The General of the Dead Army (26 page)

“What have you done?” the priest cried, as he scrambled out of the car.

“That sack had a curse on it,” the general said, drawing in his breath with difficulty.

“Just when we’d found him! Two years! Two years we’d been looking for him!”

“Yes, but his bones nearly cost us our lives,” said the general wearily.

“You don’t seem to realize what you’ve done!” the priest cried as he switched on his pocket torch.

“I didn’t mean to throw it out. All I did was give it a shove.” His voice betrayed lassitude and remorse.

They both went over to the roadside and looked down into the darkness from which the sound of the rushing water rose. But the two tiny beams threw no more than a pale glow on the steep embankment.

“It’s too dark to see,” the general said.

They joined the driver, and all three stood raking the river bed with their eyes for a fewmoments.

“It will have been carried away by the current,” the general said. The priest merely threw him a furious glance, then turned his torchbeam as though he were looking for a way down.

The general returned to the car. The priest stayed a moment or two leaning over the bridge parapet, then returned to the car as well.

They were on their way again.

He must be whirling round and round in that dark water now like someone caught in a nightmare, the general thought. Then he closed his eyes in order not to see the milestones and tried to sleep.

T
HE WEEK WAS DRAWING
to an end. It was the last day of their stay in Albania. The general got up late. He opened his shutters. The morning was overcast.

It’s nearly ten, he thought. The Mass, as I remember, is scheduled for eleven-fifteen, then the banquet at four-thirty.

His bedside table was covered by a big pile of letters, telegrams, newspapers, and magazines forwarded to him from his home.

But there were more letters than anything else. As before, they contained all manner of stories, place names, sometimes sketches of a hill or a copse. As for the articles, they were more or less summed up by their titles: “An Army Exhumed”, “Imminent Return of the General of the Shades”, “Government Promises to the Families of the Dead…”

He looked throught these papers without stopping at any one of them, then took a deep breath, got into his cape, and left. He took his time walking down the stairs, made his way across the deep-piled carpet of the main lobby. At the desk he asked for the head waiter, who arrived a moment later.

“Have you been told that we’re having a small banquet later this afternoon?”

“Yes sir. All will be ready for seven o’clock in Room 3.”

The general asked if anyone had seen the priest, and was told he had gone out.

There was a great deal of activity going on in the lobby and around the reception desk. There were two telephones that never seemed to stop ringing and several groups of guests waiting for the lifts with cases at their feet. A number of Negroes were sitting in some of the big armchairs, a group of Chinese escorted by two young girls walked past him into the main restaurant, and beside the telephone switchboard two very blonde young women, presumably Scandinavian, were waiting to be put through.

The general went through into the lounge where he usually took his coffee, but couldn’t find a single empty table. It was the first time he had seen such an influx of foreigners in the hotel.

He retraced his steps with the intention of leaving the building and met yet another group of Africans walking in through the main door carrying their luggage.

Outside, beneath the tall pine trees, there were far more cars parked than was usual.

What is all the activity? he wondered to himself as he walked down the entrance steps. He turned right and began walking up the boulevard in the direction of the main government buildings.

When he reached Skanderburg Square he noticed that there were flags flapping in the wind all around the little park there. And between the flagpoles, as well as across the facades of the ministries and the big columns of the Palace of Culture, workmen were fixing up strings of lights and big banners with slogans on them.

Of course! he thought. The day after tomorrow is their national dayofcelebration.

The pavements were crammed with strollers. He gave barely a glance at the cinema posters, his mind was otherwise occupied, so much so that two steps beyond he had forgotten the titles of the films.

He looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock.

I’ll collect my ticket after the service, he thought, and turned left. Outside the bank, just behind the
Studenti
café, there was a veritable horde of travellers by the bus stops. It was the terminus for the routes serving the suburbs. The church where the
De Profundis
was to be intoned was only one stop further on, so the general decided to continue on foot. He crossed to the central pavement and let his thoughts return to the colonel’s remains as he walked along it.

He could no longer remember exactly what had happened. He could only recall that he had been in a black and somehow mindless mood. He had felt his soul being crushed under a great weight. But now, looking back, his action seemed to him to have been totally senseless.

But in any case there must surely be a way of setting the matter to rights. He would discuss it with the priest. There were quite a number of soldiers measuring six foot one - the colonel’s height. As for the teeth, that could easily be arranged. And who would ever suspect that the colonel’s remains weren’t really his? The more he thought about it, the more he felt it should be possible to reach an agreement with the priest. Then he tried to recall some of the soldiers who were the same height as Colonel Z., but without success. Every time during the course of their excavations that the expert had called out “Six foot one” he had been unable to prevent himself thinking: Like Colonel Z. But at this moment he just couldn’t recall a single one of them.

He could only remember the British flyer they had found by chance under the ruts of a village road - and then reburied in the exact spot where they had found him.

Then he remembered the diary soldier. He certainly measured six foot one. The general began to imagine what it would be like if they were to substitute that soldier’s remains for those of the colonel. He pictured to himself the reception that the colonel’s assembled family would accord to the remains of that simple soldier, the grandiose funeral service, the solemn obsequies, Betty in deepest mourning, weeping while the dead man’s old mother on her arm went on talking and talking relentlessly about her son to anyone who would listen. Then the poor fellow’s bones would be transported to his murderer’s magnificent tomb, the bells would ring out, a general would deliver a funeral oration, and the whole thing would be an outrage against nature, the whole thing would be a perversion, a cheat, a profanation. And if ghosts and spirits really did exist, then the soldier would rise from his tomb that very night. No! the general thought. We had better find another. There must surely be one. He began to step out. He only had two more minutes before the Mass was due to begin. He was already in sight of the church, a handsome modern edifice with its main door leading almost directly onto the street. And parked along the pavement on either side of the entrance were a number of luxurious cars of various makes.

Members of the diplomatic corps, the general thought to himself, and walked swiftly up the marble steps. The Mass had barely begun as he entered the church. He dipped a finger in the stoup on his right, crossed himself and found a seat on the side. He fixed his eyes on the priest and listened to him speaking, but without actually managing to grasp the meaning of anything he said. He was only really aware of the customary black hangings covering the side walls of the church and the empty coffin in front of the choir, also draped with black cloth. The hangings and the congregation’s black clothes seemed to deaden the guttering light of the candles; moreover the windows were set very high, and the light they gave had in any case been filtered through their multicoloured stained glass, so that the church seemed even darker and colder than it really was.

The priest was praying for the souls of the dead soldiers. Lack of sleep had made his face even paler than usual, and his eyes looked tired and tormented. The diplomats all sat listening attentively, their faces set in grave expressions, and mingling with the smell of the burning candles there was a faint whiff of scent hovering in the nave.

A woman in front of the general began to weep silently.

The priest’s voice carried to the four corners of the church, solemn and sonorous:

Requiem aeternam dona eis!

The woman’s sobs redoubled and she pulled a handkerchief out of her bag.

Et lux perpetua luceat eis!
the priest went on, raising his eyes to the great crucifix.

Then his voice thundered out even more solemnly and sank to an even deeper note:

Requiescant in pace!
he concluded, and his words echoed back from every corner of the church.

Amen!
the deacon said.

For a few seconds the general thought he could hear the tiny sound of the candle flames burning.

May they rest in peace! he repeated to himself, and a sudden wave of emotion engulfed him.

So that as the priest raised the wafer and the chalice over the kneeling congregation, then went on to eat of the bread and drink of the wine for the salvation of the soldiers’ souls, it suddenly seemed to the general that he was seeing them, thousand upon thousand of them, their aluminium mess-tins in their hands, queuing up for their evening stew from the big dixies, just at that moment of the day when the sun’s last rays were lighting up their mess-tins and the steel of their helmets with glints of scarlet and eternal light.

And may light eternal shine on them! he breathed between his lips, after he had kneeled down, staring with wild and sombre gaze at the marble flagstones on the floor.

The little bell rang and everyone rose.

Ite, missa est!
the priest’s voice rang out.
Deo gratias!
the deacon added.

People began to move towards the doors. Even from inside the church one could hear the car engines starting up, and as the general emerged through the main door he saw that the diplomats’ cars were already moving off one by one. He walked over to wait for a bus at the stop just outside the church. Once in the bus he remained standing at the back of the vehicle, near the big rear window.

“Tickets, comrades,” the conductress cried.

He understood the word for ticket and realized that of course he would have to buy one. He pulled a hundred-lek note out of his pocket and held it out to her.

“Haven’t you anything smaller?”

Sensing what she said rather than actually understanding it he shook his head.

“It’s three leks,” the conductress said, and held up three fingers in front of his face. “Haven’t you got three leks in coins?”

The general once more shook his head apologetically.

“He is a foreigner, comrade,” a tall youth with an oddly sedate way of speaking said to the conductress.

“So it seems,” she answered, and began counting out change.

“He must be an Albanian just back from America,” an old man sitting behind the conductress broke in. “There are some that forget our language completely over there.”

“No, grandad, he’s a foreigner, I’m sure of that,” the sedate-voiced youth repeated.

“Oh no,” the old man insisted, “you mark my words, he’s an Albanian just come home again. I can recognize them at a glance, I tell you.”

The general sensed that they must be discussing him and supposed that he had been taken for an American.

The pair continued to argue in front of his face, and went so far as to point at the general without the smallest inhibition.

My goodness, he thought, even if I were a shade they ought to show me a little more respect!

Suddenly the idea that they and he belonged to utterly different worlds, with no point of contact be it physical or mental, and that they lived in complete mutual ignorance, froze him to the marrow.

When the bus stopped at the State Bank and the passengers alighted, he caught the old man’s eye. “O.K.” the old man said to him with a smile of self-satisfaction on his face before he disappeared.

The general made his way through the crowd of country people who were waiting for their bus and then turned into the main boulevard.

The pavements along Dibër Street were packed with people, particularly outside the buffet-bars and the People’s Department Store. As he walked past the latter he suddenly had the idea of buying a souvenir. He stopped and looked in the windows for a moment, then walked in. There were a number of little figures of all kinds on display along the counters and he examined them slowly one by one. He had always had a weakness for such objects - most of them figurines in various national costumes.

What would our soldiers leaving Albania have chosen? he wondered. All soldiers abroad seem to buy exactly the same knick-knack to bring back. Their telegrams are identical too. And even their letters as near as damn it.

Suddenly the gnome began playing its drum again inside his skull; slowly at first, then faster, faster, ever faster. Only now he wasn’t sitting inside his head cross-legged, he was standing up, black and white and shining, in his red tunic with its black edging, his tall cap on his head. And there he was at the same time inside the glass display counter, standing beating his drum, neatly fashioned out of gleaming porcelain, and the general couldn’t tear his eyes away. He pointed to it.

“The mountain peasant with the drum?” the assistant asked. The general nodded.

The girl removed the figure from the counter, wrapped it up and handed it to him.

“That will be eighteen leks twenty, please.”

He paid, walked out of the shop and turned up towards the street of the Barricades.

B
OOM, BOOM, TARARABOOM …

“Hello there!”