Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

“Madman,” said Stres, more softly this time, as though murmuring the word to himself. “I forbid you to continue,” he said with composure.

His aide opened his mouth, but Stres leapt to his feet and, leaning close to the man’s face, shouted, “Not another word, do you hear? Or I’ll have you thrown in jail, on the spot, right now. Do you understand?”

“I have spoken my mind,” the man replied, breathing with difficulty. “Now I shall obey.”

“It’s you who are sick,” Stres said. “You’re the one who’s sick, poor man.”

He looked for a long moment at his deputy’s face, wan from insomnia, and suddenly felt keenly sorry for him.

“I was wrong to assign you to all that research in the family archives. So many long hours of reading, for someone unused to books—”

The man’s feverish eyes remained fixed on his chief.

“You may go now,” said Stres in a kindlier voice. “Get some rest. You need rest, do you hear? I am prepared to forget all this nonsense, provided you forget it too, do you follow me? You may go.”

His aide rose and left. Stres, smiling stiffly, watched the man’s unsteady gait.

I must find that adventurer right away, he said to himself. The archbishop was right, the whole business should have been nipped in the bud to avoid the dangerous consequences it will surely have.

He began to pace the room. He would tighten precautions at every crossing point, assign all his men to the task, suspend all other activity to mobilise them for this one case. He would set everything in motion, he would spare no effort until the mystery was cleared up. I must find the truth, he told himself, as soon as possible. Or else we’ll all go mad.

Despite the efforts of Stres’s men, acting in concert with Church officiants who lectured the faithful day after day, those who believed that Doruntine had returned with her lover were many fewer than those inclined to think that the dead man had brought her back.

Stres himself examined the list of people who had been out of the district between the end of September and 11 October. The idea that Doruntine might have been brought back by one of Kostandin’s friends so that his promise might be fulfilled came to him from time to time, but each time it struck him as hardly credible. Even after the complete list of absentees had been submitted to him and he found, as he had hoped, that the names of four of the dead man’s closest friends were on it, he could not bring himself to accept the conjecture. After all, hadn’t he himself been away on duty during just that time? On the night he got back his cloak had been so filthy that his wife had asked, Stres, just where have you been? Doubt is the mind’s first action, and just as he had suspected others, so others had the right to suspect him. And in any event, Kostandin’s friends had little trouble proving that all four had been at the Great Games held annually in Albania’s northernmost principality. Two of them had even taken part and had won prizes.

In the meantime, it would soon be forty days since the death of mother and daughter. The day would be celebrated according to custom, and the mourners would certainly sing their distressing ballads, without changing a damned word. Stres was well acquainted with the obtuse stubbornness of those little old women. On the seventh day after the deaths, also celebrated according to custom, they had changed nothing despite the warning he had sent them, and they had done the same on the four Sundays that followed. The old crows will caw for another few days, the priest had said, but in the end they’ll be quiet. Stres was not too sure about that.

One day he saw them making their way in single file to the abandoned house to take up their mourning, as was the custom. Stres stood, tall and still, at the roadside, dressed in his black cape with the white antler on its collar signifying his rank as an officer of the prince, and he watched the women pass by, dressed all in black, with their cheeks already wetted by the tears they had yet to shed, paying him no attention at all. Stres surmised that they had recognised him, nonetheless, for he thought he could detect in their eyes a glint of irony directed at him, the destroyer of legends. He nearly burst out laughing at the thought that he was engaged in a duel with these mourners, but to his astonishment the thought suddenly turned into a shiver.

In the meantime, the archbishop, to everyone’s surprise, had remained at the Monastery of the Three Crosses, though Stres was no longer annoyed about it. Absorbed in his pursuit of the wandering adventurer, he paid little attention to anything else. He had received no clear information from the innkeepers. There had been three or four arrests on the basis of their reports, but all the suspects had been released for lack of evidence. Information was awaited from neighbouring principalities and dukedoms, especially in the northern districts through which the road to Bohemia passed. At times, Stres entertained new doubts and built new theories, only to set them aside at once.

The first snow fell towards the middle of November. Unlike the snow that falls in October, it did not melt, but blanketed the countryside in white. One afternoon, as he was on his way home, Stres, almost unconsciously, turned his horse into the street leading to the church. He dismounted at the cemetery gate and went in, trampling the immaculate snow. The graveyard was deserted, the crosses against the blanket of snow looked even blacker. A few birds, equally dark, circled near the far side of the cemetery. Stres walked until he thought he had found the group of Vranaj graves. He leaned forward, deciphered the inscription on one of the stones, and saw that he had made no mistake. There were no footprints anywhere around. The icons seemed frozen. What am I doing here, he asked himself with a sigh. He felt the peace of the graveyard sweep over him, and the feeling brought with it a strange mental clarity. Dazzled by the glare of the snow, he found himself unable to look away, as if he feared that the clarity might desert him. All at once Doruntine’s story seemed as simple as could be, pellucid. Here was a stretch of snow-covered earth in which was buried a group of people who had loved one another intensely and had promised never to part. The long separation, the great distance, the terrible yearning, the unbearable solitude ( It was so lonely …) had tried them sorely. They had strained to reach one another, to come together in life and in death in a state partaking of death and life alike, dominated now by the one, now by the other. They had tried to flout the laws that bind the living together and prevent them from passing back from death to life; they had thereby tried to violate the laws of death, to attain the inaccessible, to gather together once more. For a moment, they thought they had managed it, as in a dream when you encounter a dead person you have loved but realise that it is only an illusion ( I could not kiss him, something held me back ). Then, in the darkness and chaos, they parted anew, the living making her way to the house, the dead returning to his grave ( You go ahead, I have something to do at the church ), and though nothing of the kind had really happened, and quite apart from the fact that Stres could not bring himself to believe that a dead man had risen from his grave, in some sense that was exactly what had happened. The horseman — brother had appeared at a bend in the road and said to his sister, “Come with me.” It did not really matter whether it was all in her mind or in the minds of other people. At bottom, it was something that could happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. For who has never dreamed of someone coming back from far away to spend another moment with them, to sit astride the same horse for a while? Who in the world has not yearned for a loved one, has never said, If only he or she could come back just once, just one more time, to be kissed — but somehow, something stops you from giving that kiss? Despite the fact that it can never happen, never ever. Surely this is the saddest thing about our mortal world, and its sadness will go on shrouding human life like a blanket of fog until its final extinction.