The File on H. by Ismaíl Kadaré Page B

fitful sleep of the ground-floor guests had followed the two of them upstairs. Tomorrow, he thought — as if he needed to fasten his mind on something clearer and more logical in order to dispel a profound sense of fear caused by he knew not what — tomorrow we’ll have our work cut out! He wrapped himself in his blanket and gave a deep sigh.
    Bill woke several times in the night, thinking it was dawn, but each time sunrise seemed to be ever further off. When finally he woke up properly, it was quite late.
    Going downstairs, the Irishmen discovered with surprise that the main quarters of the inn were entirely deserted.
    â€œThey’ve gone,” Shtjefen said when he noticed their amazement. “Highland folk get up very early.” Through the open door you could see the dark, rain-heavy sky.
    "And just think." the innkeeper continued, “they’re traveling in that weather!”
    The clack of Martin’s clogs could be heard, then the lad himself appeared at the back door, a bucket of water in each hand.
    â€œMorning,” he said.
    â€œGood mornings Martin. Did you have a good night?” asked Max.
    â€œHmm … So-so … I was worried about… about the recorder….”
    â€œWhy so?” Bill queried
    â€œWell, how should I know?” he stammered, “Anything could happen, couldn’t it?”
    Martin’s face looked vaguely worried, and Bill remembered his own bad night and the anxiety that had seemed to rise from below, as if it were coming from another age….
    February 27,
at the Inn of the Bone of the Buffalo
    Today we really began our work on the Homeric enigma
.
    We listened several times to the two poems sung by the rhapsode last night. Each song has about a thousand lines
.
    We compared both of them to the published versions, and as we expected, we found significant variations
.
    The first one tells of the treachery of Ajkuna, wife of the valiant Muj. German
scholars saw her as a kind of Helen of Troy of Albanian epic. Except that her story is enough to make your blood curdle
.
    The other song must be a version of the epic of Zuk the Standard Bearer. It would be hard to think up a more tragic tale. A young woman is in the mountains. looking for her brother, who has been mortally wounded by his enemies. She finds him at last, drowning in his own blood. The wounded man asks for a drink, but there is no spring near at hand, and she is afraid that if she leaves him, she would not find her way back; so he tells her to soak a strip of cloth from her dress in his blood and let it drip as she walks, to mark her route; she follows his advice, but the rain comes and washes away the drops of blood. She loses her way and wanders around the mountains until she is confronted by a crow and a bear. The crow confesses that he has just picked out the eyes of a wounded man, and the bear admits he gobbled up the man’s head; so she flees, screaming, across the fog-enshrouded mountain
.
    â€œHow horrible!” Max exclaimed when he turned off the recording
.
    We spent the rest of the day transcribing this ballad. No doubt we’ll spend more days on it.
    Late February,
at the Inn of the Bone of the Buffalo
    We’re waiting with impatience, not to say anxiety, for the rhapsode to come back
.
    Sometimes we are frightened of burying ourselves in the world of the epic and losing sight of the main aim of our visit We are Homeric scholars. That’s what we keep telling ourselves, every day, reminding ourselves that we came here not to study the Albanians' epic poetry but to try to solve the enigma of Homer
.
    Easier said than done. In spite of ourselves, epic absorbs us. And then we encounter issues that are more tangled than grass roots. For example, we have now identified two other versions of the adventures of Ajkuna, wife of Muj, and they give quite different explanations for what happened to hen It must have been the same with the rape of Helen in