Free Broken April by Ismaíl Kadaré Page A

descend in order to reach it, but we must climb.”
    She listened, looking at him still. He had leaned his forehead against the glass that was clouded over by their breath. Beyond it, the world seemed transformed.
    â€œThey wander these roads with that black ribbon on their sleeves like ghosts in the mist,” he said.
    She listened, but she did not speak. How many times, before they had started out, had he talked about these things, but now his words had a different sound. Behind them, like a film scene behind the subtitles, the landscape looked even more somber. She wanted to ask him if they would also meet on the roads men whose heads were muffled up in their shrouds, whom he had mentioned once, but something kept her from asking. Perhaps it was simply fear that just asking the question would provoke the apparition.
    The carriage had gone quite some distance now, and the village was out of sight. Only the cross above the church swayed slowly on the horizon, leaning to one side like crosses on graves, as if the sky, imitating the soil in cemeteries, had also fallen in a little.
    â€œThere’s a cairn,” he said, pointing to the roadside.
    She leaned forward to see better. It was a heap of stones somewhat lighter in color than those around the spot, piled carelessly with no obvious design. She thought that if it had not rained that day, those stones would not look so forlorn. She told him that, but he smiled and shook his head.
    â€œThe
muranë
, as they are called, always look sad,” he said. “More than that, the more pleasant the countryside the sadder they look.”
    â€œThat may be so,” she replied.
    â€œI’ve seen all kinds of tombs and graveyards, with everysort of sign and symbol,” he went on, “but I don’t think there is any grave more real than the simple heap our mountain people build, on the very spot where a man was killed.”
    â€œThat’s true,” she said. “It has an air of tragedy about it.”
    â€œAnd the very word,
muranë
, naked, cruel, suggesting pain that nothing can soften—isn’t that so?”
    She nodded and sighed again. Roused by his own words, he went on talking. He spoke of the absurdity of life, and the reality of death in the North country, about the men of those parts who were esteemed or despised essentially in terms of the relations they created with death, and he brought up the terrible wish expressed by the mountaineers on the birth of a child. “May he have a long life, and die by the rifle!” Death by natural causes, from illness or from old age, was shameful to the man of the mountain regions, and the only goal of the mountaineer during his entire life was laying up the hoard of honor that would allow him to expect a modest memorial on his death.
    â€œI’ve heard certain songs about the men who are killed,” she said. “They are just like their graves, their
muranë.”
    â€œThat’s true. They weigh on the heart like a heap of stones. In fact, the same concept that governs the structure of the
muranë
governs the structure of the songs.”
    Diana barely repressed another sigh. Minute by minute, she felt as if something were collapsing inside her. As if he guessed what she felt, he hastened to tell her that if all this was very sad, at the same time it had grandeur. He set himself to explaining to her that, when all was said and done, the aspect of death conferred on the lives of these men something of the eternal, because its very grandeurraised them above paltry things and the petty meanness of life.
    â€œTo measure one’s days by the yardstick of death, isn’t that a very special gift?”
    She smiled, shrugging her shoulders.
    â€œThat is what the Code does,” Bessian went on, “particularly in the section devoted to the law of the blood feud. Do you remember?”
    â€œYes,” she said, “I remember quite well.”
    â€œIt