Ismail Kadare - Broken April

What the devil is wrong with me? Just as on those other occasions, he avoided giving himself an answer. Later. Later, perhaps, the opportunity would present itself. He had not understood until now just why he had not demanded an explanation. Now he felt that he did know why; it was that he was afraid of what she might answer. It was a fear akin to what he had experienced one winter night in Tirana in the course of a spiritualist seance at a friend’s house, when they were preparing themselves to hear the voice of one of their group who had died some time ago. Bessian did not quite know why, but he could only imagine that Diana’s explanation would be of the same kind, delivered as if from behind a curtain of smoke.

It was a long while since the carriage had left behind it that doomed village, and he told himself again that the only reason that he had put off having it out with his wife was fear. I’m afraid of what she might say, he thought, I’m afraid, but why?

The feeling that he was to blame had become even stronger during their journey. In fact that feeling had arisen much earlier, and perhaps he had undertaken this tour in order to rid himself of it. Well, the contrary effect had manifested itself. And now, apparently, the possibility that Diana’s response might have some connection with that feeling of culpability on his part was enough to make him tremble inwardly. No, it would be better that she keep silent all through this dreadful trial, that she turn into a mummy, and that he never hear her say to him the things that would give him pain.

At some places the road was full of holes, and the carriage lurched violently. As they were going by some pools of water formed by the melting snow, she asked him, “Where are we going to have lunch?”

He turned his head, astonished. Those simple words gave him a warm feeling.

“Wherever we can,” he said. “Do you have an idea?”

“No, no, that’s fine,” she said.

He was about to turn his whole body towards her, but he felt a strange misgiving, as if he had beside him a fragile glass object that kept him motionless.

“We might even stay the night in some inn,” he said, without turning his head.

“If you wish.”

He felt a wave of warmth flooding his chest. Couldn’t all this be quite simple, and he, with his habit of complicating things, had he not seen the beginning of a tragedy where perhaps there was only the fatigue of the trip, an ordinary headache, or something of that sort?

“In some inn,” he said, “the first one we come to.”

She consented with a nod.

Perhaps it will be really much better that way, he thought happily. They had been spending their nights in the houses of strangers, with friends of friends, or more accurately, with the links of a chain of friends who had a single origin: the person with whom they had spent the first night of their journey, the only person they had known before. And every night there was a repetition of more or less the same scene — words of welcome, conversation in the living room around the fireplace, topics such as the weather, cattle, the government. Then dinner, accompanied by the most carefully considered phrases, then coffee, and the next morning, their departure, attended by the traditional escort who accompanied them to the borders of the village. In sum, all that could get to be pretty tiresome for a young bride.

“An inn!” he cried out in his thoughts. An ordinary inn beside the road, that was where salvation lay. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? How stupid I am, he told himself happily. An inn, even a dirty one that smelled of cattle, would bring them closer together by surrounding them, if not with the kind of comfort it could not possibly provide, then with its dire poverty in whose depths there gleamed ten times more bright the happiness of temporary guests.

An inn loomed up beside the road sooner than they had expected. It rose in the midst of a barren stretch of land at the crossing of the Road of the Cross and the Great Road of the Banners, where there was no village to be seen nor any other sign of life.

“Do you serve meals?” Bessian asked as soon as he had passed the threshold.

The innkeeper, a tall, ungainly fellow with half-closed eyes answered between clenched teeth, “Cold beans.”

On seeing Diana and the coachman, who was carrying a travelling bag, the innkeeper became somewhat more lively, and he grew quite attentive when he heard one of the carriage horses neighing. He rubbed his eyes and said in a hoarse voice, “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! We can give you fried eggs and cheese. I have raki* too.”

They sat down at the end of a long oak table that, as in most of the inns, took up the greater part of the common room. Two mountaineers, seated on the floor in one corner, looked curiously in their direction. A young woman was sleeping, her head resting on her baby’s cradle. Close by her, on a heap of many-colored bags, someone had set down a lahoute .

While waiting for the innkeeper to bring them their meal, they looked about them in silence.

“The other inns were more lively,” Diana said at last. “This one is very quiet.”

“Better that way, don’t you think?” Bessian looked at his watch. “Though at this time of day….” His thoughts were elsewhere and his fingers kept up a drumming on the table. “But it doesn’t look too bad here, does it?”

“That’s true, especially from outside.”

“It has a steep roof, the kind you like.”

She nodded. Despite her weariness, her expression was softer.

“Shall we sleep here tonight?”

As he said the words, Bessian felt his heart pounding, as if in secret. What is happening to me? he said to himself.

When she was still unmarried and she had come to his place for the first time, he had been less stirred than he was now, when she was his wife. It’s enough to drive you crazy, he thought.

“If you like,” she said.

“What’s that?”

She looked at him in surprise.

“You asked me if I would like it if we slept here tonight, didn’t you?”

“And you would?”

“Yes, of course.”

That’s marvellous, he thought. He wanted to kiss that much-loved head that had been torturing him all these past days. A wave of warmth, of a kind he had never felt before, flooded through him. After so many nights of being separated, they would sleep together at last, in this isolated mountain inn, among these desolate roads. It was lucky, really, that things had happened this way. If not for that, he would never have known the sensation that few men have had occasion to experience — to re-live one’s first embrace of a loved woman. She had become so distant in these days that now he felt that he was rediscovering her as she had been when he had known her before they were married. More, this second discovery seemed to him even sweeter and more unsettling. People are right to say it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good.

He sensed something moving behind him, and all at once, right under his eyes, as if coming at him from the world of the commonplace, were certain circular objects that gave off a piquant smell and were quite useless: the plates of fried eggs.

Bessian looked up.

“Do you have a good room for tonight?”

“Yes, sir,” the innkeeper said confidently. “One with a fireplace at that.”

“Really? That’s splendid.”

“Oh, yes,” the innkeeper went on. “There’s no room like it in all the inns of the district.”

I’m really in luck, Bessian thought.

“I’ll take you to it as soon as you’ve had your lunch,” the innkeeper said.

“Splendid.”

He had no appetite. Diana did not eat her eggs, either. She asked for some cream cheese, but she left it in the dish because it was dry and hard. Then she asked for yoghurt, and at last for eggs again, but boiled this time. Bessian ordered the same thing, but he ate nothing.