THE GENERAL SLEPT ONLY FITFULLY FOR THE FEW HOURS THAT
remained before morning.
He was wakened by the voices of the workmen as they wrenched the pegs of their tent out of the frozen ground. Then they threw it, soaking wet, into the lorry, on top of the big packing cases, beside their shovels and picks.
The two drivers had started their engines and were run ning them to warm them up.
The priest was already up and making coffee. He sat listening to the pleasant murmur of the burner as the little flickering flame threw its uncertain glow up into his face. The pale light of dawn was visible through the open flap of the tent.
The general felt a wave of homesickness. He wished the priest good morning.
'Good morning,' the priest replied. 'Did you sleep well?' 'No, not well. It was very cold. Especially from midnight on.'
'I was shivering too. Would you like some coffee?' 'Please.'
The priest poured the coffee into the cups. The general got up and dressed.
A quarter of an hour later they had left their tent and the workmen were busy striking it. The rain had stopped, but the ground was still sodden, and the opened graves down in the big cemetery half filled with water. The youngest workman, the one with the roll-necked sweater, tossed the empty disinfectant sprays into the back of the lorry.
'It's as though it will never rain again,' the priest said when they were settled in the car.
To the east, behind the high clouds, the sun was rising above the horizon, an alternately wan and dazzling blur of light.
The general fell into a doze.
They had been driving for more than two hours when the driver braked suddenly.
The general wiped the mist from his window and looked out. Right in the middle of the road, looking very small in his tight black jacket, stood a peasant boy signalling to them to stop. The lorry squealed to a halt only a few yards behind the car.
The driver stuck his head out of the window.
'We haven't any room. Sorry, lad!' he shouted.
But the boy gabbled something in reply and indicated the side of the road with one hand.
'Who is that man?' the priest asked.
The general wound down his window to see better. On the side of the road, a black cape over his shoulders, an old peasant was seated on a big stone. He had a big handkerchief spread out on his knees and was eating a breakfast of maize bread, cheese, and onions. While the boy was chattering away to the driver, the old man was observing the two vehicles with curious eyes. In front of him, on the side of the road, lay a coffin. A little way away a mud-caked donkey was standing motionless on the verge.
'What's happening?' the general asked.
'How do I know?' the priest answered. 'We shall find out eventually.'
The expert had got out of the car and was talking to the two peasants. The old man shook the crumbs from his hand kerchief and pulled himself to his feet. The expert came over to the car.
'Well?' the general asked.
'They have the remains of a soldier.' 'One of ours?'
'Yes,' the expert said. And then, gesturing towards the coffin:
'He was working for this peasant when he was killed.'
The general opened his door and got out of the car. The priest followed and went over to the old peasant.
'I didn't quite follow,' he said.
'The soldier was working for this old man,' the expert repeated. 'He's a miller, and the soldier was employed in his mill. That's where he was killed.'
'Ah!' the priest said. 'Was he a deserter? Or did he only go to work for him after our capitulation? There were a great many cases like that.'
The expert questioned the peasant anew, then came back:
'Apparently he was a deserter.'
The general, who had missed these last exchanges, now joined them, walking very slowly and wearing a grave expression. It was the attitude he always adopted when in the presence of the Albanian peasants.
'Now what is all this about?' he asked.
Those cold, depressing days were behind him, the tent pitched among the mountains was a thing of the past, and now that he had a clean uniform on he had regained a sense of his own importance.
The old man's face was cadaverous, his eyes grey and tired. Unhurriedly, he took out his tobacco pouch, filled his pipe, then lit it from his lighter. The general let his eyes rest on the old man's fingers, as brown and dry as tinder, and his big, still powerful hands. The boy just stood there star ing, eyes wide with wonder at the sight of the general in uniform.
'We have waited here three hours,' the old man said. 'We set out before dawn. They told me yesterday you would come this way, so I decided to come here with my grandson and wait. We stopped many cars and lorries before yours came; but all the men in them said they weren't carrying any dead men. Two of them even thought I was mad.'
'Was it you who buried him?' the general asked.
'Yes,' the old man said. 'Who else could have done? He lived with us.'
'Ah, so he lived with you. But I should like to know, if possible, what sort of agreement you had come to with him. What could this soldier from a great regular army be doing with you, I mean how was it possible that he remained in your house of his own free will and found the life accept able? You are a peasant, are you not?'
The expert translated, simplifying the general's words.
The peasant removed the pipe from between his lips and looked the general in the eyes.
'He was my labourer. Everyone will tell you that.'
The general scowled and reddened at this insult. It was only now that he understood what had happened all those years ago. He gave the miller a sidelong glance as though to say: 'Ah yes, it's easy for you to talk like that now, old peasant!' and nervously lit a cigarette, snapping two or three matches in the process.
'The man was one of those deserters who worked on Albanian farms,' the priest explained.
The general grimaced with disgust at the word 'deserter'.
He was very angry.
'What was his name?' the expert asked the miller.
'I've no idea,' came the answer. 'We all just called him "Soldier". And that was all the name he ever had here.'
'When did you dig him up?' the expert asked.
'The day before yesterday,' the old man answered. 'I heard that someone was coming round to collect them all so I decided to dig him up and deliver him to you. Better the poor fellow should rest his bones at home, I said to myself.'
'Did you find a small round medallion with the body?' 'A medal?' the old miller asked in astonishment. 'Oh, he wasn't the kind for winning medals. Work now, there he hadn't his equal. But war, no, that wasn't something he was good at.'
'No, grandad, not a medal,' the expert interrupted him with a smile, 'a medallion! Something that looks like a coin, but with the image of the Virgin Mary on it.'
The peasant shrugged.
'No, I didn't find anything. I picked up his bones one by one, but I didn't find anything like that.'
'You did well,' the priest told him. 'You did your duty as a good Christian.'
'And who else was there to do it?' the old man said. 'Of course it was my duty to do it.'
'And we thank you for it,' the priest said, 'in the name of the soldier's mother.'
The old man moved closer to the priest, who seemed to
him to be an affable and kindly person, and began talking to him directly, gesturing from time to time towards the crudely fashioned coffin of unseasoned oak.
'I made it yesterday,' he said, 'and this morning, before dawn, the boy and I started out. We had a bad time of it getting across onto the main road by the mill. There was mud up to our knees. The donkey fell twice. Just look at the mess he's got himself in! And it wasn't easy to get him on his feet again.'
The priest listened to him attentively.
'And the soldier, was it you who killed him?' he asked suddenly in a quiet voice, fixing him with his eyes.
The old peasant made a gesture of stupefaction and re moved his pipe from his mouth. Then he began to laugh.
'Are you quite right in the head? Why ever should I have killed him?'
The priest smiled too, with the air of someone saying: 'These things can happen, you know.'
The miller gave him a brief account of how the deserter had been killed by soldiers of the 'Blue Battalion' during a reprisal raid in September 1943. Then, presumably still thinking of the priest's questions, he grew pensive.
'What are they saying, my boy?' he asked the expert in a low voice.
'They are foreigners, grandad, they have different ways from us.'
'You go to so much trouble, you come so far, and .. .' 'Now, now, old father, don't you let them upset you,' one
of the workmen who had climbed down to load the coffin onto the lorry said. 'We're going to have to say goodbye to you now. We have to be on our way.'
As the old man was talking to the expert and the work men were lifting the coffin onto the lorry, the general, who was just about to climb back into the car, suddenly turned back.
'Is he claiming compensation?' he asked the expert. The expert reddened.
'No!'
'He has a perfect right to do so. We are prepared to pay him what he asks.'
'But he hasn't asked for anything!'
The general, thinking he had found a way of avenging himself to some extent for the affront he had received from the old peasant, insisted.
'All the same, tell him that we intend to remunerate him.' The expert hesitated.
'We should like to compensate you for your trouble,' the priest told the miller in silky tones. 'What surn would satisfy you?'
The miller scowled and lifted his head. 'I don't want anything,' he said curtly.
'But after all, you have gone to a fair amount of trouble, taken up valuable time, used a certain amount of raw material .. .'
'Nothing,' the peasant said again.
'We pay well,' the general interrupted.
'God be praised, I am not in need,' the miller said.
'But you provided this soldier with board and lodging for a considerable period. Perhaps we could make out a bill.'
The old man shook his pipe clean.
'I am a debtor too,' he said. 'I wasn't able to pay him his last wages. Perhaps you would like me to give them to you!'
And turning his back on them the old miller walked back to his donkey.
As the car was about to move off the boy murmured
something in the old man's ear and the latter began waving his hand towards them.
'Wait, devils, I nearly forgot! I have something else for
you.' And he thrust his hand under his cloak.
'He's going to ask for money after all,' the general said when he saw the old man wave. 'You see! I knew it!'
'What is it?' the expert asked, as he got out of the car.
'A book,' the old man said. 'He wrote in it sometimes.
Here, take it!'
The expert stretched out his hand and took the book. It was an ordinary school exercise book filled with small, neat writing.
'His last wishes, no doubt,' the old man said, 'otherwise I wouldn't have taken the trouble to bring it to you. Who knows what the poor fellow scribbled in it. Perhaps he has left his goats and sheep to someone. I didn't like to ask him about that. But even if he'd had any animals, the wolves Will certainly have eaten them all by now.'
'Thank you,' the expert said. 'It will almost certainly give us his name.'
'We all called him "Soldier",' the old man said. 'No one ever thought to ask him what his name was. Farewell. God be with you on your journey.'
'Another diary!' the general said, flicking through the exercise book the expert had handed to him. 'How many is that we've found?'
'This is the sixth,' the priest said.
The car moved off, followed by the lorry, and the general, turning round, saw the old countryman stand for a moment without moving, looking after them, then turn in the oppo site direction, strike his donkey on the rump, and set off home again with his grandson by his side.