The section of the road protected by the bessa differed not at all from the rest of the road. It was the same ancient paving, damaged in places by horses’ hooves and flowing water, with the same hollows in its surface and, at the sides, the same brush. But Gjorg felt that there was something warm about the golden dust. He took a deep breath and he slowed his pace. Here is where I’ll wait for nightfall, he thought. He would sit down and rest on a stone. That would be better than hiding in a thicket. Besides, the carriage might come this way. He still had a faint hope that he might see her. And his musings went further than that: he saw the carriage stop and heard the people in it say, “Oh, mountaineer, if you’re tired, climb into our carriage and ride with us a ways.”
Now and again, Gjorg looked up at the sky. In three hours, at most, night would fall. Mountaineers were going by, on foot or on horseback, alone or in small groups. In the distance he could see two or three motionless specks. They must surely be murderers like himself who were waiting for night in order to travel farther. They must be worried at home, he thought.
A mountaineer came along, walking slowly and driving before him an ox that was all black.
Gjorg was walking even more slowly than the mountaineer and his ox, and they came up with him.
“Good afternoon,” the man said.
“Good afternoon,” Gjorg said.
The man made a gesture with his head at the sky.
“Time just doesn’t go by,” he said.
He had a reddish mustache that seemed to light up his smile.
“Your bessa’s over?”
“Yes, since noon today.”
“Mine was over three days ago, but I haven’t managed to sell this bull yet.”
Gjorg looked at him astonished.
“For two weeks I’ve been tramping the roads with him, and I can’t manage to sell him. He’s one fine animal, all my people wept when they saw him leaving, and I can’t find a buyer.”
Gjorg did not know what to say. He had never had anything to do with selling cattle.
“I’d like to sell him before I shut myself up in the tower,” the mountaineer went on. “The family’s in bad shape, friend, and if I don’t sell him myself, there won’t be any one at home to sell him. But I don’t have much hope anymore. If I haven’t been able to sell him in the two weeks when I was still free, how am I going to sell him now that I can only go about by night? Well, what do you think?”
“You’re right,” Gjorg said. “It won’t be easy.”
Looking sidelong, he watched the black ox that was chewing calmly. The words of the old ballad of the soldier dying in a far-off country came to him: “Give my love to mother and tell her to sell the black ox.”
“Where are you from?” the mountaineer asked.
“From Brezftoht.”
“That’s not so far from here. If you step along you can be home tonight.”
“And you?” Gjorg asked.
“Oh, I’m from very far from here, from the Krasniq banner.”
Gjorg whistled. “Yes, that’s really far. You’ll certainly have sold your bull before you get home.”
“I don’t think so. Now the only places where I can sell him are the roads that are under the bessa, and they’re scarce.”
Gjorg nodded.
“You see, if this road that’s under the bessa went as far as the crossing with the Grand Road of the Banners, well, I could certainly sell him. But it ends before that.”
“Is the Road of the Banners nearby?”
“It’s not far. That’s what I call a road! What don’t you see go by there!”
“It’s true, you see very odd things on the roads. Once I happened to see a carriage—”
“A black carriage with a pretty woman in it,” the other man interrupted.
“How do you know that?” Gjorg cried.
“I saw her yesterday at the Inn of the Cross.”
“And what were they doing there?”
“What were they doing? Nothing. The carriage didn’t have the horses in the shafts, and it was just in front of the inn. The coachman was drinking coffee in it.”
“And she?”
The mountaineer smiled. “They were inside the inn. They had been there two days and two nights without leaving their room. That’s what the innkeeper said. Old boy, that woman was as beautiful as a fairy. Her eyes pierced you through and through. I left them behind me last night. They certainly must have left today.”
“How do you know?”
“The innkeeper said so. They were supposed to leave the next day. The coachman told him.”
Gjorg was stunned for some moments. He stared at the paved road-surface.
“And what road do you take to get there?” he asked suddenly.
The other man pointed out the direction.
“It’s an hour’s walk from here. This road we’re on crosses the Road of the Banners. They have to pass there, if they haven’t done so already. There is no other road.”
Gjorg was staring in the direction that his companion had pointed to. Now the man looked at him in surprise.
“What’s the matter with you, you poor fellow?” he said.
Gjorg did not answer. An hour’s walk from here, he told himself. He raised his head to look for the sun’s track behind the clouds. He reckoned that there were still two hours of daylight left. She had never been so near. He would be able to see his fairy.
Without further thought, without even saying goodbye to his fellow wayfarer, he went off like a madman in the direction where, according to the man with the black ox, the crossroads lay.
The Vorpsi’s carriage was leaving the High Plateau behind at a good pace. The day was ending when the roads of the little town, the tops of two minarets, and the belfry of the only church appeared in the distance.
Bessian leaned towards the carriage window; the silly lanes among the buildings he filled at once in his imagination with the small city’s people, employees of the sub-prefecture carrying documents to the justice of the peace, with shops, with sleepy offices, and with four or five telephones of ancient vintage, the only ones in town, by means of which boring talk was carried on, mostly punctuated with yawning. He thought of all that, and all at once the world that awaited him in the capital seemed terribly pale and insipid compared with the one he had just left.
Nevertheless, he thought sadly, he belonged to that pale world, and since that was the case he ought never to have gone up to the High Plateau. It had not been created for ordinary mortals but for Titanic beings.
The smoke from the little town grew in volume. Diana, her head resting on the back of the seat, was as motionless as when they had entered the carriage. Bessian felt that he was bringing home only the outward form of his wife, and that he had left the woman herself somewhere in the mountains.
Now they were driving over the naked moor where their tour had begun a month ago. He turned his head again to see the Rrafsh, perhaps for the last time. The mountains were receding ever more slowly, sinking back into solitude. A white, mysterious mist came down upon them, like a curtain lowered on the play just ended.
At that moment, Gjorg was walking with long strides on the Road of the Banners, that he had reached an hour ago. The air was rippled with the first shiver of dusk when he heard, off to one side, a few short words:
“Gjorg, give my greeting to Zef Krye….”
His arm, in a sudden motion, tried to slip the rifle from his shoulder, but that gesture became confounded with the syllables qyqe, the last half of the hateful name, which made its way confusedly to his consciousness. Gjorg saw the ground reel, and then rear up violently to crash against his face. He had collapsed.