Assignment - Mara Tirana Read Online Free Page A

is here. She brought some medicine for you.”
    He heard a movement in the hut and then saw the girl. She had been standing in the shadows, motionless, tall and slim and dark. It must be cold out now, he thought, because she wore a scarf over her dark red hair and kept her thin coat buttoned to her throat. She had the dark brown eyes of her mother, but they reflected neither the tenderness nor the aged, wise compassion of the old woman. She looked at him coldly, with no emotion.
    “I have brought you penicillin, Major,” she said in a flat voice.
    “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
    “It should help you.” She spoke English easily, with an American accent, and he guessed she had been born there. “But do you know how dangerous it is for us to ask for penicillin?”
    “I can imagine. I’m grateful.”
    “You cannot imagine. You are an American, and you do not know the meaning of life as it is lived here. But I brought it for you, anyway. Each tablet is one hundred thousand units. You will take two, every four hours. It will stop the infection in your leg.”
    “Is it broken?”
    “I think not. Your back muscles are only terribly strained. You will be well again.”
    She gave him the tablets and a tumbler of water. She looked down at him with cold brown eyes that seemed to be looking at someone else. Her mouth was a little too wide to be beautiful, but her dark red hair caught and held the gleam of light from the oil lantern. Behind her, Jamak stood beside his wife, and the old people looked exhausted and gray, like the shadows and the stones that made up the hut.
    Adam saw that the old man’s hands shook worse than before. “Lissa, where did you get the medicine?” Jamak asked. “I got it, I got it,” she said impatiently. “Is that enough?”
    “Were you careful?”
    “One cannot be careful asking for this sort of thing.” The girl spoke crisply. “I told Stana the Gypsy I needed it, and she got it from Medjan. I said it was for you, Jamak.” The old woman moaned. “You went to Petar Median?”
    “Who else? The Turk wants me.”
    “Did you promise—?”
    The girl’s face was cold with contempt. “What promises I made were with my lips, not my heart.”
    “Medjan will be angry. He is a lieutenant of the police, he will demand—”
    “He will demand, but he will get nothing except a knife.”
    “Lissa, Lissa—” the old woman moaned.
    “Be quiet. It is done. It was the only way.”
    “Will he stay away?”
    “Of course. I will not stay here on Zara Dagh. I will go back to Viajec. Why should he come here, if I am at the village, so close to his police station?” The girl walked back to where Adam lay and looked down at him. She spoke coolly. “How do you feel now, Major?”
    “Not good. I don’t like to have put you all in danger.” 
    “We always live in danger. A little more, a little less. . ."
    “Don’t be angry with me,” Adam said.
    “I am officially a nurse in the village. Do you understand that? These old people are my parents. And Gija, who has gone to tell your countrymen where you are, Gija is my brother. We live on the edge of a very sharp knife here.”
    “You were bom in America, weren’t you? And you came back when your older brother Giurgiu sent for the whole family?”
    She shrugged. “Why not? He was a big politician here. I was only a child, anyway. I had no choice. And life brings unpleasant surprises. For Giurgiu, it was a firing squad, because he got too big and too careless in his position. And he left us all stranded here, in these mountains, treated like pariahs because we were his family.” Her words were bitter. The warmth that flashed in her eyes was that of anger. “Now you come here and Gija, the wild one, has rushed away like a boy playing a game, to go to the West for your friends.” “Lissa, what can I do?”
    “If you had died, it would be easier for all of us.” “Is the danger for you very great?”
    “Zara Dagh is a wild and lonely place. But I