“Cloistered because of blood-vengeance?”
“Yes, my son, for blood-vengeance. Nobody has ever seen anything to match it. Well, of course people have killed one another within the village, but never anything like this.”
The old woman took a deep breath.
“Of the two hundred households of our village, only twenty are not involved in the blood-feud.”
“How can that possibly be?”
“You’ll see for yourself, my boy. The village looks as if everything had turned to stone, as if the plague had struck it.”
Bessian put his head near the window, but the village was not yet in sight.
“Two months ago,” the mountain woman said, “I myself buried a nephew, a boy beautiful as an angel.”
She began to talk about that boy, and to tell how he had been killed, but as she spoke — and this was strange — the order of the words in her sentences began to change. And not only their order but the spaces between them, as if a special atmosphere was clothing them, painful and disturbing. As happens with fruit before it is fully ripe, her language changed from its ordinary condition to quite another condition, the prelude to song or lamentation. It would seem that this is how the songs of the bards come about, Bessian thought.
He was looking fixedly at the old mountain woman. That state of feeling that preceded song was accompanied by corresponding changes in the expression of her face. In her eyes there was lamentation, but no tears. And they seemed all the more disconsolate.
The carriage entered the village, followed by the echoing clatter of its wheels on the empty road. On either side stone kullas rose up, seeming even more silent in broad daylight.
“This kulla belongs to the Shkreli, and that one, farther along, to the Krasniq, and the blood-vengeance that must be carried out is so mixed up that no one really knows which clan is the one that is supposed to take vengeance now, so much so that both families are holed up in their towers. That tower over there, the one that is three storeys high, belongs to the Vithdreq, who are feuding with the Bunga, whose kulla you can hardly see from here — the one whose walls are made partly of black stone. And those are the towers of the Karakaj and the Dodanaj, who are feuding, and each of those families has carried out two coffins through their doors this spring. As for those other kullas over that way, in the same line and facing each other, they belong to the Ukas and the Kryezeze, but since they are within rifle-shot, not just the men of each house but even the women and the young girls open fire on one another from inside their walls and do not go out.”
The mountain woman went on talking in this way while the two outlanders turned to this window and that in an attempt to grasp the meaning of this strange form of civic life governed by the blood-feud as she described it to them. There was no sign of life in the heavy silence of those kullas. The pallid sunlight falling obliquely on their stonework only emphasized their desolate air.
They set down the old woman not far from the center of the village, and they accompanied her to her own kulla. Then the carriage started off again through that stone kingdom, that looked as if it were under a spell. And just imagine that there are people behind those walls and their narrow loopholes, Bessian thought. There are ardent young women and young wives. And for a moment it seemed to him that despite that stiff carapace he could feel the pulsing of life, fearfully intense and beating against the walls with Beethovian power. The outside, however, the walls, the rows of loopholes, the pallid sunlight falling upon them, gave nothing away. And suddenly he cried out to himself, what is all that to you? You’d better concern yourself with your wife’s unyielding stiffness. He felt rage rising swiftly in him, and he turned to Diana to break that unbearable silence once and for all, to speak to her, to demand an explanation to the very last detail, of the mute riddle of her conduct towards him.
It was not the first time that he had been on the point of doing that. Dozens of times he had rehearsed what he would say, from the most gentle appeal, Diana, what’s the matter? Tell me what’s troubling you, to the harshest reproofs, of the kind one can’t compose without the word “devil”—what the devil is wrong with you? What the devil do you mean by that? Oh, go to the devil! In these cases, he found, that word was irreplaceable. And right now, in that haze of rage that was upon him, it was the first word that occurred to him, ready to be a part of any sentence whatever, glad to be of use, eager to take part in the argument. Well, just as in all those other times, not only could he not use that word against her, but like a man who has made a mistake and means to make amends and be responsible for the consequences, he used it against himself. He was still turned towards her, and instead of speaking harshly to her, he said to himself, what the devil is wrong with you?
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.