Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

The newcomers stood motionless for a moment with their heads bowed. Their hair now resembled the melted candle wax on either side of the icons.

“And that grave over there is Kostandin’s.”

Stres’s voice seemed far away. The gravestone, canted slightly to the right, hadn’t been straightened. Stres’s deputy searched his chief’s face, but understood from his expression that he was not to mention that the gravestone had been moved. The cemetery watchman, who had accompanied the small group and now stood a little to one side, also held his tongue.

“And there you are,” Stres said when they had returned to the road. “A row of graves is all that remains of the whole family.”

“Yes, it is very sad indeed,” said one of the strangers.

“All of us here were most disturbed by Doruntine’s return,” Stres went on. “Perhaps even more than you were in your land over her departure.”

As they walked they spoke again of the young woman’s mysterious journey. Whatever the circumstances, there could be no justification for such a flight.

“Did she seem unhappy in your country?” Stres asked. “I mean, surely she must have missed her family.”

“Naturally,” one of them answered.

“And at first, I suppose, the fact that she did not know your language must surely have increased her sense of solitude. Was she worried about her family?”

“Very much so, especially in recent times.”

In such terrible solitude …

“Especially in recent times?” Stres repeated.

“In recent times, yes. Since none of her relatives had come to visit her, she was in a state of constant anxiety.”

“A state of anxiety?” Stres said. “Then surely she must have asked to come herself?”

“Oh yes, on several occasions. My cousin had told her, ‘If no one from your family comes to see you by spring, I will take you there myself.’”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. And in truth she was not alone in her anxiety, for we had all begun to fear that something might have happened here.”

“Apparently she didn’t want to wait until spring,” Stres said.

“It would seem so.”

“When he learned of her flight, her husband must surely—”

The two strangers looked at one other.

“Of course. It was all very strange. Her brother had come to fetch her, but how was it he had made no appearance at the house, not even for a moment? Admittedly there had been an incident between Kostandin and our cousin, but so much time had passed since then—”

“An incident? What sort of incident?” Stres interrupted.

“The day of the wedding,” his deputy answered, lowering his voice. “The old woman speaks of it in her letters.”

“But notwithstanding this incident,” the stranger continued, “her brother’s behaviour — if indeed it really was her brother — was not justifiable.”

“Forgive me,” Stres said, “but I wanted to ask you whether her husband thought, even for an instant, that it might not be her brother?”

They looked at each other again.

“Well — how shall I put it? Naturally he suspected it. And needless to say, if it was not her brother, then it was someone else. Anything can happen in this world. But no one would ever have anticipated such a thing. They’d been getting along very well. Her circumstances, it must be admitted, were far from easy, being a foreigner as she was, not knowing the language, and especially worrying so much about her family. But they were fond of each other in spite of everything.”

“All the same, to run away like that so suddenly,” Stres interrupted.

“Yes, it is strange, we must admit. And it was just in order to clarify things that, at our cousin’s request, we set out on this long journey. But here we have found an even more complicated situation.”

“A complicated situation,” Stres said. “In one sense that is true enough, but it doesn’t alter the fact that Doruntine actually returned to her own people.”

He spoke these words softly, like a man who finds it difficult to express himself, and in his own heart he wondered, why on earth are you still defending her?

“That is true,” one of the strangers answered. “And in one sense, seen in that light, we find it reassuring. Doruntine indeed came back to her people. But here we have a new mystery: the brother with whom she is said to have made the journey is long since dead. One may therefore wonder who it was that brought her back, for surely someone must have accompanied her here, is that not so? And several women saw the horseman. Why, then, did she lie?”

Stres lowered his head thoughtfully. The puddles in the road were strewn with rotting leaves. He thought it superfluous to tell them that he had already asked himself all these questions. And it seemed equally futile to tell them of his conjecture about an impostor. Now more than ever he doubted its validity.

“I simply don’t know what to tell you,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He felt weary.

“Nor do we know what to say,” commented one of them, the one who had spoken least so far. “It is all very sad. We are leaving tomorrow. There is nothing more for us to do here.”

Stres did not answer him.

It’s true, he thought, his mind numb. There is nothing more for them to do here.

The strangers left the next day. Stres felt as though he had only been awaiting their departure to make a cool-headed attempt, perhaps the last, to clear up the Doruntine affair. It was quite evident that the two cousins had come to find out whether Doruntine had told the truth in her note, since her husband had at first suspected infidelity. And perhaps he had been right. Perhaps the story was far more simple than it appeared, as is often true of certain events which, however simple in themselves, seem to have the power to sow confusion in people’s minds, as if to prevent discovery of their very simplicity. Stres sensed that he was finally unravelling the mystery. Up to now he had always assumed that there was an impostor in the case. But the reality was otherwise. No one had deceived Doruntine. On the contrary, it was she who had deceived her husband, her mother, and finally everyone else. She tricked us all, Stres thought with a mixture of exasperation and sorrow.

The suspicion that Doruntine had been lying had sprung up in his mind from time to time, only to vanish immediately in the mist that surrounded the whole affair. And that was understandable enough, for there were so many unknowns in the case. Stres had only to recall his initial doubts that the horseman and the night ride were real, or his suspicion that Doruntine had actually left her husband’s home months, even years, before. Yes, he had only to remember his theory that she had been suffering from mental illness and all his elegant reasoning seemed merely specious. But the visit of the Bohemian strangers had dispelled all these doubts. Now there was a note, which he had seen with his own eyes, and in it she made mention of her flight with someone. Several women had seen the horseman. And most important of all, a date had been established: 29 September. Now you’re stuck, Stres said to himself, not without regret. His satisfaction at the prospect of an early resolution of the mystery was rather muted. Perhaps he had become sentimentally attached to the mystery, and would rather not have seen it brought to light. He even felt himself to have been somehow betrayed.

The whole thing, then, notwithstanding the macabre background, had been no more than a commonplace romance. That was the heart of it. All the rest was secondary. His wife had been right to see it that way from the start. Women sometimes have a special flair for this sort of thing. Yes, that must be it, Stres repeated to himself, as if trying to convince himself as thoroughly as possible. A journey with her lover, though love and sex may well have been blended with grief. But that was just the thing that gave the whole story its special flavour. What wouldn’t I give, she had said, to make that journey once more. Yes, of course, Stres said to himself, of course.