Stres butted in to remind them politely that this was quite at odds with the ancient kanun the Albanians had inherited from their Illyrian ancestors, whose customary laws, as everyone knew, had been very similar to those of the Ancient Greeks, who had given them the very word kanun. Just a year ago he’d read a stage play written by a Greek fifteen hundred years before, and he had been stunned by it …
They knew all this, just as they knew that law courts had superseded the kanun long before. But they thought that humankind had been inadequately prepared for the transition. They reckoned that in their own era it was more appropriate to renovate the old kanun than to adopt a new system of government. The besa was a good example …
It was still very rare: delicate, like a wild flower needing tender care, its shape as yet undefined. To illustrate their thesis, they reminded Stres of an incident that had occurred some years before, when Kostandin was still alive. In a village not far off, a man had killed his guest. Stres had heard talk of the case. It was then that the expression “He violated the besa” had been used. Everyone in the village, young and old, had been deeply shaken by the event. Together they decided that no such disgrace would ever befall them again. In fact they went further still, decreeing that anyone, known or unknown, who entered the territory of their village would stand under the protection of the besa and would thereby be declared a friend and be protected as such, that the doors of the village would be opened to anyone, at any hour of the night or day, and that any passer-by must be given food and his safety assured. In the marketplace of the capital they were the butt of jokes. Anyone want a free meal? Just head for that village and knock on any door; talk about consideration, they’ll escort you to the village border as if you were a bishop. But the villagers, ignoring the mockery, went even further. They requested — and received — the prince’s permission to punish those who violated the besa. No one guilty of such an offence could leave the territory of the village alive. Another village, quite far from the first, asked the prince to grant them the same right, on terms that were no less curious: the villagers requested that protection of their besa cover not only their own place of habitation, but also a sector of the highway, including two inns and a mill. But the prince was afraid that if he allowed the new rule to spread it would interfere with traffic along the highway and complicate the administration of that part of the country, and so he refused.
That was what the besa meant. That was how Kostandin saw it. He considered the besa a bond linking all that was sublime, and he felt that once it and other similar laws had spread and held sway in every aspect of life, then external laws, with their corresponding institutions, would be shed naturally, just as a snake sloughs off its old skin.
Thus spoke Kostandin on those memorable afternoons they used to pass at the New Inn, where he went on and on about Albanianness. Perorating, or as some wits put it, albanating. “So that’s how it is,” he would say, “for my part, I shall give my mother my besa to bring Doruntine back to her from her husband’s home whenever she desires. And whatever happens — if I am lying on my deathbed, if I have but one hand or one leg, if I have lost my sight, even if … I will never break that promise.”
“Even if …?” Stres repeated. “Tell me, Milosao, don’t you think he meant ‘even if I’m dead’?”
“Perhaps,” the young man answered absently, looking away.
“But how can you account for that?” Stres asked. “He was an intelligent man, he didn’t believe in ghosts. I have a report from the bishop stating that at Easter you and he laughed at people’s faith in the resurrection of Christ. So how could he have believed in his own resurrection?”
They looked at one another, each suppressing a smile.
“You are right, Captain, so long as you are speaking of the present world, the existing world. But you must not forget that he, that all of us, in our words and thoughts, had in mind another world, one with a new dimension, a world in which the besa would reign supreme. In that world everything could be different.”
“Nevertheless, you live in our world, in this existing world,” said Stres.
“Yes. But a part of our being, perhaps the best part, lies in the other.”
“In the other,” he repeated softly. He was now the only one suppressing a smile.
They took no notice of it, or pretended not to, and went on discussing Kostandin’s other ideas, the reasons why he held that this reorganisation of life in Albania was necessary. These had to do with the great storms he saw looming on the horizon and with Albania’s location, caught in a vice between the religions of Rome and Byzantium, between two worlds, West and East. Their clash would inevitably bring appalling turmoil, and Albania would have to find new ways to defend itself. It had to create structures more stable than “external” laws and institutions, eternal and universal structures lying within man himself, inviolable and invisible and therefore indestructible. In short, Albania had to change its laws, its administration, its prisons, its courts and all the rest, it had to fashion them so that they could be severed from the outside world and anchored within men themselves as the tempest drew near. It had to do this imperatively or it would be wiped from the face of the earth. Thus spoke Kostandin. And he held that this new organisation would begin with the besa.
“Then of course,” Stres said, “Kostandin’s own default, the violation of his promise, was all the more serious and inadmissible, was it not?”
“Oh yes, certainly. Especially after his mother’s curse. Except for one thing, Captain Stres: there was no default. He kept his promise in the end. Somewhat belatedly, of course, but he had a good enough reason for being late: he was dead. In the end he kept his word in spite of everything.”
“But he was not the one who brought Doruntine back,” said Stres. “You know that as well as I do.”
“For you, perhaps, it wasn’t him. We see it differently.”
“Truth is the same for all. Almost anyone could have brought Doruntine here — except Kostandin!”
“Nevertheless, it was he who brought her back.”
“So you believe in resurrection?”
“That’s secondary. It has nothing to do with the heart of the matter.”
“Just the same, if you don’t accept the resurrection of the dead, how can you persist in claiming that he made that journey with his sister?”
“But that is of no importance, Captain Stres. That is completely secondary. The essential thing is that it was he who brought Doruntine here.”
“Maybe it’s this business about two worlds that prevents us from understanding one another,” Stres said. “What is a lie in one may be the truth in the other, is that the idea?”
“Maybe … Maybe.”
Meanwhile, the country seethed as it awaited the great assembly. Words, calculations, forebodings and news fluttered in the wind like yellowing leaves before a storm, falling to earth only to be raised anew. Drenched in road dirt or whitened by rime, messengers began cropping up all over the place, even while the date of the great assembly remained unknown. Some believed it would happen before Easter, others said straight after. But once folk had become convinced that it would be around Easter time, they claimed it was no coincidence that the Lord had set the date close to that of the Day of Resurrection: he wanted to test their souls one more time, to press them and torture them for who knows what ancient sin.