On that same October day, it came out who it was that had shot the unknown traveller. It was a young man of the Kryeqyqe family, who had been on the watch for him a long time because the man had done him an injury in a cafe, in front of a woman, also unknown. And so, at the end of that October day, the Berisha found themselves in enmity with the Kryeqyqe. Gjorg’s clan, which had hitherto lived in peace, was at last caught up by the great engine of the blood feud. Forty-four graves had been dug since then, and who knows how many are to come, and all because of the knocking at the gate on that autumn night.
Many times, when he was alone, when he let his mind stray, Gjorg had tried to imagine how the life of his clan would have run, had that late guest not knocked at the gate of their kulla, but at another gate. If, by magic, those knocks could be blanked out from reality, then, oh, then (and on this matter Gjorg thought the stuff of legend to be quite real), one would see the heavy stone slabs lifted from forty-four graves, and the forty-four dead men would rise, shake the earth from their faces, and return to the living; and with them would come the children who could not have been born, then the babies that those children could not bring into the world, and everything would be different, different. And all that would happen if, by enchantment, one could correct the course of things. Oh, if only he had stopped a little farther along. A little farther on. But he had stopped exactly where he had, and no one could change that anymore, no more than anyone could change the direction in which the victim had fallen, no more than anyone could ever change the rules of the ancient Kanun…. Without the knocking at the door, everything would be so different that at times he was afraid to think of it, and he consoled himself with the notion that perhaps it had to happen this way, and that if life outside the whirlpool of blood might perhaps be more peaceful, by the same token it would be even more dull and meaningless. He tried to call to mind families that were not involved in the blood feud, and he found no special signs of happiness in them. It even seemed to him that, sheltered from that danger, they hardly knew the value of life, and were only the more unhappy for that. Whereas clans that were in the blood feud lived in a different order of days and seasons, accompanied as it were by an inner tremor; the people were more handsome, and the young men were in favor with the women. Even the two nuns whom he had first passed, when they had seen the black ribbon sewn to his sleeve that meant that he was searching for his death or that his death was searching for him, had looked at him strangely. But that was not the important thing; what was happening within him was the important thing. Something terrifying and majestic at the same time. He could not have explained it. He felt that his heart had leaped from his chest, and, opened up in that way, he was vulnerable, sensitive to everything, so that he might rejoice in anything, be cast down by anything, small or large, a butterfly, a leaf, boundless snow, or the depressing rain falling on that very day. But all that — and the sky itself might fall down upon him — his heart endured, and could endure even more.
He had been walking for hours, but except for a slight numbness in his knees, he was not at all tired. The rain was still falling, but the drops were sparse, as if someone had pruned away the clouds’ roots. Gjorg was sure he had passed the boundaries of his own district and was journeying through another region. The country looked much the same; mountains raising their heads behind the shoulders of other mountains as if in frozen curiosity. He met a small party of mountaineers and asked them if he was on the right road for the Castle of Orosh, and how far off it might be. They told him he was going the right way, but that he would have to hurry if he wanted to arrive before nightfall. As they spoke, their eyes drifted towards the black ribbon on his sleeve and, perhaps because of the ribbon, they suggested again that he quicken his pace.
I’ll hurry, I’ll hurry, Gjorg said to himself, not without bitterness. Don’t worry, I’ll get there in time to pay the tax before nightfall. Without thinking, perhaps because of his sudden anger, or simply following automatically the advice of those strangers, he had indeed picked up his pace.
Now he was quite alone on the road, which crossed a narrow tableland furrowed by old watercourses. Around him the fields were desolate and untilled. He thought he heard the rumbling of distant thunder and looked up. A single airplane was flying slowly among the clouds. Wonderingly his eyes followed its flight for a while. He had heard that in the neighboring district a passenger plane flew by once a week, from Tirana to a far-off foreign country in Europe, but he had never seen it before.
When the airplane disappeared in the clouds, Gjorg felt a pain in his neck, and only then realized that he had stared at it for a long time. The plane left a great emptiness behind it, and Gjorg sighed unawares. Suddenly he felt hungry. He looked around for a fallen tree trunk or stone to sit upon and eat the bread and goat cheese he had brought along, but on either side of the road there was only the naked earth, dried watercourses, and nothing more. I’ll go on a little further, he said to himself.
And after another half-hour of walking, he made out the roof of an inn in the distance. He traversed almost at a run the stretch of road leading to it, stopped for a moment before the door, then went into the building. It was an ordinary inn, like all the others in the mountain districts, with no signboard, the roof steep-pitched, smelling of straw, and with a large common room. On either side of a long oaken table with many scorch marks, some customers were sitting on chairs of the same wood. Two of them were bending down to bowls of beans, eating greedily. Another stared vacantly at the planks of the table, his head supported by his hands.
As he sat down on one of the chairs, Gjorg felt the muzzle of his rifle touch the floor. He slipped the weapon from his shoulder, set it down across his thighs, and, with a shake of his head, threw back the soaked hood of his cloak. He felt the presence of other people behind him, and only then noticed that on either side of the stairway that led to the upper storey, other mountaineers were sitting on black sheepskins and woolen packs. Some of them, leaning against the wall, were eating corn bread that they dipped in whey. Gjorg thought that he would get up from the table, and like them, take out his bread and his cheese from his bag, but at that moment the smell of beans reached his nostrils and at once he wanted terribly a plate of hot beans. His father had given him a coin, but it was not clear to Gjorg whether he could really spend it or if he was supposed to bring it back unspent. Meanwhile, the innkeeper, whom Gjorg had not been aware of until then, appeared before him.
“Going to the Kulla of Orosh?” he asked. “Where are you from?”
“From Brezftoht.”
“Then you must be hungry. Would you like to have something?”
The innkeeper was skinny and deformed. Gjorg thought the man must be a sharper, because while saying, “Would you like to have something?” instead of looking him in the eye, he stared at the black band on Gjorg’s sleeve, as if to say, “If you’re about to pay five hundred groschen for the murder you did, the world won’t come to an end if you spend a couple of them in my inn.”
“Would you like to have something?” the innkeeper asked again, turning his eyes from Gjorg’s sleeve at last but still not looking at his face but at some place off to the side.