Bessian shrugged.
“Are you from Shkoder? No? From Tirana? Oh, of course, with a carriage like that. Will you stay the night here?”
“No, we’re going to the Kulla of Orosh.”
“Oh, yes. I thought as much. It’s more than two years since I saw a carriage like that. Relatives of the prince?”
“No, his guests.”
As they passed through the great hall of the inn on the way to their private room, Diana felt the stares of the customers, of whom some were eating lunch at a long, grubby oak table, while others sat in the corners on their packs of thick black woolen cloth. Two or three, sitting on the bare floor, moved a little to let the small group through.
“These past three days we have had a good deal of excitement because of a boundary dispute that is to be settled nearby.”
“A boundary dispute?” Bessian asked.
“Yes, sir,” said the innkeeper, pushing open a dilapidated door with one hand. “That’s why Ali Binak and his assistants have come.”
He said these last words in a low voice, just as the travellers crossed the threshold of the private room.
“There they are,” whispered the innkeeper, nodding towards an empty corner of the room. But his guests, now used to the innkeeper’s squint, looked in another direction, where at an oak table, but smaller and somewhat cleaner than the one in the public room, three men were eating lunch.
“I’ll bring another table right away,” the innkeeper said, and he disappeared. Two of the diners looked up at the newcomers, but the third went on eating without lifting his eyes from his plate. From behind the door, there came a grating noise punctuated by thumping sounds, drawing nearer and nearer. Soon they saw two table legs, then part of the innkeeper’s body, and then the whole table and the innkeeper grotesquely entangled.
He set down the table and left to fetch their seats.
“Please be seated,” he said, arranging the stools. “What would you like?”
After asking what there was, Bessian said at last that they would have two fried eggs and some cheese. The innkeeper said, “At your service” to everything, and for a while he was busy coming and going in all directions, trying to serve the new guests without neglecting the earlier ones. While hurrying from one group of his distinguished guests to the other, he seemed to be at a loss, obviously unable to make up his mind which was the more important. It looked as if his uncertainty worsened his physical handicap, and it seemed that he wanted to direct some of his limbs towards one group and some towards the other.
“I wonder just who they think we are,” Diana said.
Without raising his head, Bessian glanced sidelong at the three men who were eating lunch. It was apparent that the innkeeper, while bending down to wipe the table with a rag, was telling them about the new arrivals. One of them, the shortest, seemed to be making as if he were not listening, or perhaps he was in fact not listening. The second, who had colorless eyes that seemed to go with his slack, indifferent face, was looking on as if bewildered. The third man, wearing a checked jacket, could not keep his eyes off Diana. He was obviously drunk.
“Where is the place where the boundaries are to be established?” Bessian asked when the innkeeper served Diana her fried eggs.
“At Wolf’s Pass, sir,” the landlord said. “It is a half-hour’s walk from here. But if you go by carriage, of course, it will take less time.”
“What do you say, Diana, shall we go? It should be interesting.”
“If you like,” she said.
“Has there been feuding over the boundaries, or killings?” Bessian asked the innkeeper.
The man whistled. “Certainly, sir. That’s a strip of land greedy for death, studded with muranës time out of mind.”
“We’ll go without fail,” Bessian said.
“If you like,” his wife said again.
“This is the third time that they have called on Ali Binak, and still the dispute and the blood-letting have not ended,” the landlord said.
At that moment the short man got up from the table. From the way the other two rose immediately after him, Bessian surmised that he must be Ali Binak.
That man nodded towards them, without looking at anyone in particular, and led the way out. The two others followed. The man in the checked jacket brought up the rear, still devouring Diana with his reddened eyes.
“What a revolting man,” Diana said.
Bessian gestured vaguely.
“You mustn’t cast the first stone. Who knows how long he’s been wandering through these mountains, without a wife, without pleasure of any kind. Judging by his clothes, he must be a city man.”
“Even so, he might spare me those oily looks,” Diana said, pushing away her plate; She had eaten only one egg.
Bessian called the innkeeper for the bill.
“If the gentleman and the lady want to go to Wolf’s Pass, Ali Binak and his assistants have just started out. You could follow them in your carriage. Or perhaps you need someone to accompany you….”
“We’ll follow their horses,” Bessian said.
The coachman was drinking coffee in the public room. He rose at once and followed them. Bessian looked at his watch.
“We have a good two hours in which to see a boundary settlement, haven’t we?”
The coachman shook his head doubtfully.
“I don’t know what to say, sir. From here to Orosh is a long way. However, if that’s what you want to do….”
“We’ll be all right if we reach Orosh before nightfall,” Bessian continued. “It’s still early afternoon, and we have time. And then, it’s an opportunity not to be missed,” he added, turning to Diana, who was standing beside him.
She had turned up the fur collar of her coat and was waiting for them to make up their minds.
Ten minutes later, their carriage overtook the horses of Ali Binak’s small party. They stood to one side to let the carriage pass, and it took a while for the coachman to explain to them that he did not know the way to Wolf’s Pass, and that the carriage would follow after them. Diana was ensconced in the depths of the coach so as to avoid the annoying looks of the man in the checked jacket, whose horse kept appearing on one or the other side of the vehicle.
Wolf’s Pass turned out to be farther away than the innkeeper had said. In the distance they saw a bare plain on which some people appeared as moving black specks. As they drew nearer, Bessian tried to recall what the Kanun said about boundaries. Diana listened calmly. Bessian said, “Boundary marks shall not be disturbed, any more than the bones of the dead in their graves. Whosoever instigates a murder in a boundary dispute shall be shot by the whole village.”
“Are we going to be present at an execution?” Diana asked plaintively. “That’s all we needed.”
Bessian smiled.
“Don’t worry. This must be a peaceful settlement, since they’ve invited that — what’s his name again? Oh, yes, Ali Binak.”
“He seems to me to be a very responsible man,” Diana said. “I wouldn’t say as much for one of his assistants, the man in the clown’s jacket — he’s repulsive.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him.”
Bessian looked straight ahead, impatient as it seemed, to reach the plain as swiftly as possible.
“Setting up a boundary stone is a solemn act,” he said, still staring into the distance. “I don’t know if we’ll have the good fortune to be present at just such a ceremony. Oh, look. There’s a muranë.
“Where?”
“There, behind that bush, on the right.”