The General of the Dead Army by Ismaíl Kadaré, Derek Coltman

too, Betty, of course, I’m sorry, my dear. Do you remember that last time he came back from Albania? For those two weeks of leave? Only two weeks and we had to celebrate your marriage in such a rush, because time was so precious. His duties were so important he couldn’t stay away from that accursed country anylonger. Do you remember, Betty?”
    “Yes, mother, how could I forget?”
    “Do you remember how you cried and cried up on the landing while he was putting on his uniform, how I tried to comfort you and keep myself calm, and then suddenly there was that telephone call? It was from the War Minister. The plane had to take off in half an hour. Our poor darling hurtled down those stairs, barely touching them, kissed us both, and left. Oh, do forgive me,” the old lady said, “I do beg your pardon for pouring it all out like this, but I do feel things so, I always have.”
    During the days that followed they became even better acquainted, and the colonel’s family became part of their group. They played tennis, swam, took boat trips, and went dancing together in the night clubs along the front. The general’s wife didn’t find this new friendship very much to her taste, but as was her custom she kept the fact to herself. Inwardly, however, she was decidedly chagrined to see her husband walking so often with Betty along the water’s edge, and his whole attitude to this woman vexed her.
    “I should very much like to know what you two find to talk about all the time you’re together,” she remarked one day.
    “About the colonel,” he answered. “What else?”
    “Oh, come! I’m prepared to accept that his old mother talks about him non-stop all day, but that his widow has no other subject of conversation either, well … “
    “That’s not very nice of you,” he interrupted her. “These people are in distress and they’ve asked me to help them. And after all, it’s the least I can do to show willing.”
    “Show willing!”
    “I don’t follow your sarcasm. Indeed I find it quite out of order, in the circumstances, with death stalking the whole time.”
    “All right, all right. Such exaggerated attachment to a husband who’s been dead twenty years, and with whom she lived for only two weeks, can be explained in only one way.”
    “Oh, I know what you’re going to tell me: the old countess and her fortune, what she has to leave. Well, that’s enough. I don’t want to listen to gossip of this kind. It is my duty to bring back the colonel’s remains. And that’s all there is to be said about it.”
    Then Betty suddenly disappeared for two days, and when she returned the general noticed a certain coldness towards him combined with a great lassitude.
    “Where have you been?” he asked her when he met her outside the hotel.
    She was in a bathing costume and wearing sunglasses that masked her face. He could not prevent himself noticing that she had blushed under her tan as she spoke the name of the chaplain.
    She told him that her mother-in-law had begged her to go immediately to the priest, on her behalf, and ask him to do his best in helping to find her son, that she had finally succeeded in locating him, that her mother-in-law’s mind was now at rest, etc…
    But he wasn’t listening to her. He was gazing in a sensual stupor at her scantily covered body, and it was then that he wondered for the first time what her relationship with the priest really was.
    Then the days sped by, soaked with sunlight. The colonel’s old mother continued to hold forth on the virtues of her son - who according to her had been the entire War Office’s blue-eyed boy - and on the antiquity of her family. Betty, meanwhile, would disappear from the beach from time to time; and when she came back - always with that same tired and distant air - the general always asked himself the same question. Their group would spend the whole afternoon on the hotel’s main terrace. A film star, the group’s latest addition, said to