Gjorg started. He looked about him, scarcely knowing why. It was a room in an inn, dirty, with a sharp odor of smoke and wet wool, and as if that was not enough, the mouth that talked about that woman gave off at the same time a bad smell of tobacco and onions. Gjorg turned his eyes in every direction, as if to say, wait a minute, is this a fit place to bring up her name? But they went on talking and laughing. Gjorg was like a man in a trap, in a state between listening and not-listening, and with a ringing in his ears. And suddenly it came to him in complete clarity why it was he had undertaken this journey. He had tried to hide it from himself. He had dismissed it from his mind obstinately, had suppressed it, but the reason why was right there, in the center of his being: if he had set out on the road, it wasn’t to look at the mountains, but to see that woman again. Without being aware of it, he had been looking for that carriage with the strange outlines, that rolled and rolled forever across the High Plateau, while he, from far away, murmured to it, “Why do you wander through these parts, butterfly-carriage?” In reality, with its gloomy appearance, bronze door-handles, and complicated lines, the carriage reminded him of a coffin that he had seen at one time, when he had been on his only journey to Shkoder, in the Cathedral, between a funeral cortege and solemn organ music. And inside that carriage, butterfly-coffin, were the eyes of the woman with the auburn hair, that he had breathed in with a sweetness and an emotion that he had never felt in the presence of any other being in the world. He had looked into women’s eyes in his life, and many of those eyes, ardent, bashful, stirring, delicate, artful, or proud, had looked into his, but never eyes like those. They were at once distant and close, understandable and enigmatic, unmoved and sympathetic. That glance, while it aroused desire, had some quality that took hold of you, carried you far away, beyond life, beyond the grave, to where you could look upon yourself with serenity.
In the night (that fragments of sleep tried to fill in disorder, as a few stars try to people a dark autumn sky), that look was the only thing that his sleep did not blot out. It remained there, at his very center, a lost jewel in whose making all the light of the world had been consumed.
Yes, it was to meet those eyes again that he had set out across the High Plateau. And these men talked about that woman as an everyday matter, in that dirty inn, in the acrid smoke, with their mouths filled with bad teeth. Suddenly, he jumped to his feet, unslung the rifle from his shoulder, and fired at them once, twice, three times, four times. He killed them all, then killed those who came to their rescue, at the same time as the innkeeper and the police who just happened to be there, then ran out and fired again at his pursuers, at still others, at whole villages that were hunting him, at the Banners, at the Provinces. All that he imagined, while in fact he did nothing more than get up and leave. The cold wind was grateful on his forehead. He stood still for a moment, his eyes half-closed, and without being able to account for it, he remembered a phrase that he had heard once, several years ago, on a damp September day, while standing in a long line of people that had formed in front of a warehouse for corn belonging to the sub-prefecture: “It seems that the young women in the city kiss you on the lips.”
Since his attention, in the course of his wanderings, was constantly distracted by one thing or the other, Gjorg felt more and more that his journey was fragmentary, interrupted by periods of utter vacancy and great discontinuities. Often he was surprised to find himself on a road or at an inn when he had thought he was still on the road or at the inn which in fact he had left behind hours ago. In that way, hour by hour and day by day, his mind was breaking away from reality, and his ramblings came to seem a journey in a dream.
Now he no longer hid from himself that he was hoping to find that carriage. He did not even conceal it from others. He had inquired several times, “You didn’t happen to see a carriage with a curious body with odd lines…. it’s hard to explain.” “How’s that again?” they said. “Describe it. What sort of carriage?” “Well, it’s very different, with black velvet inside, and bronze ornaments — like a coffin.” And they said, “Are you serious? You wouldn’t be a bit off your nut, would you, old fellow?”
Once someone told him that he had seen a carriage that looked something like the one Gjorg had described, but he said it was the carriage of the bishop of the next district, who was travelling, oddly enough, in very bad weather.
They can put up in these filthy inns if they like, and even have bad teeth, as long as they mention her, he said to himself.
Several times he thought he had picked up their traces, but he lost them again. The approach of death made him wish even more for that meeting. And the long way he had come also sharpened his hunger to see her.
One day he saw a man in the distance who appeared to be riding a mule. It turned out to be the steward of the blood from the Kulla of Orosh, travelling God knows where. Having gone a little farther, Gjorg turned his head, as if to make sure that it was the steward of the blood. The other man had also turned around to look at him. “What’s the matter with him?” Gjorg thought.
Once someone told him that he had seen a carriage that was just like Gjorg’s description, but it was empty. Another time, someone described the carriage’s appearance with great accuracy, and even the head of the beautiful traveller, whose hair, through the window, had seemed auburn to some people and nut-brown to others.
At least she’s still here, on the High Plateau, he thought. At least she hasn’t yet gone down to the plain.
Meanwhile, the month of April was wearing on swiftly. The days went on, one after the other, without a pause, and the month that even without the coming end of his truce seemed to him the shortest of the year, was getting shorter, wearing itself out swiftly.
He did not know in what direction he ought to travel. Sometimes he wasted time on the wrong road, and sometimes he went back, not by design, to a place where he had already been. His suspicion that he was not going in the right direction tormented him more and more. At last he had the conviction that he would never go anywhere but in the wrong direction, to the very end of the handful of days that was left to him, unhappy moonstruck pilgrim, whose April was to be cut off short.
CHAPTER VI
The Vorpsis went on with their trip. Bessian looked at his wife from the side. Her features were somewhat drawn, and she was a little pale, which made her look only the more desirable, as had happened a few days ago. She is tired out, he thought, even though she won’t admit it. Actually, during all those days he had been waiting to hear her say at last the words that would have been so natural, “Oh, I’m so tired.” He had waited for those words impatiently, feverishly, the remedy for their trouble, but she had not said them. Her face pale, she looked out at the road in silence, or very nearly. As for her expression, which even when she was angry or humiliated had always seemed understandable to him, he now found that he had no clue to what it might mean. If only her eyes expressed annoyance, or worse, coldness. But there was something else in her eyes. In some way her look was empty at its center and only the edges were still there.
Seated side by side, they rarely spoke. Sometimes he tried to create a bit of warmth, but fearing that he might put himself in a position of inferiority, he did that with great discretion. The worst of it was that he felt quite unable to be angry at her. In his relations with women he had noticed that anger and quarrelling could at times bring about a sudden resolution of static situations that had seemed hopeless, as a storm can clear away an oppressively humid atmosphere. But there was something in the way that her eyes were set that defended her against anyone else’s anger. Something like the eyes of pregnant women. At one moment he even wondered — almost aloud — can she be expecting a child? But his mind, mechanically, reckoned up the time that had passed, and this disposed of his last hope. Bessian suppressed a sigh that he did not want her to hear, and he went on looking at the countryside. Night was falling.