“An inn!” he cried out in his thoughts. An ordinary inn beside the road, that was where salvation lay. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? How stupid I am, he told himself happily. An inn, even a dirty one that smelled of cattle, would bring them closer together by surrounding them, if not with the kind of comfort it could not possibly provide, then with its dire poverty in whose depths there gleamed ten times more bright the happiness of temporary guests.
An inn loomed up beside the road sooner than they had expected. It rose in the midst of a barren stretch of land at the crossing of the Road of the Cross and the Great Road of the Banners, where there was no village to be seen nor any other sign of life.
“Do you serve meals?” Bessian asked as soon as he had passed the threshold.
The innkeeper, a tall, ungainly fellow with half-closed eyes answered between clenched teeth, “Cold beans.”
On seeing Diana and the coachman, who was carrying a travelling bag, the innkeeper became somewhat more lively, and he grew quite attentive when he heard one of the carriage horses neighing. He rubbed his eyes and said in a hoarse voice, “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! We can give you fried eggs and cheese. I have raki* too.”
They sat down at the end of a long oak table that, as in most of the inns, took up the greater part of the common room. Two mountaineers, seated on the floor in one corner, looked curiously in their direction. A young woman was sleeping, her head resting on her baby’s cradle. Close by her, on a heap of many-colored bags, someone had set down a lahoute.
While waiting for the innkeeper to bring them their meal, they looked about them in silence.
“The other inns were more lively,” Diana said at last. “This one is very quiet.”
“Better that way, don’t you think?” Bessian looked at his watch. “Though at this time of day….” His thoughts were elsewhere and his fingers kept up a drumming on the table. “But it doesn’t look too bad here, does it?”
“That’s true, especially from outside.”
“It has a steep roof, the kind you like.”
She nodded. Despite her weariness, her expression was softer.
“Shall we sleep here tonight?”
As he said the words, Bessian felt his heart pounding, as if in secret. What is happening to me? he said to himself.
When she was still unmarried and she had come to his place for the first time, he had been less stirred than he was now, when she was his wife. It’s enough to drive you crazy, he thought.
“If you like,” she said.
“What’s that?”
She looked at him in surprise.
“You asked me if I would like it if we slept here tonight, didn’t you?”
“And you would?”
“Yes, of course.”
That’s marvellous, he thought. He wanted to kiss that much-loved head that had been torturing him all these past days. A wave of warmth, of a kind he had never felt before, flooded through him. After so many nights of being separated, they would sleep together at last, in this isolated mountain inn, among these desolate roads. It was lucky, really, that things had happened this way. If not for that, he would never have known the sensation that few men have had occasion to experience — to re-live one’s first embrace of a loved woman. She had become so distant in these days that now he felt that he was rediscovering her as she had been when he had known her before they were married. More, this second discovery seemed to him even sweeter and more unsettling. People are right to say it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good.
He sensed something moving behind him, and all at once, right under his eyes, as if coming at him from the world of the commonplace, were certain circular objects that gave off a piquant smell and were quite useless: the plates of fried eggs.
Bessian looked up.
“Do you have a good room for tonight?”
“Yes, sir,” the innkeeper said confidently. “One with a fireplace at that.”
“Really? That’s splendid.”
“Oh, yes,” the innkeeper went on. “There’s no room like it in all the inns of the district.”
I’m really in luck, Bessian thought.
“I’ll take you to it as soon as you’ve had your lunch,” the innkeeper said.
“Splendid.”
He had no appetite. Diana did not eat her eggs, either. She asked for some cream cheese, but she left it in the dish because it was dry and hard. Then she asked for yoghurt, and at last for eggs again, but boiled this time. Bessian ordered the same thing, but he ate nothing.
Right after lunch, they went upstairs to see the room. The chamber that, according to the innkeeper, was the envy of all the inns in that district of the High Plateau, was the plainest imaginable, with two windows, both with wooden shutters, facing north, and a large bed covered by a thick woolen counterpane. It did indeed have a fireplace, and there were ashes on the hearth.
“It’s a fine room,” Bessian said, looking questioningly at his wife.
“And can one have a fire?” she asked the landlord.
“Certainly. Right away if you wish.”
For the first time in a long while, Bessian thought he saw a gleam of pleasure in Diana’s eyes.
The innkeeper went away, and came back with an armload of wood. He lit the fire in a clumsy manner that showed it was something that he did very rarely. Both of them looked on as if it were the first time in their lives that they were looking at a fire kindled in a fireplace. He left at last, and Bessian, alone with his wife, felt again the secret pounding within his chest. Several times his eyes slid over to the large bed, with its counterpane the color of milk, which made it look warm. Diana was standing by the fire, her back turned to her husband. Timidly, as if he were drawing near to a stranger, Bessian took two steps towards her and put his arms around her shoulders. Her arms crossed, she did not move while he began to kiss her neck and then to kiss her near her lips. At times, from the side, he caught a glimpse of the red glow of the flame reflected on her cheek. Then, as his caresses grew more pressing, she said gently, “No, not now.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too cold. Besides, I have to have a bath.”
“You’re right,” he said, planting a kiss on her hair. Without saying anything more, he moved away from her and left the room. The lively sound of his footfalls on the stairs showed his pleasant mood. He came a few moments later, carrying a large iron bucket full of water.
“Thank you,” Diana said with a smile.
As if he were drunk, he set down the bucket on the fire, and then, looking as if he were thinking of something quite definite, he bent down to look under the mantelpiece, repeated that several times while keeping the sparks away with his hands, and found what he had been looking for, it seemed, since he called out, “There it is.”
Diana too, bent down, and she saw the end of a pot-hook black with soot, hanging above the fire as in most of the fireplaces of the countryfolk. Bessian picked up the bucket, and supporting himself with one hand on the masonry of the fireplace, tried to hang it on a notch of the pot-hook.
“Careful,” Diana said, “you’ll burn yourself.”
But the bucket was already in place, and Bessian was blowing gaily on his slightly reddened hand.