Many people set off from distant parts with the sole object of seeing him. Sometimes they — came with their wives, or even made the journey a second time. This was no doubt why the Inn of the Two Roberts had recently doubled its business.
42
THE WEATHER DETERIORATED. The count, together with his family, returned from the mountain lodge where he had spent the summer. At the bridge, the left-hand approach arch was being finished.
One day at the beginning of September the count’s daughter came to see the immured victim. I had not seen her for some time. She had grown and was now a fine girl. I thought she would not be able to bear the sight of the dead man, but she endured it. As she left the sandbank, thin and somewhat woebegone, people turned their heads after her. They knew that the powerful Turkish pasha, whom ill fortune had recently made our neighbor, had quarreled with our liege lord because of this dainty girl.
Perhaps because she had spent her girlhood in such troubled times as recent seasons had been, no tales had been woven around her, such as those about knights crossing seven mountain ranges to meet a girl in secret, and the like, which are usually told about young countesses and the daughters of nobles in general. In place of such tales of love, there was only an alarming sobriquet attached to her, which, I do not know why, spread everywhere, They called her “the Turk’s bride.” I often racked my brains to explain such an irrational nickname. It was quite meaningless, because nothing like that had happened. It was the opposite of the truth, but the nickname clung to her. It could not conceivably have been created out of goodwill, or even malice, and so perhaps resembled a truth and a lie at the same time. The girl did not go to the Turks as a bride, but the nickname remained, as if it were unimportant whether the wedding took place or not, and the main thing was the proposal and not its acceptance. And so she was called “the Turk’s bride” simply because the Turks had asked for her, had cast their eyes this far, and had brandished from a distance that black veil with which they cover their women.
The nickname made my flesh creep. Why was it still used, and why did it not perish the moment the Turk’s proposal was rejected? What was this perpetual danger, this offer of marriage, that still floated on the wind? Sometimes I told myself that it was a chance nickname, more ridiculous than alarming, and not worth becoming upset about, but it was not long before my suspicions were aroused again. Did it all not extend beyond the fate of the noble young lady? Did popular imagination in some obscure, utterly vague way perhaps foresee a generally evil destiny for the girls of Arberia? This horrible nickname could not have arisen for nothing, still less have stuck to her like a burr.
I said these things to myself, and thought: If only that young girl knew what I was thinking as she walks along the bank with her nurse, her slight figure almost translucent!
43
HASTE WAS EVIDENT EVERYWHERE: in the works on the Ujana, in the pace of the heralds, and even in the flight of the storks, which, having pecked at the beams of the bridge for the last time, set off on their distant migrations that no rivers or bridges obstructed.
Even the news coming from the Orikum base was gathered in haste and was contradictory. It was said that the aged Komneni was dead but that his death was being kept secret because of the situation at Orikum. All kinds of other things were whispered. It was said that the great Turkish sultan had withdrawn into the interior of Asia to meditate in complete solitude about the general affairs of the world, and that this was the reason why the Turks seemed to have fallen asleep.
There was no sign of them. But one day, at the end of the week, another dervish was seen, wandering across the cold plain’ a solitary figure amid the winds. Like all itinerant dervishes, he was barefoot and dust-covered, and perhaps for this reason seemed to have ash-colored rags instead of hair’ and hair instead of rags. He paused at the first arch of the bridge, fell on his face in front of the victim, and intoned an Islamic prayer in a deep and mournful voice. Then he disappeared again, I do not know where, across the open plain,
44
AFEW DAYS before the final work on the bridge, one of the master-in-chief’s two assistants, the fat one, fell ill with a rare and frightening disease: all the hairs on his body fell out, They shut him in a hut and tried in every possible way to keep his sickness secret, but there was no way it could be concealed. People gossiped about it all day, some with pity, some with fear, but most with mockery. Wolves molt in summer, they said, just like him. Mad Gjelosh wandered all day around the hut, putting his eye to cracks in the wall to see what he could. Then he emerged from the other side, nodding his head as if in understanding, Old Ajkuna said that this was only the beginning of God’s punishment. Everybody who has taken part in this cursed business will lose first his hair, she said, then his eyes, nose, and ears, and in the end the flesh will fall from his bones piece by piece.
Meanwhile the workmen, always in haste, scrambled day and night among the mesh of scaffolding, scurrying everywhere like beetles, with pails, whetstones, and stone slabs in their hands, It seemed that they were cladding the sides because^ in contrast to the stones of the piers and arches, this was soft limestone’ easy to smooth and therefore called female stone* It was said that in some buildings in which it had been used long ago it oozed a white juice resembling milk, as if it were a woman’s breast.
45
AT DAWN ON THE MORNING of the first Sunday of the month of St. Dimiter, the bridge over the Ujana e
Keqe’ which had in these two years brought us more troubles than the river itself had brought stones and tree stumps, stood complete.
Everyone knew that it was almost finished, but its appearance on that morning was quite amazing. This was because the day before much of it had still been half hidden behind the confusion of planks, and they had only begun removing the scaffoldings as if peeling the husk from a corn cob, just before dusk. They had perhaps planned it this way, so that at the dawn of day it would stand clear, as if emerging from the womb of the gorge.
The hammers had echoed all night’ dislodging the wooden wedges that fell crashing down. In their sleep, people thought they heard thunderclaps^ turned heavily in their beds, and cursed or were afraid. There were many who thought that the laborers, repenting or following an order from who knows where, were demolishing what they had built.
In the morning they were right not to believe their eyes. Under the clumsy light of day’ between the turbid waters and the gloomy sky, it soared powerfully from one bank, sudden, dazzling, like a voicelike scream, and hung in suspense directly over the watery gulf as if about to launch itself in flight. But as soon as it reached midway over the river, its trajectory fell, like a dream of flying, and it gently bent its back until its span touched the opposite bank and froze there. It was lovely as a vision. The veins of the stone seemed both to absorb and emit light, like the pores of a living body. Thrust between the enmity of water and earth, it now seemed to be striving to strike some accord between the separate elements of its surroundings. The frothing wave crests seemed to soften toward it, as did the wild pomegranate bushes on the opposite hill, and two small clouds on the horizon.