Ismail Kadare - Broken April

He went on explaining that the prince’s power was of a very special kind, founded on the Kanun and unlike any other regime in the world. Time out of mind, neither police nor government had had any authority over the High Plateau. The castle itself had neither a police force nor governmental powers, but the High Plateau was nonetheless wholly under its control. That had been true in the time of the Turks, and even earlier, and that state of affairs had gone on under the Serbian occupation and the Austrian occupation, and then under the first republic, and the second, and now under the monarchy. Some years ago a group of deputies tried to put the High Plateau under the authority of the national government, but the attempt failed. The partisans of Orosh had said that we should act so that the Kanun would extend its sway over the entire country instead of trying to uproot it in the mountains, though of course no power in the world could achieve that.

Diana asked Bessian a question about the princely origins of the master of the Kulla , and he had the feeling that she did that in the naive way that a woman tries to find out if the jewelry someone is about to give her is really gold.

He told her that he did not believe in the princely origins of the lords of Orosh. At the very least, that matter had not been established. Their origins were lost in the mists of time. According to Bessian, there were two possibilities: either they were descendants of a very old but not very distinguished feudal family, or else they were a family that, generation after generation, had dealt in interpreting the Kanun . It was well known that a dynasty of that kind, which was rather like a temple of the law, an institution halfway between oracles and repositories of legal tradition, could in time amass great power, until their origins were quite forgotten and they exercised absolute dominion.

“I said that the family interpreted the Kanun ,” Bessian went on, “because to this day, the Kulla of Orosh is recognized as the guardian of that very Kanun .”

“But isn’t the family itself outside the Code?” Diana asked. “I think you told me that once.”

“Yes, that is the case. It is the only family that is not under the jurisdiction of the Kanun .”

“And there are all sorts of grim legends about it, aren’t there?”

“Yes, of course. Naturally, a castle as old as this is bound to have an atmosphere of mystery.”

“How interesting,” Diana said, gaily this time, cuddling up to him as before. “It’s so exciting to be visiting there, isn’t it?”

He took a deep breath, as if after some great exertion. He pulled her close again, and he looked at her with a mixture of tenderness and reproof, as if he were telling her, why do you torment me by removing yourself so suddenly and so far, when you are so close to me?

Her face was lit once again by that smile that he could see only from the side, and that was almost entirely directed straight before her, into the distance.

He put his head to the window.

“It will be night soon.”

“The tower must not be far now,” Diana said.

Both were trying to find it, each looking out through the window nearest them. The late-afternoon sky was set in a heavy immobility. The clouds seemed to have frozen forever, and if some sense of motion still persisted around them, its locus was not the sky but the earth. The mountains filed by slowly before their eyes, at the same speed as their rolling carriage.

Holding hands, they searched the horizon to find the tower. The mystery of it brought them closer still. Several times they cried out almost simultaneously, “There it is! There it is!” But they knew at once that they were mistaken. It was only the mountain peaks with shreds of cloud clinging to them.

All around them was empty space. One would have thought that other buildings and life itself had withdrawn so as not to disturb the solitude of the Kulla of Orosh.

“But where is it?” Diana said plaintively.

Their eyes sought the tower at every point on the horizon, and it would have seemed just as natural to see it appear high in the sky, among the tattered clouds, as somewhere on the earth, among the rocky peaks.

The light of the copper lamp carried by the man who was leading them up to the third storey of the kulla wavered mournfully on the walls.

“This way, sir,” he said for the third time, holding the lamp away from him the better to light their way. The floor was made of wooden boards that seemed to creak louder at that hour of the night. “This way, sir.”

In the room, another lamp, also of copper, its wick scarcely turned up, shed a feeble light on the walls and on the pattern of the carpet on a deep red ground. Against her will, Diana sighed.

“I’ll bring your suitcases at once,” said the man, and he went away quietly.

They stood there for a moment, looking at each other, and then they looked around the room.

“What did you think of the prince?” Bessian asked in a low voice.

“It’s hard to say,” Diana replied, almost in a whisper. At any other time she would have admitted that she did not know what to make of him; he was not very natural, any more than the style of his invitation, but she felt that long explanations were out of place at that late hour. “It’s hard to say,” she repeated. “As for the other one, the steward of the blood, I think he’s repulsive.”

“I do too,” Bessian said.

His eyes, and then Diana’s, rested stealthily on the heavy oak bed and its heavy red woolen coverlet with a deep nap. On the wall, above the bed, there was a cross of oak.

Bessian went to one of the windows. He was still standing there when the man came back, holding his copper lamp in one hand and the two suitcases in the other.

He set them down on the floor and Bessian, his back to the man and his face pressed to the window-pane, asked, “What is that, down there?”

The man walked over with a light step. Diana watched them both for a moment, leaning on the window-sill, looking down as if into a chasm.

“It’s a sort of large room, sir, a sort of gallery, I don’t know what to call it, where you take in the people from all parts of the Rrafsh when they come to pay the blood tax.”

“Oh,” Bessian said. Because his face was right against the pane, his voice sounded strange to Diana. “That’s the famous murderers’ gallery.”

“ Gjaks , sir.”

“Yes, gjaks …. I know. I’ve heard of them.”

Bessian stayed by the window. The servant of the castle withdrew a few steps, noiselessly.

“Good night, sir. Good night, madam.”

“Good night,” Diana said, without raising her head that was bent over the suitcase that she had just opened. She went through her things languidly, without deciding to choose this or that. The evening meal had been heavy, and she felt an unpleasant weight in her stomach. She looked at the red woolen coverlet on the broad bed, then turned again to her suitcase, hesitating about putting on her nightgown.

She was still undecided when she heard his voice.

“Come see.”

She got up and went to the window. He moved to make room for her and she felt the icy coldness of the glass go right through her. Outside, the darkness seemed to hover over an abyss.

“Look down there,” Bessian said faintly.

She looked into the darkness, but saw nothing; she was penetrated with the vastness of the black night and she shivered.

“There,” he said, touching the glass with his hand, “down there, don’t you see a light?”

“Where?”

“Down there, all the way down.”

At last she saw a glimmer. Rather than a light it was a feeble reddish glow on the rim of the abyss.