The Ghost Rider (2 page)
Authors: Ismail Kadare
Tags: #Fiction, #Suspense, #General, #Albania, #Brothers, #Superstition, #Mothers and Daughters
Stres stood at Doruntine’s bed, looking steadily into her face. She was as beautiful as ever, perhaps even more beautiful, with those lips that seemed somehow full and light at the same time.
“Doruntine,” he said in a very soft voice.
She opened her eyes. Deep within them he sensed a void that nothing could fill. He tried to smile at her.
“Doruntine,” he said again. “Welcome home.”
She stared at him.
“How do you feel?” he said slowly, carefully, unconsciously taking her hand. She was burning hot. “Doruntine,” he said again, more gently, “you came last night after midnight, didn’t you?”
Her eyes answered “yes.” He would rather have put
off asking the question that troubled him, but it rose up of itself.
“Who brought you back?”
The young woman’s eyes stared steadily back at his own.
“Doruntine,” he asked again, “who brought you back?” His voice seemed alien to him. The very question was so fraught with terror that he almost wanted to take it back. But it was too late.
Still she stared at him with those eyes in whose depths he glimpsed a desperate void.
Get it over with now, he told himself.
“You told your mother that it was your brother Kostandin, didn’t you?”
Again her look assented. Stres searched her eyes for some sign of madness, but could find no meaning in their utter emptiness.
“I think you must have heard that Kostandin left this world three years ago,” he said in the same faint voice. He felt tears well up within him before they suddenly filled her eyes. But hers were tears unlike any others, half-visible, almost impalpable. Her face, bathed by those tears, seemed even more remote. “What’s happening to me?” her eyes seemed to say. “Why don’t you believe me?”
He turned slowly to his deputy and to the other woman standing near the mother’s bed and motioned to them to leave. Then he leaned towards the young woman again and stroked her hand.
“How did you get here, Doruntine? How did you manage that long journey?”
It seemed to him that something strained to fill those unnaturally enlarged eyes.
Stres left an hour later. He looked pale, and without turning his head or speaking a word to anyone, he made his way to the door. His deputy, following behind, was tempted several times to ask whether Doruntine had said anything new, but he didn’t dare.
As they passed the church, Stres seemed about to enter the cemetery, but changed his mind at the last minute.
His deputy could feel the glances of curious onlookers as they walked along.
“It’s not an easy case,” Stres said without looking at his deputy. “I expect there will be quite a lot of talk about it. Just to anticipate any eventuality, I think we would do well to send a report to the prince’s chancellery.”
To His Highness’s Chancellor. Urgent
I believe it useful to bring to your attention events
that occurred at dawn on this 11 October in the
noble house of Vranaj and which may have unpredictable
consequences
.
On the morning of 11 October, the aged Lady
Vranaj, who, as everyone knows, has been living
alone since the death of her nine sons on the battlefield,
was found in a state of profound distress, along
with her daughter, Doruntine, who, by her own
account, had arrived the night before, accompanied
by her brother Kostandin, who died three years ago,
alongside all his brothers
.
Having repaired to the site and tried to speak
with the two unfortunate women, I concluded that
neither showed any sign of mental instability, though
what they now claim, whether directly or indirectly,
is completely baffling and incredible. It should be
noted at this point that they had given each other
this shock, the daughter by telling her mother that she
had been brought home by her brother Kostandin, the
mother by informing her daughter that Kostandin,
with all her brothers, had long since departed this
world
.
I tried to discuss the matter with Doruntine,
and what I managed to glean from her, in her
distress, may be summarised more or less as
follows:
One night, not long ago (she does not recall the
exact date), in the small city in central Europe where
she had been living with her husband since her
marriage, she was told that an unidentified traveller
was asking for her. On going out, she saw the
horseman who had just arrived and who seemed to
her to be Kostandin, although the dust of the long
journey he had just completed made him almost
unrecognisable. But when the traveller, still in the
saddle, said that he was indeed Kostandin, and that
he had come to take her to her mother as he had
promised before her marriage, she was reassured.
(Here we must recall the stir caused at the time by
Doruntine’s engagement to a man from a land so
far away, the opposition of the other brothers, and
especially the mother, who did not want to send her
daughter so far off, Kostandin’s insistence that the
marriage take place, and finally his solemn promise,
his besa, that he would bring her back himself
whenever their mother yearned for her daughter’s
company.)
Doruntine told me that her brother’s behaviour
seemed rather strange, since he did not get off his
horse and refused to go into the house. He insisted
on taking her away as soon as possible, and when
she asked him why she had to leave in such haste
– for if the occasion was one of joy, she would don
a fine dress, and if it was one of sorrow, she would
wear mourning clothes – he said, with no further
explanation, “Come as you are.” His behaviour
was scarcely natural; moreover, it was contrary to
all the rules of courtesy. But since she had been
consumed with yearning for her family for these
three years (“I lived in the most awful solitude,”
she says), she did not hesitate, wrote a note to her
husband, and allowed her brother to lift her up
behind him
.
She also told me that it had been a long
journey, though she was unable to say exactly how
long. She says that all she remembers is an endless
night, with myriad stars streaming across the sky,
but this vision may have been suggested by an
endless ride broken by longer or shorter intervals
of sleep. It is interesting to note that she does not
recall having travelled by day. She may have formed
this impression either because she dozed or slept in
the saddle all day, so that she no longer remembers
the daylight at all, or because she and her escort
retired at dawn and went to sleep, awaiting nightfall
to continue their journey. Were this to prove
correct, it would suggest that the rider wished to
travel only by night. In Doruntine’s mind, exhausted
as she was (not to mention her emotional state),
the ten or fifteen nights of the trip (for that is
generally how long it takes to travel here from
Bohemia) may have blended into a single long –
indeed endless – nocturnal ride
.
On the way, pressed against the horseman as
she was, she noticed quite unmistakably that his hair
was not just dusty, but covered with mud that was
barely dry, and that his body smelled of sodden earth.
Two or three times she questioned him about it. He
answered that he had been caught in the rain several
times on his way there and that the dust on his body
and in his hair, thus moistened, had turned to clots
of mud
.
When, towards midnight on 11 October,
Doruntine and the unknown man (for let us so
designate the man the young woman took to be
her brother) finally approached the residence of the
Lady Mother, he reined in his horse and told his
companion to dismount and go to the house, for
he had something to do at the church. Without
waiting for an answer, he rode towards the church
and the cemetery, while she ran to the house and
knocked at the door. The old woman asked who
was there, and then the few words exchanged
between mother and daughter – the latter having
said that it was she and that she had come with
Kostandin, the former replying that Kostandin
was three years dead – gave to both the shock that
felled them
.
This affair, which one is bound to admit is most
puzzling, may be explained in one of two ways: either
someone, for some reason, deceived Doruntine,
posing as her brother with the express purpose of
bringing her back, or Doruntine herself, for some
unknown reason, has not told the truth and has
concealed the manner of her return or the identity
of the person who brought her back
.
I thought it necessary to make a relatively
detailed report about these events because they
concern one of the noblest families in the principality
and because they are of a kind that might seriously
trouble people’s minds
.
Captain Stres
After initialling his report, Stres sat staring absently at his slanted handwriting. Two or three times he picked up his pen and was tempted to lean over the sheets of paper to amend, recast, or perhaps correct some passage, but each time he was about to put pen to paper his hand froze, and in the end he left his text unaltered.
He got up slowly, put the letter into an envelope, sealed it, and called for a messenger. When the man had gone, Stres stood for a long moment looking out the window, feeling his headache worsen. A crowd of theories jostled one another to enter his head as if through a narrow
door. He rubbed his forehead as though to stem the flood. Why would an unknown traveller have done it? And if it was not some impostor, the question was even more delicate: What was Doruntine hiding? He paced back and forth in his office; as he came near the window he could see the messenger’s back, shrinking steadily as he threaded his way through the bare poplars. And what if neither of these suppositions was correct, he suddenly said to himself. What if something else had happened, something the mind cannot easily comprehend? Who knows what lies hidden inside us all?
He carried on staring at the windowpane. That rectangle of glass which, at any other time, would have struck him as the most ordinary and innocent thing in the world now suddenly seemed fraught with mystery. It stood in the very midpoint of life, simultaneously separating and connecting the world. “Strange,” he mumbled to himself.
Stres managed to snap out of his daydream, turned his back on the window, called his deputy and strode down the stairs.
“Let’s go to the church,” he said to his deputy when he heard the man’s footsteps, then his panting, at his back. “Let’s have a look at Kostandin’s grave.”
“Good idea. When all is said and done, the story only makes sense if someone came back from the grave.”
“I wasn’t considering anything so ludicrous. I have something else in mind.”
His stride lengthened as he said to himself, why am I taking this business so much to heart? After all, there had been no murder, no serious crime, nor indeed any
offence of the kind he was expected to investigate in his capacity as regional captain. A few moments ago, as he was drafting his report, this thought had come to him several times: Am I not being too hasty in troubling the prince’s chancellery about a matter of no importance? But some inner voice told him he wasn’t. That same voice told him that something shocking had occurred, something that went beyond mere murder or any other crime, something that made assassination and similar heinous acts seem mere trifles.
The little church, with its freshly repaired bell tower, was now very near, but Stres suddenly veered off and went straight into the cemetery, not through the iron grille, but through an inconspicuous wooden gate. He hadn’t been in the cemetery for a long time, and he had trouble getting his bearings.
“This way,” said his deputy as he strode along. “The graves of the Vranaj sons must be over here.”
Stres fell in step beside him. The ground was soft in places. Small, soot-blackened icons streaked with candle wax added to the serene and melancholy atmosphere. Some of the graves were covered with moss. Stres stooped to right an overturned cross, but it was heavy and he had to leave it. He walked on. He saw his deputy beckon in the distance: he had found them at last.
Stres walked over. The graves, neatly aligned and covered with slabs of black stone, were identical, made in a shape that suggested a cross as well as a sword, or a man standing with his arms stretched out. At the head of each grave was a small niche for an icon and candles. Beneath it the dead man’s name was carved.
“There’s his grave,” said the deputy, his voice hushed.
Stres looked up and saw that the man had gone pale.
“What’s the matter?”
His deputy pointed at the grave.
“Take a good look,” he said. “The stones have been moved.”
“What?” Stres leaned forward to see what his aide was pointing to. For a long moment he examined the spot carefully, then stood up straight. “Yes, it’s true. There’s been some disturbance here.”
“Just as I told you,” said the deputy, his satisfaction in seeing that his chief shared his view mixed with a new surge of fear.
“But that doesn’t mean much,” Stres remarked.
His deputy turned and looked at him with surprise. His eyes seemed to say, sure, a commander must preserve his dignity in all circumstances, but there comes a time when one must forget about rank, office and such formalities. A battered sun strove to break through the clouds. They looked up, in some astonishment, but neither uttered the words each might have expected to hear in such circumstances.