Three Arched Bridge Read Online Free PDF Page A

never looked so disconsolate,

11
    T HE RAFT CONTINUED to punt men and livestock across the Ujana e Keqe. I do not know why, but after the decision to build the bridge, I began to notice what sort of traffic went to and fro across the river by raft. On the last Saturday in March, I stood watching near the old jetty almost all day. The weather was cold, with a thin rain that erased from the sandbank the final traces of the departed designer’s scrawls. People sat miserably on the raft, huddled against the cold, trying to turn their backs to the bitter wind. The expressions on their pinched faces gave little clue as to why they were crossing the river. Maybe they were traveling because of illness, or for visits, or they might just be on their way to the bank, or in mourning. Almost half the faces among them were familiar, while the others were utter strangers, and it was quite useless to attempt to discover who they might be. A monk’s habit or the cloak of a simple icon seller might conceal the Venetian consul on a secret mission to who knew where. Such things had happened.

12
    T HREE DAYS LATER I watched the raft again from the porch of the presbytery, Only two goatherds with their animals were crossing. The raft made the journey several times until it had carried the entire small herd to the opposite bank, The herdsmen were wrapped in cloaks like those of all common shepherds, but their tall pointed caps made them look somehow frightening from a distance.
    Another day at dawn,1 heard through my sleep some distant voices, apparently calling for help, and shouting “Ujk, ujk” — “Wolf, wolf.” I leaped out of bed and listened hard. They were really protracted shouts of Uk, oh U-u-uk.” I went out to the porch, and in the dim dawn light 1 made out four or five people on the opposite bank with a kind of black chest in their midst. They were calling the ferryman. Their shouts, stretching like a film over the swollen waters of the river, hardly reached me. It was a cold, bleak morning, and who knows what anxiety had made them set out on their road before dawn. “Uk, oh
    U-u-uk,” they called to the ferryman, holding their hands to their mouths like the bells of trumpets.
    Finally I saw Uk stagger down to the bank in his stooped fashion, no doubt muttering curses under his breath at these unknown travelers, the raft, the river, and himself.
    When the raft drew near the opposite bank and the travelers boarded, I saw that the black object was nothing less than a coffin, which they carefully lifted onto the planks of the raft,
    I went back to bed to rest a while longer, but sleep eluded me.

13
    T HE FIRST CONTINGENT of men and laden mules arrived at midday on the seventeenth of April. Mad Gjelosh strode out in front of the muleteers, gesticulating as if pounding a drum and puffing out his cheeks, drunk with joy.
    The men and mules halted on the riverbank, just next to the designer’s empty hut. There, in the wasteland among the wild burdocs, they started unloading. This took all day. By late afternoon the riverbank was unrecognizable. It was a complete jumble; people scurried about, speaking a language like a thicket of brambles, amid the piles of planks, ladders, creeperlike ropes, stakes, cleats, and implements of every kind. There was so much hubbub that even Gjelosh was taken aback, and I rather suspect that his initial joy was dampened.
    Late that evenings the new arrivals began building sheds by torchlight. That night some of them slept in the open, if such perpetual restlessness could be called sleep. They kept wandering, who knows why, from the bushes to the riverbank, calling to each other with loud voices and seeming to sing, weep, or groan in their sleep. They went
boo, boo
like owls, and threw up exactly over the spot where the toads were. Torches glimmering here and there gave everything the appearance of a nightmare. In fact, the anxiety and sleeplessness they brought with