Ismaïl Kadaré (1936–2024)

In chains, with eyes swollen from beatings, the prisoner is dragged right to the top of Olympus. Rubberneckers congregate to get a look, and all around they exclaim, "So it was Tantalus who did this monstrous thing!"

[...]

When it wakes up again, Olympus seems all sleepy-eyed. After its indeterminate absence, dawn doesn't quite know how to come upon the world, having lost its old habits. Here and there you can see a few puddles of night lying around, with rubbish collectors trying to shovel it up as if it were night soil. The whole place is buzzing with rumours about immortality. Some people think of it as an infinite number of particles spread around the body; others imagine it as a device that can be redirected towards the impossible; but most people see it as a key to some secret door. But these ramblings do not last long. By noontime, the stories have become utterly muddled... In the taverns, people say that Tantalus was less greedy for immortality than he was for food and drink. The crimes he committed - which still cannot be named - should be put down to his insatiable appetite. They even say he's going to be sent down to hell for voracity.

"A guest is really a demi-god," he went on after a while, "and the fact that any one at all can suddenly become a guest does not diminish but rather accentuates his divine character. The fact that this divinity is acquired suddenly, in a single night simply by knocking at a door, makes it even more authentic. The moment a humble wayfarer, his pack on his shoulder, knocks at your door and gives himself up to you as your guest, he is instantly transformed into an extraordinary being, an inviolable sovereign, a law-maker, the light of the world. And the suddenness of the transformation is absolutely characteristic of the nature of the divine. Did not the gods of the ancient Greeks make their appearance suddenly and in the most unpredictable manner? That is just the way the guest appears at an Albanian's door. Like the gods he is an enigma, and he comes directly from the realms of destiny or fate - call it what you will. A knock at the door can bring about the survival or extinction of whole generations. That is what the guest is to the Albanians of the mountains."
"But that's terrible," she said.
He pretended not to have heard her and simply smiled, but with the cold smile of someone who intends to skirt what might well be the real subject of discussion.

At times, Mark had thought of mad things that he dare not confess to anyone. Oh, if only the women as well as the men were subject to the rules of blood-letting. Then he was ashamed, even terrified - but that seldom happened, only sometimes at the end of the month or quarter, when he felt despondent because of the figures in the ledger. Weary as he was, he would try to put those ideas from him, but his mind could find no respite and he went back to them. But this time, in going back to them, it was not to blaspheme the Kanun but simply to give vent to his astonishment. He thought it very strange that weddings, which were usually occasions for joy, often brought about quarrels which led to feuding, while funerals, which were necessarily sad, never led to anything of the kind. That led him to compare the ancient blood-feuds with those of recent times. On both sides of the comparison, there was both good and bad.

"Do you remember those two lieutenants who were reduced to looking after sheep in that Albanian village? What division were they from? Weren't they from one of the alpine regiments?"
"I don't remember," the priest said.
"What an odd phenomenon that was," the general mused. "And it happened right through our forces in Albania. Really curious. Or rather shameful, I should say!"
"Absolutely," agreed the priest. "Some ridiculous things happened."
"We ourselves have come across instances of this kind. The times we've blushed for shame as we heard stories of our troops being reduced to washing clothes or minding some poultry for Albanian peasants. Just two hours ago some shepherd or miller, I can't recall, had my blood boiling..."
The priest nodded once more in assent.
"You say ridiculous things happened. But they are worse than ridiculous, these incidents, they are worrying."
"In war it is always difficult to say exactly what is tragic and what is grotesque, what is heroic and what is worrying."

"What is this loathsome task we have been burdened with?" the general suddenly said, as though he were continuing some interrupted discussion. "I feel it would be easier to dig out the pharaohs still buried in the depths of their great pyramids than to excavate a mere two feet of earth in order to retrieve these soldiers of ours."
"You can't tear your mind away from the subject, can you? Perhaps that is why you are feeling unwell."
"The war here wasn't like other wars," the general went on. "There were no proper fronts, no direct confrontations. The war simply insinuated itself all over the country, like a breeding worm burrowing into the country's every cell. That's why it was so different from the sort of war that's fought elsewhere.
"That's because the Albanians are given to war by their very nature," the priest said.