“Oh, yes,” Diana said.
“There’s another.”
“Yes, yes, I see it, and there’s another one further on.”
“Those are the muranës that the innkeeper mentioned,” Bessian said. “They serve as boundary marks between fields or property lines.”
“There’s another,” Diana said.
“That’s what the Kanun says. ‘When a death occurs during a boundary dispute, the grave itself serves as a boundary mark.’ ”
Diana’s head was right against the window-pane.
“The tomb that becomes a boundary mark cannot, according to the Kanun, ever be displaced by any person to the end of time,” Bessian continued. “It is a boundary that has been consecrated by bloodshed and death.”
“How many opportunities to die!” Diana said those words against the window-pane, which promptly steamed over, as if to cut her off from the sight of the landscape.
In front of them the three horsemen were dismounting. The carriage halted a few paces behind. As soon as Bessian and Diana stepped down from the coach, they felt that everyone’s attention was directed at themselves. Assembled all around them were men, women, and many children.
“There are children here, too, do you see?” Bessian said to Diana. “Establishing the boundaries is the only important event in the life of a mountaineer to which the children come, and that is done so as to preserve the memory of it for as long as possible.”
They went on talking to each other, supposing that it would allow them to face the curiosity of the mountain people in the most natural-seeming way. Out of the corner of her eye, Diana looked at the young women, the hems of whose long skirts billowed with their every movement. All of them had their hair dyed black and cut in the same style, with curls on their foreheads and straight hair hanging down on each side of their faces like curtains in the theatre. They looked at the newly arrived couple from a distance, but taking care to conceal their interest.
“Are you cold?” Bessian asked his wife.
“A bit.”
In fact it was quite cold on the high plateau, and the blue tints of the mountains all around seemed to make the air even colder.
“Lucky it’s not raining,” Bessian said.
“Why would it be raining?” she said in surprise. For a moment she thought of the rain as being a poor beggar-woman, out of place in this magnificent alpine winter scene.
In the middle of a pasture, Ali Binak and his assistants were carrying on a discussion with a group of men.
“Let’s go and see. We’re sure to find out something.”
They walked on slowly through the scattered people, hearing whispers — the words themselves, partly because they were mumbled and partly because of the unfamiliar dialect, were almost incomprehensible to them. The only words they did understand were “princess” and “the king’s sister,” and Diana, for the first time that day, wanted to laugh aloud.
“Did you hear?” she said to Bessian. “They take me for a princess.”
Happy to see her a little more cheerful, he pressed her arm.
“Not so tired now?”
“No,” she said. “It’s lovely here.”
Without being aware of it, they had been approaching Ali Binak’s group. They exchanged introductions almost spontaneously because the mountain people seemed to be pushing the two groups of new arrivals together. Bessian told them who he was and where he came from. Ali Binak did the same, to the astonishment of the mountaineers who believed him to be famous throughout the world. As they talked, the crowd of people around them grew, staring at them and especially at Diana.
“The innkeeper told us a little while ago that this plain has known many disputes about boundaries,” Bessian said.
“That is true,” Ali Binak replied. He spoke quietly and in a somewhat monotonous tone, with no hint of passion. No doubt that was required of him because of his work as an interpreter of the Kanun. “I think you must have seen the muranës on either side of the road.”
Bessian and Diana both nodded their heads.
“And after all those deaths the dispute is still not settled?” Diana asked.
Ali Binak looked at her calmly. Compared with the curious looks of the crowd around them and especially the blazing eyes of the man with the checked jacket, who had introduced himself as a surveyor, Ali Binak’s eyes seemed to Diana to be those of a classical statue.
“No one is quarreling any longer about the boundaries established by bloodshed,” he said. “Those have been established forever on the face of the earth. It is the others that still stir up quarrels,” and he pointed towards the upland.
“The part that is not bloody?”
“Yes, just so, madam. For a good many years there has been discord over these pastures on the part of two villages, and it has not been brought to an end.”
“But is the presence of death indispensable in order for the boundary lines to be lasting?” Diana was surprised at having spoken, and particularly at her tone, in which a certain irony could clearly be distinguished.
Ali Binak smiled coldly.
“We are here, madam, precisely to prevent death from taking a hand in this affair.”
Bessian looked at his wife questioningly, as if to say, what has come over you? He thought he saw in her eyes a fleeting light that he had never seen before. Rather hurriedly, as if to wipe away all trace of this small incident, he asked Ali Binak the first question that came to him.
Around them all eyes were trained on the little group that was talking eagerly. Only a few old men sat to one side on some big stones, indifferent to everything.
Ali Binak went on talking slowly and only a minute later did Bessian realize that he had asked about the very thing he should have been careful not to mention, the deaths brought about by boundary disputes.
“If the man doesn’t die at once, and he forces himself along, whether walking or crawling, until he reaches someone else’s land, then, at the place where he collapses and succumbs to his wounds, there his muranë will be built, and even though it is on another’s land it remains forever the new boundary mark.”
Not only in Ali Binak’s appearance but in the syntax of his speech, there was something cold, something alien to ordinary language.
“And what if two men kill each other in the same instant?” Bessian asked.
Ali Binak raised his head. Diana thought she had never seen a man whose authority was so unaffected by his small stature.
“If two men kill each other at a certain distance from each other, then the boundary for each is the place where each man fell, and the space between is reckoned as belonging to no one.”
“No-man’s land,” Diana said. “Exactly as if it were a question of two countries.”
“It’s just as we were saying yesterday evening,” Bessian said. “Not only in their habits of speech, but in thought and action the people of the High Plateau have something of the attributes of independent countries.”
“And when there were no rifles?” Bessian went on. “The Kanun is older than firearms, isn’t it?”
“Yes, older, certainly.”
“Then they used blocks of stone for the purpose, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” said Ali Binak. “Before rifles were available, people practiced trial by ordeal, carrying stones. In the case of a quarrel between two families or villages or banners, each side appointed its champion. He who carried his block of stone farthest was the winner.”
“And what will happen today?”
Ali Binak looked around at the scattered crowd and then fixed his eyes upon the small group of old men.
“Venerable elders of this banner have been invited to bear witness about the former boundaries of the pasture.”