Three Arched Bridge

by Ismail Kadare

  “That is true,” our liege lord said. “At least, I have never heard of such a thing,”

  “Nor will you,” the other man interrupted. “But those others, my lord! You know yourself that they are doing their utmost to obstruct the building of this bridge, And when they saw they were not succeeding, or in other words,, when their despicable schemes were scotched by your lordship, they then produced the idea of destroying the bridge, First they placed their hopes in the fury of the river, but then, when nature did not help them, they sent their people to damage our bridge,”

  He paused again briefly, as if to let his audience take in what he said. It was clear, as I had suspected, that the water people would not give up the struggle easily, They were paying the road people back in their own coin, Apparently a battle over money was more savage than that fight between the crocodile and the tiger that the Dutchman had told me about.

  “And that, my lord count, is in short the history of the matter,”

  Our count stared on imperturbably at the stooped delegate. At last, when the man had apparently had his say, he spoke:

  “So what do you want of me, gentlemen?”

  The leader of the delegation fixed his gaze on the count’s eyes once again, as if to say. Do you really not understand what we want?

  “We want the culprits punished,” he said in a perfectly dry tone.

  Our liege lord spread his arms. A bluish light filtered through the stained glass of the upper portion of the window, seeming to dissolve you and carry you far away. The count kept his arms open.

  “It’s no use asking that from me,” he said finally. “I have never meddled in your business, and I have no intention of doing so now.”

  “And so shall we do the murder ourselves?”

  “What?”

  The pens of the scribes scratched disconsolately in the silence. The dim bluish light seemed to take your breath away.

  “What?” said the leader of the delegation, hunched, almost fallen on the table.

  The master-in-chief, s red poll was opposite him, like a cold fire.

  “You mentioned a murder,” the count said.

  Their eyes were again fixed on each other.

  “A punishment,” the visitor said.

  “Ah yes, a punishment.”

  The silence continued after the scratching of the quills ceased, when any silence becomes unbearable.

  Everybody expected the words of our liege lord to fill this lull. His voice came, weary and indifferent as if from beyond the grave.

  “If it is true, as you say, that your enemies have hit upon the idea of destroying the bridge with the help of legend, then you in turn could use the same means of punishing the culprits…. In other words …”

  The count left the phrase unfinished, which happened extremely rarely.

  The strangers’ eyes burned feverishly.

  “I understand, my lord count,” their leader said at last.

  He raised his body from the seat, although his back and head remained hunched over the table, as if they could not be detached from it. It was apparently not easy for him to move his back, and he remained thus for a very long time, while the others turned their heads toward the master-in-chief, almost as if he, who knew the secrets of bridges, could help to lift that arched backbone.

  The man finally succeeded in standing up, and after bidding the count farewell, the delegation left one by one. I left too.

  It was bad weather outside. The north wind froze my ears. As I walked, I could not stop thinking of what they had talked about with the count. Something ominous had been discussed in a mysterious way. Everything had been carefully shrouded. I had once seen the body of a murdered man on the main road, two hundred paces from the Inn of the Two Roberts. They had wrapped him in a cloth and left him there by the road. Nobody dared to lift the cloth to see the wounds. They must have been terrible.

  The thought that I had involuntarily taken part in a conspiracy to murder disturbed my sleep all night. My head was heavy next morning. Outside, everything was dismal Old, iron-heavy rain fell. Oh God, I said to myself, what is the matter with me? And a wild desire seized me to weep, to weep heavy, useless tears, like this rain.

  29

  THE RAIN CONTINUED ALL THAT WEEK, as drearily as on that day of the discussion. People say that rain like this falls once in four years. The heavens seemed to be emptying the whole of their antiquity on the earth.

  In spite of the bad weather, work on the bridge did not pause for a single day. Builders stopped abandoning the site. Work on the second and third arches proceeded at speed. Sometimes the mortar froze in the cold, and they were obliged to mix it with hot water. Sometimes they threw salt in the water.

  The Ujana e Keqe swelled further and grew choppier, but did not mount another assault on the bridge. It flowed indifferently past it, as if nothing had happened, and indeed, to a foreign eye there was nothing but an ordinary bridge and river, like dozens of others that had long ago set aside the initial quarrels of living together and were now in agreement on everything. However, if you looked carefully, you would see that the Ujana e Keqe did not reflect the bridge. Or, if its furrows cleared and smoothed somewhat^ it only gave a troubled reflection almost as if what loomed above it were not a stone bridge but the fantasy or labor of an unquiet spirit.

  Everyone was waiting to see what the spirits of the waters would do next. Water never forgets’ old people said. Earth is more generous and forgets more quickly, but water never.

  They said that the bridge was carefully guarded at night. The guards could not be seen anywhere, but no doubt they watched secretly among the timbers.

  30

  AS SOON AS IT HAD PUT ITS AFFAIRS IN ORDER, the deputation departed^ leaving only one man behind. This was the quietest among them’ a listless man with watery, colorless eyes. He kept to himself, as if not wanting to interfere in anyone’s business, and he often walked quite alone by the riverbank. Mad Gjelosh — who knows why — imagined that he had a special right to threaten and insult this man whenever he saw him. The flaccid character noticed the idiot’s wild behavior with surprise, and did his best to keep out of his way.

  One day 1 happened to meet him face to face; he spoke to me first, apparently remembering me from the discussion with the count. We strolled a while together. He said that he was a collector of folktales and customs. I wanted to ask what this had to do with the bridge builders but suddenly changed my mind. Perhaps it was those watery eyes that made me think better of it.

  A few days later he came to the presbytery, and we talked for a considerable length of time about Balkan tales and legends, some of which he knew, The tranquil water of his gaze became suddenly troubled whenever 1 mentioned them, despite his attempts to control his somnolent eyes.

  “Ever since I have got to know them, 1 can’t stop talking about them,” he continued, as if trying to apologize.

  I recollected in a flash the delegation’s interest in legends, and also how our count had mentioned them during the discussion. Now I no longer had any doubt that 1 was really talking to a collector of legends. Nevertheless, deep down inside myself, something thudded, calling for my attention, It was a summons or a vision that fought to reach my brain but could not, 1 do not know what kind of fog prevented it,

  “I hope I am not irritating you by saying the same things over and over again,” he continued,

  “On the contrary,” I said. “It is a pleasure for me, Like most of the monks in these parts, I myself take an interest in these things.”

  As we walked along the sandbank, 1 explained to him that the legends and ballads of these parts mainly dealt with what had most distressed people throughout the ages, the division of mankind into the two great tribes of the living and the dead, The maps and flags of the world bear witness to dozens of states, kingdoms, languages, and peoples, but in fact there are only two peoples, who live in two kingdoms: this world, and the next, In contrast to the petty kingdoms and statelets of our world, th
ese great kingdoms have never touched each other, and this lack of touch has pained most of all the people on this side, No testimony, no message, has so far ever come from the other side, The people on this side, unable to endure this rift, this absence of a crossing, have woven ballads against the barrier, imagining its destruction. Thus these ballads mention those in the next world, in other words the dead, crossing to this side temporarily with the permission of their kingdom, for a short time, usually for one day, to redeem a pledge they have left behind or to keep a promise they have made.

  “Ah, I see,” he said now and then, while his eyes stared as if begging me to continue.

  I said that this is at least how we think on this side. In other words, we are sure that they make efforts to reach us, but that is only our own point of view. Perhaps they think differently, and if they heard our ballads they would split their sides laughing …

  “Ah, you think that they probably do not want to come to us?”

  “Nobody can know what they think,” I replied. “Besides Him above,”

  A few black birds, those that they call winter sparrows, flew above us. He asked whether all the ballads sung were old, and I explained that sometimes new ones were devised — or rather, that is what people thought, whereas in fact all they did was revive forgotten ones.

  I told him that an incident in the neighboring county ninety years ago, at the time of the first plague, had become the occasion for a new legend, A bride who had married into a distant house returned to her native land and, unable to explain her journey, declared that her dead brother had brought her home …

  “Ah, it seems to me that I have heard it,” he interrupted me. “A bride called Jorundina, if I am not mistaken.”

  “Jorundina or Doruntina. We pronounce it both ways,”

  “It is a heavenly ballad. Especially the suspicions against the young bride and her defense based on the promise her brother had made to her while he was’ alive…. There is a special word in your language …”

  “Besa,” I said.

  “Baesa,” he repeated with a grimace, as if he could not get his tongue around the word and could barely extract it from his mouth,

  “For years on end there were investigations to shed light on the secret. All kinds of suspicions were raised, and all kinds of explanations were given, but later all these were forgotten and it remained a legend.”

  “Thank God,” he said. “It would be a sin to lose such a pearl.”

  My pleasure that he appreciated the legend so much led me to say things that I would otherwise have avoided. I said, for instance, that whereas the Orthodox Church had several times tried to prohibit it, the ballad was now sung everywhere at Easter celebrations, and not only at feasts in Arberia, but throughout all the territories of the Balkans.

  He listened to me, all eyes and ears.

  “Because we fight over everything here on this peninsula, and not only over pastures and sheep, you can imagine that there have been quarrels even over the authorship of legends.”

  “Just think of that,” he said.

  “Even though everybody insists on claiming this legend for his own land, our monks think that it was born here. This is not because the event really happened in this country but because only among the Albanians has the besa become so charged with meaning,”

  “No doubt,’ he said, His eyes remained half closed, and it seemed that his mind was elsewhere. “Magnificent,” he murmured. “The living and the dead trying to climb on the same cart… because, as we know, there is something dead in every living person, and vice versa,”

  He talked as if to himself, and meanwhile covered half his face with the collar of his cloak.

  “I am keeping my left eye from the wind,” he said to me, although I had not shown any sign of suspicion.

  For part of the way, we spoke about other legends. They always concerned the prohibition against crossing from one world to the other and the temptation to transgress it. A man who tried to climb out of the pit of hell. Another who, having been transformed into a snake, attempted again to assume human form. A wall that demanded a sacrifice in order not to fall…

  “A sacrifice?” he almost shrieked.

  His brow darkened, and it was not just gloom but the opening of a chasm. He continued to hide half his face with his collar, but even what was visible was enough to make your flesh creep.

  “A wall demanding a sacrifice … This is the legend of immurement, if I am not mistaken.”

  “It is, sir,” I replied, quite coldly, I do not know why. “But you seem to know it.”

  “I know it. But I would like to hear it again. Tell it to me,” he said in a lost voice, as if in a plea for help.

  He now seemed far away, despite his attempts to smile. I could almost, sense the reason for his anxiety. It was somewhere close to me. I could almost touch it. Ah, just a moment, I thought, just a moment. It will appear of its own accord.

  “A wall that demanded a human being in a cavity … as it were, to acquire a soul, tell it to me,” he said again, “And take no notice of me, I am like a child, and when I like something, I like to hear it a dozen, a hundred times in a row.”

  I began to tell him the legend of the castle of Shkodér, just as I had heard it years ago from my mother. There were three brothers, all masons, who were building the walls, but their work was not going well because what they built in the day was destroyed in the night,

  Suddenly the reason for his distress came as clear to me as sunlight. You had to have the brains of Gjelosh not to grasp the similarity between the castle in the legend and the damaged bridge.

  “What they built during the day was destroyed in the night,” he murmured in a soporific voice, as if lulling himself to sleep.

  I could not look him in the eye.

  “What could they do?,’ I went on, involuntarily lowering my voice. “A wise old man told them that the wall collapsed because it demanded a sacrifice. And so they decided to immure one of their brides in the foundations.”

  “A sacrifice,” he said, uselessly.

  “Yes, a sacrifice,” I whispered. “Since to immure someone means killing them.”

  “Killing them…”

  “Of course. And they say that even if a person’s shadow is walled up inside a bridge, that person must die, and then …”

  “Yes, yes,” he groaned.

  “But which bride?” 1 continued. “They argued over the matter at great length and decided to sacrifice the bride who brought them their midday meal the next day,”

  “But,” he interrupted, “But —”

  “They gave their besa to each other that they would not tell their wives about the decision they had made. And so, as you see, we have the besa again. Or rather the besa and treachery woven together,”

  “Yes., baesa”

  The word now seemed to stretch and tear at the corners of his mouth, and I would not have been surprised to see a trickle of blood,

  I wanted to say that here, just as in the first tale, the motif of the besa, according to our monks, proves the Albanian authorship of the ballad. But there was some kind of… how shall I put it… fatal urgency in his expression that forced me too to talk fast,

  “And that night two brothers, the oldest and the second, told their wives, and so broke the besa. The youngest brother kept it,”

  “Ah,” he exclaimed,

  “The two older brothers broke the besa," I repeated, hardly able to swallow my saliva.

  This was exactly the right place to explain to him that these words “to break the besa, are, in the Slavic version of the ballad, vjeru pogazio, which mean “to violate faith’, or “to outrage religion,” and are quite meaningless in the Slavic version. This is because of an erroneous translation from the Albanian, mistaking the word besa for besim, meaning belief, religion. However, he would not let me pause. He had grasped my hand, and softly. very softly, as if asking me about a secret, he said, “And then?”

  “Then morning came, a
nd when their mother-in-law as usual tried to send one of the brides with food for the masons, the two older wives who knew the secret pretended to be sick. So the youngest set out, and they immured her, and that is all.”

  I raised my eyes to look at his face, and almost cried out. All the standing moisture of his old man’s eyes had drained away, and those empty eyes now resembled the cavities in a statue. Like death, I thought. That is how her eyes must have looked.

  31

  THROUGHOUT THE FOLLOWING DAYS he was always seeking me out, and as soon as he found me he would do what he could to bring the conversation around to the immurement of the bride* He spoke of it as if it were an event that had happened two weeks before, and as if he was charged with its investigation. Gradually he involved me too. For hours on end I could think of nothing but a semidesert place under a scorching sun, where three workmen kept building walls that could never be finished* As we talked about the legend, we carefully analyzed it strand by strand, trying to account for its darker sides and to establish a logical link between its contradictory parts.

  He asked me which of the three brides had children, and whether perhaps the youngest had none, as was easy to believe, and whether this was the reason why she was the one who was sacrificed. But I explained to him that all three had children, and I even apologized for not telling him the end of the story, in which the young wife who was immured begged her murderers (1 used the actual word) to leave one breast outside the wall, so that even after her death she could suckle her child. He nearly lost his temper at my omission, shaking his finger almost threateningly at me, and told me not to do such a thing ever again, Because we were both of us at the time steeped in a strange world, his threat made no impression on me, although this is not something that I could normally forgive anyone. At this point 1 also told him about the curse that the sacrificed wife lays on the stonework in the two famous lines:

  O tremble, wall of stone,