Ismail Kadare - Broken April

The daylight, even though it was brighter now, still looked cold and hostile as the far spaces from which it came. Lord, he sighed, this time so deeply that he felt as if his ribs were creaking like the timbers of a hut that someone was trying to tear down. His eyes were fixed on the gray sky that spread, lonely, above the mountains; it was hard to tell whether he was making them turn dark or if the darkness within him came from them.

His expression was at once questioning, threatening, and prayerful. What’s wrong with you, he seemed to be saying to the scene before his eyes, why have you changed so.

He had always thought that he knew his Rrafsh , of which it was said that it was one of the largest and most sombre of the high plateaus of Europe, and that besides spreading over thousands of square miles in Albania it went beyond her frontiers, through the Albanian districts of Kosovo, those that the Slavs called “Old Serbia,” but were really part of the High Plateau. That is what he used to think, but lately he found more and more that there was something about it that estranged him from it. His mind wandered painfully towards its slopes, skirted its chasms, as if he wanted to discover from whence came that incomprehensible something — worse than incomprehensible, ironic, in broad daylight. Especially when the wind began to howl and those mountains huddled together, he found them completely foreign.

He knew that the machinery of death was there, set up from time immemorial, an ancient mill that worked day and night, and whose secrets he, the steward of the blood, knew better than anyone. And yet, that did not help him drive away that feeling of estrangement. Then, as if to convince himself that it was not so, feverishly he traversed in his imagination that cold expanse unfolding in his head in a peculiar form, something between a topographical map and a cloth spread for the funeral feast.

Right now he was calling up that dismal map, looking through the library windows. In strict order, his mind arrayed all of the fertile fields of the High Plateau. They were divided into two large groups: cultivated fields, and fields lying fallow because of the blood feud. That disposition of things corresponded to a simple rule: The people who had blood to redeem tilled their fields because it was their turn to kill, and accordingly, no one threatened them, they could go out to their fields when they pleased. On the other hand, those who owed blood left the fields untilled, and immured themselves in the tower of refuge for protection. But that situation changed abruptly as soon as those who had blood to redeem had committed their murder. Then, from a family with blood to redeem, they changed into a family that owed blood, and therefore, they became gjaks and betook themselves to the towers of refuge, letting their fields lie fallow. Conversely, of course, their enemies ceased to be gjaks , they left the towers in which they had been cloistered, and since it was now their turn to kill, they were not afraid and they set about cultivating their fields just as they chose. And that state of affairs lasted until the next murder was done. Then everything was reversed again.

Whenever he travelled in the mountains on business concerning the Kulla , Mark Ukacierra was always attentive to the connection between the cultivated fields and the fields that lay fallow. The former were generally more extensive. They made up nearly three-quarters of all the grain fields. In some years, however, the ratio changed and was more favorable to the fields lying fallow. Those fields reached a third or two-fifths of the total number, even rising on occasion so as to equal the area of the cultivated fields. People remembered two years in which the area of the fallow fields was greater than that of the cultivated fields. Yes, but that was a long time ago. Little by little, with the decline of the blood feud, the fallow fields shrank in number. Those fields were the special joy of Mark Ukacierra. They bore witness to the power of the Kanun . Whole clans allowed their fields to go uncultivated and themselves to suffer hunger so that the blood might be redeemed, and contrarily there were families who did just the opposite, putting off the redemption of blood from season to season and from year to year, to gather enough corn so as to be able to cloister themselves for a long time. You are free to choose between keeping your dignity as a man and losing it, the Kanun said. Each man chose between corn and vengeance. Some, to their shame, chose corn, others, on the contrary, vengeance.

Mark Ukacierra had had many opportunities to see, side by side, the fields of families engaged in the blood feud with each other.

And the picture was always the same: one field being worked here, another lying fallow there. The clods in the tilled fields struck Mark Ukacjerra as something shameful. And the vapor that rose from them, and its smell, and its quasi-feminine softness made him sick. But the neighboring fallow fields with their irregularities that sometimes looked like wrinkles and sometimes like clenched jaws, nearly moved him to tears. And everywhere in the high country, the picture was the same — cultivated fields and fields untilled, on one side of the road or the other, close but estranged, looking at each other with hatred. And what was even more peculiar was that one or two seasons later their positions would be interchanged; the fallow fields suddenly grew fertile, and the tilled fields lay fallow.

Perhaps for the tenth time that morning, Mark Ukacierra sighed. His thoughts were still far away. From the fields he turned to the roads, which he had travelled afoot or on horseback in the service of the Kulla . The Grand Highway of the Accursed Peaks, The Road of Shadow, the Road of the Black Drin River, the Road of the White Drin River, the Bad Road, the Great Highway of the Banners, the Road of the Cross — all these were travelled day and night by the people of the High Plateau. Special stretches of road were safeguarded by the perpetual bessa ; that is, whoever committed a murder on those sections of roadway would incur the vengeance of a whole community. In that way, on the Grand Highway of the Banners, the section from Peter’s Bridge to the Big Sycamores was under the bessa of the Nikaj and the district of Shala. Whoever was wronged there would be avenged by the district of the Nikaj or the district of Shala. Likewise, on the Road of Shadow, the stretch from the Fields of Reka to the Deaf Man’s Mill was covered by the bessa . The Road of the Curraj as far as Cold Stream also benefited from the bessa . The manor houses of the Nikaj and of Shala were also protected by the bessa as well as the Old Inn on the Road of the Cross, except for its stable. The same was true of the Young Widow’s Inn, with four hundred paces of roadway from its north door, from the eight ravines of the Fairies’ Stream within a radius of forty paces; and the manor houses of Rreze; and the Storks’ Pasture.

He tried to recall one by one the other places protected by a special bessa , as well as those places that were under the bessa of everyone — that is to say, where it was forbidden to take vengeance, as was the case of all the mills without exception, and their surroundings within a radius of forty paces, and again of the waterfalls and their surroundings within a radius of four hundred paces, because the noise of the mills or the sound of falling water would not allow a person to hear the warning cry of the avenger. The Kanun had thought of everything. Often, Mark Ukacierra had wondered if such places protected by the bessa set limits to feuding or on the contrary helped to increase the number of such encounters. Sometimes it seemed to him that because of the protection afforded every passerby, such places put death aside, but sometimes he thought that on the contrary the very road or inn that was under the bessa , because of its promise to avenge the blood of whomever might be killed there, led to new feuds. In his mind, all this was vague and ambiguous, like many other things in the Kanun .