He took a deep breath, as if after some great exertion. He pulled her close again, and he looked at her with a mixture of tenderness and reproof, as if he were telling her, why do you torment me by removing yourself so suddenly and so far, when you are so close to me?
Her face was lit once again by that smile that he could see only from the side, and that was almost entirely directed straight before her, into the distance.
He put his head to the window.
“It will be night soon.”
“The tower must not be far now,” Diana said.
Both were trying to find it, each looking out through the window nearest them. The late-afternoon sky was set in a heavy immobility. The clouds seemed to have frozen forever, and if some sense of motion still persisted around them, its locus was not the sky but the earth. The mountains filed by slowly before their eyes, at the same speed as their rolling carriage.
Holding hands, they searched the horizon to find the tower. The mystery of it brought them closer still. Several times they cried out almost simultaneously, “There it is! There it is!” But they knew at once that they were mistaken. It was only the mountain peaks with shreds of cloud clinging to them.
All around them was empty space. One would have thought that other buildings and life itself had withdrawn so as not to disturb the solitude of the Kulla of Orosh.
“But where is it?” Diana said plaintively.
Their eyes sought the tower at every point on the horizon, and it would have seemed just as natural to see it appear high in the sky, among the tattered clouds, as somewhere on the earth, among the rocky peaks.
The light of the copper lamp carried by the man who was leading them up to the third storey of the kulla wavered mournfully on the walls.
“This way, sir,” he said for the third time, holding the lamp away from him the better to light their way. The floor was made of wooden boards that seemed to creak louder at that hour of the night. “This way, sir.”
In the room, another lamp, also of copper, its wick scarcely turned up, shed a feeble light on the walls and on the pattern of the carpet on a deep red ground. Against her will, Diana sighed.
“I’ll bring your suitcases at once,” said the man, and he went away quietly.
They stood there for a moment, looking at each other, and then they looked around the room.
“What did you think of the prince?” Bessian asked in a low voice.
“It’s hard to say,” Diana replied, almost in a whisper. At any other time she would have admitted that she did not know what to make of him; he was not very natural, any more than the style of his invitation, but she felt that long explanations were out of place at that late hour. “It’s hard to say,” she repeated. “As for the other one, the steward of the blood, I think he’s repulsive.”
“I do too,” Bessian said.
His eyes, and then Diana’s, rested stealthily on the heavy oak bed and its heavy red woolen coverlet with a deep nap. On the wall, above the bed, there was a cross of oak.
Bessian went to one of the windows. He was still standing there when the man came back, holding his copper lamp in one hand and the two suitcases in the other.
He set them down on the floor and Bessian, his back to the man and his face pressed to the window-pane, asked, “What is that, down there?”
The man walked over with a light step. Diana watched them both for a moment, leaning on the window-sill, looking down as if into a chasm.
“It’s a sort of large room, sir, a sort of gallery, I don’t know what to call it, where you take in the people from all parts of the Rrafsh when they come to pay the blood tax.”
“Oh,” Bessian said. Because his face was right against the pane, his voice sounded strange to Diana. “That’s the famous murderers’ gallery.”
“Gjaks, sir.”
“Yes, gjaks. . . . I know. I’ve heard of them.”
Bessian stayed by the window. The servant of the castle withdrew a few steps, noiselessly.
“Good night, sir. Good night, madam.”
“Good night,” Diana said, without raising her head that was bent over the suitcase that she had just opened. She went through her things languidly, without deciding to choose this or that. The evening meal had been heavy, and she felt an unpleasant weight in her stomach. She looked at the red woolen coverlet on the broad bed, then turned again to her suitcase, hesitating about putting on her nightgown.
She was still undecided when she heard his voice.
“Come see.”
She got up and went to the window. He moved to make room for her and she felt the icy coldness of the glass go right through her. Outside, the darkness seemed to hover over an abyss.
“Look down there,” Bessian said faintly.
She looked into the darkness, but saw nothing; she was penetrated with the vastness of the black night and she shivered.
“There,” he said, touching the glass with his hand, “down there, don’t you see a light?”
“Where?”
“Down there, all the way down.”
At last she saw a glimmer. Rather than a light it was a feeble reddish glow on the rim of the abyss.
“I see,” she said. “But what is it?”
“It’s the famous gallery where the gjaks wait for days and sometimes weeks on end to pay the blood-tax.”
He felt her breath come faster by his shoulder.
“Why do they have to wait so long?” she asked.
“I don’t know. The kulla doesn’t make paying the tax easy. Perhaps so that there will always be people waiting in that gallery. You’re cold. Put something over your shoulders.”
“That mountaineer back there, at the inn, he must have come here, too?”
“Certainly. The innkeeper told us about him. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes, that’s right. It seems that he came here three days ago to pay the blood tax. That’s what he told us.”
“Just so.”
Diana could not suppress a sigh.
“So he was here. . . .”
“Without exception, every killer on the High Plateau goes through that gallery,” he said.
“That’s terrifying. Don’t you think so?”
“It’s true. To think that for more than four hundred years, since the building of the castle of Orosh, in that gallery, night and day, winter and summer, there have always been killers waiting there.”
She felt his face near her forehead.
“Of course it’s frightening, it couldn’t be otherwise. Murderers waiting to pay. It’s truly tragic. I’d even say that in a certain way there is grandeur in it.”
“Grandeur?”
“Not in the usual meaning of the word. But in any case, that glimmer in the darkness, like a candle shining on death. . . . Lord, there really is something supremely sinister about it. And when you think that it’s not just a matter of the death of a single man, of a candle-end shining on his grave, but infinite death. You’re cold. I told you to put something over your shoulders.”
They stood there awhile, not turning their eyes from that light at the foot of the kulla, until Diana felt chilled to her marrow.
“Brr! I’m freezing,” she said, and moving away from the window she said, “Bessian, don’t stay there, you’ll catch cold.”
He turned and took two or three steps towards the centre of the room. At that moment, a clock on the wall that he had not noticed struck twice with a deep sound that made them both start.
“Goodness, how frightened I was,” Diana said.
She knelt down again to her suitcase. “I’m taking out your pyjamas,” she said a moment later.
He murmured a few words and began to walk up and down the room. Diana went over to a mirror that stood on a chest of drawers.
“Are you sleepy?” she asked.
“No. Are you?”
“Me neither.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette.
“It would have been
better not to have had that second cup of coffee.”
Diana said something, but since she had a hairpin in her mouth, he could not make out the words.
Bessian stretched out now, and leaning on his elbow, looked on distractedly at his wife’s familiar gestures before the mirror. That mirror, the chest, the clock, as well as the bed and most of the other furniture of the kulla, were related, as their lines showed, to a baroque style, but simplified in the extreme.
As she combed her hair in the mirror, Diana watched out of the corner of her eye the wreaths of smoke floating over Bessian’s abstracted face. The comb moved ever more slowly through her hair. With an unhurried gesture she put it down on the chest, and watching her husband in the mirror, quietly, as if she did not want to attract his attention, she walked with light steps to the window.
Beyond the glass was anguish and night. She let their tremors pass through her while her eyes searched insistently for the tiny lost glimmer of light in the chaos of darkness. It was there down below, in the same place, as if suspended above the chasm, flickering wanly, about to be swallowed up by the night. For a long moment she could not take her eyes from the feeble red glow in that abyss of darkness. It was like the redness of primeval fire, a magma ages old whose pallid reflection came from the centre of the earth. It was like the gates of hell. And suddenly, with unbearable intensity, the guise of the man who had passed through that hell was present to her. Gjorg, she cried out within her, moving her cold lips. He wandered forbidden roads, bearing omens of death in his hands, on his sleeve, in his wings. He must be a demigod to face that darkness and primal chaos of creation. And being so strange, so unattainable, he took on enormous size, he swelled and floated like a universal howling in the night.
Now she could not believe that she had actually seen him, and that he had seen her. Comparing herself with him she felt colorless, stripped of all mystery. Hamlet of the mountains, she thought, repeating Bessian’s words. My black prince.
Would she ever meet him again? And there, by the window, her forehead icy from the frozen pane, she felt she would give anything to see him again.
Then she felt her husband’s breath behind her, and his hand resting upon her hip. For some moments he gently caressed that part of her body that moved him more than any other, then, not seeing what was happening in her face, he asked her in a muffled voice, “What’s the matter?”
Diana did not answer, but she kept her head turned towards the black panes, as if inviting him to look out there too.
CHAPTER IV
Mark Ukacierra was going up the wooden stairway leading to the third storey of the kulla when he heard a voice calling to him in a low tone, “Hush! The guests are still asleep!”
He went on his way without any attempt to lighten his footfalls, and the voice above him on the stairs, came again: “I told you not to make noise. Didn’t you hear me? The guests are still asleep!”
Mark raised his eyes to see who had dared address him in that way, just as one of the servants put his head over the banister to see who had shattered the quiet. But recognizing the steward of the blood, the servant, horrified, clapped his hand over his mouth.
Mark Ukacierra went on ascending, and when he reached the top of the stairway, he passed right by the terror-stricken man without saying a word to him, not even turning his head.
Ukacierra was first cousin to the prince, and since on the roster of duties in the castle he was concerned with all the business connected with bloodshed, he was called the steward of the blood. The other servants, while for the most part also cousins of the prince, albeit distant ones, feared the steward just as much as the prince. They stared in amazement at their colleague who had so narrowly escaped a storm, and recalled, not without resentment, other occasions on which the slightest misstep had cost them dear. But the steward of the blood, even though he had dined sumptuously with distinguished guests last night, was distracted this morning. His face ashen, he was obviously out of sorts. Without glancing at any of them, he pushed open the door of a large room adjoining the living room and went in.
The room was cold. Through the panes of the high, narrow windows framed in unpainted oak, came a light that seemed to him the light of an evil day. He went closer to the windows and looked out at the motionless clouds. April was almost here, but the sky had not yet taken leave of March. That idea came to him and brought a particular sense of annoyance, as if it were an injustice aimed specifically at him.
His eyes fixed on the scene beyond the window, as if he wanted to torment them with the grey light that was quite as trying, he forgot the corridors filled with cautious steps, with “Sh! Quiet!” and the guests who had arrived last night, who had aroused in him without his taking account of it a vague disquiet.
Last night’s dinner had been troublesome. He had had no appetite. Something gnawed at his stomach, gave him an empty feeling that, while he forced himself to eat, seemed more empty with every mouthful.
Mark Ukacierra turned his eyes away from the windows, and looked for a moment at the heavy oak shelves of the library. Most of the books were old, religious works in Latin and in old Albanian. On another shelf set apart from these were, side by side, contemporary publications dealing directly or indirectly with the Kanun and the Kulla of Orosh. Some of the books treated these matters only, and there were journals that contained extracts, articles, monographs, and poems.
If the chief function of Mark Ukacierra was to look after the business of the blood-tax, he was also in charge of the castle’s archives. The various documents were kept in the lower part of the bookcase that was lined on the inside with sheet iron as a safety measure, and locked with a key: deeds, secret treaties, correspondence with foreign consuls, agreements with the successive governments of Albania, with the first republic, the second republic, and the monarchy, agreements with the governors or military commanders of the troops of occupying powers, Turks, Serbs, Austrians. There were documents in foreign languages but for the most part they were written in old Albanian. A great padlock, whose key Mark carried hanging from his neck, glittered yellow between the two doors.
Mark Ukacierra took a step towards the bookshelves, and passed his hand half-caressingly, half-angrily along the row of books and current magazines. He could read and write, but not well enough to really understand what they said about Orosh. A monk from the convent not far from the Kulla came once a month to arrange, according to their contents, the books and magazines that came by the post. He divided them into good and bad publications: the first were those that spoke well of Orosh and the Kanun, the second those that spoke ill, and the proportion of good to bad always varied. Usually the good publications were more numerous, but the number of the bad ones was by no means negligible. There were times when the bad ones increased so as to nearly equal the tally of the good.
Again, Mark passed his hand along the row of books in annoyance, and two or three fell down. There were stories, plays and legends of the High Plateau that, as the monk said, were good for the soul, but there were others bitter as poison, so that one could not understand how the prince could bear to see them on his bookshelves. If it were up to Mark Ukacierra, he would have burnt those books long ago. But the prince was easy-going. Far from burning them or throwing them out of the window, there were times when he actually leafed through them. He was the master and he knew what he was doing.
Last night after dinner, as he walked before his guests through the rooms that adjoined the great hall, he had said on coming to the library, “How many times they have spat upon Orosh, but Orosh was not shaken by it and never will be.” And instead of seeing to the battlements of the Kulla, he would leaf through the books and periodicals as if in them he might find the secret not only of the attacks upon his stronghold but of its defense. “How many governments have fallen,” the prince had gone on, “And how many kingdoms have been swept from the face of the earth, and Orosh is still standing.”
And that fellow, the writer, whom Mark had not care
d for from the start, no more than for his beautiful wife, he had leaned down to the books and periodicals to read their titles, and he had said nothing. In the light of what Mark thought he understood in the course of the conversation at dinner, the man had written about the Rrafsh himself, but in such a way that you could not tell whether it was well meant or not. A kind of hybrid. But perhaps it was just for that reason that the prince had invited him to the castle with his wife—to see what he had in mind and to persuade him to adopt his own views.
The steward of the blood turned his back on the bookshelves and looked out of the window again. As far as he was concerned, he had no faith in these guests. It was not only the vague dislike he had felt as soon as he had laid eyes on them, going up the stairs with their leather suitcases, but rather because of a different feeling that was the source of that dislike, a kind of fear that these guests, the woman in particular, aroused in him. The steward of the blood smiled bitterly. Everyone who knew him would have been astonished to learn that he, Mark Ukacierra, who had seldom been afraid of anything all his life—even things that made brave men turn pale—had felt fear in the presence of a woman. Nevertheless, there it was: she had frightened him. By her expression he had understood at once that she had doubts about certain things that were being said around the table. Some of the opinions offered—quite discreetly—by his master, the prince, which had always seemed to him to have the force of law, to be beyond discussion, quietly fell apart, annihilated, as soon as they came before that young woman’s eyes. Can this be possible? Two or three times he had put the question to himself, and he had pulled himself up short immediately. No, it’s not possible. It’s me, I’m losing my wits. But he had glanced furtively at the young woman again, and he was certain that it was really so. The words dissolved in her eyes, lost their strength. And after the words, a wing of the kulla collapsed, and then himself. It was the first time that this had happened, and that was the reason for his fear. All kinds of distinguished guests had occupied the prince’s guest room, from papal envoys to persons close to King Zog, and even those bearded men they call philosophers or scholars, but not one of them had stirred any such feeling in him.