“Diana!” he called, on the chance that she might hear him.
A number of people turned towards him.
“She may have gone into the church out of curiosity, or into a house to go to the bathroom.”
“That’s possible.”
They kept on walking, but Bessian was uneasy. I shouldn’t have left the inn, he thought.
“Forgive me,” the doctor said in a mild tone. “Perhaps I overdid it.”
“That’s nothing. Where can she have gone?”
“Don’t worry. She must be right in the neighborhood. Do you feel ill? You’re very pale.”
“No, no. I’m all right.”
Bessian felt the doctor’s hand take hold of his arm, and he wanted to move away, but he forgot to do it. Some children were keeping close to the nearest group of people, the one that included Ali Binak and the surveyor. Bessian felt his mouth go bitter. The lakes, he thought, for a second only. That old carpet of leaves, hopelessly rotten, covered over with that deceptive gold.
He was striding swiftly towards the group around Ali Binak. Is she drowned, he wondered while still some distance from them. But their faces were petrified. There was nothing in their expression that could give him reassurance.
“What is it?” he asked in panic, and unconsciously, perhaps because of the expression of those faces, instead of saying, “What has happened to her?” he said, “What has she done?”
The answer came with great difficulty from pitilessly clamped jaws. They had to repeat it to him several times before he could understand: Diana had gone inside the tower of refuge.
What had happened? Not at that moment, and not later, when the witnesses started to describe what they had seen (people felt immediately that it was one of those happenings that had an element of reality and at the same time an element of mist that separated it from normal life, and therefore that it was a happening that lent itself to the legendary), not at that time nor afterwards, then, could anyone establish precisely how the young woman from the capital had managed to get into the tower, where no stranger had ever set foot. And what was even more unlikely than the fact that she had entered there, was that no one had noticed it, or rather that if someone remembered that she had drawn away from the group, that she had wandered in the neighborhood, no one except for some children had paid enough attention to keep their eyes upon her. And she herself, perhaps, if she were questioned about the way in which she had gone down the road that far and had succeeded at last in entering, might she have been unable to explain anything at all? To judge by the few words that she had left behind her on the High Plateau, she would have felt at that moment something like detachment from everything, a kind of loss of gravity, which had lightened for her not only the idea of entering the tower but her going itself — all the way to the gate. And then, it should not be ignored that that very circumstance might help to turn people’s attention from her, and so allow her to take the fateful step. In fact, as some persons remembered thereafter, she had drawn away from the people in the square and approached the tower as lightly as a moth fluttering towards a lamp. She was flying, as it were, and carried along in that way like a leaf in the wind, she had gone inside — or rather, fallen across the threshold.
Bessian, his face ashen, understood at last what had happened. The first thing he did was to dart out to take his wife from that place, but strong hands seized both his arms.
“Let me go!” he shouted in a hoarse voice.
Their faces were aligned around his, unmoving as the stones of a wall. Among them was the pale face of Ali Binak.
“Let me go!” he said to him, though Ali was not one of those who were restraining him.
“Calm yourself, sir,” said Ali Binak. “You cannot go over there; no one can enter there, except for the priest.”
“But my wife is inside there,” Bessian cried. “Alone among those men.”
“You are quite right. Something must be done, but you may not go there. They could fire at you, you see. They might kill you.”
“Then have someone send for the priest, or for the Devil knows who, just so one can get inside.”
“The priest has been notified,” Ali Binak said.
“He’s coming! Here he is!” several voices said.
A small group had gathered around them. Bessian recognized his coachman, who was looking at him with eyes that seemed to be popping out of their sockets, expecting an order from him. But Bessian looked away.
“Move away!” Ali Binak said in a commanding tone. Some persons took a few steps only, and then stopped.
The priest came up, out of breath. His flabby face, with its heavy pockets beneath his eyes, looked very much alarmed.
“How long has she been inside?” he asked.
Ali Binak looked around questioningly. A number of persons spoke at once. One said half an hour, another an hour, and someone else a quarter of an hour. Most of those around shrugged their shoulders.
“That’s not important,” Ali Binak said. “What is needed is action.”
The priest and Ali Binak conferred with each other. Bessian heard Ali Binak say, “Then I’ll go with you,” and he took courage from that. In the crowd you could hear the words, “The priest is going there, together with Ali Binak.”
The priest walked off, followed by Ali Binak. After taking a few steps, Ali turned around and said to the crowd, “Stay where you are. They might shoot.”
Bessian felt that he was still being held by his arms. What is happening to me? he groaned inwardly. It seemed to him that the whole world was empty; all that was left was two forms in motion, the priest and Ali Binak, and the tower of refuge to which they were going.
He heard voices around him, like the distant whistling of a wind that was coming from another world. “They can’t shoot the priest, since he is protected by the Kanun, but there’s nothing to stop them from killing Ali Binak.” “No, I don’t think they’ll fire at Ali Binak either. Everyone knows who he is.”
The two men were halfway along when, suddenly, Diana appeared at the gate of the tower. Bessian could never remember clearly what happened at that moment. He remembered only that he had striven with all his strength to go to her, that his arms were gripped violently, and that voices said: Wait until she has come a bit farther, and she reaches the white stones. Then, again, he saw for a fleeting moment the figure of the doctor; he made another attempt to free himself and he heard the same voices trying to calm him.
At last Diana reached the white stones, and the men who were holding Bessian let him go, although one of them said, “Don’t let him go — he’ll kill her.” Diana’s face was white as a sheet. There was no sign of terror in it, nor pain, nor shame — only a frightening absence, especially in her eyes. Anxiously, Bessian looked for a tear in her clothing, a bluish stain on her lips or her neck, but he saw nothing of that kind. Then he heaved a sigh, and perhaps he would have felt relieved if there were not that emptiness in her eyes.
In a gesture that was not violent but not gentle either, he seized his wife’s arm, and walking ahead of her he drew her towards the carriage, and they got in one behind the other, without a word and without a wave to anyone.
The carriage rolled swiftly on the highroad. How long had they been travelling in this way — a minute, a century? At last Bessian turned to his wife.
“Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
She sat motionless on the seat, looking straight ahead, as if she were somewhere else. Then he seized her by the elbow, violently, harshly.
“Tell me, what did you do in there?”
She did not answer, she did not try to draw away her arm that he was squeezing like a vise.
Why did you go there, he cried out within him. To see all the horror of the tragedy with your own eyes? Or to look for that mountaineer, That Gjorg…. Gjorg. I’ll search for you in tower after tower, eh?