Ismail Kadare - Broken April

“I wonder just who they think we are,” Diana said.

Without raising his head, Bessian glanced sidelong at the three men who were eating lunch. It was apparent that the innkeeper, while bending down to wipe the table with a rag, was telling them about the new arrivals. One of them, the shortest, seemed to be making as if he were not listening, or perhaps he was in fact not listening. The second, who had colorless eyes that seemed to go with his slack, indifferent face, was looking on as if bewildered. The third man, wearing a checked jacket, could not keep his eyes off Diana. He was obviously drunk.

“Where is the place where the boundaries are to be established?” Bessian asked when the innkeeper served Diana her fried eggs.

“At Wolf’s Pass, sir,” the landlord said. “It is a half-hour’s walk from here. But if you go by carriage, of course, it will take less time.”

“What do you say, Diana, shall we go? It should be interesting.”

“If you like,” she said.

“Has there been feuding over the boundaries, or killings?” Bessian asked the innkeeper.

The man whistled. “Certainly, sir. That’s a strip of land greedy for death, studded with muranës time out of mind.”

“We’ll go without fail,” Bessian said.

“If you like,” his wife said again.

“This is the third time that they have called on Ali Binak, and still the dispute and the blood-letting have not ended,” the landlord said.

At that moment the short man got up from the table. From the way the other two rose immediately after him, Bessian surmised that he must be Ali Binak.

That man nodded towards them, without looking at anyone in particular, and led the way out. The two others followed. The man in the checked jacket brought up the rear, still devouring Diana with his reddened eyes.

“What a revolting man,” Diana said.

Bessian gestured vaguely.

“You mustn’t cast the first stone. Who knows how long he’s been wandering through these mountains, without a wife, without pleasure of any kind. Judging by his clothes, he must be a city man.”

“Even so, he might spare me those oily looks,” Diana said, pushing away her plate; She had eaten only one egg.

Bessian called the innkeeper for the bill.

“If the gentleman and the lady want to go to Wolf’s Pass, Ali Binak and his assistants have just started out. You could follow them in your carriage. Or perhaps you need someone to accompany you….”

“We’ll follow their horses,” Bessian said.

The coachman was drinking coffee in the public room. He rose at once and followed them. Bessian looked at his watch.

“We have a good two hours in which to see a boundary settlement, haven’t we?”

The coachman shook his head doubtfully.

“I don’t know what to say, sir. From here to Orosh is a long way. However, if that’s what you want to do….”

“We’ll be all right if we reach Orosh before nightfall,” Bessian continued. “It’s still early afternoon, and we have time. And then, it’s an opportunity not to be missed,” he added, turning to Diana, who was standing beside him.

She had turned up the fur collar of her coat and was waiting for them to make up their minds.

Ten minutes later, their carriage overtook the horses of Ali Binak’s small party. They stood to one side to let the carriage pass, and it took a while for the coachman to explain to them that he did not know the way to Wolf’s Pass, and that the carriage would follow after them. Diana was ensconced in the depths of the coach so as to avoid the annoying looks of the man in the checked jacket, whose horse kept appearing on one or the other side of the vehicle.

Wolf’s Pass turned out to be farther away than the innkeeper had said. In the distance they saw a bare plain on which some people appeared as moving black specks. As they drew nearer, Bessian tried to recall what the Kanun said about boundaries. Diana listened calmly. Bessian said, “Boundary marks shall not be disturbed, any more than the bones of the dead in their graves. Whosoever instigates a murder in a boundary dispute shall be shot by the whole village.”

“Are we going to be present at an execution?” Diana asked plaintively. “That’s all we needed.”

Bessian smiled.

“Don’t worry. This must be a peaceful settlement, since they’ve invited that — what’s his name again? Oh, yes, Ali Binak.”

“He seems to me to be a very responsible man,” Diana said. “I wouldn’t say as much for one of his assistants, the man in the clown’s jacket — he’s repulsive.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him.”

Bessian looked straight ahead, impatient as it seemed, to reach the plain as swiftly as possible.

“Setting up a boundary stone is a solemn act,” he said, still staring into the distance. “I don’t know if we’ll have the good fortune to be present at just such a ceremony. Oh, look. There’s a muranë .

“Where?”

“There, behind that bush, on the right.”

“Oh, yes,” Diana said.

“There’s another.”

“Yes, yes, I see it, and there’s another one further on.”

“Those are the muranës that the innkeeper mentioned,” Bessian said. “They serve as boundary marks between fields or property lines.”

“There’s another,” Diana said.

“That’s what the Kanun says. ‘When a death occurs during a boundary dispute, the grave itself serves as a boundary mark.’ ”

Diana’s head was right against the window-pane.

“The tomb that becomes a boundary mark cannot, according to the Kanun , ever be displaced by any person to the end of time,” Bessian continued. “It is a boundary that has been consecrated by bloodshed and death.”

“How many opportunities to die!” Diana said those words against the window-pane, which promptly steamed over, as if to cut her off from the sight of the landscape.

In front of them the three horsemen were dismounting. The carriage halted a few paces behind. As soon as Bessian and Diana stepped down from the coach, they felt that everyone’s attention was directed at themselves. Assembled all around them were men, women, and many children.

“There are children here, too, do you see?” Bessian said to Diana. “Establishing the boundaries is the only important event in the life of a mountaineer to which the children come, and that is done so as to preserve the memory of it for as long as possible.”

They went on talking to each other, supposing that it would allow them to face the curiosity of the mountain people in the most natural-seeming way. Out of the corner of her eye, Diana looked at the young women, the hems of whose long skirts billowed with their every movement. All of them had their hair dyed black and cut in the same style, with curls on their foreheads and straight hair hanging down on each side of their faces like curtains in the theatre. They looked at the newly arrived couple from a distance, but taking care to conceal their interest.

“Are you cold?” Bessian asked his wife.

“A bit.”

In fact it was quite cold on the high plateau, and the blue tints of the mountains all around seemed to make the air even colder.

“Lucky it’s not raining,” Bessian said.

“Why would it be raining?” she said in surprise. For a moment she thought of the rain as being a poor beggar-woman, out of place in this magnificent alpine winter scene.

In the middle of a pasture, Ali Binak and his assistants were carrying on a discussion with a group of men.

“Let’s go and see. We’re sure to find out something.”

They walked on slowly through the scattered people, hearing whispers — the words themselves, partly because they were mumbled and partly because of the unfamiliar dialect, were almost incomprehensible to them. The only words they did understand were “princess” and “the king’s sister,” and Diana, for the first time that day, wanted to laugh aloud.