Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

He touched the thick paper of the report with his fingers as if to convince himself that the man he was waiting for was really coming. We can’t go any faster, it’s dark, you see. He repeated to himself the delirious prisoner’s words. Don’t be afraid, none of your brothers is still alive …

He’s the one, Stres said to himself. Now he was sure of it. Just as he had imagined. He recalled the moment in the cemetery, that day in the snow when he told himself that it was all lies. Well, it wasn’t all lies, he now thought, his eyes fixed on the chilly expanse. The plain stretched to infinity in the grey rain, and the snow itself had melted or withdrawn into the distance without a trace, as if to help him forget everything that that great day had pumped into the captain’s head.

The dusk was getting thicker. On either side of the road an occasional idler could be seen, no doubt awaiting the arrival of the carriage. News of the arrest had apparently spread.

The messenger, dozing in his corner, made a sound like a groan. The deputy seemed lost in thought. Stres had heard no further mention of that incest theory of his. He must be embarrassed now.

The messenger let out another groan and half opened his eyes. They had a demented look.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Are they here yet?”

No one answered. Stres went to the window for perhaps the hundredth time. The plain was now so gloomy that it was hard to make out anything. But soon the arrival of the carriage was heralded, first by a far-off rumbling, and then by the clatter of its wheels.

“Good Lord! At last,” said Stres’s deputy, shaking the messenger by the shoulder.

Stres ran down the stairs, followed by his aide and the messenger. The carriage was rolling up as they got to the threshold. A few people were following along in the dark. Others could be heard running from farther off. The carriage came to a halt and a man dressed in the uniform of an officer of the prince got off.

“Where is Captain Stres?” he asked.

“I am he,” said Stres.

“I believe you have been informed that—”

“Yes,” Stres interrupted. “I know all about it.”

The man in uniform seemed about to add something, but then turned and headed for the carriage, leaned in through the window and said a few words to the people inside.

“Light a lantern,” someone called out.

The curtain over the carriage window was drawn back, revealing a forest of legs that jiggled about in such a way that you could not tell whether the people attached to them were embracing each other or having a fight.

Stres knew from experience that the way the legs of a criminal or his escort moved told you everything about the rest of the man, and so he understood that the prisoner had been restrained in the severest fashion, with his hands tied behind his back.

“It’s him! It’s him!” whispered the people who had gathered around.

The flickering gleam of the lantern revealed no more than half the face of the man in irons, a face bizarrely streaked with mud. The men who had brought him handed him over to two of Stres’s men, who took hold of him, as the first ones had, by the armpits. The shackled man offered no resistance.

“To the dungeon,” Stres said shortly. “What about you, what do you mean to do now?” he added, addressing the man in uniform, who seemed to be the commander of the small detachment.

“We’re going back at once,” he replied.

Stres stood there until the carriage shook into motion, then turned towards the building. At the very last moment he paused on the threshold. He sensed the presence of people in the half-darkness. In the distance he heard the footsteps of a man running towards them.

“What are you all waiting for, good people?” Stres asked quietly. “Why don’t you go home and go to bed? We have to stay up, it’s part of our job, but why should you stand around here?”

No answer came from the shadows. The light of the lantern flickered briefly as if terrified by those waxy twisted faces, then abandoned them to the darkness.

“Good night,” said Stres, entering the building and, lantern in hand, following his deputy down the staircase that led to the dungeon. The smell of mould choked him. He felt suddenly uneasy.

His aide pushed open the iron door of the dungeon and stood aside to let his chief pass. The prisoner was slumped on a pile of straw. Sensing a presence, he looked up. Stres could just make out his features in the gleam of the lantern. He seemed handsome, even marked as he was by the mud and the blows he had suffered. Stres’s eyes were drawn involuntarily to the man’s lips, and those human lips — cracked in the corners by fever, yet strangely alien to those shackles, those guards, those orders — suggested to Stres more than any other detail that he had before him the man who had made love to Doruntine.

“Who are you?” asked Stres icily.

The prisoner looked up. His expression, like his lips, seemed foreign to the setting. Seducer’s eyes, Stres said to himself.

“I am a traveller, officer,” the man answered. “An itinerant seller of icons. They arrested me. Why, I don’t know. I am very sick. I shall lodge a complaint.”

He spoke a laboured but correct Albanian. If he really was a seller of icons, he had apparently learned the language for his trade.

“Why did they arrest you?”

“Because of some woman I don’t even know, whom I’ve never seen. Someone called Doruntine. They told me I made a long journey on horseback, with her behind me, and all sorts of other rubbish.”

“Did you really travel with a woman? More precisely, did you bring a woman here from far away?” Stres asked.

“No, sir, I did not. I have travelled with no woman at all, at least not in several years.”

“About a month ago,” said Stres.

“No. Absolutely not!”

“Think about it,” said Stres.

“I don’t have to think about it,” said the shackled man in a booming voice. “I am sorry to see, sir, that you too apparently subscribe to this crazy idea. I am an honest man. I was arrested while lying on the roadside in agony. It’s inhuman! To suffer like a dog and wake up in chains instead of finding help or care. It is truly insane!”

“I am no madman,” said Stres, “as I think you will have occasion to find out.”

“But what you’re doing is pure madness,” the man in shackles replied in the same stentorian voice. “At least accuse me of something plausible. Say that I stole something or killed someone. But don’t come and tell me, You travelled on horseback with a woman. As if that was a crime! I would have done better to admit it from the outset, then you would all have been satisfied: yes, I travelled on horseback with a woman. And what of it? What’s wrong with that? But I am an honest man, and if I did not say it, it is because I am not in the habit of lying. I intend to lodge a complaint about this wherever I can. I’ll go to your prince himself. Higher still if need be, to Constantinople!”

Stres stared at him. The fettered man bore his scrutiny calmly.

“Well,” said Stres, “be that as it may, once again I ask you the question you find so insane. This will be the last time. Think carefully before you answer. Did you bring a young woman named Doruntine Vranaj here from Bohemia or from any other far-off place?”

“No,” the prisoner replied firmly.

“Wretch,” said Stres, turning his eyes from the man. “Put him to the torture,” he ordered.

The man’s eyes widened in terror. He opened his mouth to speak or to scream, but Stres charged out of the dungeon. As he followed a guard carrying a lantern up the stairs, he quickened his pace so as not to hear the prisoner’s cries.

A few minutes later he was on his way home, alone. The rain had stopped, but the path was dimpled with puddles. He let his boots splash in the water as he strode along distractedly. It’s dark, you know, I can’t see anything, he muttered to himself, repeating the words of the seller of icons.