Three Arched Bridge

by Ismail Kadare

  People responded to the news with a feeling between fear and elation. They were pleased that they would have no more dealings with the disgraceful ferrymen, who were always on the other bank when you wanted them on this one,, were sometimes not to be found at all or,, even worse, were to be found drank, with the exception of the most recent hunchbacked ferryman, who neither pestered the women nor drank but was so gloomy in his expression that he seemed to be carrying you to certain death by drowning, The rafts were filthy and damp and spun around in the water, making you want to throw up, while the bridge would always be there, at all times of the day or night, ready to arch its stone back under your feet without swaying or playing tricks. They would have no more trouble with the river either, which sometimes swelled and wreaked havoc, and sometimes sank to the merest thread, as if about to give up the ghost, People were glad that the Ujana e Keqe, which had been such a trial to them, would finally be pinned down by a clasp of stone. But this very thing, besides causing joy, also scared them. It was not easy to saddle a kicking mule, let alone the Ujana e Keqe* Oh, we will see, we will see how this business will fare, they said.

  And as always before such events, people began to move more among each other’s scattered houses; they even went farther afield, to the Poplar Copse, where few had been since the duke of Gjin had been ambushed there, shortly before the betrothal with the house of our liege lord was broken off. There were others who went to the wild pomegranates by the Five Wells, from where they could indirectly emerge at Mark Kasneci’s clearing; they would then roll up their breeches to cross the quagmire and come out at the great highway, There, if the news really was such that they could not keep it to them-selves^ their legs of their own accord ate up the road down to the Inn of the Two Roberts. There, everybody knew what happened: words took wing.

  Among those who were not at all pleased about the bridge and even became hostile to it was the old woman Ajkuna. She prophesied nothing but ill for it. It is Beelzebub’s backbone^ she said, and woe to any with the audacity to climb upon it!

  7

  AT THE END OF MARCH, one bitter morning (it was one of the three days that mark the tail end of winter), they again summoned me urgently to the count, 1 was seized with trembling lest those crazy jabberers had come back, I would have found it easier to interpret for woodpeckers, 1 was ashamed of myself when, dozing in the cart, I found myself repeating to myself as if crazy the ancient ditty, “Oh March wind, oh brother mine, dry the loudmouths on the washing line,” However, this time it was not them but the people from “Boats and Rafts,” There were three men; one of whom, tall and pale and with a pointed beard, spoke little. Judging by the respect shown to him by the other two, he was one of the main directors of “Boats and Rafts,” and perhaps their great master’s deputy. All three spoke perfect Latin. They had brought with them some black leather bags, full of all kinds of documents,

  This time the count brought us into his study. Heavy oak bookshelves occupied part of the walls, and I strained my eyes to read the titles of the books from a distance, in the hope of asking for one of them some time, should the opportunity arise,

  “We fail to understand what complaint the noble count might have against us,” said Pointed Beard, not raising his eyes from his bag, “As far as I am aware, we have always fulfilled every item in our agreement,”

  Our liege lord’s cheeks, pale since his daughter first fell ill, blushed above the cheekbones,

  1 had acted as interpreter for several conversations between the count and “Boats and Rafts,” and I knew well that it was always “Boats and Rafts” that complained about our lord, and not the other way around. There had been continual complaints about the delayed repayment of sums borrowed by our liege lord from “Boats and Rafts” since the time of the unfortunate campaign against the duke of Tepelene. The bank of “Boats and Rafts” had twice reduced the interest rate, from fourteen to nine and then to six percent, and had finally agreed to postpone the repayment of the loans for five years without interest, They were forced into this against their will, because they did not want to create an open breach between themselves and the count, from which they would emerge the losers, since the count could profit from the quarrel and refuse to pay back a single penny, Most princes did this now and then, and everybody knew that there was no power that could force the count to honor an agreement with a bank, even with one of the largest in Dürres, such as the bank of “Boats and Rafts,”

  So when Pointed Beard mentioned the question of a complaint, our liege lord blushed, because he thought this was subtle mockery.

  “What complaint?” he cried, “Who has been complaining about you?”

  His tone seemed to be sayings Have you grown so big-headed as to imagine 1 would make the effort to make complaints against endless moaners like yourselves?

  The man from “Boats and Rafts” eyed him frostily,

  “There is no question of a direct complaint, my noble count,” he said.

  “Then speak clearly,” the count said.

  The representative of “Boats and Rafts” stared at him fixedly. His beard, coating the lower portion of his jaw, appeared to carry the entire weight of his head.

  “Sir, it is a question of a bridge,” he said finally.

  “Ah,” the count said. The exclamation seemed to escape him involuntarily, and we all — who knows why? — gazed at one another.

  “A bridge, no less,” Pointed Beard repeated, as if doubting we had understood correctly. His piercing eyes never left the count.

  “So that’s the problem,” the count said. “And what concern of yours is it?”

  The “Boats and Rafts” representative took a deep breath. It seemed that he needed something more than air to shape the required words of explanation. He began to speak slowly and, phrase by phrase, stated his opinion with increasing baldness. In the end he put it bluntly. “Boats and Rafts” was against the construction of the bridge, because it severely damaged the company’s interests. It was not just that the raft across the Ujana e Keqe would fall out of use. No, it was something extremely serious, which harmed the entire system of ferries, or what the Latins called water transportation, which had used rafts and barges since time immemorial and was now concentrated in the hands of “Boats and Rafts.”

  Our liege lord listened with an expression of indifference. The “Boats and Rafts” emissary spoke in well-prepared phrases. I was able to translate his pure Latin with ease, and even had plenty of time left over to think about what I heard. The visitor claimed that this stone bridge would be the first injury (his exact words) ever brutally inflicted on the free spirit of the waters. Then others could be expected. Nothing but disaster would come of putting rivers in such horrible chains, as if they were convicts.

  The count’s eyes became thoughtful, and he glanced at me for a moment. The men from “Boats and Rafts” appeared to notice this, because they leaned in my direction throughout the rest of the conversation. They began to talk about bridges not only with contempt but as if they were dangerous things.

  Clearly the demon of the waters, in the person of “Boats and Rafts,” was in bitter enmity with the demon of the land, who built roads and bridges.

  “Forbid them to set foot on our land,” Pointed Beard said, “and we will be ready to make a new agreement with you about the old loans.”

  Our liege lord studied his hands.

  The words “forbid them” were uttered by the man with the black beard with such rage and savagery that he seemed to be saying. Kill them, slaughter them, hack them to pieces, so that it will not occur to the mind of man to build a bridge on this earth for the next forty generations.

  Some years previously, a Dutch monk coming from Africa had told me about a deadly struggle between a crocodile and a tiger, which he had seen with his own eyes from the branches of a tree,

  “We may even consider the possibility of deferring all your debts, over a very long period,” Pointed Beard said.

  Our liege lord conti
nued to stare down at the ring glittering on his hand,

  “Or indefinitely,” the other went on.

  The Dutchman told me how for a long time the two beasts, the tiger and the crocodile, had circled each other, without being able to bite or strike a blow at all.

  “Besides, is the noble count aware of the nature of the business conducted by the man who wants to build this bridge?” asked Pointed Beard.

  “That is of little interest to me,” the count said, shrugging.

  “Then allow me to tell you,” Pointed Beard continued. “He is involved in the black arts.”

  Three times the tiger threw himself on the crocodile’s back, and three times his claws slipped on the monster’s hard scales. Yet the crocodile could not bite the tiger or lash him with his tail. It seemed that the contest would never end.

  “Of course,” our liege lord said, “the bitumen he extracts is black.”

  “As black as death,” Pointed Beard said.

  They must have noticed again that shadow of gloom in our liege lord’s eyes, because they fell back again on evil premonitions. All three began to talk, interrupting each other to explain that one only had to see those barreis loaded with that horrible stuff to be sure that only wizards could take to such a trade, and alas for anyone who permitted carts to cross his land loaded with these barrels, that leak drops of tar in the heat, sprinkling the roads — no, what do I mean, sprinkling? — staining the roads with the devil’s black blood. And these drops of pitch always sow disaster. Now it has become a main raw material for war, and this great wizard is selling it everywhere, to the Turks and Byzantium on one hand, and to all the counts and dukes of Arberia on the other, fomenting quarrels on both sides.

  “That’s what that tar does, and you are prepared to let it pass right through your lands. It brings death. Grief.”

  But in one of the crocodile’s furious thrashes, the tiger, it seems, discerned his soft, exposed belly. He attacked his enemy again with a terrifying roar. The crocodile lunged to bite him, exposing his belly again. The tiger needed only an instant to tear it open with his claws. Burying his head in his enemy’s body and crazed by his blood, he tore through the bowels with amazing speed, until he reached the heart.

  The three talked on, but I, who knew our liege lord, realized that he was not listening anymore. Perhaps because they had talked more than they should, they had lost. Although the count seemed to be in doubt for a moment, it was never easy to make him change his mind. The sum of money promised by the road company was greater than the entire profits of the water people. Besides, his daughter had shown signs of improvement since his decision to build the bridge.

  “No,” he said at last, “We will talk no more about the bridge. It will be built,”

  They were struck dumb. Two or three times they moved their hands and were about to speak, but they did nothing but close their bags.

  The beast of the water was defeated.

  8

  AWEEK LATER the master of roads and bridges bought the stretch of highway that belonged to our lord, Two other emissaries had been journeying without rest for three months and more through the domains of princes, counts, and pashas, buying up the great western highway that had once been called the Via Egnatia and was now called the Road of the Balkans, after the name the Turks have recently given to the entire peninsula, which comes from the word mountain. More than by the desire of the Ottomans to cover under one name the countries and peoples of the peninsula, as if subsequently to devour them more easily, I was amazed by our readiness to accept the new name. 1 always thought that this was a bad sign, and now 1 am convinced that it is worse than that,

  Now down this road came its purchasers, their clothes and hair whitened by its dust. They had so far purchased more than half of it, piece by piece, and perhaps they would travel all summer to buy it all They paid for it in fourteen kinds of coinage — Venetian ducats, dinars, drachmas, lire, groschen, and so forth —- making their calculations in eleven languages, not counting dialects, This was because the road passed through some forty principalities, great and small, and so far they had visited twenty-six of them, More than buying it, they seemed to be winding the old roadway, so gouged and pitted by winters, summers, and neglect, onto a reel

  The highway was older than anyone could remember. In the past three hundred years or so, almost all the holy crusades had passed along it. They said that two of the leaders of the First Crusade, Robert Giscard, Count of Normandy, and Robert, Count of Flanders, had spent a night at the inn a thousand paces down the road from us, which since then had been called the Inn of the Two Roberts,

  Tens of thousands of knights of the Second Crusade had also passed this way, and then the Third Crusade, headed by Frederick Barbarossa, or Barbullushi as our yokels called him. Then came the interminable hordes of the Children’s Crusade, the Fifth Crusade, the Seventh and Eighth, the knights of the Order of the Templars, the Order of St. John the Hospitalier, and the Teutonic Order. Very old men remembered these last, not from the time when they were traveling to Jerusalem, but from about forty years ago, when they passed this way on their return to Europe.

  A sorrier array of men had never been seen, as old Ajkuna said. Slowly, silently, they rode on their great horses, with breastplates patched with all kinds of scrap, which squeaked, krr, krr, as they rode, sometimes dripping rust in wet weather. They were returning northward to their own countries, with that creaking like a lament, leaving trickles of rust on the road like drops of discolored blood. Old Ajkuna said that when they saw the first of their ranks, people began to call, “Ah, the ‘Jermans’ are coming, the ‘Jermans’ are coming.” One hundred and fifty years had passed since they came this way on their journey to Jerusalem; but the stories about them that had passed from mouth to mouth were so accurate that people recognized the “Jermans” as soon as they appeared again. Very old people said that this was what they were called when they first came — “Jermans,” or people who talk as if in jerm, in delirium. Yet many people seem to have liked this name, since they say it is now used everywhere. According to our old men, these people have even begun to call their own country Jermani, which means the place where people gabble in delirium, or land of jerm. However, I do not believe that this name has such an origin.

  All these things came to my mind fragmentarily as the agreement was being concluded. They paid for every piece, yard by yard, in Venetian ducats, and in the end departed very pleased, as if they had acquired the road for nothing. And so, with muddied hair and filthy clothes, they went on their way.

  The Dutch monk had told me that the beast of the land, having gorged himself on the crocodile’s heart, left the beast dead under its useless scales and, with bloodied muzzle, wandered off through the grassland as if drunk.

  9

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER THIS, one cloudy morning, two somewhat bewildered-looking travelers dismounted from their heavily laden mules by the Ujana e Keqe. They asked some children playing nearby whether this river was really the Ujana e Keqe, unloaded their mules, and there and then began to dig pits in the ground, fixing some sort of stakes in them, Toward noon, it was apparent that they were building a hut, They labored all day, and nightfall found them still at work; but in the morning they were no longer there, There was only the ugly hut, rather rickety, its door shut with a padlock.

  This aroused general curiosity. Everybody, not just old people and children, clustered around it, peering through cracks and crevices in the planks to see inside. They turned away disappointed, shrugging their shoulders as if to say, “Strange, not a thing inside,” Some people examined the padlock, fingered it, while others chided them: “Don’t touch it. What’s it got to do with you?” Then they shook their heads and left.

  Four days passed in this way. Interest was waning fast, but on the fifth day it revived again even more strongly. In the morning people discovered, or simply had a feeling, that the hut was no longer empty. There was no smoke or noise, but nonetheless it was felt that s
omeone was inside. Somebody must have come during the night.

  Nobody saw him all that day or the next. A damp mist swathed everything, and people who went to the hut and peered through chinks said that the stranger was huddled up inside, wrapped in fleeces.

  He emerged only on the third day. He had a tousled, tightly curled mop of red hair, and pockmarked cheeks. He had the kind of eyes that somehow seem not to allow you to look straight into them. A sick gleam that appeared as soon as you caught his eye would totally confuse you. He walked along the riverbank for a long while, crossed to the other side on the raft, and walked there too, returning to shut himself in the hut again.

  For days on end, people saw him wade into the river up to his knees, drive in small stakes of some kind, and lower some things like copper sheets into the water. He would study these carefully and then fill his hands again and again with river mud, letting it trickle through his fingers. Everyone realized that this could be none but the designer, or as they said now, the projector of the future bridge.

  He stayed two consecutive weeks in the rough little hut, gloomy and not keeping company with anybody.

  People came from all parts to see him, and not only the curious or the idle, who are never in short supply at such times, but folk of all kinds. Men who had set out for market came, women with their cradles in their arms, cheese-makers who smelled of brine, and hurrying soldiers.