Read Online Broken April by Ismaíl Kadaré - Free Book Online Page A

article was rather vague. You could not tell whether the author, a certain A.G. (could that be their acquaintance,Adrian Guma?) was in favor of the trip or was being slightly ironic about it.
    She herself, when her fiance had announced it to her two weeks before the wedding, had thought the idea pretty bizarre. Don’t be surprised at anything, her friends had told her. If you marry a man who’s a bit odd, you have to expect surprises. But at bottom we have to say you’re very lucky.
    And in fact she was happy. During the last days before the wedding, in the half-fashionable, half-artistic circles of Tirana, people talked about nothing but their honeymoon trip. Her friends envied her and told her: You’ll be escaping the world of reality for the world of legend, literally the world of epic that scarcely exists anymore. And they would go on talking about fairies, mountain nymphs, bards, the last Homeric hymns in the world, and the
Kanun
, terrifying but so majestic. Others shrugged their shoulders at all this enthusiasm, hinting discreetly at their astonishment, which was aroused particularly by the question of comfort, the more so since this was a honeymoon trip, something that called for certain conveniences, whereas, in the mountains the weather was still quite cold, and those epic
kullas
were of stone. On the other hand, there were others—few in number—who listened to all those opinions with a rather amused air, as if to say, “Right, go on up north among the mountain nymphs. It will do both of you good, and especially Bessian.”
    And now they were heading towards the grim Northern Plateau. This
Rrafsh
, about which she had read and heard so much during her studies at the institute for young ladies named “The Queen Mother,” and especially later during her engagement to Bessian, attracted her and alarmed herat the same time. In fact, what she had read and heard on the subject, and even Bessian’s own writings had not given her any idea of what life was really like up there in the highlands amidst the never-ending mists. It seemed to her that everything people said about the High Plateau took on at once an ambiguous, nebulous character. Bessian Vorpsi had written half-tragic, half-philosophical sketches about the North, to which the press had responded in a rather halfway fashion too: some reviewers had hailed the pieces as jewels of the first water, and others had criticized them as lacking in realism. On a number of occasions it had occurred to Diana that if her husband had decided to undertake this rather strange tour, it was not so much to show her what was so remarkable about the North as to settle something that he felt within him. But each time she had given up the idea, thinking that if that was his object he could have taken that trip long ago, and alone at that.
    She was watching him now, and from the way his set jaw made his cheekbones more prominent, and the way he stared through the carriage windows, she felt that he was holding back his impatience—which she found quite understandable. He was certainly telling himself that this part-imaginary, part-epic world that he talked about for days on end was taking its time about showing itself. Outside, on either side of the carriage, the endless wasteland unfolded, without a sign of human presence, its countless grey rocks watered by the dullest downpour in the world. He’s afraid that I’ll be disappointed, she thought, and several times she was on the point of saying, “Don’t worry, Bessian, we’ve only been travelling an hour, and I’m not so impatient or so naive as to think that all the wonders of the North are going to appear beforeour eyes at once.” But she did not say those words; unselfconsciously, she rested her head on his shoulder. She knew that the gesture was more reassuring than any words, and she stayed a long time like that, looking out of the corner of her eye at her