Ismail Kadare - Broken April

“What?”

“Nothing at all. At first, in a fury, the brothers reached for their weapons, but a word from their father was enough to stop them and to calm them. I think you can imagine what it was that he said.”

Embarrassed, she shook her head.

“The old man simply said, ’He is a guest. Don’t touch him.’ ”

“And then? What happened then?”

“Then they sat down with their enemy and guest for as long as the custom required. They conversed with him, they prepared a bed for him, and in the morning they escorted him to the village boundary.”

Diana pressed two fingers between her eyebrows, as if she meant to extract something from her forehead.

“So that is their conception of a guest.”

Bessian brought out that sentence between two silences, as one sets an object in an empty space in order to throw it into relief. He waited for Diana to say “That’s terrible,” as she had the first time, or to say something else, but she said nothing. She kept her fingers on her forehead, where the brows meet, as if she could not find the thing that she wanted to tear away.

The muffled panting of the horses reached them from outside, and the coachman’s occasional whistles. Together with these sounds, Diana heard her husband’s voice, which for some reason had again become deep and slow.

“And now,” he said, “the question that arises is to understand why the Albanians have created all that.”

He talked on, his head quite close to her shoulder, as if he meant to ask her for answers to all the questions or speculations that he advanced, though his delivery scarcely allowed for any responses on her part. He went on to ask (it was not clear if the questions were addressed to himself, or Diana, or someone else), why the Albanians had created the institution of the guest, exalting it above all other human relations, even those of kinship.

“Perhaps the answer lies in the democratic character of this institution,” he said, setting himself to think his way through the matter. “Any ordinary man, on any day, can be raised to the lofty station of a guest. The path to that temporary deification is open to anybody at any time. Isn’t that so, Diana?”

“Yes,” she said softly, without taking her hand from her forehead.

He shifted in his seat, as if looking both for a more comfortable position and for the most appropriate language in which to express his idea.

“Given that anyone at all can grasp the sceptre of the guest,” he went on, “and since that sceptre, for every Albanian, surpasses even the king’s sceptre, may we not assume that in the Albanian’s life of danger and want, that to be a guest if only for four hours or twenty-four hours, is a kind of respite, a moment of oblivion, a truce, a reprieve, and — why not? — an escape from everyday life into some divine reality?”

He fell silent, as if waiting for a reply, and Diana, feeling that she had to say something to him, found it easier to lay her head on his shoulder again.

Bessian found that the familiar odor of his wife’s hair rather disturbed the stream of his thoughts. Just as the greening of nature gives us the feeling of spring, or snow the feeling of winter, her chestnut hair tumbling over his shoulder aroused in him better than anything else the sensation of happiness. The thought that he was a happy man began to shine feebly in his consciousness, and in the velvet jewel-case of the carriage, that idea took on the secret languor of luxurious things.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“Yes, a bit.”

He slipped his arm around her shoulders and drew her gently to him, breathing in the perfume of his young wife’s body, given off subtly, like every valued thing.

“We’ll be there soon.”

Without removing his arm, he lowered his head slightly towards the window so as to glance outside.

“In an hour, an hour and a half at most, we’ll be there,” he said.

Through the glass, one could see in the distance, standing out clearly, the jagged outlines of the mountains in that March afternoon flooded with rain.

“What district are we in?”

He looked outside but did not answer her, merely shrugging his shoulders to indicate that he did not know. She remembered the days before their departure (days that now seemed to have been torn away not from this month of March, but from another March, as far off as the stars), filled with witty sayings, with laughter, with jokes, fears, jealousies, all stemming from their “northern adventure” as Adrian Guma had dubbed it when they had met him at the post office where they were composing a telegram to send to someone who lived on the High Plateau. He had said, That’s like sending a message to the birds or to the thunderbolts. Then the three had laughed, and in all the merriment, Adrian had gone on asking, “You really have an address up there? Forgive me, I just can’t believe it.”

“A little while longer and we’ll be there,” Bessian said for the third time, leaning towards the window. Diana wondered how he could know that they were approaching their destination, travelling on a road without signposts or milestones. As for Bessian, he was thinking that he did not have time to say more about the cult of hospitality, just as evening was drawing on, and they were drawing nearer and nearer to the tower in which they would spend the night.

“In a little while, this evening, we shall assume the crown of the guest,” he murmured, only just touching her cheek with his lips. She moved her head towards him, her breath came faster as in their most intimate moments, but it ended in a sigh.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said quietly. “I’m just a little frightened.”

“Really?” he said, laughing. “But how can that be?”

“I don’t know.”

He shook his head for a moment, as if her half-smile, close to his face, were the flicker of a match that he must try to blow out.

“Well, Diana, let me tell you that it doesn’t matter at all that we are in death’s kingdom — you can be sure that you have never been so well shielded from danger or the least affront. No royal pair has ever had more devoted guards ready to sacrifice their present and their future than we shall have tonight. Doesn’t that give you a sense of security?”

“That’s not what I was thinking about,” Diana said, changing her position on the seat. “I’m troubled by something else, and I don’t really know how to explain it. A little while ago you talked about divinity, destiny, fatality. They are all very fine things, but they are frightening, too. I don’t want to bring misfortune to anyone.”

“Oh,” he said gaily, “like every sovereign, you find the crown both alluring and frightening. That’s quite understandable, since, after all, if every crown is glorious, every crown is woeful, too.”

“That’s enough, Bessian,” she said quietly. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not making fun of you,” he said with the same playful air. “I have the very same feeling. The guest, the bessa , and vengeance are like the machinery of classical tragedy, and once you are caught up in the mechanism, you must face the possibility of tragedy. But despite all that, Diana, we have nothing to fear. In the morning, we’ll take off our crowns and be relieved of their weight until the night.”

He felt her fingers stroking his neck, and he pressed his head against her hair. How shall we sleep there, she wondered, together or apart? And now she asked him aloud, “Is it still very far?”

Bessian opened the carriage door a little to put the question to the coachman, whose existence he had nearly forgotten. The man’s reply was accompanied by a blast of cold air.

“We’re nearby,” he said.