Ismail Kadare - Elegy for Kosovo

“Jesus Christ protect us!” Gjorg said, and held out his hand to Vladan to steady him. They made their way through the total confusion, Vladan ranting deliriously. “I’ve lost my gusla! Perhaps I threw it away myself! I thought, what do I need it for! If Prince Lazar has been taken prisoner, we’re all finished! Where are your Albanians?”

“I have no idea,” Gjorg answered. “I can’t even see our banners anymore!”

“There’s no point looking for them! They’ve all fallen! Throw away your lahuta, brother! You won’t want to be singing with the Turks!”

“Holy Mary!” Gjorg said. “I have never seen such a calamity in my life!”

Soldiers ran in all directions, gasping, stumbling over dead bodies. Men who had thrown away their weapons crouched down by corpses to snatch up their swords, only to throw them away again a few steps later. From all around men shouted: “Stop!” — “Where are you going?” — “Which side are you on?”

Through all the mayhem, shreds of violent news were heard. Mirçea of Rumania was heading for the Danube with his Walachians. King Tvrtko, having by now lost his crown, was hurrying back to Bosnia. The Catholic Albanians were following Count Balsha to the foggy mountains of western Albania, while the Orthodox Albanians were following Jonima down to the Macedonian flatlands. Everyone but the dead was trying to escape from the cursed plain,

“I had a premonition in my heart!” Vladan murmured. “For days now, I have had a premonition in my heart of this great disaster!”

“Then why,” Gjorg wanted to ask him, “why did you bring bad luck upon us, you wretch!” But he was too exhausted even to move his lips.

Hoarse voices came from far away: “Come back everyone! Good news! The Turkish sultan has been killed!”

Strangely enough, everyone kept running. They heard the news but had forgotten it in an instant. The day was coming to an end. It was too late to do anything. For a moment the fugitives glanced back at the wide plain, as if to sense where the sultan might have died, then right away, exhausted, they realized that his death, like everything else, had come too late.

Darkness fell quickly. There was a feeling that this day, with its harsh, morbid brightness, could engender only an all-engulfing darkness. Through this darkness trudged officers who had torn off their insignia, now doubly hidden, and soldiers, cooks, carriers of secrets that no longer served a purpose, keepers of the official seal, assassins who had not been able to ply their trade, army clerics whose terror had driven them insane, and madmen whose terror had brought them back to sanity.

Twice Gjorg was tempted to throw away his lahuta, but both times he had thought he was going mad and changed his mind. If he could keep a clear head until morning, he would not go insane. The third time he thought of throwing away his lahuta, the instrument’s single string gave off a mournful sound, as if to say, “What have I done to you? “

The fugitives made their way through the darkness like black beetles. Someone had lit a torch, and in its light the men’s faces looked even more frightening. Dogs were licking the hooves of a fallen horse, “Lord in Heaven!” Gjorg muttered, “It is the honey we were cheering this very morning,”

“We are dead, brother!” he heard Vladan’s voice say, “Do you believe me now, that we are nothing but spirits?”

They had been walking for four days and no longer knew where they were. The throng of fugitives would swell and then thin out again in sorrow. Tagging along at times were Hungarian soldiers whose language nobody understood, Walachians desperately looking for the Danube, Jews who had come from God knows where. Just as suddenly as they had appeared, they disappeared again the following day, as if snatched away by some dream. A Turkish subaltern also tagged along for part of the way, the only Turk, it seemed, who had thrown in his lot with the Christians. He stared at everything in amazement, and every time they stopped to rest he would ask the others to teach him the correct way of crossing himself.

In a stupor, Gjorg heard snippets of conversation. “I think we’ve left Albania, we’ve been walking so many days now” — “I think so too” — “This isn’t Serbian land” — “What do you think?” — “I’d say this isn’t Serbia” — “What? Not Serbia, not Albania?” — “Let me put it to you this way, my friend: some say this is Serbia, some say Albania. The Lord only knows which of the two it really is. So who owns this accursed plain where we spilled our blood, the Field of the Blackbirds, as they call it? It was there, my brother, that the fighting started — a hundred, maybe even two hundred years ago.”

Gjorg opened his eyes and thought he saw the Cursed Peaks. They were crowned by the snow and the sky he knew, but the villages at their foot were different. His eyes filled with tears at the thought that he might never see them again.

Gjorg had lost sight of his traveling companions, including Vladan. Two Albanians he met outside a village told him that they were on their way to Albania, but that they couldn’t take him along. They were military couriers, and had to get there as fast as possible by whatever means they could — boat, cart, horses. They had to find their lord, Count Balsha, as soon as possible and hand him a message.

Gjorg didn’t understand. The calamity must have driven them mad, for what kind of message could they be delivering now that the war was lost? And if it were such an urgent matter, then why were they dozens of miles astray, and how were they going to find the count? How did they even know he was alive, and what could the point of such a message be, now that everyone was dead?

They listened coldly to his questions and told him that they were military couriers, that they were not permitted to question or doubt. It had been in the course of that horrifying afternoon that they had been ordered to deliver this message to Count Balsha from one of the flanks of the Albanian army — that was why they hadn’t managed to get to him. Everything had collapsed before their eyes, the count’s tent kept moving farther and farther away, and the torrent of soldiers had ended up carrying them in the opposite direction. Now, no matter what the cost, they intended to accomplish what they had thus far been prevented from doing: they would find the count, and if they did not find him, then his grave, and there at the grave, even if they were the last men standing, they would deliver their message,

Gjorg followed them with his eyes as they disappeared in a cloud of dust, and an instant later he was convinced that they had been merely an illusion. His spirit was filled with sorrow.

Outside a large village, Gjorg came across a crowd of fugitives moving toward them. He recognized them by their tattered army tunics and the distinctive darkness of their features. They were surprised that in a single day the sun of the Plains of Kosovo had spared their tousled heads but had completely blackened their faces.

Disgraced as they were, they seemed even darker. In three or four languages they hurled curses at the peasants who would not let them into the village, at fate, even at heaven.

“We went to war to save that cross!” they shouted, pointing to the belfry of the village church. “And you won’t even give us a crust of bread and shelter for the night! A curse upon you!”

The villagers watched them silently with cold, distrustful eyes. Only the dogs, still tied up, barked and tried to hurl themselves at the strangers.

“May you never live a happy day under your roofs, and may a thornbush blossom by your door!”

Gjorg turned to see who had uttered the curse. He would have recognized Vladan’s voice, whether speaking or singing, among dozens of others, but the curse had been uttered somewhere between speech and song.