Ismail Kadare - Broken April

“I understand, Diana,” he said in a voice that was strangely weary. “Of course, it’s hard for me, but I understand—”

She interrupted him. “This is really a wonderful place. How right we were to come here.”

Bessian walked on, his thoughts elsewhere, and so they came to the second lake, and then they began to retrace their steps. On the way he got hold of himself; he was thinking of the room with the fireplace that was waiting for them, all warm, at the inn.

They came to the place where they had left their carriage, but instead of getting in they turned towards the village. The coach followed them.

The first persons they met on the way, two women carrying casks of water on their heads, slowed their steps and looked at them for a moment. In contrast, with the beauty of the countryside, the towers, close up, seemed especially gloomy. The village streets and especially the little square in front of the church were filled with people. Those tight trousers of heavy wool, milk-colored, with its black stripe, oddly like the symbol of an electrical discharge, that ran down their sides, expressed all the agitation that marked their bearing.

“Something must have happened,” Bessian said.

They watched the people for a moment, trying to imagine what might have occurred. But, apparently, what had happened must have been something rather peaceful and solemn.

“Is that tower the one that is the tower of refuge?” Diana asked.

“Probably. It looks like one.”

Diana slowed her step to look at the tower rising somewhat apart from the others.

“If the truce that was granted to that mountaineer we saw — you know, the one we talked about today — if the truce ended in the last few days, he would certainly have taken refuge in a tower of that sort, wouldn’t he?”

“Oh, certainly,” Bessian said, still looking at the crowd.

“And if, at the expiration of the truce, the murderer is on the highway, far from his own village, he could take shelter in any one of those towers of refuge?”

“I think so. It’s the same as with travellers overtaken by night who go into the first inn they find on the road.”

“So that he could very well have sought refuge in this very tower?”

Bessian smiled.

“It’s possible. But I don’t think so. There are many towers, and besides, we met that man a long way from here.”

Diana turned her head once more towards the kulla , and, in the depths of her stare and the corners of her eyes, Bessian thought he detected something like a gentle yearning. But in that instant he saw in the crowd someone who was waving at him. A checkered vest, some familiar faces.

“Take a look at who’s over there,” Bessian said, with a gesture of his head in their direction.

“Well, Ali Binak,” Diana said in a low voice that expressed neither satisfaction nor annoyance.

They met in the center of the square. The surveyor seemed to have drunk one glass too many this time, too. The doctor’s pale eyes, and not his eyes alone but all of the delicate skin of his face, were sorrowful. As for Ali Binak, one could just make out, behind his customary coldness, a mournful weariness. The group of experts was attended by a small knot of mountaineers.

“You are going on with your journey through the High Plateau?” Ali Binak asked them in his sonorous voice.

“Yes,” Bessian said. “We shall be in this district a few days more.”

“The days are getting longer now.”

“Yes, we’re in the middle of April. And you, what are you doing in these parts?”

“What are we doing here?” the surveyor said. “As usual, running from one village to another, from one Banner to another. Portrait of a group with bloodstains….”

“What?”

“Oh, I just wanted to use an image — how shall I say — well, borrowed from painting.”

Ali Binak darted a cold glance at the speaker.

“Is there some dispute here that you must arbitrate?” Bessian asked Ali Binak.

The latter nodded.

“And what a dispute!” the surveyor interposed again. “Today,” he said, with a jerk of the hand to indicate Ali Binak, “he has pronounced judgment in a way that will go down in history.”

“One mustn’t exaggerate,” Ali Binak said.

“It’s no exaggeration,” the surveyor said. “And this gentleman is a writer and we really must describe to him the case that you settled.”

In a few minutes the case for which Ali Binak and his assistants had been called to the village had been related by several speakers at once, particularly the surveyor, and they interrupted, amplified, or corrected one another. Things appeared to have happened in this fashion:

A week ago the members of a certain family had put to death one of their girls, who was pregnant. There was no doubt that they would promptly kill as well the boy who had seduced her. In the meantime, the boy’s family learned that the baby whom the young woman had not been able to bring into the world was a male child. The family forestalled their adversaries by declaring that they were the injured party in regard to the young woman’s kin, and argued that while the young man was not connected with the victim by marriage, the male child belonged to him. In so doing, the boy’s family made the claim that they were the ones who had a transgression to avenge, and that accordingly, it was their turn to kill a member of the young woman’s family. In that way, they not only protected their guilty boy against the punishment that awaited him, but also, by tying the hands of the adverse party, prolonged the de facto peace at their convenience. It goes without saying that the other family vigorously contested this view of the case. The business was brought before the village council of elders, who found it very hard to resolve. The parents of the young woman, devastated by their misfortune, were understandably outraged by the notion that they owed a victim to their adversaries when it was precisely a boy of that house who had brought about the death of their daughter. They insisted that another solution had to be found. And what further complicated the situation was that, according to the Kanun , a male child from the moment of conception belonged to the family of the boy, and must be avenged on the same principle as one avenges a man. The council of elders, declaring themselves unable to pronounce on the question, appealed to the great expert on the Kanun , Ali Binak.

The case had been considered an hour ago (just when we were walking on the banks of the lakes, Bessian thought). The judgment, as in all matters arising from the Kanun , was rendered promptly. The spokesman for the boy’s family had said to Ali Binak, “I should like to know why they spilled out my flour [meaning the baby that had been conceived].” And Ali Binak answered him at once: “What was your flour looking for in someone else’s flour sack [meaning the womb of the young stranger woman, not bound properly by marriage].” Both parties were thus non-suited, and both were declared blameless and not bound to seek vengeance.

Impassive, with never the quiver of a muscle in his pale face, not speaking at all, Ali Binak listened to the noisy account of how he had pronounced judgment.

“There’s nothing for it — you’re a wonder,” the surveyor said, his eyes wet with drunkenness and admiration.

They began to walk aimlessly around the square.

“When all is said and done, if you think about it calmly, these are really simple matters,” said the doctor, who was walking along with Bessian and Diana. “Even this last case, which seems so dramatic, is really a question of the relation of creditor to debtor.”

He went on talking, but Bessian was scarcely paying attention. He had another concern. Didn’t a discussion of this kind tend to have a bad effect on Diana? During the last two days they had rather neglected matters like these, and her face had begun at last to look less troubled.