36
THE MARCH DAYS rolled by like chunks of ice. Nobody could remember such a bitterly cold spring in years. The news about the Orikum base at Vloré was true. The decision to hand over the Byzantine portion of the base to the Turkish Empire was proclaimed by special decree in the two imperial capitals, Constantinople and Brusa.
The news caused deep despair everywhere. It was said that the courts of Europe could not believe that ancient Byzantium could submit to such an indignity. Some made allowances, saying that this was at present the only way of staving off the Turkish monster. At present… But later?
News came from Vloré of preparations for the evacuation of the Byzantine warships. Apparently the base would be vacated very soon. The Scandinavian garrison too was preparing to make way for the Turks.
The elderly prince of Vloré kept his army mobilized. They said that he himself was seriously ill but was keeping his illness secret.
As if these dark clouds were not enough^ the bards at the Inn of the Two Roberts continued singing about the sacrifice that must be made at the bridge.
Work proceeded feverishly on the bridge. Ever since I had heard the most recent ballad’ in which the immured victim cursed the bridge to perpetual trembling, it seemed to me that the bridge had really begun to shake.
37
FOR SEVERAL CONSECUTIVE DAYS carts loaded with barrels of pitch passed along the western highway. The ferryman poled them across the river, cursing the wagoners, the pitch, and the entire world.
They said that the pitch was urgently needed at the Vloré base. That is how it has always happened. As soon as tar begins to move fast along the highways, you know that blood will flow after it.
Meanwhile dire foreboding continually thickened around us, or, 1 would say, around everything that centered upon this cursed bridge. Now it was not merely the bards who went on casting their grim spell night and day at the Inn of the Two Roberts. No, this matter was now a topic of general conversation from morning to night; strangest of all, it became a most simple and natural thing to talk about a sacrifice, as if it were the weather or the crops. The idea of sacrifice, up to now a truth within a song, had emerged from its cocoon and suddenly crept up on us. Now it moved among us, alive and on equal terms with all the other concerns of the day.
On the roads, at home, and in taverns along the great highway, people talked of the reward the bridge and road builders would give to the family of the man who would allow himself to be sacrificed in the bridge piers. I could not accustom myself to this transition at all Things that had been savage and frightening until yesterday had suddenly become tame. Everybody talked about the sum of money the immured man’s family would receive, and people even said that, apart from the cash payment, they would receive for a long time to come a percentage of the profits from the bridge, like everyone else who had met its expenses. Other people gave even more astonishing explanations, They said that the compensation due to every member of the family had been worked out in the minutest detail, with every kind of eventuality borne in mind. Everything had been provided for, from the possibility of the victim being without relatives, an odd man out, as they say (which was difficult to believe), to the opposite case of a poor man who might have a wife, parents, and a dozen children. They had anticipated everything, from the possibility of an orphan (in which case, in the absence of heirs, the remaining portion of the reward would be spent on a chapel for his soul that would be built just next to the bridge piers) to the case of a needy man, who would be given a first and final chance of property to leave to his nearest and dearest, in just the same way as a meadow or a mill is left as a bequest, except that this property would be his death. They said that the planning had been so thorough that they had even provided for the sacrifice of rich men, in other words death for a whim, out of boredom with life, or simply for fame. In this case, if the immured victim did not care for the reward, the cash would be used to erect, besides the chapel, a statue or memorial, also next to the bridge piers,
They said that all these calculations had been put down on paper and fixed with a seal, so that anybody who was thinking of being immured could read them beforehand.
To me all this resembled a bizarre dream. This was something we had never heard of before, a kind of death with accounts, seals, and percentages, We were quite unused to it. Sometimes I could not take it in at all I called to mind the delegation and its talks with the count, and what the collector of legends and the bridge’s master-in-chief had said, and I tried to establish some connection between these things, but the more 1 brooded the more perplexed 1 became. This business of calculated sacrifice confused me completely.
Sometimes I told myself that perhaps these were the signs of the new order that the master-in-chief had told me about in that unforgettable conversation. That jumble of words had been full of contracts, accounts, currency exchange, and percentages, percentages, percentages on everything. Even on death.
38
IT WEIGHED ON ME like a fatal burden. Its stone piers crushed me. One of its arches planted itself directly on my stomach, another on my throat. I wanted to break free and save myself from it, but it was impossible. The only movement I could make was a slight, a very slight tremor…. Ah yes, 1 thought, this was the perpetual trembling of which the ballad spoke. A cry rose in my throat. The cry struggled to come out, pressing against the stone arch. This went on a long time. Then, I do not know how, something was released inside me, and I budged. In that same moment, with eyes closed in terror, I felt the bridge collapse and fall on my body.
I woke drenched in sweat. The room was stuffy. I rose to open the window. Outside a warm, damp wind blew. One could sense that the sky, though invisible, was overcast. Some silent flashes of lightning burst against the mute flatness.
“Oh Lord,” I cried aloud, and I lay down again on my bed. But further sleep eluded me. A few awkward ideas, with a deceptive glitter as if frozen by winter, floated somewhere inside me. I do not know how long I remained in this state. When I finally opened my eyes, it was light. Somebody was knocking at the outside door. There was an anxious rattle at the iron doorlatch. The sky was cloudy, but not as overcast as I had imagined. Spring has unexpectedly come, full of fury, I said to myself.
Two village neighbors were at the door, with distraught faces. Their eyes were troubled and bloodshot.
“What is it?” i asked. “What’s the matter?”
They raised their hands to their throats, as if trying to force out the words.
“At the bridge, Gjon … Under the first arch … They’ve walled up Murrash Zenebisha,”
“No.”
1 was unable to say anything else, or even to think. But these people, who seemed to have lost the power of thought before me, expected something from me. Soon! found myself walking toward the bridge. We hardly walked but were blown where the wind bore us, like three waving scraps of rag, myself in the middle and the others on either side*
I knew Murrash Zenebisha. Among ordinary people, it would have been difficult to find anyone more commonplace than he. His appearance, his average height, and his whole life were ordinary to the point of weariness, I could not take in the fact that this extraordinary thing, immurement, had happened to none other than him. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed an aberration. It was more than turning into a leader or a statue* … Everything had gone too far … now he was divided from us by the mortar of legend.
From a distance, you could see a small gathering of people around the bridge pier. By the first arch. He must be there.