The Traitor's Niche. Ismail Kadare
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and thrashed, groaned and fought for breath as they grappled with the void of the night. The wheels of a carriage were heard far away, and someone whispered, “Ali Pasha’s head has left.” In one of the infantrymen’s tents, a soldier moaned in his sleep: “Put the head back on, for God’s sake, put the head back on, and stop all this.” One of his neighbors whispered to a comrade alongside, “I’ve heard that in a remote village of Trebizond there’s an old barber-surgeon who can fix a severed head. I wrote his name on a bit of paper and stuck it in my army card.” His friend listened in silence, and then in horror said, “No, no! That would be too much, if they came back with their heads stuck on, crooked, any old how, in some botched job, and . . .” “What?” asked his friend. But the other soldier had fallen back to sleep. “With heads stuck on crooked,” his comrade repeated. Crooked? Why crooked, for God’s sake?
The distant sound of wheels reached Hurshid Pasha’s ears. He’s gone, he thought. Wrapping his shoulders in a woollen blanket, he closed his eyes for the tenth time, but still he couldn’t sleep. He felt a constant pressure in his temples. The hissing wind, racing low over the surface of the land, seemed to penetrate his skull. The head has set off for Asia, he thought, but the body remains in Europe. His imagination conjured up some sticky, ectoplasmic creature, pulled by both continents, endlessly lengthening and becoming thinner and more transparent, as if at any moment it might turn into some ethereal substance, something between a cloud and the tail of a comet.
The carriage is heading for Asia, he thought wearily. He is stretching, changing his shape continually, wrapping himself around me. Lying down, Hurshid Pasha felt weak. He propped himself up on his elbow. The thought swept through him, sometimes clearly, sometimes obscurely, that his glory would rise above the other man’s ruin. Ali Pasha had been above him for so long, like rolling thunder. Now, under the earth, he would be like some mute crevasse opened by an earthquake. Enough, he said to himself. He has gone. I am still here. It was simple. And indeed for a few moments his mind was clear. But then an old, forgotten phrase came to him from somewhere: “spurned by the grave.” So such horrors had been known before.
This thought calmed him a little, and his mind drifted, but then it occurred to him that Ali Pasha would have two graves. Two graves, he repeated to himself. With his entire being, he suddenly yearned for a single grave for himself. He longed for rest, and almost groaned audibly. Wrapping himself again in his woollen blanket, he drowsed for a few moments. He was lying down, at the center of the earth, whole and entire . . . while nearby him were muffled voices. There were plains, with gentle hills, like dough, and apparently a quarrel among them . . . “grr grr . . . give me the head . . . you take the body . . . grr grr . . .” It was Europe and Asia, quarreling over him . . .
He woke several times during the night. Once his mind remained empty. Another time he asked himself softly, oh God, why aren’t things simpler? Towards midnight he started from sleep again. Where am I? he wondered, and then remembered what had happened. I won, he thought drowsily, and huddled deeper in his blanket. It’s midnight . . . Tundj Hata was now a black cat with a fish head between his teeth, racing through a landscape of darkness and confusion. Run with that curious fish, Hurshid Pasha thought, and immediately fell asleep.
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