Ismail Kadare - Broken April

In the past, he had asked himself the same question about the many ballads on the theme of the blood-feud which were sung all over the High Plateau. There were many bards in the villages of the various districts. There was no road on which one did not meet them, and no inn in which one could not hear them. It was hard to say if the ballads increased or diminished the numbers of the dead. They did both. One could say the same about the tales that went from mouth to mouth concerning things that had occurred in olden times or more recently, recounted during the winter nights by the fireside which would spread abroad thereafter, just as the travellers did, and come back transformed on some other night, just as a former guest might come back changed by the passing of time. Sometimes he found parts of those stories published in those sickening periodicals, strung out along their columns as if in coffins. For Mark Ukacierra, what was printed in books was only the corpse of what was recounted orally, or accompanied by the sound of the lahoute .*

In any case, like it or not, these things were connected with his work. Two weeks ago, the prince, preparing to give him a dressing down about the unfavorable condition of affairs, had told him so directly. As it happened, his words were a bit obscure, but the gist of it was more or less like this: If you, the steward of the blood, are tired of your work, don’t forget that there are plenty of people who would be happy to have the post — and not just anybody, but university men.

It was the first time that the prince had mentioned the University in a somewhat threatening tone. On some earlier occasions, he had suggested that Mark study, with the help of the priest, every matter concerned with the blood-feud, but this time his tone had been cutting. And now that it had come to mind again, Mark Ukacierra could feel a kind of pressure in his temples. Go ahead, engage one of those educated men who stink of perfume and give him my job, he growled. Take on a steward of the blood who is educated, and when your little effeminate steward goes mad in his third week, then you’ll remember Mark Ukacierra.

For a while he let his thoughts go freely from one possible outcome to another, but they all ended in the same way — the prince would be sorry, and he himself would be triumphant. But one way or the other, I must take a tour through the whole of the High Plateau, he said to himself when he felt the flood of that brief euphoria ebb away. It would be a good idea to prepare a report for the prince’s eye, like the one he had made four years ago, giving precise data about the current situation and forecasts of future conditions. Perhaps the prince’s personal business was not going well either, and Mark Ukacierra was serving as his scapegoat. But that did not matter. The prince was his master, and it was not for the steward to sit in judgment of him. His anger had left him completely. His mind, whose sudden access of resentment had put him momentarily under stress, was now freed of its troubles, and it was wandering in the distance once more, among the mountains. Yes, he really must go on that journey. The more so because just now he was not feeling well. Perhaps a change of air would lighten somewhat his recent troubles. And perhaps he might be able to sleep again. Besides, it would be useful to disappear for a time from the prince’s sight.

Planning that trip, without any special enthusiasm, began, little by little, stubbornly, to absorb him. And again, just as it had been a little while back, his thoughts began to untangle the roads that he would perhaps be taking, except that this time, connecting them in his mind with his boots or his horse’s shoes, he thought of them in a different way; he imagined in another fashion the inns and the houses where he might sleep, the horses whinnying at night, the bedbug bites.

It would be a working trip, in the course of which he would perhaps have to review everything that was connected, in his mind, with a rough sketch of a death-mill, with its millstones, its special tools, its countless wheels and gears. He would have to examine the entire mechanism minutely in order to find what it was that was blocking its action, what was rusted and what was broken.

Oh! he exclaimed, at the sudden pain of a stomach cramp, and he was tempted to say, you would do better to look at what is broken inside you, but he did not follow his thought to the end. Perhaps a change of air would rid him as well of the nauseous hollow in his stomach that was plaguing him. Yes, he ought to set out at once, leave this place, observe everything closely, discuss things at length — especially with the interpreters of the Kanun , ask their opinion — visit the towers of refuge, meet with the priests, ask them if there were any persons who grumbled about the Code and if so take down their names in order to ask the prince to expel them, etc. Mark Ukacierra’s spirits rose. Yes, certainly, he could draw up a detailed report on all those matters. Mark began to walk to and fro in the library. Sometimes he stopped before one of the windows; then, as a new idea occurred to him, he took up his pacing again. Already he could see the interpreters of the Code, by whose opinions the prince always set great store. There were some two hundred of them throughout the High Plateau, but only a dozen were famous. He must meet with at least half of those whose reputations were preeminent. They were the pillars of the Kanun , the intelligence of the High Plateau; they would certainly give their opinion of the state of affairs, and perhaps some advice about the means of improving it. But he must not rest content with that alone. His instinct told him that it would be useful to descend to the terrain that was the foundation of death, the murderer himself. He must enter the towers of refuge, speak one by one with each of the cloistered men, those who were the bread and salt of the Kanun . That last idea gave him special pleasure. Whatever words of wisdom might be uttered by the famous interpreters, the last word concerning death — so says the Kanun —belongs to the avengers of blood.

He rubbed his forehead, trying to recall the findings he had accurately reported four years ago. There were seventy-four towers of refuge in all the High Plateau, and about a thousand men cloistered in them. He tried to call up those towers in imagination, scattered, dark, forbidding, with their black loopholes and their heavy doors. Their image was bound up with that of the irrigation ditches, because of which some of those men were immured in the towers, and that was true also of those roads and inns protected by the bessa , and the interpreters of the Kanun , the story-tellers and the bards. Those were the screw mechanisms, the transmission belts, the gearwheels of the ancient machine that had worked without a stop for hundreds of years. For hundreds of years, he said again. Every day, every night. Without ever stopping. Summer and winter. But then came that day, the seventeenth of March, to disturb the order of things. Thinking of that day, Mark Ukacierra sighed once more. He felt that if that day had really passed as it very nearly had, all of that mill of death, its wheels, its heavy millstones, its many springs and gears, would make an ominous grating sound, would shake from top to bottom, and break and smash into a thousand pieces.

O Lord, may that day never come, he said, and again he felt that sensation in the hollow of his stomach. Then, mixed with the nausea, there came to mind once more some few passages of last night’s dinner, the prince’s discontent. And the animation he had felt for a few moments fell away completely, giving way to a strange anguish of mind. Let everything go to hell, he said. His uneasiness was of a very special kind, like a damp, gray mass that invaded him everywhere, softly, without any sharp edges nor painful pinchings. Oh, he would infinitely prefer an obvious pain, but what could he do against that pulp that he could not get rid of? People went on crushing him as if his own distress, which he never mentioned to a soul, were not enough. For three weeks now, he had been feeling it more and more frequently. All at once he asked himself the question that he had been putting off from day to day, night after night: Could he have been stricken with blood-sickness?