Three Arched Bridge by Ismaíl Kadaré

like marks made by hammers, picks, or crowbars, he no doubt shivered in terror like the rest.

24
    T HE NEWS that the bridge had been damaged led folk to appear on both banks of the Ujana, just as in the days after the flood, when everybody hurried to collect tree stumps for firewood.
    The surface of the waters was now a blank. People watched for hours on end, and there were those who swore that they had discerned beneath the waves, if not naiads themselves, at least their tresses or their reflections. They then recalled the wandering bards, remembered their clothes and faces, and especially strove to recall the verses of their ballads, distorting their rhymes, as when the wind bends the tops of reeds.
    â€œWho would have thought their songs would come true?” they said thoughtfully. “They weren’t singers, they were wizards.”
    The Ujana e Keqe meanwhile flowed on obliviously. Its banks had been damaged and torn since its unsuccessful onslaught, so that in places it resembled a gully, but it had not hung back. It had finally succeeded in crippling the bridge.
    At night, the bridge lifted blackly over the river the solitary span that had been so cruelly wounded. From a distance the mortar and fresh lime of the repaired patches resembled rags tied around a broken limb. With its injured spine, the bridge looked frightening.

25
    J UST AT THIS TIME, for two successive nights, a strange monk named Brockhardt stayed in our presbytery on his way back to Europe from Byzantium’ where he had been sent on his country’s service,
    I was reading in the last light of the fading day when they came to me and said that a person resembling a monk had crossed the river on the last raft and was asking for something in an incomprehensible tongue, I told them to bring him to me.
    He was very sharp-featured, long-limbed, and unbelievably dust-covered*
    â€œI have never seen such a long highway,” he said, pointing to himself with his finger^ as if his journey weighed on his body like a yoke. “And almost the whole of it under repair,”
    I studied his muddied appearance with some surprise and hastened to explain.
    â€œIt is the old Via Egnatia, which a road company is restoring,” I said. He nodded and removed his cloak, shaking dust everywhere, “The very same people as are building the stone bridge,”
    â€œYes,” he said, “I saw it as I arrived.”
    He looked even taller without his cloak, His limbs were so scrawny that if he had crossed those arms of skin and bone, he would have resembled a warning of mortal danger.
    â€œOne fork of the road takes you to the military base at Vlore, doesn’t it?” he said.
    He must be a spy, I thought.
    â€œYes,” I replied.
    After all, what did it matter to me if he asked about the Vloré base? It belonged to somebody else now.
    I invited him to sit down on the soft rug by the fire and laid the small table.
    â€œSit down, and we will eat. You must be hungry.”
    1 uttered these words in an unsteady voice, as if worried that I would find it impossible to fill all that boniness with food. As if reading my mind, he grinned from ear to ear and said:
    â€œI am a guest. The Slavs say
gost’s
and have derived this from the English word
ghost.”
He smiled. “But like every soul alive, I need meat, ha-ha-ha!”
    He laughed in a way that could not fail to look frightening. I tried not to look at his Adam’s apple, whose movements seemed about to cut his throat.
    â€œEat as if in your own home,” I said.
    He went on chuckling for a while, not lifting his eyes from the table. The thought that I had the opportunity of spending the evening with one who knew something about the study of languages gave me a thrill of pleasure.
    â€œAnd what news is there?”1 asked, saving the subject of languages for later.
    He spread his arms, as if to say, Nothing out of the ordinary.
    â€œIn Europe, you know, war has