The Time of the Goats

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136 21 It was not dif­ fi­ cult to dis­ cover how ­ Father had ­ reached the con­ clu­ sion that ­ Changa was in the for­ tress with the goats. After all, the most sig­ nif­i­ cant an­ swers to his ­ life’s key ideas and ques­ tions were dis­ cov­ ered in his books. After the night dur­ ing which he ­ stayed awake anx­ iously search­ ing­ through his books, some­ thing ­ Changa had said dur­ ing their last con­ ver­ sa­ tion amid those books came to mind, and now he was fully con­ vinced that he knew where ­ Changa was. I “When an­ i­ mals are about to die,” ­ Changa had asked, “Why do they look for dark­ ness?” “I don’t know,” my ­ father re­ called an­ swer­ ing, “but human be­ ings ap­ proach­ ing death seek light, even a ray of light, to bring light­ ness into the dark­ ness of death!” “Why is that?” ­ Changa had per­ sisted. My ­ father had then con­ tin­ ued thought­ fully: “Con­ tem­ plat­ ing death, a per­ son ex­ presses his pow­ er­ less­ ness. Had he grown more ac­ cus­ tomed 137 to the ­ thought of death dur­ ing the ­ course of his life, he would be less­ likely to seek light at the end. As death ap­ proaches, a per­ son ­ senses how the cir­ cle of light—his fam­ ily, his peo­ ple, his father­ land, the world— di­ min­ ishes.” “An­ i­ mals don’t have a father­ land, so they don’t have any light to de­ fend!” ­ Changa ­ stated sim­ ply. Ev­ i­ dently, nei­ ther ­ Father nor ­ Changa had a de­ fin­ i­ tive an­ swer, but it had been ­ etched in the ­ goatherd’s mind: an­ i­ mals die in dark­ ness. I To my ­ father, this was a clear in­ di­ ca­ tion that ­ Changa had cho­ sen the large shel­ ter in the for­ tress as a grave for him­ self and all the goats in the city, wish­ ing in the end, even in death, to be ­ worthy of their great love. My ­ father then re­ called all the books that ­ Changa had ­ sought in con­ nec­ tion with the his­ tory of the for­ tress. Yes, ­ Changa had ­ clearly been fas­ ci­ nated by the al­ most mys­ ti­ cal his­ tory of the for­ tress. More than once when he went with his goats along the hill up to the for­ tress, the goats had ­ quickly ­ climbed along the ­ shaded rocky prec­ i­ pices where no human foot could tread, as if they had awak­ ened some in­ stinct ­ passed down from their dis­ tant wild an­ ces­ tors, those for­ mid­ able lords of the steep Bal­ kan peaks. From his books, ­ father ­ sensed that his­ tory was one long, ­ cloudy, un­ cer­ tain dream that did not re­ peat nor was ­ linked to any that had come be­ fore. There was al­ ways a new dream to dream, dif­ fer­ ent from the last. My ­ father felt in his mar­ row how ­ tragic his­ tory was when life was­ marked by re­ set­ tle­ ments, wars, and sep­ ar­ a­ tions. When fate had led him here be­ neath the for­ tress, ­ Father’s dream re­ turned, to bring to life the chron­ i­ cle of the fall of the Bal­ kan em­ pires. This for­ tress was just such a mon­ u­ ment to fal­ len em­ pires. My ­ father had rap­ idly dou­ bled, trip­ led the num­ ber of books he owned about the for­ tress. He ­ learned that the Kale had been set­ tled in 138 pre­ his­ toric times, dur­ ing the Neo­ lithic and early ­ Bronze Age, four thou­ sand years be­ fore the Com­ mon Era; the re­ mains of dug­ outs, huts, and pal­ i­ sades were proof of those set­ tle­ ments. The Kale had re­ mained a bat­ tle­ ground for the chang­ ing em­ pires; it stood like a bea­ con in the ocean of time. Gen­ er­ a­ tions of oc­ cu­ pi­ ers, cel­ e­ brated or name­ less, would for­ tify it, as if for the ages; they re­ built these cyclo­ pean stone walls that had been as­ sem­ bled by pre­ vi­ ous oc­ cu­ pi­ ers. They would es­ tab­ lish their...