Ismail Kadare - Broken April

This is torture, she thought, and she opened her eyes. Before her, on the dark wall, she could see a patch of dim light. For a long moment, as if spellbound, she stared at the greyish patch. Where had it been, why hadn’t she noticed it sooner? Outdoors, as it seemed, day was breaking. Diana could not take her eyes from that narrow window. In the depressing darkness of the room, that shred of dawn was like a message of salvation. Diana felt its soothing effect freeing her swiftly from her terrors. Many mornings must have been condensed in that bit of grey light; if not it could never have been so alert, so tranquil, and so indifferent to the terrors of the night. Under its influence, Diana fell asleep quickly.

The carriage was travelling again over a mountain road. The day was grey, and the dull horizon closed down upon the distant heights. The men who had escorted Diana and Bessian had turned back, and the two were alone again, uncrowned guests, showing signs of fatigue from the past night, seated on the velvet-covered bench.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked her.

“Not much. Just towards morning.”

“Me too. I scarcely closed my eyes.”

“I thought as much.”

Bessian took her hand and held it. It was the first time since their marriage that they had slept apart. He glanced at her profile out of the corner of his eye. She seemed pale to him. He wanted to kiss her, but something that he did not understand held him back.

For a while he kept his eyes on the small carriage window, and then, without turning his head, he looked furtively at his wife once again. Her pale face seemed cold to him. Her hand lay inertly in his. He asked her, “What’s the matter?” but in fact no word came out. A faint alarm sounded somewhere deep within him.

Perhaps it was not really coldness? It was rather a certain detachment, or the first stage of a kind of estrangement from him.

The carriage rolled along, shaking more or less rhythmically, and he told himself that perhaps it was neither one nor the other. No, certainly not, he thought, neither one nor the other. It was something more simple: taking up the proper distance, that ability to slough one’s skin and become a far-off star which every human being has, and was really one of the reasons for her withdrawing. That was what had been emphasized this morning in Diana’s case, and what had particularly struck him, accustomed as he was to feeling her very close to him and very understanding.

The grey daylight found its way only sparingly into the carriage, and in addition the velvet upholstery absorbed part of it, deepening the gloom. Bessian thought that he might be in the early stage of a coming defeat, at the moment when one cannot tell if the savor is pleasant or bitter — for he thought himself sufficiently acute to see defeat where others would still see victory.

He smiled to himself and realized that he was not in the least unhappy. After all, she had always found him somewhat remote, and there was no harm if she were to become a little aloof herself. Perhaps she would seem even more desirable to him.

Bessian was surprised that he fetched a deep breath. Other days would come to them in their life together; by turns one would be a riddle to the other, and certainly he would recover the lost ground.

Lord, what ground have I lost that I must recover? He laughed at himself, but his laughter did not show in any part of his body, and it rolled along hollowly within him. And, to persuade himself that his doubts were foolish, once again he looked secretly at his wife’s face in the hope that they would be weakened. But Diana’s handsome features offered him no reassurance.

They had been travelling for some hours when their carriage halted at the side of the road. Before they had had time to ask why they had stopped, they saw the coachman come up to the window on Bessian’s side and open the door. He said that this was a place where they might have lunch.

Only then did Bessian and Diana notice that they had stopped in front of a steep-roofed building that must be an inn.

“Still another four or five hours to the Castle of Orosh,” the coachman explained to Bessian. “And I think that there is no other suitable place for refreshment between. Then, the horses need a rest, too.”

Without answering, Bessian stepped down and stretched out his hand to his wife to help her. She stepped down nimbly, and still holding her husband’s hand she looked towards the inn. Several people had come to the threshold and were staring at the new arrivals. Another man, the last to emerge from the inn door, approached them with a halting step.

“What can we do for you?” he said respectfully.

It was clear that this man was the innkeeper. The coachman asked him whether they could eat lunch at the inn and whether there was fodder for the horses.

“Certainly. Do come in, please,” the man replied, pointing to the door, but looking at a different part of the wall where there was no door nor any kind of entrance. “Enter, and welcome.”

Diana looked at him astonished, but Bessian whispered, “he’s squint-eyed.”

“I have a private room,” he explained. “It so happens that the table is taken today, but I’ll arrange another one for you. Ali Binak and his assistants have been here for three days,” he added proudly. “What did you say? Yes, Ali Binak himself. Don’t you know who he is?”

Bessian shrugged.

“Are you from Shkoder? No? From Tirana? Oh, of course, with a carriage like that. Will you stay the night here?”

“No, we’re going to the Kulla of Orosh.”

“Oh, yes. I thought as much. It’s more than two years since I saw a carriage like that. Relatives of the prince?”

“No, his guests.”

As they passed through the great hall of the inn on the way to their private room, Diana felt the stares of the customers, of whom some were eating lunch at a long, grubby oak table, while others sat in the corners on their packs of thick black woolen cloth. Two or three, sitting on the bare floor, moved a little to let the small group through.

“These past three days we have had a good deal of excitement because of a boundary dispute that is to be settled nearby.”

“A boundary dispute?” Bessian asked.

“Yes, sir,” said the innkeeper, pushing open a dilapidated door with one hand. “That’s why Ali Binak and his assistants have come.”

He said these last words in a low voice, just as the travellers crossed the threshold of the private room.

“There they are,” whispered the innkeeper, nodding towards an empty corner of the room. But his guests, now used to the innkeeper’s squint, looked in another direction, where at an oak table, but smaller and somewhat cleaner than the one in the public room, three men were eating lunch.

“I’ll bring another table right away,” the innkeeper said, and he disappeared. Two of the diners looked up at the newcomers, but the third went on eating without lifting his eyes from his plate. From behind the door, there came a grating noise punctuated by thumping sounds, drawing nearer and nearer. Soon they saw two table legs, then part of the innkeeper’s body, and then the whole table and the innkeeper grotesquely entangled.

He set down the table and left to fetch their seats.

“Please be seated,” he said, arranging the stools. “What would you like?”

After asking what there was, Bessian said at last that they would have two fried eggs and some cheese. The innkeeper said, “At your service” to everything, and for a while he was busy coming and going in all directions, trying to serve the new guests without neglecting the earlier ones. While hurrying from one group of his distinguished guests to the other, he seemed to be at a loss, obviously unable to make up his mind which was the more important. It looked as if his uncertainty worsened his physical handicap, and it seemed that he wanted to direct some of his limbs towards one group and some towards the other.