Ismail Kadare - Three Arched Bridge

Old Ajkuna wept to see it. “How could they kill the river?” she cried. “How could they cut it up, oy, oy!’ She wept for it as if it had been a living person. “Killed in its sleep, poor creature! Caught defenseless and cut to pieces, oy oy!”

She climbed down into the mud to seek out the master-in-chief. “The day will come when the river takes its revenge,” she muttered, “It will fill with water and be strong again. It will swell and roar. And where will you hide then? Where?”

Whenever she thought she spied the builder in the distance, she would raise her stick threateningly: “Where will you hide then, Antichrist!”

WHILE THEY WERE STILL DIGGING THE PITS for the foundations of the bridge piers, our liege lord, the count of the Gjikas, received a request for his daughter’s hand in marriage, The request was very unusual It came from none of the Albanian or European dukes, barons, and princes, as often happened, but from an unexpected direction whence betrothals and wedding guests had never come, the Turkish state. The governor of one of the empire’s border provinces asked for the count’s daughter for his son Abdullah (what a terrible name!). The proposal, as the envoys said, was made with the knowledge of the sultan, so it was not difficult to realize that this was a political match. Our liege lord, Stres Gjikondi, had been aloof toward his new neighbors, and now they were trying to mollify him. -

For longer than people could remember, betrothals had been like a calming oil poured on the sea of hostilities and divisions among the nobles of Arberia, Of course these things pacified matters for a time, but not for long. If there was a recent reason for a coolness, people’s minds worried at it until the day of the hated announcement: “We have important business,” After that, people knew what came: a fracas.

A year ago the count of Kashnjet had asked for the hand of our liege lord’s only daughter, and immediately afterward so had the duke of the Gjin family, or Dukagjin as he is called for short, whose arms carry a single-headed white eagle, But our liege lord did not grant his daughter to her first suitor for reasons known only to himself, while the second withdrew his suit after an ambush at the Poplar Copse by unknown persons, doubtless suborned precisely for this task by those old enemies of our count, the Skuraj family, whose princely arms carry in the center a wolf with bared teeth.

Quarrels among the Albanian princes and lords have been hopelessly frequent for the last hundred years. The Balsha family, princes of the north, whose arms carry a six-pointed white star and who in recent years have been in continual financial straits, could seldom agree with the proud Topia family, who have pretensions to the throne of all Arberia. Nor have the Balshas been on good terms with the counts of Myzeqe, the Muzakas, who have added to their old arms a forked stream that is rumored to suggest the springs of oil recently discovered on their lands. Yet the Muzakas likewise have been in almost continual animosity with Aranit Komneni, the powerful prince of Vlore, even though both families are allied by marriage to the emperors of Byzantium, in contrast to the Dukagjins, Balshas, and Topias, who have forged their marriage alliances abroad, exclusively with the French royal family. Nor have the Muzakas been on good terms with the Kastriotis, whose arms also bear an eagle, though not a white one like the Dukagjins, but a red one with two heads. People say that the dukes of Gjin descend from the marriage long ago of the chieftain Gjin to a mountain sprite, while the Kastrioti family, or Castriothi, as they sometimes write their name, are the only Albanian lords to use antique pearls as their seals. Two years ago there would have been a general slaughter among the men of Dukagjin and the Kastriotis at the wedding of the count of Kashnjet, had it not been for the intervention of Dejdamina, the old mistress of the house.

The lords of Arberia imagined they could settle these quarrels by marriages. But as I mentioned, the alliances thrown across this stormy sea have been merely like rainbows straining to climb a few degrees above the abyss. The marriages of the great Count Topia with Katrina, the sister of Balsha II, of the latter with Komita, daughter of the prince of Vloré, and of the second brother, Gjergj Balsha, to Marija, the daughter of Andre Muzaka, did not in the least deter the three old princely houses from very soon setting aside the wedding music for the drums of war.

Marriages with foreigners have not been any more successful. From the time when the Albanian prince Tanush Topia, father of the present count Karl Topia, snatched Helene d, Anjou, daughter of the king of France, from the French escorts who were accompanying her to her wedding in Byzantium, ill fortune has dogged many of the marriages in the land of Arberia. Tanush Topia kidnapped the French princess with inexcusable thoughtlessness, without in the least considering that he was entering into double enmity with France and Byzantium, both of whom were greater and mightier than himself, He lived with the Frenchwoman for five years, and she bore him two children, His father-in-law, the king of France, pretended to forget the offense, and invited the couple, son-in-law and daughter, to Paris, supposedly to be reconciled. He killed them both, and still today, after so many years, whenever I see the Topia coat of arms with its lion crowned with the white lilies of the Angevins of France, it reminds me of a tombstone.

Aranit Komneni’s marriage into the imperial house of Byzantium was no less troubled, However, where Tanush Topia’s marriage became the cause of a quarrel, here on the contrary a quarrel was extinguished by a marriage, Aranit Komneni’s coolness with Byzantium arose over the old naval base of Orikum near Vlore. Taking advantage of Byzantium’s difficult position, the Albanian prince brought to light some old documents proving that the Orikum base, before it had been captured and rebuilt by Rome, had belonged to Illyria, that is, the Arberia of today. Without waiting for the conclusion of diplomatic talks with the empire, he attacked and captured one half of the base, which was defended by a garrison of Scandinavian mercenaries. Byzantium then hurried to offer him a princess as a wife, to preserve at least joint possession of the base and the small imperial private beaches nearby. They say that the Turks have recently been doing their utmost to persuade Komneni to hand over the base to them. They have promised the aged prince fabulous sums, and even a princess for his son, if he will cede to them at least his own portion of the base, in other words one half. Rumor has it that Aranit has insisted that he will not exchange the base for the most beautiful girl on land, because, he says, the base is the most beautiful girl on land and sea alike.

Turks have been appearing more often all over the Balkans, You meet them on the great highways, at inns, at city gates waiting for permission to enter, at fairs, on boats, everywhere, Sometimes they turn up as political or commercial envoys, sometimes as trade missions, sometimes as wandering groups of musicians, adherents of religious sects, military units, or solitary eccentrics. Increasingly you hear their attenuated melodies, heavy with somnolence. Everything about them throws me into anxiety, their manners, their soft gait, their hidden movements inside their loose garments that seem especially created to conceal the positions of their limbs, and above all their language, whose words, in contrast to their soporific songs, end with a crack like a mallet blow. This is something different from the conflicts so fan. This anxiety turns into pure terror when 1 realize that these people are concealing a great deal There is something deceitful in their smiles and courtesy. It is no accident that their silken garments, turbans, breeches, and robes have no straight lines, corners, hems, or seams. Their whole costume is insubstantial, and cut so that it changes its shape continually. Among such diaphanous folds it is hard to tell whether a hand is holding a knife or a flower. But after all, how can straightforwardness be expected from a people who hide their very origins: their women?