Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

That’s what it was all about, Stres said to himself again. All the rest — surmises, inquiries, arguments — was just a pack of mean little lies signifying nothing. He would have liked to linger a while longer on that high ground where his thought flowed so freely, but he could feel the pull of the ordinary world dragging him forever downwards, faster and faster, making him tumble down from on high as soon as it could. He hurried away before he could hit bottom. Looking as drained as a sleepwalker, he stumbled towards his horse, vaulted into the saddle and galloped away, as stiff as ice.

It was a wet afternoon, drenched in a fine, steady rain, one of those afternoons when one feels that nothing could possibly happen. Stres, dressed and dozing in an armchair (what else could he do on such a day?), felt his wife’s hand gently touch his shoulder.

“Stres, there are people here to see you.”

He woke with a start.

“What is it? Was I sleeping?”

“They’re asking for you,” his wife said. “It’s your deputy, and another man with him.”

“Oh? Tell them I’ll be right down.”

His aide and someone Stres didn’t know, their hair dripping, stood waiting on the porch.

“Captain,” said his deputy the moment he saw his chief, “the man who brought Doruntine back has been captured.”

Stres was taken aback.

“How can that be?” he asked.

His deputy was astonished at the surprise evident in the face of his chief, who showed no sign of satisfaction, as if he hadn’t spent weeks trying to find the man.

“Yes, they’ve caught him at last,” he said, still not sure whether his chief had fully grasped what he was talking about.

Stres went on staring at them quizzically. In fact he had understood perfectly. What he wasn’t sure of was whether or not the news pleased him.

“But how?” he asked. “How could it happen so suddenly?”

“So suddenly?” his deputy said.

“What I mean is, it seemed so unlikely …”

What in the world am I talking about? he said to himself. He had become aware of his own confusion.

It seemed obvious now that the suspicion that had occasionally occurred to him from the deepest recesses of his mind — the suspicion that his wish to track down the supposed lover was in competition with an even fiercer desire never to lay hands on the man at all — was proving to be justified.

“Upon my soul,” he mumbled, by way of a reaction, like a man who looks up at the sky to ready himself for growling, “What filthy weather”, then asked, “But how did they catch him? And where?”

“They’re bringing him in now,” answered his deputy. “He’ll be here before nightfall. This man is the messenger who brought the news, as well as a report.”

The stranger reached into the lining of his leather tunic and took out an envelope.

“He was captured in the next county, in a place called the Inn of the Two Roberts,” the deputy said.

“Oh?”

“Here is the re … re … report,” said the stranger, who had a stammer.

Stres took it from him brusquely. Little by little the vague feeling of sadness and regret at the resolution of the mystery gave way to a first surge of cold and dangerous light-headedness. He unsealed the envelope, took out the report, turned it towards the light and began to read the lines written in a handwriting that looked like a pile of angrily scattered pins:

We hereby dispatch to you this report on the capture of the adventurer suspected of having deceived and brought back Doruntine Vranaj. The information in this report has been taken from that which has been handed over to our authorities, along with the adventurer in question, by the authorities of the neighbouring county, who captured him in their territory, in accordance with our request .

The vagabond was arrested on 14 November in the highway establishment known as the Inn of the Two Roberts. He had been brought there unconscious the night before by two peasants who found him lying in the road in high fever. His appearance and, in particular, his delirious raving immediately aroused the suspicions of the innkeeper and the customers. The snatches of sentences he spoke amounted more or less to this: “There is no need to hurry so. What will we say to your mother? Hold on tight, I can’t go any faster, it’s dark, you know, I can’t see anything. That’s what you’ll say if anyone asks you who brought you back. Don’t be afraid, none of your brothers is still alive.”

The innkeeper alerted the local authorities, who, after hearing his testimony and that of the customers, decided to arrest the vagabond and, in accordance with our request, to hand him over to us at once. In keeping with the instructions that I have received from the capital, I will send him on to you immediately, but I thought it useful also to send you this information by a swift messenger as well, so that you might be fully informed about the matter in case you wish to interrogate the prisoner at once .

I send you my greetings.

Captain Gjikondi, of the border region .

Stres looked up from the sheet he was holding and glanced quickly at his deputy, then at the messenger. So it was just as he had imagined: she had run off with a lover.

His recent dreaminess was instantly supplanted by a wave of anger among the most violent he had ever experienced. It was like a blast of wind that choked his breathing, clouded his mind, and probably affected his speech as well. Like a stinging nettle, it allowed no exemptions. Now they’ll find out who Stres really is! They’ll soon see what happens when you try to take him for a ride! He would show them, scoundrels all, and this time the gloves would be off! He was going to make a clean sweep of all that filth and shit! What he was about to do would make those crooks and parasites lose their taste for wasting his time for a hundred years — and he’d do the same to those slimy mourners, those snakes in the grass who’d been boiled in their own venom! He’d put an end to their evil propaganda! To think that he, fearless Stres, had yielded to those crazy hags! Such lies they told, O Lord, such abominations …

Troubled by his own irritation, and realising he had gone too far, Stress suddenly retreated into silence.

“When are they due to arrive?” he asked the messenger after a long pause.

“In two hours, three at most.”

It was only then that Stres noticed that the messenger’s boots were caked with mud to the knees. He took a deep breath. The ideas that had come to him in the graveyard snow three days before seemed very far away.

“Wait for me,” he said, “while I get my cape.”

He went back inside and, donning his long riding cape, told his wife, “The man who brought Doruntine back has been captured.”

“Really?” she said. She could not see his face, for a flap of his cape, like the wing of a great black bird, had come between them and kept their eyes from meeting.

Stres kept his mouth shut all the way, but despite that, as he watched the captain’s stride, especially the way his boots dealt with the puddles, his companion grasped that the police chief was still just as angry and that his indignation could be read in the movement of his legs just as accurately, if not more so, as from his speech.

They had been waiting more than two hours for the carriage that was to bring the prisoner. The floorboards creaked plaintively under Stres’s boots as he paced back and forth, as was his custom, between his work table and the window. His deputy dared not break the silence; and the messenger, whose wet clothes gave off a musty odour, sat slumped in a wooden chair, and snored.

Stres could not help stopping at the window from time to time. As he gazed out at the plain and waited for the carriage to appear, he felt his mind turn slowly numb. The same steady and monotonous rain had been falling since morning, and anyone’s arrival, from whatever quarter, seemed quite inconceivable under its dreary regularity.