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

him:
    “You know, general, there is no one on this beach quite so strange as you. There is a veil of mystery all around you, and when I think that after these splendid days spent here basking in the sun you are going off to hunt for dead bodies over there, in Albania, I feel a shiver of horror. You remind me of the hero in that ballad by the German poet - his name escapes me at the moment but we had to study him at school. Yes, you’re just like him, the hero who rose up out of his tomb to ride through the moonlight. I feel sometimes that you are going to come knocking at my window in the night. Oh! What a terrifying thought!”
    The general laughed obediently, his mind not really there, while his companions all gazed in silent wonder at the setting sun. Except for the colonel’s mother, who must needs refer everything to her son and therefore remarked:
    “Oh, how he would have loved this. He was so sensitive to beauty of every kind!” And she wiped away a tear with her handkerchief.
    Betty was still as seductive and as enigmatic as ever, the sky still as blue - only, from time to time, here and there, the horizon was beginning to be darkened by black clouds, heavy with rain, sailing slowly eastwards, towards the Albanian coast….
    The general got to his feet. There was no one else in the tent.
    The noise of rain on canvas had stopped. Presumably work had begun again. He stepped outside. The mist, still as thick as ever, lay in a blanket over the scree. For a moment he followed the low flight of the sparrows, then it seemed to him that the blanket of mist was moving north-east, towards where the monument should be rising, and the telephone poles, with their wires stretched taut in space.

9
    T HE PRIEST LIT THE PARAFFIN LAMP and placed it on the small table. His shadow and that of his companion wavered, bent in the middle, against the sloping sides of the tent.
    “Brrr! How cold it is!” the general said. “With this damned humidity it soaks right into your bones.”
    The priest began opening a tin. “We shall last out till tomorrow, I expect.”
    “Well, I wish I was already in tomorrow, that’s all I can say. So that we could get the hell out of here. I’ve had enough of living like a savage. And I need a bath.”
    “It might be bearable without the cold.”
    “It’s a job that should have been done in summer,” the general said. Though in fact, he thought to himself, there was no possibility of that: in spite of everything he found some relief in venting his ill-temper, so it seemed to him.
    “It’s true it’s hardly the best of weather for such an undertaking,” the priest said. “The negotiations went on too long at the time. The government always has its reasons …”
    “Needs must when the devil drives would be nearer the mark, I’d say!”
    The general had unfolded their large-scale map of the cemetery and was pencilling in marks of some sort on it.
    “And those other two, where are they, I wonder?”
    “Perhaps they’re still back there digging up that football field where we last sawthem.”
    “Well, their task is no easier than ours. And they do seem to be very badly organized.”
    “Whereas with us everything goes like clockwork. We are the most up-to-date grave-diggers in the world.” The priest didn’t reply.
    “Though admittedly we are also very dirty ones,” the general added.
    Outside there came the sound of a song through the darkness.
    Beginning quietly, supported by deep, dark-toned voices, it rose steadily in pitch, increased in volume, and finally hurled itself against their tent in a fierce onslaught, just as the rain and the wind were perpetually doing all through those autumn nights.
    And it was almost as though the canvas, physically affected by the weight of sound, had quivered as the song struck.
    “The workmen are singing,” the general said, raising his eyes from the map.
    They both listened for a moment.
    “It is a very common custom among the Albanians of