Front Matter

A Bed for the Wretched

A Novel

By Petre Nakovski (Translated from Macedonian to English and edited by Risto Stefov) A Bed for the Wretched A Novel

Any similarity is by chance

A Bed for the Wretched – Chapter 1

In the hard soil and stony ground by the side of the main road there were long gray rotting barracks. In the dip there were a few houses, built with bricks and covered with straw. To the left there was an old outdoor oven. On the uphill there were public toilets. On the downhill there was a cemetery and under it there were barracks arranged in a straight line. The barracks which looked like neatly arranged boxes from the sky had small narrow windows outfitted with iron bars. The entire area was covered in dust. Just a bit below the barracks there were houses built out of carved white flintstone. This was Prenies… The main road, covered and packed tightly with thick flintstone gravel, was dusty. The irrigation channels were broad, deep and overgrown with grass and thorns. On days when it rained, red muddy rainwater ran down from the hill and filled the channels with silt. It was stone cold during clear nights and very hot during the day. The stones were bleached white by the rain and baked and cracked by the sun. When the wind blew, it carried clouds of reddish dust from the mountains and deposited it over the barracks. People from all places, where the red rooster of war crowed, found themselves here. Wretched people filled with misery, strife and ruin, folded over old people, widows of six wars, exhausted women bitten by illness, loners, and mothers nursing babies. In between them were men, ill men, enslaved by fear and men, fighters who had deserted their posts and here they felt like heroes. A cloud of existence passed over Prenies twice a day. Once at the crack of dawn and then again at dusk. Twice a day a column of trucks passed. If dust was raised from below, from the ovens, then the trucks were carrying the healed from the hospitals in Elbasan, Tirana, Durres and Suk, along with food and ammunition to be taken to the Vicho and Gramos battlefields. The trucks took fighters and supplies to the border and the rest was done by the Partisans. While the fighters were led to the battlefields, the supplies were taken to them on the shoulders of women, by donkey, horse, mule… on foot up the mountains. The gray dust seen flying in the distance in the valley was a sign that the trucks were coming and would soon reach the place of the ovens. When the gray cloud of dust was raised from above, from the tops of the surrounding mountains, from Preval, in the shimmering first rays of the sun, and when the trucks were snaking their way down towards Prenies, they were carrying wounded fighters. The wretched quickly descended down to the cobblestone road moaning, groaning, swearing, panicking and feeling frustrated… Twice a day, in Prenies, someone would yell out “they are coming!” And every day at dawn and dusk the wretched would pour out of the barracks and horse stables like a red cloud and head for the main road, chasing the dust clouds, attempting to catch up to the trucks racing through the compound. And the closer they came to the column of trucks, the more tormented they felt. Those who fell down were trampled as the hordes from every direction raced after the dust cloud shouting and pushing each other. And as they ran they cried out names, first and last names, but in the chaos nothing could be heard except the overriding “oh-oh-oh-a-a-a!!” and the crying and praying and swearing and cursing and whining. Everyone was calling and looking for their loved ones, closest ones, most expected and thought of ones… They all were looking for their closest relatives: in those old Czech and Italian trucks that did not want to stop for them. They all ran for the trucks and, in panic, pushed each other. Those who fell remained there, lying on the ground while being trampled by the storm... So every day, twice a day, the horde of traumatized women and decrepit old men ran behind trucks down to the ovens, to the first guard house, to the first bunker behind which the road towards Elbasan continued. They stopped here... And inside the barracks, left on the straw mattresses, were the crying babies and the moaning and groaning sick whose life was uncertain.

So, every day they ran behind the trucks that snaked their way up hill in hope... At the crossroad they looked like a tube as they glittered under the first rays of the sun. The horde kept looking, crying, whining, swearing, cursing, criticizing and silently praying as the trucks disappeared behind the last curve. The elderly sent a prayer with them, blessing those returning from the battlefields and going to the hospitals. “Let their wounds heal fast and their scars be healthy...” some would murmur while swallowing hard and trying to force back their tears. The women, with their black head kerchiefs in their hands, in silence, would bid farewell those going to the battlefields. After the trucks disappeared, the women, wearing their black head kerchiefs on their heads, would begin to stir and slowly return to the barracks and horse stables. They did not return promptly. Instead they went back on the road looking down, searching. They searched the entire road, inch by inch, looking for something discarded. A little piece of paper perhaps, all folded up or crumpled, with something written on it, about a loved one; their own or someone else’s. And then, after they were satisfied that they had done a thorough search, disappointed they would return to their barracks and horse stables and sit in silence nursing their pain, waiting, listening, waiting for the next column of trucks to arrive. Sometimes they moved from barrack to barrack like shadows, to visit a friend or a relative and mourn those who had died in the battlefields of Gramos and Vicho, in Epirus and Thessaly and those who had died in the hospitals on foreign soil… After crying and shedding tears in silence and still feeling their pain would not go, they would cry out loud in the darkness, only occasionally speaking an intelligible word, or two, as if suddenly they had woken up from a nightmare… No grass grows on the hard, trampled soil on which the black horde descends with the birth and death of each day. In the barracks and horse stables where the wretched lie, there are only four hands of space (about 24 inches) on the straw mat for each person to lie on. Above them are long rotting beams and underneath them are horse urine soaked cobblestones. The healthy wish that those who were sick will soon die - to save themselves from themselves and to save the others from torment. Outside of the passing trucks, no one is allowed to leave the compound, but some do manage to sneak out without being seen. Those who do sneak out, climb up to Preval and look at the lake water, and in it they see the reflection of the high peaked gray mountains and they whisper to themselves and point with their finger saying : “There… over there is my home…”