Summary
Bessian and Diana grow more estranged from one another. They continue their trip around the High Plateau, but rarely speak to each other. Bessian considers ending the trip early, but realizes “that once they went down there would be no chance of a remedy” (169). Diana continues to think about Gjorg, and mourns that his bessa will soon be expiring. Bessian begins to suspect that Diana has fallen in love with Gjorg.
While riding in the carriage, Diana and Bessian come across an old woman squatting on the side of the road. They stop to see if anything is wrong, and she tells them that she has a bad cramp. Bessian offers her a ride to the nearby village in which she lives. She tells them that the village is almost empty because most of the men are cloistered away due to the blood feuds. Several months earlier, the old woman had “buried a nephew, a boy beautiful as an angel” (173). The carriage arrives in the village, and the old woman points to all the kullas and describes the various blood feuds between the local families.
After dropping the woman off, Bessian begins to feel rage at Diana’s distant attitude. In an attempt to improve her mood, he suggests they stay at an inn instead of a kulla. They find a quiet, run-down inn to spend the night, and Bessian feels a sense of relief. They order food from the innkeeper, but neither of them eat anything.
They settle in their room, and decide to visit a nearby lake. After a half-hour carriage ride, they arrive at the lake. They walk along the lakes, and Diana suggests that Bessian should write about the experience when they return to Tirana. She expresses an appreciation for the natural beauty, but Bessian can only think about their room back at the inn.
While exploring the local village, Diana and Bessian encounter a group of people gathered in the village, including Ali Binak and a doctor and a surveyor employed by Binak to help with his dispute resolutions. Binak tells them that he is in the village to resolve a dispute involving the murder of a pregnant woman.
Diana and Bessian then talk to the doctor, who explains that he is hired “to determine the number of the wounds and where they occur” in order to calculate the fines that must be paid by the perpetrator (192). When the doctor declares that “blood has been transformed into merchandise,” Bessian and the doctor begin arguing (194). The doctor chastises Bessian heavily, saying “instead of doing something for these unfortunate mountaineers, you help death, your look for exalted themes, you look here for beauty so as to feed your art” (195).
Suddenly, Bessian realizes that Diana is no longer standing beside him. He begins to look around but cannot find her anywhere. He grows panicked, and begins to fear that she has drowned in the lake. When Bessian walks up to Ali Binak in a crowd of villagers, he is told that “Diana has gone inside the tower of refuge” (197). Bessian tries to run to the tower to remove her, but is restrained by the villagers.
Finally, Diana emerges from the tower and Bessian grabs her and takes her to the carriage. He interrogates her as to why she entered the tower, and she does not respond. He then accuses her of trying to find Gjorg. Night falls as they return to the inn. They stay in their room for the next day, as Bessian wonders “what had they done to her, the half-blind Cyclops murderers in the tower?” (202). On the 17th of April, the day Gjorg’s bessa expires, they load up the carriage and begin their journey back to Tirana.
On the final day of his bessa, Gjorg returns to his village. The bessa is set to expire at noon, and Gjorg is still far from the safety of a tower of refuge near his home. He thinks of his family, and rues the fact that he has become “a man stained with blood” (205). He begins to fear that he is being followed by a member of the Kryeqyqe family so that they can kill him as soon as the bessa expires.
Gjorg comes across a waterfall and it reminds him “of the hair of the beautiful traveler from the capital” (206). Gjorg walks away from the waterfall moments before his bessa expires.
The narrative shifts back to Diana and Bessian, who are leaving the High Plateau in their carriage. Bessian regrets taking her on the honeymoon because he believes that “just one brush with the High Plateau…had been enough to take her away from him” (207). He looks at his watch and sees that it is noon.
With his bessa expired, Gjorg searches for a safe place to spend the night. He reaches a road that is protected by a special bessa and decides to wait there for nightfall. He meets another man whose bessa has expired who is selling a cow before he cloisters himself away in a tower of refuge. The man tells Gjorg that he saw Diana and Bessian’s carriage the day before. Gjorg decides to leave the road protected by the bessa in the hopes of seeing Diana again.
Bessian thinks of his life back in the city. While he feels that “that capital seemed terribly and insipid,” he concludes that “he belonged to that pale world” (215). He realizes that Diana has been profoundly changed by her experience in the Plateau, and he feels “that he was beginning home only the outward form of his wife” (215).
As Gjorg hurries to the road where he hopes to meet the carriage, he is shot. He collapses to the ground, and feels “two hands moving his body” (216). As is customary according to the Kanun, he is turned onto his back and his gun is placed by his head. As he nears death, Gjorg feels that “this is it...and really the whole thing has been going on too long” (216).
Analysis
The demise of Diana and Bessian's marriage is now becoming apparent. Diana continues to think of Gjorg and Bessian, aware of this fact, begins to grow frustrated and dejected. Here, a reversal of their positions begins to occur. Whereas Bessian was once eager to travel to the High Plateau, and Diana was ambivalent about the journey and felt estranged from the local culture, now the opposite is true. Through the encounter with the woman left by the roadside, Bessian is forced to reckon with the devastation caused by the blood feuds.
Crucially, the climax of the estrangement between Diana and Bessian reaches its climax at the same time as the doctor and Bessian are arguing by the lake. Indeed, Bessian is so sensitive about his relationship to the culture of the High Plateau–and his reputation–that he does not notice that Diana has run into a tower of refuge in the hopes of finding Gjorg.
It is important to note that the towers of refuge are forbidden to all those except the men involved in the blood feuds. In this way, Diana demonstrated a profound lack of respect and understanding for the local culture by running into the tower. Based on this act, it is clear that her and Gjorg will never be able to be together. Moreover, while one might have been inclined to criticize Bessian at the beginning of the novel, it is ultimately clear that he maintains a more respectful engagement with the culture than Diana. In any case, both end the novel in an unhappy state and with their marriage all but irreparably strained.
With Gjorg's bessa expired he is–to use a colloquial phrase–a dead man. While he could hide away in the safety of a tower of refuge, he has made it clear that he would sooner accept death. He does precisely this by leaving the waterfall, given that, according to the Kanun, the area surrounding waterfalls is protected by a special bessa under which Gjorg could not be killed. In this way, he chooses Diana over life itself and dies in the process.
In a strange sense, Gjorg's death is almost relieving. It is a moment that he has been dreading for the entirety of the novel and finally it arrives, and Kadaré does not mention any sort of pain. Instead, lying on the snow, it is as though he is finally able to rest. Just as the novel began with a killing, so too does it end with a killing, as Kadaré gestures towards the continuation of this cyclical nature of the blood feuds. Using Gjorg as his example, Kadaré shows the scale of this tragedy that has occurred countless times over the centuries.
