Ismail Kadare: Spring Flowers, Spring Frost

The young woman’s sorrow and the way she began to wilt soon put an end to any suspicions of an intentional disposai of the snake-husband. She was fading away with grief, in a manner not often seen in new brides. Under the black veil that she wore in accordance with the custom for widows, she looked no more than a shadow when she walked to church on Sundays. Thenceforth she was known only as “the snake’s widow,” but these words were said without malice, and she took no offense at them.

In the spring, her hand was asked in marriage not once but twice, and both times the proposal was rejected. It turned out to be an eventful season. Criers went out to announce in every village that the prince had resolved to outlaw from that day on any form of marriage with a beast, tree, or bird, as well as the use of pressure to make people suffer such humiliation. The word snake was not heard in the proclamation, but everyone knew that it was the snake business that had prompted the order — just as it raised puzzling queries about the old Code of Laws, whose mantle of authority seemed to be wearing ever thinner. It had seemed tempting very often to set down in writing the prohibition on breaking any of the rules of the Code, but the idea was eventually abandoned. It seemed like a sacrilege to write down anything about it. But then tribes that the Romans called “Slaves” poured down into the North, into the great Plain of Arberia, and that seemed an extra reason to strengthen the authority of the old Kanun .

In the autumn the young woman was once again asked in marriage, and once again the request was made in vain. It turned out to be the last time anyone would ask to marry her. It became generally accepted that she had decided never to wed again.

Her decision, together with the measures taken by the prince, failed to put an end to a story that was now no longer very fresh; on the contrary, they seemed to give it new life. What in fact was the mystery that had taken place there, right before everyone’s eyes? Well, they had all seen fine and famous fellows leaving widows, the sort of husbands you could not imagine being forgotten; all the same, long after the death of the great man, they had all seen the widows — with head held low and eyes full of tears, to be sure — agreeing, almost reluctantly, but agreeing all the same, to marry a second time. Whereas the snake’s widow obstinately refused to do anything of the sort.

There was an intolerable enigma at the bottom of this story. Something obscure that, paradoxically, through its very absence, blinded. What had happened on that first night of marriage, the previous October? And what actually happened on the night of January 17?

There were only three wells from which a drop of the truth might possibly be drawn: the bride herself, the priest who took her confession, and the doctor. The woman’s lips were sealed on the matter, the priest’s even more so. The only thing that had been squeezed out of the doctor when he was in his cups concerned the bride’s virginity. Like any self-respecting newlywed, she had lost it. That piece of information left everyone bewildered, as it would not have done for any other newly wedded woman.

But one fine day morbid curiosity got the upper hand. The priest and the bride had given nothing away, but something else came along to betray them. The snake’s widow fell ill with a high fever, with bouts of delirious speech. And that is how she let it all out.

So this is what had really happened on that wedding night, when the household had fallen silent. The bride’s parents, crossing themselves as they went, took their daughter to the threshold of the nuptial chamber, asked her once more to forgive them for the decision they had made, and then closed the door on her.

The bedroom was well heated. There were two candles that cast a faint light on each side of the bed. The snake was coiled up in a corner of the conjugal bed, quite still. With jerky, doll-like movements, the bride took off her wedding dress, lay down on the sheets, and waited. The moment that had now come seemed sometimes more, and then sometimes less, terrifying than she had imagined. Apparently, the slight inebriation she had allowed herself to suffer had slightly dulled her senses. Now she prayed only that it should all be over as quickly as possible, that the bite be like lightning, and death just as instantaneous. It was all she hoped for. Otherwise she would have to submit to the crudest and most unimaginable ordeal: being made love to by a snake.

She continued to wait. Two or three times, she glanced at the snake, and it looked back at her. Snake’s eyes, as the saying goes: even the candlelight could not brighten them. Do I please you? she wondered sadly and half ironically, feeling rancor toward the snake, toward her parents, and toward the offense that she was supposed to redeem.

In her dizzy state she imagined more than once that she had dropped off to sleep. As for the snake, he remained where he was, and seemed to be sleeping as well.

In the gap between two bouts of dozing, she thought she heard something rustle. She shivered and opened her eyes. The snake was no longer where it had been. The time had come! Holy Mother of God! Make my nightmare less hard to bear! she prayed.

She saw the snake rising ever upward at the end of the bed, swaying this way and that. Holy Virgin! she burst out in prayer once again, but at the same instant, she heard these words: “Be not afraid, I am a man.”

The speckled snakeskin inflated as if by the force of an internal hurricane, and all of a sudden fell to the ground like a cloak, revealing what was indeed a man.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said again. “I am your husband.”

“Have pity on me,” she groaned.

“It’s you, my wife, who should have pity on me.”

He came slowly toward her, put one knee on the bed, and said soothing words to her. He was a handsome young man, with fair hair cut in the fashion of the times.

“I have been sentenced to spending three-quarters of my life in the form of a snake” he explained. “I can live as a man for only one-quarter of the time.”

The bride was bursting with questions. When was this pact made? Who had decided it? Why did you not ask for more?

Even before she had managed to put these questions into words, the man answered her:

“Nobody can know when or with whom he makes a pact. It’s probably with himself.”

“Do you also have an offense to atone for?”

“I have to presume I do.”

She was tempted to tell him that he was even more handsome that any dream-husband she had ever imagined.

“I have only a little time left, dear soul,” he said. “My hours are numbered. I have to go back to my other shape before dawn.”

He drew closer to her, stroked her hair softly; then, since she wanted to smell the nape of his neck to be sure he had the smell of a human being, he let her have her way. He began to caress her breasts, kissed her on the lips, ran his mouth over her belly, telling her all the while that he had been dazzled by her beauty the very first time he had caught sight of her.

She would have liked to ask him if he thought as a human even when he was in the form of a snake, but everything suggested that it was indeed so.

He became bolder with his caresses, kissed her belly again, and then, lower down, her other lips. Now he added to his tender words stronger ones, whispering in her ear the kind of vulgarities that the village boys use on their way home from Sunday church. It was those words that won her and made her give in to him entirely.

He lay dozing at her side, in a state of exhaustion, while she stroked his blond hair. Then she too yielded to fitful sleep, but each time she came to, she glanced sideways at the snakeskin lying on the floor. What is this happiness that I feel? she wondered, fearfully.