Three Arched Bridge by Ismaíl Kadaré

been difficult to find anyone more commonplace than he. His appearance, his average height, and his whole life were ordinary to the point of weariness, I could not take in the fact that this extraordinary thing, immurement, had happened to none other than him. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed an aberration. It was more than turning into a leader or a statue* … Everything had gone too far … now he was divided from us by the mortar of legend.
    From a distance, you could see a small gathering of people around the bridge pier. By the first arch. He must be there.
    As I drew closer, I tried, I do not know why, to recall Murrash Zenebisha’s commonplace face. Oh Lord, from this moment 1 could not picture it in my mind at all It swam as if under a film of water, with a broken, uncanny smile.
    The small group of people moved silently to make room for me, Nobody greeted me, They stood like candles, looking strangely small against the background of the bridge. A part of the arch bent heavy and chill above them,
    â€œThere he is,” a quiet voice said to me.
    He was there, white like a mask, spattered with plaster, only his head and neck, and part of his chest. The remainder of his trunk, and his arms and legs, were merged with the wall
    I could not tear my eyes from him. There were traces of fresh mortar everywhere. The wall had been strengthened to contain the sacrifice. (A body walled up in the piers of a bridge weakens the structure, the collector of tales had said.) The bulging wall looked as if it were pregnant. Worse, it looked as if it were in birth pangs.
    The body seemed planted in the stone. His stomach and legs and the main portion of his trunk were rooted deep, and only a small portion of him emerged.
    A wall that demands a human being in its cavity, the collector of customs had said. Foul, sinful visions taunted me. The wall indeed looked pregnant, … But this was a perverse pregnancy…. No baby emerged from it, on the contrary, a human being was swallowed up…. It was worse than perverse. It would have been perverse if, in contrast to a baby who emerges into the light, the man who entered the darkness were to shrink and be reduced to the size of an infant and then to nothing…. But that was not to happen. This was a perversion of everything. It was perversity itself.
    Around me, people’s voices came as if from the next world.
    â€œWhen?” asked the hushed voice of a new arrival.
    â€œJust after midnight.”
    â€œDid he feel much pain?”
    â€œNone at all”
    I heard sobbing close beside me. Then I saw his wife. Her face was swollen with tears, and in her arms she carried a year-old baby, who was trying to nuzzle her breast. Paying no attention to the men standing around, she had uncovered one breast. The breast was swollen with milk, and the nipple occasionally escaped from the baby’s mouth. Her tears fell on her large white breast, and when the nipple missed the child’s mouth, her tears mixed with drops of milk.
    â€œHe was very calm,’ explained one of the count’s scribes, who had apparently come in search of explanations. “He asked about the terms of the agreement one more time, and then …”
    A workman who stood holding a pail near the place of sacrifice splashed the dead man with wet plaster. The plaster trickled down the hair sticking to his brow, gave a sudden gleam to his open eyes, which was quickly quenched, and then patchily smeared his features before coursing down his neck and disappearing into the walk
    â€œWhy are you throwing on plaster?, ’ a nervous voice asked. But no one replied.
    It seemed that they were sprinkling him at intervals, because after emptying its contents over the sacrifice,, the worker went to refill his bucket from a nearby barrel
    His wife’s interrupted sobbing became louder after the sprinkling.
    â€œHe didn’t tell anyone about what he was going to do?”