slipped the weapon from his shoulder, set it down across his thighs, and, with a shake of his head, threw back the soaked hood of his cloak. He felt the presence of other people behind him, and only then noticed that on either side of the stairway that led to the upper storey, other mountaineers were sitting on black sheepskins and woolen packs. Some of them, leaning against the wall, were eating corn bread that they dipped in whey. Gjorg thought that he would get up from the table, and like them, take out his bread and his cheese from his bag, but at that moment the smell of beans reached his nostrils and at once he wanted terribly a plate of hot beans. His father had given him a coin, but it was not clear to Gjorg whether he could really spend it or if he was supposed to bring it back unspent. Meanwhile, the innkeeper, whom Gjorg had not been aware of until then, appeared before him.
“Going to the Kulla of Orosh?” he asked. “Where are you from?”
“From Brezftoht.”
“Then you must be hungry. Would you like to have something?”
The innkeeper was skinny and deformed. Gjorg thought the man must be a sharper, because while saying, “Would you like to have something?” instead of looking him in the eye, he stared at the black band on Gjorg’s sleeve, as if to say, “If you’re about to pay five hundred groschen for the murder you did, the world won’t come to an end if you spend a couple of them in my inn.”
“Would you like to have something?” the innkeeper asked again, turning his eyes from Gjorg’s sleeve at last but still not looking at his face but at some place off to the side.
“A plate of beans,” said Gjorg. “How much will it be? I’ve got my own bread.”
He blushed, but he had to ask the question. Not for anything would he spend any part of the money set aside for the blood tax.
“A quarter groschen,” said the innkeeper.
Gjorg breathed a sigh of relief. The innkeeper turned away, and when he came back a moment later with a wooden bowl full of beans in his hand, Gjorg saw that he had a squint. As if to forget, he bent his head over the bowl of beans and began to eat quickly.
“Would you like coffee?” the innkeeper asked, when he came to take away the empty bowl.
Gjorg looked at him bewildered. His eyes seemed to say, don’t tempt me. I may have five hundred groschen in my purse but I’d rather give you my head (Lord, he thought, that’s just what it will cost me, my head thirty days from now, and even before thirty days, twenty-eight days), before time, than one groschen from the purse that’s owing to the Kulla of Orosh. But the innkeeper, as if he guessed what was in Gjorg’s mind, added:
“It’s very cheap. Ten cents.”
Gjorg nodded impatiently. The innkeeper, moving awkwardly between the chairs and the table, cleared away dishes, brought fresh ones, and then disappeared again, finally coming back with a cup of coffee in his hand.
Gjorg was still sipping his coffee when a small group entered the inn. From the stir their arrival caused, from the turning of heads and by the way the lame innkeeper behaved in their presence, he understood that the newcomers must be well-known in the district. One of them, the man who came at once into the center of the room, was very short, with a cold, pallid face. After him came a man dressed like a townsman, but very oddly, with a checked jacket, and his breeches stuffed into his boots. The third man had a face whose features seemed somehow blunted and whose eyes rained scorn. But it was clear at once that everybody’s attention was centered upon the short man.
“Ali Binak, Ali Binak,” people began to whisper around Gjorg. His eyes widened, as if he could scarcely believe that there, in the same inn as himself, was the famous interpreter of the Kanun, of whom he had heard since he was a child.
The innkeeper, with his odd sideling walk, invited the small party into an adjacent room, evidently reserved for distinguished guests.
The short man mumbled a brief greeting to no one in particular, and without turning his head either to the right or to the left, he followed the innkeeper. While appearing to be aware of his fame, he was, surprisingly, quite without the haughty bearing common among men of small stature who have a sense of their own importance; on the contrary, his movements, his face, and especially his eyes, suggested the calm of a man without illusions.
The newcomers had disappeared into the other room, but the whispering on their account had not stopped. Gjorg had finished his coffee, but while he knew that time was important now, he was pleased to be sitting there, listening to the lively comments on every hand. Why had Ali Binak come? he wondered. No doubt to settle some complex case. Besides, he had been dealing with such things all his life. They called him from Province to Province and from Banner to Banner to ask his opinion in difficult cases, when the elders were divided among themselves over the interpretation of the Code. Of the hundreds of interpreters in the limitless space of the north country rrafsh*, there were no more than ten as famous as Ali Binak. So that it was not for nothing that he went to one place or another. This time, too, someone said, he had come about a complicated boundary question that had to be settled promptly, tomorrow, in the neighboring Banner. But who was the other, the man with the light-colored eyes? That’s right, who was he? They said he was a doctor whom Ali Binak often brought with him in thorny affairs, especially when it was a matter of reckoning up wounds to be paid for with fines. Well, if that was the case, Ali Binak hadn’t come about a boundary dispute but for some other reason, since of course a doctor had no business with boundaries. Perhaps they had misunderstood all along. Some said that he was in fact here about another matter, very complicated, that had come up a few days ago in the village beyond the plateau. In an exchange of shots because of a quarrel, a woman who happened to be there, between the rivals, had been killed in the crossfire. She was pregnant, and with a man-child, as was proved after the baby had been extracted. The village elders, it appeared, were very perplexed in deciding who had the duty of taking revenge for the infant. Could it be that Ali Binak had come to clear up this very case?
But the other one in his odd get-up, who was he? Just as with all the other questions, there was an answer to this one. He was a sort of public servant whose business was measuring land, but he had the Devil knows what kind of name to him that ended in “meter,” the kind of word you can’t pronounce without twisting your tongue, geo, geo. . . . that’s it, geometer.
Oh, then it must be about the boundary business, if this geometer, or whatever you call him, is here.
Gjorg wanted to stay and listen a while longer, the more so because there was every reason to think that people would be telling other kinds of stories at the inn, but if he lingered, he risked not getting to the castle in time. He stood up suddenly, so as not to be tempted again, paid for the beans and the coffee, and was about to leave; at the last moment he remembered to ask for directions once more.
“You take the highroad,” the innkeeper said, “then, when you come to the Graves of the Wedding Guests, at the place where the road forks, make sure you go right, not left. You hear, the right fork.”
When Gjorg went outside, the rain had fallen off still more, but the air was very damp. The day was as cloudy as the morning had been, and just as there are certain women whose age you cannot guess, there was no way to tell what time it was.
Gjorg went on, trying to think of nothing at all. The road stretched endlessly with grey wasteland on either hand. Once his eye fell on some half-sunken graves scattered along the roadside. He thought that these must be the Graves of the Wedding Guests. Then, since the road did not fork there, he decided that those graves must be further on. And so it turned out. They appeared a quarter of an hour l
ater, and they were sunken like the others, but even more dismal, and covered with moss. As he passed them he imagined that the party of wedding guests he had met with that morning had simply turned round and come back to bury themselves in this cemetery and take up their abode here forever.
He took the right fork of the road, as the innkeeper had advised, and, moving on, he had to force himself not to turn his head and look at the old graves again. For a time, he managed to walk without a thought in his head, yet with a curious sense of being at one with the humped shapes of the mountains and the clouds about him. He was not aware how long he had been going on in that indolent way. He would have liked to go on in that way forever, but suddenly there rose up before him something that took his mind off the rocks and mists at once. It was the ruins of a house.
As he went by it, he looked out of the corner of his eye at the great heap of stones; rain and wind had long ago effaced the marks of the fire, replacing them with a sickly grey tint the sight of which seemed to help you get rid of a sob long imprisoned in your throat.
Gjorg walked on, looking sidelong at the ruins. With a sudden jump he vaulted the shallow roadside ditch and in two or three strides reached the pile of burned stone. For an instant he was still, and then, like someone who, confronted by the body of a dying man, tries to find the wound and guess what weapon has brought death near, he went to one of the corners of the house, bent down, moved a few stones, did the same thing with the other three corners, and having seen that the cornerstones had been pulled out of their beds, he knew that this was a house that had broken the laws of hospitality. Besides burning them down, there was this further treatment reserved for those houses in which the most serious crime had been committed, according to the Kanun: the betrayal of the guest who was under the protection of the bessa.
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