Broken April by Ismaíl Kadaré

it was very near now. The last traveler even stretched his hand in the direction where it was supposed to be.
    â€œWill I get there before nightfall?” Gjorg asked him.
    â€œI think so,” he said. “Just around nightfall.”
    Gjorg set off again. He was sinking with fatigue. Sometimes he was ready to believe that the evening, in delaying, was keeping the
Kulla
far off, and sometimes on the contrary, it was the remoteness of the
Kulla
that kept the evening suspended, without letting it settle on the earth.
    Once he thought he could make out the silhouette of the
Kulla
through the fog, but the dark mass proved to be a convent, like the one he had seen in the morning of that long day. Farther along, he felt once again that he was close to the
Kulla
, and even thought that at last he could see it clearly on the top of a steep hill, but going on he saw that it was not the
Kulla
of Orosh, it was not a building at all, but a mere rag of fog darker than the others.
    When he found himself alone again on the highroad, he felt all hope of ever reaching the castle fail within him. The emptiness of the road on either side seemed emptier still because of the shrubby growth that had sprung up there as if with an evil intention. What is the matter, Gjorg thought. Now, he could see no villages at all, no matter how far back from the road, and the worst of it was his conviction that they would never appear again.
    Walking along, he raised his head from time to time, looking for the
Kulla
on the horizon, and again he thought he saw it, but scarcely believing that he did. From the time of his childhood, he had heard about the princely castlethat had guarded for centuries men’s adherence to the Code, but for all that he did not know what it looked like, nor anything more about it. The people of the Plateau simply called it Orok, and it was impossible to imagine the appearance of the place from their stories. And now that Gjorg caught sight of it in the distance, not believing that it was really the castle, he could not make out its shape. In the fog its silhouette seemed neither high nor low, and sometimes he thought it must be quite spread out and sometimes he thought it a compact mass. Gjorg found that it gave the impression that the road climbed up in switchbacks, and that his changing point of view made the building change continually. But even when he was quite close, he could make out nothing distinctly. He was sure that it must be the castle and he was certain that it was not. At one moment he thought he saw a single roof covering various buildings, and at another, several roofs covering a single building. Its appearance changed as he approached. Now he thought he saw a castle-keep rising amidst a number of structures that seemed to be outbuildings. But when he had walked on a bit farther, the main tower disappeared and he saw only those outbuildings. Then these too began in turn to break up, and when he came closer still, he saw that they were not fortified towers, but dwellings of some kind, and in part not even that but perhaps galleries, more or less abandoned. There was no one about. Did I take the wrong road, he wondered. But just then a man appeared before him.
    â€œThe death tax?” the man asked, glancing surreptitiously at Gjorg’s right sleeve, and without waiting for an answer, he extended his arm towards one of the galleries.
    Gjorg turned in that direction. He felt that his legs would not hold him up. Before him was a wooden door, avery old one. He turned round, as if to ask the man who had spoken to him if he should go in there, but the man was gone. He looked at the door for a moment before making up his mind to knock. The wood was all rotten, bristling with all sorts of nail-heads and bits of iron carelessly hammered in, mostly askew and serving no purpose. All that metal had become one with the ancient wood, like the fingernails of an old man’s hand.
    He started to knock, but he