Ismail Kadare - Broken April

For hours on end he looked scornfully at the snow-covered ground, as if to say, yes, I’ll go out there, I’ll go out quickly to spill that bit of blood. The thought haunted him so much that sometimes he thought he really saw a small red stain take shape in the heart of that endless white.

In the first days of March he felt a little better, and in the second week of the month he left his bed. When he stepped outside his legs were shaky. Nobody imagined that in his condition, still dizzy from his illness, his face white as a sheet, he would go out to lie in ambush for his man. Perhaps that was why Zef of the Kryeqyqe, knowing that his enemy was still ill, had been taken unawares.

At moments the rain fell so sparsely that one would imagine it must stop, but suddenly it started up again better than ever. By that time it was afternoon and Gjorg felt his legs getting numb. The gray day was the same; only the district was different. Gjorg could tell because the mountaineers he met wore different clothing. The small villages were farther and farther from the highroad. In places the bronze of a church bell glinted weakly in the distance. Then for miles the landscape was empty.

He met fewer and fewer travelers. Gjorg asked again about the Kulla of Orosh. First, people told him it was quite close by, then, further on, when he thought he must really be drawing near, they told him it was still a long way. And each time the passers-by pointed in the same direction, in the distance where sight was lost in the mist.

Two or three times Gjorg imagined that night was falling, but it turned out that he was mistaken. It was still that endless afternoon in which the villages drew further away from the highway as if they meant to hide from the road and from the world. Once more he asked if the castle was still far off, and he was told that it was very near now. The last traveler even stretched his hand in the direction where it was supposed to be.

“Will I get there before nightfall?” Gjorg asked him.

“I think so,” he said. “Just around nightfall.”

Gjorg set off again. He was sinking with fatigue. Sometimes he was ready to believe that the evening, in delaying, was keeping the Kulla far off, and sometimes on the contrary, it was the remoteness of the Kulla that kept the evening suspended, without letting it settle on the earth.

Once he thought he could make out the silhouette of the Kulla through the fog, but the dark mass proved to be a convent, like the one he had seen in the morning of that long day. Farther along, he felt once again that he was close to the Kulla , and even thought that at last he could see it clearly on the top of a steep hill, but going on he saw that it was not the Kulla of Orosh, it was not a building at all, but a mere rag of fog darker than the others.

When he found himself alone again on the highroad, he felt all hope of ever reaching the castle fail within him. The emptiness of the road on either side seemed emptier still because of the shrubby growth that had sprung up there as if with an evil intention. What is the matter, Gjorg thought. Now, he could see no villages at all, no matter how far back from the road, and the worst of it was his conviction that they would never appear again.

Walking along, he raised his head from time to time, looking for the Kulla on the horizon, and again he thought he saw it, but scarcely believing that he did. From the time of his childhood, he had heard about the princely castle that had guarded for centuries men’s adherence to the Code, but for all that he did not know what it looked like, nor anything more about it. The people of the Plateau simply called it Orok, and it was impossible to imagine the appearance of the place from their stories. And now that Gjorg caught sight of it in the distance, not believing that it was really the castle, he could not make out its shape. In the fog its silhouette seemed neither high nor low, and sometimes he thought it must be quite spread out and sometimes he thought it a compact mass. Gjorg found that it gave the impression that the road climbed up in switchbacks, and that his changing point of view made the building change continually. But even when he was quite close, he could make out nothing distinctly. He was sure that it must be the castle and he was certain that it was not. At one moment he thought he saw a single roof covering various buildings, and at another, several roofs covering a single building. Its appearance changed as he approached. Now he thought he saw a castle-keep rising amidst a number of structures that seemed to be outbuildings. But when he had walked on a bit farther, the main tower disappeared and he saw only those outbuildings. Then these too began in turn to break up, and when he came closer still, he saw that they were not fortified towers, but dwellings of some kind, and in part not even that but perhaps galleries, more or less abandoned. There was no one about. Did I take the wrong road, he wondered. But just then a man appeared before him.

“The death tax?” the man asked, glancing surreptitiously at Gjorg’s right sleeve, and without waiting for an answer, he extended his arm towards one of the galleries.

Gjorg turned in that direction. He felt that his legs would not hold him up. Before him was a wooden door, a very old one. He turned round, as if to ask the man who had spoken to him if he should go in there, but the man was gone. He looked at the door for a moment before making up his mind to knock. The wood was all rotten, bristling with all sorts of nail-heads and bits of iron carelessly hammered in, mostly askew and serving no purpose. All that metal had become one with the ancient wood, like the fingernails of an old man’s hand.

He started to knock, but he noticed that the door, though punched and stuck with so many pieces of iron, had no knocker, nor even any trace of a lock. Only then did he see that the door was ajar, and he did something he had never done in his life before: he pushed open a door, without first calling out: “Oh, master of the house!”

The long room was in semi-darkness. At first he thought it was empty. Then he made out a fire in one corner. Not much of a fire, and fed with damp wood that gave out more smoke than flame. Some men were waiting in that room. He smelled the odor of the heavy woolen cloth of their cloaks before he could see their forms, sitting on wooden stools or squatting in the corners.

Gjorg too huddled in a corner, putting his rifle between his knees. Little by little his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. The acrid smoke gave him a bitter taste in his throat. He began to see black ribbons on their sleeves and he understood that, like him, they had come there to pay the death tax. There were four. A little later he thought he saw five. But less than a quarter of an hour later he thought there were four again. What he had taken for the fifth man was only a log stood on end, who could tell why, in the darkest corner.

“Where are you from?” asked the man nearest him.

Gjorg told him the name of his village.

Outside, night had fallen. To Gjorg it seemed to have come down all at once, as soon as he had crossed the threshold of the long room, like the wall of a ruin that collapses as soon as you have left its shadow.

“Not all that far, then,” the man said. “I’ve had to travel two days and a half without stopping.”

Gjorg did not know what to say.

Someone came in having pushed open the door, which creaked. He carried an armload of wood that he threw on the fire. The wood was wet and the flickering light went out. But a moment later, the man, who seemed to be crippled, lit an oil lamp and hung it on one of the many nails hammered into the wall. The yellow light, enfeebled by the soot on the lamp-chimney, tried in vain to reach the far corners of the room.