Dimiter (2 page)

Grodd carried the farmer into his home, roused his wife, and then ran to the nearby village where he wakened the doctor and then rushed him back to the house. But it came to no use, the old doctor told him after assessing the nature of the
wound, for complex surgery was needed, and quickly, or the farmer would be dead in a matter of hours.

“It’s subdural hematoma,” the doctor explained.

“It is
demons
!” cried the baker, distraught.

The wife hastily blessed herself.

The old doctor shrugged and left.

With the anguished Grodd breathing curses by his bed, the fallen farmer, still unconscious, very soon contracted a fever, slipped into pneumonia, and within three days was visibly dead.

Inconsolable, Grodd burst into tears.

“It was the demons who killed him!” he shouted at one point.

“Yes, it was only the
appearance
of pneumonia,” agreed the wife.

After that no one cared to say anything at all.

The code of the
bessa
could not be satisfied except by the killing of a male. And so one year after the death of the farmer, when wariness and vigilance had relaxed, Grodd the baker returned to the farmer’s house where he happened to come upon his two-year-old son as he played alone in a dreamy field, and there, amid the sun-washed, breeze-blown poppies that were bluer and more vivid than Bengal light; among the hazel and cherry trees and the dogwood, the mustard and the parsley and the brabble of larks and the swaying, star-flung Michaelmas daisy petals as white as the Arctic fox, Grodd watched as the boy chased a black-winged butterfly; listened to a cowbell’s tinkle in the distance, remembered his youth, heard the little boy laugh, took a breath, and then shot him between his brindled eyes. It was Grodd that the hunting force had been searching for when
they happened upon the Prisoner. Some thought it was not by chance.

FROM THE DE-BRIEFING OF RAKO BEY, LEADER OF THE
VOLUNTEER FORCE TO QUELLEZA, TAKEN 10 OCTOBER

Q.
And what led you to the house in the first place?

A.
Nothing, sir. Grodd was related to the blind man who lived there, but then he is related to most of the village. Nothing led us there, Colonel. It was fate.

Q.
Maintain propriety.

A.
Sorry, sir.

Q.
Our fate is in our hands.

A.
Yes, exactly.

Q.
About the house, then . . .

A.
Oh, it was just another house outside the village. We surrounded it a little after sundown. It was cold. We broke in and found the blind man inside. And the other one.

Q.
The other one?

A.
Yes. We found the blind man sitting by the fire. The other was at the table. There was food set out, a lot of it: cabbage, bread, cheese, lamb and eggs, onions, some grapes. When I saw the lamb and eggs I knew the other one had to be a guest, an outsider, so I kept my gun leveled at him. He could have been Grodd. Though I was doubtful.

Q.
Why?

A.
Because Grodd was supposedly blue-eyed and slender.

Q.
I don’t understand.

A.
Well, he didn’t fit Grodd’s description.

Q.
You didn’t see the Prisoner as blue-eyed and slender?

A.
No, of course not. He is dark-eyed and stocky, a brute. Why are you staring like that?

Q.
Never mind. Did the Prisoner resist?

A.
No, he didn’t.

Q.
He did nothing?

A.
No, his head was down, he didn’t move. He had a small woolen blanket on his lap and his hands were out of view underneath it.

Q.
Did he speak to you?

A.
No. The blind man did all the talking. He asked us who we were and what was happening. I told him. I demanded their identity cards. But when the oldster stood up I saw his blindness and I told him, “Never mind, grandfather. Sit.” The other fellow dug for his card in his pocket, and then he handed it over and I checked it. It said that his name was Selca Decani and that he was a seller of feta cheese from Theti. But I think he was more than that.

Q.
How?

A.
I don’t know. I can’t explain it.

Q.
I am handing you the Prisoner’s identity card. Did you scrutinize it carefully?

A.
Well, no. I mean, he obviously wasn’t Grodd so I just glanced at some items, looked at the photograph, and gave the card back.

Q.
I invite you to examine the photograph again.

A.
He looks slender here. He isn’t.

Q.
But it’s he?

A.
Yes, it’s he.

Q.
And the color of the eyes? What does it say?

A.
This is strange.

Q.
What does it say?

A.
It says blue.

Q.
You recall now they were blue?

A.
They were black as wet olives in a barrel. I was with him all the way to Shkoder Prison. They are black.

Q.
Very well.

A.
Are you testing me?

Q.
Continue your report.

A.
The card is wrong.

Q.
I said continue.

A.
Well, we were leaving them, almost out the door, when suddenly the blind man spoke very oddly.

Q.
Oddly how?

A.
Just an odd tone of voice. I can’t describe it.

Q.
And what did he say?

A.
He said, “He is not one of us. He is alien.”

Q.
What did he mean?

A.
I wasn’t sure. We came back and trained our guns on the fellow, and I asked the old man to explain. He didn’t answer. I said, “Grandfather, hurry, speak up. My daughter will be three years old by the weekend and I promised to be with her. Hurry up, please, give an answer.” And the oldster said, “Take him.” I looked into the fellow’s eyes and then decided to club him with the butt of my rifle.

Q.
Why?

A.
I don’t know. Just something, some movement in the back of his eyes, some inner struggle. I had the feeling he could kill us if he wished.

Q.
You’re quite tired, I think.

A.
I haven’t slept.

Q.
We’ll come back to this. What happened next?

A.
I knocked him out and we chained up his legs, and then
we took him to the station house in Quelleza. We asked the police if the man had checked in with them when he first came into the village. That’s the law.

Q.
So it is.

A.
They said no. This was highly suspicious. I explained things completely to the local commissar and to the commandant of police.

Q.
That was well.

A.
So then the commandant asked him some questions. Well, the man wouldn’t speak, not a word, and we started to wonder about whether he was a mute or some kind of an imbecile, perhaps. But all the wires to Theti were down, there’d been a storm, and we couldn’t check out any part of his story. As it happened, though, we ran into wonderful luck. In Quelleza at that moment was a merchant from Theti, a big fellow, bald, very talkative; anyhow, they found him and they brought him to the station and they asked if he’d ever seen the Prisoner before. He said yes, and that he couldn’t quite remember his name but that our man was very definitely from Theti. Then the commissar asked if he was Selca Decani, and the merchant said, “Of course he is! Exactly! It’s Selca!” and “How in the world could I have possibly forgotten!” Then he started to study our fellow intently and a curious look came over his face and he told us though he didn’t know how it could have happened, but he’d somehow made an error, for until that moment it had slipped his mind that Selca Decani had been dead for many years, and that our fellow looked nothing like Decani at all. What made his mistake so amazing, he told us, was that he had known Decani quite well and had been saddened and depressed by his death for many months. It was all very strange.

Q.
To say the least. And then?

A.
Oh, well, as we were hurrying and still in pursuit of the baker, I suggested that our fellow be kept in Quelleza, but the commandant and commissar quickly said no and they advised me to take our fellow with us to Shkoder, which we finally did and then gave him to your Secret Police, the Sigurimi. They seemed very nervous.

Q.
The Secret Police?

A.
No, the people at Quelleza. They seemed very anxious to be rid of the fellow.

Q.
Did it never occur to you that the Prisoner might be the would-be assassin of Mehmet Shehu you were sent there to find in the first place?

A.
Oh, well, of course, but we were told that he’d been captured near the Buna.

Q.
And who told you that?

A.
The people at Quelleza.

Q.
From Quelleza to Shkoder, did the Prisoner speak or in any way give you information?

A.
He did not. He didn’t speak at any time. Not a word.

Q.
And what else did you notice about him that was unusual?

A.
Oh, well, one thing, perhaps. While we were marching-back to Shkoder we stopped in the middle of the day at Mesi and lunched in a courtyard next to the jail. It was un-seasonably warm and humid, so we rested. One of my men played the lute and we sang. We’d chained the Prisoner’s legs to an apricot tree and I kept staring at him.

Q.
Why?

A.
There were swarms of mosquitoes biting. They were biting rather fiercely, in fact.

Q.
And what of that?

A.
He never slapped at them.

Q.
His hands were free?

A.
Yes, they were free.

Q.
Very well. Now then, earlier you stated that his papers seemed in order.

A.
So I thought.

Q.
And he never did actually resist arrest?

A.
No, not really.

Q.
So again I ask, why did you club him with your rifle? I mean some reason besides an odd look in his eyes. Did you think he was holding a gun or a knife beneath the blanket?

A.
No, he wasn’t holding anything.

Q.
Then why did you strike him?

A.
I was afraid.

Q.
Afraid of what?

A.
When I yanked off the blanket I saw blood on his hand. I mean the hand that I hadn’t seen before, the right one. It was gashed as if by the teeth of some animal.

Q.
And this made you feel afraid?

A.
It did.

Q.
For what reason?

A.
I thought of the dog with the broken neck.