Ismail Kadare - Three Arched Bridge

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 continued 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.

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.