The General of the Dead Army Read Online Free PDF Page A

the little group of bonehunters arrived. Having wandered into the museum quite by chance, the expert had of course recognized the skeleton immediately for what it was by the regulation medallion. (In their article, the local archaeologists were advancing two possible hypotheses on the origin of this object: it was, they said, either a coin or a personal adornment dating from Roman times.) But the expert’s visit to the museum put an end to all such conjectures. Only a single point remained to be elucidated: how had the soldier managed to find his way into the impenetrable labyrinth beneath the citadel, and why?
    He asked the priest, but he had no clear recollection of the episode.
    “You’re right,” said the general. “One remembers so many stories, and many of them are strangely similar, just as the names are. Really the lists are too long, and sometimes I feel I don’t remember a thing.”
    “He was just a soldier, no different from any of the others,” the priest said.
    “What is the good of all these names, all these cards covered in details and descriptions?” the general said. “When all is said and done, can a pile of bones still have a name?”
    The priest shook his head as though to signify: There is nothing we can do. That is the way it is!
    “They should all have the same name, just as they all wear the same medallion round their necks,” the general went on. The priest did not reply.
    The sounds of the band were still reaching them from the basement. The general continued to chain-smoke.
    “It’s horrible, the number of our men they managed to kill,” he said as though in a dream. “It is indeed.”
    “But we killed a lot of theirs too.”
    The priest remained silent.
    “Yes, we certainly killed a lot of theirs,” the general said again. “You see their graves everywhere too. It would have been depressing and humiliating to see nothing but lonely cemeteries filled with our own soldiers everywhere.”
    The priest made a movement of the head, but without making it clear whether he was agreeing with the general or not.
    “A meagre consolation,” the general added.
    Once again the priest made that movement of the head that seemed to say: There’s nothing we can do about it.
    “What do you mean?” the general said. “Do you think their graves are a consolation or not?”
    The priest spread out his hands.
    “I am a man of religion. I cannot approve of homicide.”
    “Ah!” the general said.
    The engaged couple had got to their feet and were leaving the lounge.
    “We fought one another like wild beasts,” the general went on. “Those devils really were savage fighters.”
    “There’s a reason for that,” the priest said. “It’s not a matter of conscious courage with them. It’s ingrained in their psychology.”
    “I don’t understand you,” the general said.
    “There’s nothing difficult about it,” the priest continued. “In war, some are guided by their reason, however reliable or unstable it happens to be, others follow their instincts.”
    “Yes!”
    “The Albanians are a rough and backward people. Almost as soon as they are born someone puts a gun into their cradle, so that it shall become an integral part of their existence.”
    “Yes, you can see that,” the general said. “They even hold their umbrellas as though they were guns.”
    “And by becoming from earliest childhood an ingredient of their very being,” the priest went on, “a fundamental constituent of their lives, the gun has exercised a direct influence on the Albanians’ psychological development.”
    “How interesting.”
    “But if you cultivate what amounts to a sort of religion around any object, then naturally you feel a desire to use it. And what is the best use to which you can put a gun?”
    “Killing, of course,” the general said.
    “Exactly. And the Albanians have always had a taste for killing or getting themselves killed. Whenever they haven’t been able to find an enemy to fight