The General of the Dead Army (13 page)

“Is that the mill?” one of them asked, making a sign to me that the others couldn’t see.

“Yes,” I answered in terror.

“Right! Burn it down, men!” he cried, and led off at a run.

The other soldiers followed him. I joined their ranks. I don’t know how or why but my legs were suddenly free again, and I felt light and strong as though my body had been freed from a spell. I was suddenly filled with the same fever, the same ferocity I had felt the year before, when we burned those six villages one after another during the winter campaign. We all rushed forward bellowing like crazed, stampeding animals. Two men set fire to the mill. Another group had seized the miller and were dragging him outside. They took him out into the yard and shot him.

I thought of Christine. I leaped up the stairs of the house two by two. There were soldiers coming down dragging Aunt Frosa bound hand and foot. When she saw me she spat in my face and cried: “Filth! Spy!”

But I didn’t care. All I could think of was Christine. I ran into her room and threw myself on her bed. She was trembling all over. “No! Soldier! No!”

But the blood was pounding in my head. I had to be quick about it. There was so little time. I pulled off the counterpane, frenziedly ripped off her thin nightdress in my impatience, and threw myself on top of her.

“Soldier! Soldier!”

I woke with a start. It was Christine’s voice calling me. Beside me, as before, the quiet water lapped, and there was the smell of hay. I had fallen asleep briefly.

“Soldier! Soldier!”

I walked towards the house with heavy steps. Christine had appeared at the middle window.

“My mother wants you,” she said.

I was still rubbing my eyes.

If she knew the nightmare I’d just had!

24 June 1943

The inhabitants of Gjirokastër are evacuating the town. They are passing all the time, exhausted, carrying their belongings bundled on their backs. The women carry their children in their arms and the old people drag themselves along behind as best they can. The place is in panic. They say that the town is going to be burned down. Some claim that it has been mined and is going to be blown up. The fugitives are taking refuge out in the country.

Gjirokastër itself is being bombed every day. I sometimes climb up into the poplar growing beside the brook and look across at the town. I was stationed there for over a year with my regiment so I know every street and alley, all the café-keepers and the
gofté
sellers. I also know two tarts in Varosh, one of the poorer districts.

The planes are punctual. They come from the north, so they usually appear through the Tepelene gorge. The anti-aircraft battery at Grihoti is the first to open fire. The noise of the shells bursting doesn’t reach as far as here though; we can only see the white puffs of smoke they make. Then the guns on the
teqe
hill go into action; but the planes seem just as unconcerned by those as by the first ones. They float on tranquilly towards the town, and then I begin to imagine the wailing of the sirens down there in Gjirokastër, and all the people rushing helter-skelter down into the cellars. It seems unbelievable that all the fear and horror battening on that town can be caused just by those three tiny objects flying overhead, glinting in the sun like silver coins tossed up in the sky.

The last anti-aircraft gun to open fire is the old one roosting up in the citadel, an old blunderbuss that everyone makes fun of.

From here it’s easy to follow the manoeuvres of the planes as the pilots come in, gradually losing height, then suddenly dive onto the military airfield, then make off, placid and gleaming, as if the columns of black smoke that rise at once over the town are nothing to do with them.

All that is in the daytime. At night the town ceases to exist beneath its blackout. First the darkness swallows up the streets and low houses, the bridge straddling the river, then it blots out the various quarters, one story at a time, starting from the ground floor, and the bridges over the streams, until at last it reaches the citadel, the steeples, and the minarets with their untidy stork’s-nest hats.

Yesterday evening, as I watched the town being enveloped in the darkness and disappear, I remembered a similar night, almost three years ago now, when our company, on its way south, marched into Gjirokastër for the first time.

It was a stifling night, there was rain in the air, as soon as we arrived in the Grihoti barracks, even though we were whacked, covered in mud and feeling depressed as hell, we asked to be taken to the brothel. Our commanding officer gave permission for us to go, and immediately, as though by enchantment, all our vitality came flooding back, and just as we were, covered in mud, with several days’ growth of beard, without even having unslung our rifles from our shoulders, we fell in again and marched back out through the main gate of the barracks. The brothel was in the very centre of the town and we had another kilometre to march in order to reach it. But now our legs were no longer heavy. We made silly jokes and teased one another as we marched along the dark road; and we were in our seventh heaven. We had heard a lot about this brothel and couldn’t wait to be there. A prince’s palace would not have been more enticing.

We were stopped at our checkpoint on the bridge over the river, then when the sentries had passed us through we left the highroad and took a short cut.

Our heavy army boots clattered on the cobbles, and the inhabitants behind their shutters and their heavy doors must surely have been trembling with fright at the thought that yet another massacre might be about to take place. If only they had known where we were going!

At last we reached the “house”. It was a very dark night and the muggy air made it almost impossible to breathe. We halted outside the entrance. The officer acting as our guide pushed it open and vanished inside.

The house was dark and silent. There didn’t seem to be any other clients in there.

“Perhaps they’re asleep,” one of us said in a worried voice. “Even if they have got their heads down, they’d better get them up again, and quick about it,” someone else said.

“Hear, hear!” another joined in. “We’re in uniform and they’ve got to respect us. Especially since we’re only passing through.”

“Here today, but where will we be tomorrow, eh?” a small voice added.

But just then the door opened, the officer re-emerged, and we rushed over to cluster round him.

“Now listen,” the officer said. “You can go in straight away, but no noise, you hear! Any rowdiness and it’s back to barracks right away! Right, fall in again!”

We arranged ourselves as best we could in two ranks, God knows how. We were just rearing to get in there.

“Now pay attention to me,” the officer said. “It’s very dark in there, but all the windows are open because it’s so stifling hot, so we don’t want any light. If any of you men takes it into his head to strike a match or use a lighter he’ll live to regret it. There’s a checkpoint not far from here with a machine-gun nest.”

“No problem, sir,” two or three voices murmured in assent.

“We don’t need light. We’ll get by without…”

“Yeah, it’s not light we need, it’s … “

“Quiet, you damned idiot!” the officer grunted. “Now, silence! The first five or six, forward!”

There was a scuffle, and they disappeared into the darkness of the courtyard beyond the door.

“Don’t get your rifles mixed up!” the officer cried to them as they vanished. Then turning back to us: “Six more follow me!”

I was one of those six. We crossed the flagged courtyard as though we were drunk, then went up the stairs and ended up on a landing with a long passage leading off it. It was dark along the passage and so stuffy you could hardly breathe. A pause, then I realized that all the others had melted away into the blackness and that I was all alone in the passage. I felt my way along it in the darkness, I heard a raucous gasp, then another, the blood rushed to my head, I dived through the first open door and heard a sound of violent panting. I rushed out again and found myself in front of another open door. In the shadowy darkness I could vaguely make out a white form in one corner of the room. I went in, took two more steps, then stopped.

“Come on,” a soft voice said.

Shyly, I moved forward a few more steps, then stretched out my arms and touched her. She was completely naked. Her body was so moist with sweat that my hands slid over it. I felt my eyelids drooping and couldn’t find the bed. “Take off your rifle,” she said gently.

I unslung my rifle and leaned it up against the wall. Then she lay down.

I couldn’t make out her face in the dark, but to judge by her voice and her breasts she must have been very young.

“I’m sorry,” I said a few minutes later as I lay briefly relaxed in her arms, “I’m sorry for being so dirty.”

“Oh that doesn’t matter,” she said, and her listless tone made it clear that she had got used to soldiers’ sweat a long long time ago.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“South, to the front.”

She didn’t comment. And those were the only words we exchanged. I tried to make out her features, but it was no good: they just merged into an indistinguishable blur. I got up slowly, picked up my rifle, slung it over my shoulder, then turned back once more toward the pale form stretched out in the corner.

“Good night,” I said.

“Good night,” she answered with total indifference.

I left the room, groped my way back to the top of the stairs and went down them. The others who had finished were already outside. They were sitting on the stone seats on either side of the door, their rifles between their knees, smoking.

An hour later we were making our way back along the main road; but now we weren’t talking or joking - just listening to the ragged clumping of our boots on the asphalt, once again in the dumps, weary to the bone, splattered from head to foot with everykind of muck.

“Damned darkness!” someone exclaimed as though in a dream; but no one answered and we continued on our silent way toward Grihoti.

A long time afterwards we happened to pass through Gjirokastër again, and naturally asked permission to visit the “house”. We were told that it had been closed. I’m not quite sure why but apparently there was some sort of rumpus. One of the girls in the place had been killed and they’d had to evacuate the rest. It made me think of that girl I’d spent those few moments with in the darkness, on that muggy, suffocating night, and I thought to myself that it might quite possibly have been her. But it could just as well have been one of the others. There were five or six I think. Seven at most.

July, noon

Christine’s eyes - hieroglyphs. Like the eyes of all Albanian girls. Love? On my side, yes. On hers, nothing.

Djouvi isn’t getting any better.

July

Last night troops went by along the Gjirokastër road. They were moving north. We could see the beams of their headlights from up here. Presumably a regiment moving to a new posting.

21 July

The village near us is crawling with
ballistes
. They spend the evening singing old songs. Who knows what’s going to happen?

But the miller has told me, just in case, that if I see any men coming in white caps with big eagles on the front, then I’m to hide straight away. He’s told Christine the same thing.

Sunday

Christine is getting married in a week’s time. I found it out quite by chance. I didn’t know it but she’s been engaged for a long time now, and yesterday, as Aunt Frosa was filling a pail with water at the race, I said to her, just for the sake of talking to someone:

“You’ve been stuck at that loom of yours weaving away for days and days now. Why is that?”

“Because the day’s nearly on us, my lad, the day’s nearly on us.”

“What day?”

“What day? What day? We’re marrying our daughter next week. Surely you know that?”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t know.”

But my voice came out so faint as I said it that Aunt Frosa looked up and stared at me for a moment. My first thought was to try as hard as I could to control my feelings. But then I thought: The hell with it, why should I have to hide the pain I feel?

I honestly don’t know whether she knew or not what a shock her words had given me, but she gave me another of her stares and said:

“Why yes, my son! Time passes, and girls grow up and have to be married. You too, boy, when you’re home again, as soon as this war is over, your mother will marry you to some pretty young girl, yes, as pretty as the flowers in May!”

When she said that I almost broke down altogether, because I felt she was trying to console me, and that just made the pain worse.

I went out and sat beside the brook. And I said out loud, just for myself: “Christine, you’re going to be married!” That was all.

August

Monotony!

Christine is married. Last Sunday the bridegroom’s relatives came to fetch her. Six men on horseback, all armed. The roads are very dangerous. There was no wedding feast. The men just sat down round the low table as a token, but they had a long journey back ahead of them and scarcely touched the raki. I was invited too, but I might as well not have been there for all the notice that was taken of me.

Two days ago I wanted to give Christine a little present. But what? I don’t have anything! Then I thought of giving her my medallion. I’d seen her glancing at it two or three times with an intrigued look in her eye.

“Here, take this to remind you of me.” She took it and gazed at it with delight. “It’s the Holy Virgin!”

“Yes.”

“Who gave it to you? Your mother?”

“No, the army.”

“Why?”

“So that I can be identified when I’m dead.”

She burst out laughing.

“And how do you know you’re going to be killed?”

“Well, if I ever am!”

“Christine!” Aunt Frosa called from the yard. Christine thanked me and fled away.

That was how I gave her the only thing I still possessed. And what good was it to me? Whatever happens I am lost. I am living, but lost, and what’s the good of being found once you’re dead!