Three Arched Bridge Read Online Free PDF Page B

packed with mud, which so dirtied them that they resembled ghosts. Now not only the river but the whole surrounding area became smeared with mud. Its traces extended as far as the main road, or even farther still, as far as the Inn of the Two Roberts,
    The lugubrious, unsociable master-in-chief wandered to and fro amid the tumult of the building site. To protect himself from the sun, he had placed on his head not a straw hat, like the rest of the world, but a visor that only shielded his eyes. Sometimes, against the general muddiness, the rays of the evening sun seemed to strike devilish sparks from his reddish poll People no longer said he was mad; now he was the sole sane exception in the crowd of strangers, and the question was whether he would be able to keep this demented throng in harness.
    As time passed, the river became an eyesore. It looked like a squashed eel, and you could almost imagine that it would shortly begin to stink. Regardless of all the damage it had caused, people began to feel pity for it.
    Old Ajkuna wept to see it. “How could they kill the river?” she cried. “How could they cut it up, oy, oy!,’ She wept for it as if it had been a living person. “Killed in its sleep, poor creature! Caught defenseless and cut to pieces, oy oy!”
    She climbed down into the mud to seek out the master-in-chief. “The day will come when the river takes its revenge,” she muttered, “It will fill with water and be strong again. It will swell and roar. And where will you hide then? Where?”
    Whenever she thought she spied the builder in the distance, she would raise her stick threateningly: “Where will you hide then, Antichrist!”

15
    W HILE THEY WERE STILL DIGGING THE PITS for the foundations of the bridge piers, our liege lord, the count of the Gjikas, received a request for his daughter’s hand in marriage, The request was very unusual It came from none of the Albanian or European dukes, barons, and princes, as often happened, but from an unexpected direction whence betrothals and wedding guests had never come, the Turkish state. The governor of one of the empire’s border provinces asked for the count’s daughter for his son Abdullah (what a terrible name!). The proposal, as the envoys said, was made with the knowledge of the sultan, so it was not difficult to realize that this was a political match. Our liege lord, Stres Gjikondi, had been aloof toward his new neighbors, and now they were trying to mollify him. -
    For longer than people could remember, betrothals had been like a calming oil poured on the sea of hostilities and divisions among the nobles of Arberia, Of course these things pacified matters for a time, but not for long. If there was a recent reason for a coolness, people’s minds worried at it until the day of the hated announcement: “We have important business,” After that, people knew what came: a fracas.
    A year ago the count of Kashnjet had asked for the hand of our liege lord’s only daughter, and immediately afterward so had the duke of the Gjin family, or Dukagjin as he is called for short, whose arms carry a single-headed white eagle, But our liege lord did not grant his daughter to her first suitor for reasons known only to himself, while the second withdrew his suit after an ambush at the Poplar Copse by unknown persons, doubtless suborned precisely for this task by those old enemies of our count, the Skuraj family, whose princely arms carry in the center a wolf with bared teeth.
    Quarrels among the Albanian princes and lords have been hopelessly frequent for the last hundred years. The Balsha family, princes of the north, whose arms carry a six-pointed white star and who in recent years have been in continual financial straits, could seldom agree with the proud Topia family, who have pretensions to the throne of all Arberia. Nor have the Balshas been on good terms with the counts of Myzeqe, the Muzakas, who have