Nevertheless, he thought sadly, he belonged to that pale world, and since that was the case he ought never to have gone up to the High Plateau. It had not been created for ordinary mortals but for Titanic beings.
The smoke from the little town grew in volume. Diana, her head resting on the back of the seat, was as motionless as when they had entered the carriage. Bessian felt that he was bringing home only the outward form of his wife, and that he had left the woman herself somewhere in the mountains.
Now they were driving over the naked moor where their tour had begun a month ago. He turned his head again to see the Rrafsh, perhaps for the last time. The mountains were receding ever more slowly, sinking back into solitude. A white, mysterious mist came down upon them, like a curtain lowered on the play just ended.
At that moment, Gjorg was walking with long strides on the Road of the Banners, that he had reached an hour ago. The air was rippled with the first shiver of dusk when he heard, off to one side, a few short words:
“Gjorg, give my greeting to Zef Krye. . . .”
His arm, in a sudden motion, tried to slip the rifle from his shoulder, but that gesture became confounded with the syllables qyqe, the last half of the hateful name, which made its way confusedly to his consciousness. Gjorg saw the ground reel, and then rear up violently to crash against his face. He had collapsed.
For a moment the world seemed to him to have gone absolutely still; then through that deafness he heard footsteps. He felt two hands moving his body. He’s turning me on my back, he thought. But at that instant, something cold, perhaps the barrel of his rifle, touched his right cheek. God, according to the rules! He tried to open his eyes, and he could not tell if they were open or not. Instead of his murderer, he saw some white patches of snow that had not yet melted, and among those patches, the black ox, which still had not been sold. This is it, he thought, and really the whole thing has been going on too long.
Again, he heard footsteps, drawing away, and a number of times he wondered, whose steps are those? He felt that they were familiar. Yes, he knew them, and the hands that had turned him on his back. They’re mine! The seventeenth of March, the road, near Brezftoht. . . . He lost consciousness for a moment, then he heard the footsteps again, and again it seemed to him that they were his own, that it was himself and no one else who was running now, leaving behind, sprawled on the road, his own body that he had just struck down.
December 1978
Other books by Ismail Kadare
DORUNTINE
“A master storyteller. He has a knack like Isak Dinesen’s for creating a long-ago atmosphere for a story essentially timeless.”—Chicago Tribune. “A magical parable of love, death, and the power of familial bonds.”—Stephan Salisbury, New York Times Book Review
THE GENERAL OF THE DEAD ARMY
The story of an Italian general, accompanied by his chaplain, charged with the mission of scouring Albania in search of the bones of their fallen countrymen, killed twenty years earlier during World War II. Their gruesome business—past and present—comes to fill them with horror, guilt, and self-disgust. In a terrible climax the general, attending a wedding feast, is called upon to answer for the crimes of his country and of all the other nations that had invaded Albania and sought to destroy its people.
These are New Amsterdam books, available from Ivan R. Dee, Publisher
Broken April Page 19
