The Pyramid by Ismaíl Kadaré Read Free Book Online

eleven thousand three hundred and eighty-second stone was eagerly awaited in the hope that when placed up against its predecessor it would contain its neighbor’s harmfulness. But it was of very limited use, since the larger side of the infected stone remained exposed. Apart from the deaths that it caused in this manner, the placing of the disease-ridden stone was also accompanied by the consecutive deaths of two fair-haired Pelasgians, Teut and Bardhylis, the former from a scorpion bite, the latter from despair. A most bizarre murder was also imputed to the infected stone, that of the Sumerian Ninourtakoudouriousouri, by an unnamed slave. For some time the slave refused to reveal the motive for his crime, but one summer’s night, just as it had been agreed that it would be pointless to torture him any further, he confessed. He had been prompted to murder out of jealousy for the Sumerian’s name, because he, as a slave, had none. Believing that the only means of obtaining a name was to take it from another while leaving the other in an inanimate state (apparently he thought that that really was the only way of appropriating a patronym), he had done the Sumerian in and thereby sealed his own fate. In fact there had been brawls on such matters before, and trading in names was not unknown between those who had one and the unnamed, who were sometimes tormented by this insufficiency, spiritually unbalanced by it, obsessed with it to the extent of losing sleep as much as any miser haunted by his gold. Even so, things had never previously gone as far as murder, unless that had happened prior to the ten thousandth stone, or even further back. Although the sale, loan, and inheritance of names was strictly prohibited in order to avoid confusion, such practices were conducted clandestinely. The arrival of the eleven thousand three hundred and eighty-third stone blurred and then completely obliterated the memory of this murder. It was during the laying of this stone that there was an increase in cases of madness; then came an outbreak of deaths from sunstroke. That had already happened before, people recalled, during the laying of the ten thousand nine hundred and ninety-ninth stone, which would not be soon forgotten since it was one of the very few blocks to have cracked because of the exceptional heat. So a bout of dementia was first suspected when Siptah the Theban was found making sketches in the sand, seeking to guess the dimensions of the work in progress, but it turned out to be nothing of the kind, to the poor man’s great misfortune. He had his bones broken with millstones, a fate normally reserved for people who asked inappropriate questions. The eleven thousand three hundred and eighty-fourth stone was still far away in the baking desert when a rumor of bad omen was heard about it: this stone and the six that were coming after it, all from the Abusir quarry, had been struck by the evil eye. No one could say whether it was a maleficent force in the seams from which they had been cut, or whether the evil inhered to the stones themselves. As the haulers approached (they had resigned themselves to their lot; reckoning they were lost already, they had no fear and considered each extra day of life as an unhoped-for gift) and as the stones grew nearer, general anxiety grew sharper, more suffocating, and more irremediable. People who had already seen the stones (for dozens of reasons there was always some traveler or messenger crossing the desert) said that at first sight they looked quite normal, but had very dark veins running through them, like the kind of sign that a man may have on his forehead and that makes his whole face seem sinister. In the event, as is always the case when anxious expectation is long drawn out and the awaited occurrence, when it finally happens, seems not as terrible as had been imagined, the arrival of the stones brought a degree of relief to everyone. There were deaths, to be sure, and in fact rather