Ismail Kadare - Broken April

“And what about you? How did you happen to settle on the High Plateau?” Bessian said in order to change the subject. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

The doctor said, with a bitter smile, “I was one. Now I’m something else.”

His eyes showed his deep distress, and Bessian thought that light-colored eyes, even the ones that seem at first sight almost colorless, can reflect an inner pain more fully than any other kinds of eyes.

“I studied surgery in Austria,” he said. “I was among the first and only group of scholarship students that was sent there by the monarchy. Perhaps you have heard what became of most of those students when they returned from foreign parts. Well, I’m one of those. Absolute disappointment, no clinical practice, no possibility of working in my profession. I was unemployed for some time, and then, just by chance, in a café in Tirana, I met that man—” and he motioned with his head towards the surveyor—“who suggested I take up this peculiar trade.”

“Portrait of a group with bloodstains,” said the surveyor, who had just come up to them and was following their conversation. “You’ll always find us wherever there is blood.”

The doctor ignored those words.

“And is it as a doctor that you assist Ali Binak in his work?” Bessian asked.

“Of course. Otherwise he would not take me with him.”

Bessian looked at him in surprise.

“There’s nothing to be surprised at there. In judgments made in accordance with the Code, particularly when it is a question of blood-letting, and most of all in the matter of wounds, the presence of someone with an elementary knowledge of medicine is always necessary. Naturally, there is no need for a surgeon’s services. I would even say that the irony of my situation is precisely that I perform work that can be done quite well by the most junior kind of nurse, not to say anyone at all who has a rudimentary knowledge of the anatomy of the human body.”

“Rudimentary knowledge? Is that enough?”

The doctor smiled the same bitter smile.

“The trouble is that you are sure that my function here is to dress and cure wounds — isn’t that so?”

“Yes, of course. I can understand that, for the reasons you’ve mentioned, you gave up your profession as a surgeon — but you can still treat wounds, can’t you?”

“No,” the doctor said. “There would be some compensation in that. But I have nothing to do with things of that kind. Do you understand? Nothing at all. The mountaineers have always treated their wounds themselves, and they are still doing that to this very day, with raki, tobacco, in accordance with the most barbaric practices, as, for example, dislodging a bullet with another bullet, etc. So they will never call on a doctor for his services. And I am here to fulfill a very different function. Do you understand? I am not here as a doctor but as the assistant to a judge. Does that seem odd to you?”

“Not entirely,” Bessian said. “I have some knowledge of the Kanun myself, and I can imagine what you are dealing with.”

“I count the wounds, classify them, and do nothing else.”

For the first time Bessian had the feeling that the doctor was getting irritated. He turned to Diana, but their eyes did not meet. There was no question that this discussion would not make a good impression on her, but he told himself, too bad; provided that this comes to a stop as soon as possible, and we can get away from here.

“Perhaps you know that, according to the Kanun , the wounds inflicted are paid for by fines. Each wound is paid for individually, and the price depends on the part of the body in which the wound is situated. The compensation for head wounds, for example, is twice as high as that for wounds on the trunk, the latter being divided into two further categories, according to whether they are about or below the waist, and there are further distinctions. My work as an assistant consists of this only — to determine the number of the wounds and where they occur.”

He looked at Bessian and then at his wife, as if he wanted to be sure of the effect of his words.

“Wounds present problems when it comes to rendering judgment — rather more problems than outright killing. You must know that by the terms of the Kanun , a wound that has not been compensated for by the payment of a fine is regarded as the equivalent of half of a man’s blood. A wounded man, accordingly, is considered to be half-dead, a kind of shadow. In short, if someone wounds two persons in a family, or the same person twice, he becomes, by virtue of that fact — if he has not paid compensation for each of the two wounds considered separately — a debtor to the extent of all of one man’s blood, which is to say a human life.”

The doctor fell silent for a moment to give them time to absorb the meaning of his words.

“All that,” he went on, “gives rise to extremely complicated problems, principally economic ones. You are looking at me as if you are surprised, aren’t you? There are families that are unable to pay the compensation for two wounds, and they choose to discharge the debt by taking a human life. There are others that are ready to ruin themselves, to pay for as many as twenty wounds received by the victim, in order to keep the right, once their victim is well again, to murder him. Strange, isn’t it? But here’s something that puts all that in the shade. I know a man from the Black Ravines, who has supported his family for years on the indemnities he has received for the wounds his enemies have inflicted. He has escaped death several times, and he is convinced that, thanks to the training that he has had, he can escape dying by any bullet whatsoever, and without a doubt he is the first man in the world to create in some sense this new trade — that of making a living from his wounds.”

“Horrible,” Bessian muttered. He looked at Diana, and she seemed to him to be even more pale. This conversation must stop as soon as possible, he thought. Now the room at the inn, the fireplace, and the kettle of hot water hanging on the crane seemed far away. Let’s get away from here, he said to himself again. Let’s get away right now.

The people in the square had broken up into small groups, and Diana and Bessian were alone with the doctor.

“Perhaps you know,” the doctor went on — and Bessian was on the point of interrupting him and saying, I don’t know and I don’t want to know—“that according to the Kanun , when two men fire at each other point-blank and one of them dies while the other is merely wounded, the wounded man pays the difference, as it were for the surplus blood. In other words, as I told you right at the beginning, often, behind the semi-mythical décor, you have to look for the economic component. Perhaps you’ll accuse me of being cynical, but in our time, as with everything else, blood has been transformed into merchandise.”

“Oh, no,” Bessian said. “That’s a somewhat simplistic way of looking at things. Of course economics plays a part in many things, but it won’t do to go too far in that direction. And on that subject, I’d like to ask if you aren’t the person who wrote an article on the blood-feud that was banned by the royal censor.”

“No,” the doctor said shortly. “I supplied the facts, but I was not the author.”

“I think I remember reading in that article the same phraseology — blood has been turned into merchandise.”

“That is an incontestable truth.”

“Have you read Marx?” Bessian asked.

The doctor did not reply. He just looked at Bessian as if to say, “And you who are asking me that question, have you read him?”

Bessian glanced swiftly at Diana, who was looking straight before her, and he felt that he must argue with the doctor.