Ismail Kadare - Three Arched Bridge

The baby had again missed, his mother’s nipple, and was whimpering, I asked the woman whether they had been in financial straits,

“No,” she said, “He’d been earning plenty recently.”

Recently, 1 thought. Like many inhabitants of the surrounding district, he had been working as a day laborer on the bridge and must have been receiving a normal wage, as normal as everything else in his life,

Another of the count’s men arrived and whispered the same questions.

“When?”

“Just after midnight.”

It seemed that we would all stand rooted to the spot, and people would arrive and mutter the same questions until the end of the world.

Now and again one could hear the words “brother, brother” from his sister. But his mother’s sobbing was more muffled. Only once she said, “They killed you, son.” And a little later she very softly added, “As if your mother had no need of you.”

I would never have dared to interrupt a mother’s lament, but the words “They killed you, son” gave me no peace,

“Is it possible someone killed him?” 1 said to her in a low voice, “But why?”

She wiped her tears.

“Why? How should a poor old woman like me know? No doubt for nothing. Because he cast a shadow on this earth,”

“He had always been worried recently,” said his wife by my shoulder, “He had something on his mind.”

“And last night?”

“Last night particularly.,’

My eyes froze again on the dead man’s neck just above the collarbone, as if something were about to appear there, a shadow, a … I do not know what to say. But the plasterer with his usual gesture once more emptied his pail of plaster over the immured man. The grayish white liquid, the very stuff of legend, poured over him.

“Last night particularly,” his wife went on. “I thought I saw him move at midnight and get up. At dawn he was gone,’

The milk from her breast had again missed her baby and trickled to the ground, but she seemed not to care.

“Did you need money?” someone asked.

“What can I say?” his wife asked. “Like everyone else.”

The members of the dead man’s family still stood grouped in silence. There was the splashing of the pail again as it was refilled with plaster from the barrel. 1 was completely numbed. 1 would not have been surprised if the man with the bucket had now coated us all with plaster.

ALL THAT DAY AND THE NEXT 1 was not at all myself. His open eyes fixed under their film of plaster seemed to stare from every wall around me, Walls terrified me, and I tried at all costs not to look at them. But they were almost impossible to avoid, 1 only then understood what an important and powerful part walls play in our lives. There is no getting away from them, like conscience, I could leave the presbytery building, but even outside there were walls, close by or in the distance,

My head was splitting in two with speculation. If he had really set out to sacrifice himself of his own free will, as everybody now claimed, what must his motive have been? The desire to ensure a better life for his wife and family, with the help of the great sum of money that the road firm would pay for the sacrifice? I could have believed this suspicion of many people, but not the modest Murrash Zenebisha. Sometimes I wondered whether he had gone to die in order to put an end to a family quarrel (you don’t know what a quarrel among sisters-in-law is like), but this too was unbelievable. There had never been the least rumor of such a thing in the Zenebisha family, I sometimes asked myself whether, whatever his reasons for sacrificing himself, he had told his wife what was in his mind. And had she accepted his plan? It was impossible to believe such a thing. And then I wondered whether he perhaps did not love his wife. She had said that he sometimes went away at night, she did not know where. She had even begun to grow suspicious.

I knew myself that this was the kind of conjecture that, although I despised, I had nevertheless acquired from that collector of customs. I strove to free myself from it, as from the walls, but I could not.

Sometimes he would go away at night…. Was his wife really telling the truth? Were the others telling the truth? I too could have believed what was said, but that place in the victim’s neck, there between his neck and collarbone, controverted everything. I had stared at it three times, because each time it had struck me that a spot under the layer of plaster had begun to blush faintly, very faintly, like a stain. But all three times the man with the pail had splashed plaster on the corpse before I could really detect a redness.

Enough, I thought. We have had nothing but babble and lies. We were dealing with a pure and simple crime. They had murdered Murrash Zenebisha. His mother had been the first to say the word: C6They killed him for nothing…. Because he cast a shadow on this earth… *” They had murdered him in cold blood shortly after midnight and then walled him up. The wound, or one of his wounds, was between the neck and the collarbone, and the man with the pail had splashed plaster over him again and again to hide the possible bloodstain. It was a murder done by the road builders.

But how had Murrash Zenebisha come to be by the bridge at night? I asked this question out loud, because 1 had the satisfaction of being able to supply a clear answer. Sometimes he would go away at night,… And so shall we do the murder ourselves? … The road builders had let slip these words at the meeting with the count. Murrash Zenebisha’s fate had been sealed on that day. And the count, withdrawing to one side, had done nothing but wash his hands like Pontius Pilate, The road builders had understood that the water people had instructed someone to damage the bridge at night, This person was the ordinary Murrash Zenebisha, He had done his job three times in a row…The fourth time they had caught and killed him. He had been very worried recently, He had something on his mind,… And last night? Last night particularly, Everywhere bards were singing about his death, There was only one possibility left to him, to give up this job, However, “Boats and Rafts” would apparently not allow the agreement to be broken. After catching him in their trap, they would not let him back out, So there was nothing for him to do but become an outlaw, or continue on his fatal path, Apparently he had chosen the second,, He had something on his mind, And last night? Last night particularly, Possibly this was to have been his last task for the water people, He set out as on the other occasions shortly after midnight, He dived into the water a long way from the bridge and swam up to it, trying not to make any noise, The night was dark and moonless, What happened next at the bridge, no one would ever know, Perhaps they caught him on the spot, dislodging the stones, or in the water, trying to escape; no one knew. No one knew how they had killed him. They may have killed him at once, or perhaps they interrogated him for a time, and threatened him. Or they may have talked to him sweetly and reassuringly, reminding him of the lavish compensation his wife would receive, Or perhaps there had been neither threats nor sweet words, and they killed him in silence, everything done without words, in dumb show, under the arch of the bridge. Because this was only the final act of a murder that had been in the wind for a long time, Its spurts of blood had already spattered us all, and its screams had died away long ago.

The long duel between the men of the water and the men of the land had concluded with the victory of the latter. Do not try to harm us again, or you will be killed, That was the cry that came from the first arch of the bridge.

I was convinced of the truth of all this. But my mind was not entirely settled, and 1 continued silently to mull over innumerable theories.