The General of the Dead Army (22 page)

They came upon a village as night fell. For the first time in ten days the general’s face lit up with a smile. It was over, really over at last. They would sleep here this evening and leave next morning for Tirana. In a few days they would be home again. The general had regained his good humour. A warm tide of wellbeing, hesitant at first but rapidly becoming bolder, began to flow through him.

The lights were not on yet in the village. Escorted by a mob of children the car made a stately progress along the extremely muddy main street. He could see the little running legs in front of them, through the windscreen, and then, turning round, he saw the other children running after them, and he smiled again. As far as he could make out he seemed to be the one the children were most interested in, while the priest apparently left them fairly indifferent. He couldn’t help feeling flattered at this, even though he knew perfectly well that he owed their interest solely to his uniform.

The desire for greatness and acclaim that had never quite died inside him was stirring weakly to life again.

Having traversed the village in this way, the noisy procession finally came to a halt outside the building occupied by the cooperative council. The expert and the driver disappeared briskly up the steps and into the entrance. A moment later the lorry drew up behind the car and the workmen began jumping down. Neither they nor the lorry seemed to excite much interest in the children however. Instead they were glueing their faces to the car windows in order to peer in at the two men sitting so calmly on the dark seats inside. One of them was smoking a cigarette. From outside that was all the children were able to make out, but they kept milling and circling around the vehicle, continuing to flatten their questing, wide-eyed little faces against the glass from time to time.

“It was probably in this village that Colonel Z. disappeared,” the priest said.

“Quite possibly,” the general replied.

“We must make enquiries,” the priest said. “We must do our best to find out if anyone knows anything.”

The general took two or three draws at his cigarette before saying slowly:

“To be honest, I’m not particularly anxious to find him. This evening I have no urge to find any dead men at all. For my part I just feel utterly delighted to have reached the end of our ordeal. And here you are wanting me to set off on some new quest.”

“But it’s our duty,” the priest said.

“Oh yes, I know, I know, but just now I just don’t want to have to think about it. This is a tremendous evening for us. I’m amazed you don’t feel that too. It’s an evening for celebration. All I want is peace and quiet. A good hot bath! That’s my main concern this evening. My kingdom for a bath!” he added with a chuckle.

The general was in good humour, very good humour. The long and arduous pilgrimage that he saw in his mind as a vision of terror was at last at an end. But it wasn’t a pilgrimage. It had been a march through the valley of the shadow of death. As the old song sung by the Swiss soldiers has it: “Our life is but a winter journey, a journey through the dark!” The general rubbed his hands.

He was safe. He could look back at them in the distance now, those sheer and hateful peaks, with calm indifference.

“Like a tragic and lonely bird…” Was that it? Was that what she had said to him, that great lady wishing him good luck on his journey, so long ago now…?

The expert re-emerged from the council building. “You will be sleeping in that house over there,” he said, and pointed to a bungalow with a verandah.

Ten minutes later the general emerged onto the verandah and leaned his elbows on its wooden balustrade. The priest was in the bedroom unpacking. There was a little garden all around the bungalow, and a view of a section of the village from the verandah.

The general could hear the clinking of a bucket and women’s voices from a nearby well, the lonely lowing of distant cattle, the sound of a radio that had just been switched on, and the cries of the children still at play, running to and fro across the square.

The village lights had been switched on now, and the monotonous hum of the generator could be heard on the outskirts.

That night would have gone by like all the others, without leaving them any particular incident to remember, ifthe general had remained content just to stand there breathing in the characteristic Albanian village smell, the subtle, almost imperceptible aroma that had by now become so familiar to him that he could have picked it out unerringly from any number of others. The priest had gone out hunting for information about Colonel Z. and so the general just stayed there, leaning on the rail of the verandah, watching the women as they took their turn to draw up water from the well. It was a routine village evening, even though in the distance, from the centre of the village, there could be heard the beat of a drum and the song of a violin, combining to cast a further spell of mystery over the night.

The general recognized the drumbeats as being the usual prelude to a wedding feast in that district. Had it not been late autumn he would have found it out of place, jarring on the nerves.

But he had known in advance, from his book on Albania, that Albanian country folk almost always celebrate their marriages in autumn, after the work of harvest has been completed. This was the second year in succession that the priest and he had been going from village to village at precisely this time of year. But now it was the beginning of winter and only the very last marriages were being celebrated, those that for one reason or another had been put off, whereas at the start of their tour they had come across them almost every day.

Often, during the night, through the sound of the falling rain, the general had caught the sound of drum rolls and the song of a violin alternating between sprightly joy and soulful revelry. And listening to them, his head buried under the bed-clothes, his thoughts would go to the lorry that was always parked outside, standing all night with the rain falling onto its black canvas cover.

He would muse on how very much one is a stranger in foreign lands. More of a stranger than the trees planted along the edges of the roads, he would think, and they, after all, are only trees.

Certainly much more of a stranger than the sheep, or the sheepdogs, or the calves whose bells you hear clinking as the evening falls.

And this particular evening too would have passed off like all those others, if the general, after having stood there thinking of all these things on the verandah, had not had to listen to the priest telling him about Colonel Z., about how he, the priest, had gone to the club and sat down at a table with some of the villagers, about what they had to say concerning the colonel’s disappearance, and about the suspicions that their remarks had aroused in him. But the general’s attention was not on what the priest was telling him. He was in a good mood.

“Enough,” he said to the priest for the third time. “Enough of all that. What we need now is a little relaxation, a little entertainment. Don’t you think?”

The priest did not reply.

“It’s a beautiful evening. A little music, a little glass of brandy … “

“And where will we find them?” the priest said. “There is no café here, only the co-operative club. And you know what that will be like … “

But the general, without allowing him to finish, broke in with a proposal that left him dumbfounded. When he did regain his composure, however, the priest refused to subscribe to the idea.

It was the first time that he had made such a formal show of opposition. But the general nevertheless pointed out to him point blank that he, the general, was the leader of the mission, and made it clear that if he was forced into it he would simply order the priest to accompany him.

“We are proud of our mission, aren’t we? You have told me so often enough. And now we have concluded it, our glorious mission. So this evening I want to enjoy myself, listen to some music, see a play, anything! Wasn’t it you who told me that the wedding feasts in this country are as good as an evening at the theatre? Or was it only funerals you were talking about? It doesn’t matter anyway. The important thing is that I want to enjoy myself a little this evening. If there was a funeral going on then we’d go to that too, you understand? I’m not going to hold back out of some sort of respect for these peasants. And besides, it was you yourself who told me that the Albanians carry hospitality to almost absurd lengths. There is no risk of our not being well received.”

The priest had riveted icy eyes upon him. The general talked on hoping to avoid a silence. But at last the silence came.

“No,” the priest said then, extending an arm in the direction he presumed the marriage feast was to take place. “We must not go. We are in mourning. We must not desert them.”

Don’t desert us. The age-old cry. For a year and a half the general had been hearing it, sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger, from his army. They wanted him near them. For love of them he had renounced his own life. Each time he had tried to leave them, even if only for a few hours, he had heard their muffled murmurs of appeal. He was their general; but this evening he was rebelling.

This thought left him paralyzed - standing up to his whole army! Normally it was quite the opposite: the troops mutinied against their leader. But this general fatefulness left everything topsy-turvy.

The priest’s arm was still extended.

“I’m not deserting anybody,” the general said in a hoarse voice, “I simply want a little relaxation.”

Without waiting for a reply he pulled on his waterproof and walked out.

The priest followed.

T
HE WEDDING FEAST WAS
being held in a house at the very centre of the village. Even from quite a distance away the general and the priest could see bright patches of light through which the rain seemed to be falling even more thickly. Despite the bad weather the big double door of the house was wide open and there was quite a crowd under the wide porch. There were people coming and going, and the little street in which the house stood was full of bustle and whispering and every kind of noise.

The two men advanced towards the house, neither of them speaking, swathed in their long, black waterproof capes, and their footsteps echoed back from the narrow lane’s stone walls - the heavy, thudding stride of the general, who splashed his way on through the puddles without even noticing them, and the lighter, livelier tread of the priest.

They paused for a moment beneath the porch, where a few young men in festive costume were smoking and talking quietly together, then went in through the doorway into the hall. The general entered first. The priest followed him inside. The passage was crammed with women and children making a tremendous din. The drum had fallen silent and they could hear the sound of men’s voices from the main room. A little group formed out in the passage, a messenger was sent into the big room, and eventually an old man, looking surprised, emerged from it and came towards them. He placed a hand over his heart in traditional greeting as he approached, then helped them off with their capes, which he proceeded to hang up alongside the villagers’ thick cloaks. He was the master of the house. He led them through into the main room, and at their appearance a general agitation became apparent; all those present seemed to begin murmuring, whispering, turning to one another, craning their necks, like a clump of multicoloured bushes suddenly stirred by a strong breeze.

The general had certainly not expected to be so troubled by the scene that presented itself to his eyes. At first, he was so put out of countenance that for a while after entering he was unable to perceive anything at all except a palette of living, moving patches of colour, just as though he had been given a hard blow on the head and was seeing stars. Someone led him to a table, then someone else helped him off with his coat. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a few mumbled syllables, and eventually he gave way to his bewilderment, simply nodding and smiling at the moving splashes of colour around him.

It was not until the drum began to beat again, and the violin voiced its first piercing invitation to the guests to stand up and dance, that he was able to recover himself slightly. Through the crystalline tinkling of the glasses he heard a voice at his elbow say in his own language: “Will you raise your glass?” and did as he was asked. The same voice then continued to speak, as though it were explaining something to him, but he was still in no state to understand anything that was said, and was himselfastonished at feeling so completely disoriented.

Now the feast seemed to him like a great organism, powerful and amorphous, breathing, moving, murmuring, dancing, and filling the whole atmosphere around him with its warm, disturbing, intoxicating breath.

It was some short while before the general had completely recovered himself. He could feel that the children were staring at him, their eyes bright with silent delight. Pushing their heads together, they were pointing fingers in his direction, as though counting the buttons on his uniform, or the circles of braid round his cuffs, for they then began discussing something and shaking their little heads in evident disagreement.

Then little by little the general became aware of everything else surrounding him. He gazed in turn at the old men with their long moustaches, sitting cross-legged on their benches and exchanging grave comments as they smoked their long Turkish pipes, at the bride in her white dress, so graceful in her shy excitement, at the groom, sweating profusely and hopping here and there the whole time looking after everyone, at the bunches of young girls, all laughing and whispering in the corners as though that was all they knew how to do, their attitude somehow a promise of hidden joys, even though it was never to be fully kept, at the disillusioned look of the young men smoking their cigarettes, at the swarthy musicians soaked in sweat, at all the women scurrying from one room to another with such a business-like air, and lastly at the old women, dressed in black, their faces marked by the years and their eyes heavy with emotion and affection, sitting along the wall like a row of pale icons. Now he was following the agile movements of the dancing legs and the rhythmic tapping of heels on the floor, obedient to the vibrant orders of the drum, the rustling of the white fustanel-las, those fustanellas with their thousands of fine pleats as white as the snows of the mountains they had just returned from, the long and convoluted toasts that seemed to lose all meaning when translated, the rough songs of the men recalling the brief mountain twilights, and the trailing, pathetic songs of the women, songs that seemed to lean on the robuster shoulders of the men’s songs and to make their way submissively, eternally, by their side. The general allowed his gaze to wander all around him without managing to think of anything at all. He simply sat there drinking and smiling, without even knowing himself to whom his smiles were addressed.