Ismail Kadare: Broken April

“We must tell the village about the death,” his father answered. Only then did Gjorg notice that his father was putting on his shoes.

He was drinking coffee his mother had made for him when he heard, outside, the first shout:

“Gjorg of the Berisha has shot Zef Kryeqyqe.”

The voice, with its peculiar ring, sounded at once like the call of a town crier and the singing of an ancient psalmist.

That inhuman voice roused him from his drowsiness for an instant. He felt as if his name had quitted his body, his chest, his skin, to pour itself cruelly outside. It was the first time he had ever felt anything like that. Gjorg of the Berisha, he repeated within him the cry of the pitiless herald. He was twenty-six, and for the first time his name plumbed the depths of life.

Outside the messengers of death, as if on wings, spread that name everywhere.

Half an hour later, they brought back the man’s body. Following the custom, they had put him on a litter made of four beech branches. Some still hoped that he was not dead.

The victim’s father waited at the door of his house. When the men bearing his son were forty paces off, he called out:

“What have you brought me? A wound or a death?”

The answer was short, dry.

“A death.”

His tongue sought moisture, deep, deep in his mouth. Then he spoke painfully:

“Carry him in and tell the village and our kin of our bereavement.”

The bells of the cattle returning to the village of Brezftoht, the bell tolling vespers, and all the other sounds of nightfall seemed laden with news of the death.

The streets and lanes were unusually lively for that evening hour. Torches that looked cold in the waning light flickered somewhere at the edge of the village. People came and went by the house of the dead man and by the house of his murderer, going in and coming out. Others, in twos and threes, went off and came back.

At the windows of houses on the outskirts, people exchanged the latest news:

“Have you heard? Gjorg Berisha has killed Zef Kryeqyqe.”

“Gjorg Berisha has taken back his brother’s blood.”

“Are the Berishas going to ask for the twenty-four hour bessa ?”*

“Yes, of course.”

The windows of the tall stone houses looked upon the comings and goings in the village streets. Now night had fallen. The torchlight seemed to thicken as if solidifying. Little by little it turned a deep red, lava springing from mysterious depths, and sparks flew upward from it as if announcing the bloodletting to come.

Four men, one of them elderly, were walking towards the dead man’s house.

“The deputation is going to ask for the twenty-four hour bessa for the Berishas,” someone said from a window.

“Will they grant it?”

“Yes, of course.”

Nevertheless, the entire clan of the Berisha were preparing to defend themselves. Here and there you could hear voices: Murrash, go home at once! Cen, close the door. Where’s Prenga?

The doors of all the houses of the clan, of kinsfolk near and distant, were closing, for this was the moment of danger, before the victim’s family had granted either of the two periods of truce; according to the Code, the Kryeqyqe, blinded by the newly shed blood, had the right to take vengeance on any member of the Berisha family.

All watched at their windows to see the delegation come out again. “Will they grant the truce?” the women asked.

At last the four mediators came out. The discussion had been short. Their bearing gave nothing away but a voice soon gave out the news.

“The Kryeqyqe family has granted the bessa .”

Everyone knew that it was the short truce, the twenty-four hour bessa . As for the long bessa , the thirty-day truce, no one spoke of it yet, for only the village could ask for it — and in any case it could not be requested until after the burial of the last victim.

The voices flew from house to house:

“The Kryeqyqe family has granted the bessa .”

“ Bessa has been granted by the Kryeqyqes.”

“And a good thing, too. At least we’ll have twenty-four hours without bloodshed,” a hoarse voice breathed from behind a shutter.

The funeral took place the next day around noon. The professional mourners came from afar, clawing their faces and tearing their hair according to the custom. The old churchyard was filled with the black tunics of the men who had come to the burial. After the ceremony, the funeral cortege returned to the Kryeqyqes’ house. Gjorg, too, walked in the procession. At first he had refused to take part in the ceremony, but at last he had given in to his father’s urging. He had said, “You must go to the burial. You must also go to the funeral dinner to honor the man’s soul.”

“But I am the Gjaks ,”* Gjorg had protested. “I’m the one who killed him. Why must I go?”

“For that very reason you must go,” his father declared. “If there is anyone who cannot be excused from the burial and the funeral dinner today, it’s you.” “But why?” Gjorg had asked one last time. “Why must I go?” But his father glared at him and Gjorg said no more.

Now he walked among the mourners, pale, with unsteady steps, feeling people’s glances glide by him and turn aside at once, losing themselves in the banks of mist. Most of them were relatives of the dead man. Perhaps for the hundredth time he groaned inwardly: Why must I be here?

Their eyes showed no hatred. They were cold as the March day, as he himself had been cold, without hatred, yesterday evening as he lay in wait for his quarry. Now the newly dug grave, the crosses of stone and wood — most of them askew — and the plaintive sound of the tolling bell, all these struck home. The faces of the mourners, with the hideous scratches left by their fingernails (God, he thought, how did they get their nails to grow so long in twenty-four hours?), their hair torn out savagely and their eyes swollen, the muffled footsteps all around him, all these trappings of death — it was he who had brought them about. And as if that were not enough, he was forced to walk in that solemn cortege, slowly, in mourning, just like them.

The braid on the seams of their tight trousers of white felt nearly touched his own, like poisonous black snakes ready to strike. But he was calm. He was better protected by the twenty-four hour truce than by the loophole of any kulla or fortress. The barrels of their rifles were aligned straight upwards against their short, black tunics, but for the time being they were not free to shoot at him. Perhaps tomorrow or the day after. And if the village asked for the thirty-day bessa on his behalf, he would be at peace for another four weeks. And then….

But a few paces ahead of him a rifle barrel swayed as if to stand out among the others. Another barrel, a short one, was to his left. Still others were all around him. Which of them…. at the last moment, in his mind, the words “will kill me” changed — as if to soften them — to “will fire at me.”

The road from the graveyard to the dead man’s house seemed endless. And he still had before him an even more arduous test, the funeral dinner. He would sit at the table with the dead man’s kin. They would pass the bread to him, they would set food before him, spoons, forks, and he would have to eat.

Two or three times he felt the urge to get out of that absurd situation, to bolt from the funeral cortege. Let them insult him, jeer at him, accuse him of violating age-old custom, let them shoot at his retreating back if they liked, anything so long as he got away from there. But he knew very well that he could never run away, no more than his grandfather, his great-grandfather, his great-great-grandfather, and all his ancestors five hundred, a thousand years before him had been able to run away.