Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

“As I listened to her speak — in tears she looked even more beautiful — I was suddenly gripped by such a violent desire for her that without a moment’s thought I said that if she agreed I could take her to her family myself. My trade has accustomed me to long journeys, and I told her that as simply as if I had offered to take her to the next town, but she thought the idea mad. It was only natural for it to seem insane to her at first, yet curiously, the passion with which she initially rejected my proposal gave me hope, for I had the impression that her protest was meant not so much to persuade me that the idea was really insane as to convince herself. The more she said, ‘You’re mad, and I am madder still for listening to you,’ the more I felt my desire increase, along with my hope that she would yield. So on the next day, when, after a sleepless night, she told me — pale, her voice dull — that she did not see what she could say to her husband if she agreed to come with me, I told myself that I had won. I was convinced that the main thing was to set out alone with her on the roads of Europe. After that, God would provide! Nothing else seemed to matter. I suggested that we didn’t have to tell him, for at bottom it was he who was forcing her to act in that way. Had she herself not told me that he had promised to take her to her mother, but that he was kept from doing so by his business? All she had to do, then, was to leave without telling him anything. ‘But how can I, how can I?’ she asked feverishly. ‘How can I explain it to him afterwards? Alone with a stranger!’ And she blushed. Of course not, I said, you cannot tell him that you made the journey with a stranger, God forbid! ‘Then what can I do?’ she asked. And I told her: ‘I’ve thought about it, and what you must do is leave him a letter saying that your brother came to fetch you in great haste, for mis fortune has befallen your family.’ ‘What misfortune?’ she interrupted. ‘You, stranger, you know what it is, but you don’t want to tell me. Oh, my brother must be dead, otherwise he would have come to see me!’

“Two days passed and still she hesitated. I was afraid of being found out and tried to meet her secretly. My desire became uncontrollable. At last she agreed. It was a gloomy late afternoon when she came in haste to the crossroads where I had told her that I would wait for her one last time. I helped her to the crupper and we set off without a word. We rode for a long time, until we felt that we were far enough away that they would not be able to trace us. We spent the night in an out-of-the-way inn and set off again before dawn. I need hardly tell you that she was in a constant state of anxiety. I comforted her as well as I could, and we pressed on. We spent the second night in another inn even farther off the beaten track than the first, in a region I don’t even know the name of. I’ll spare you the details of my attempts to win her favours. Her pride, and especially her constant anxiety, held her back. But I used every means, from passionate entreaty to threats to abandon her, to leave her alone on the high plateaus of Europe. And so, on the fourth night she gave in. I was so drunk with passion, so giddy, that by the next morning I hardly knew where we were or where we were going. If I am giving useless detail, please stop me. We spent several strange days and nights. We slept in inns that we passed on the way, then we took up our journey again. We sold some of her jewels to pay our expenses. I wanted the journey to last as long as possible, but she was impatient. The closer we came to the Albanian border, the greater was her anxiety. ‘What could have happened there?’ she asked from time to time. ‘What of that war, that plague?’ We asked often at the inns, but received only evasive answers. There had indeed been talk of great conflict in Albanian territory, but the reports differed about when it had happened. Some said it had not been war, but plague; others held that the disease hadn’t stricken Albania, but some more distant land. Meanwhile, as we neared the Albanian border, the answers grew more definite. Without telling her, I tried to find out more while she rested at the inns. Here everyone knew that war and plague had allied themselves, and had decimated the men of Albania. Once we were in the country’s northern principalities, we tried to avoid the major roads and inns, travelling mostly by night. We had now reached the principalities neighbouring her own, and she insisted that we do nothing to call attention to ourselves. We cut across fallow fields, often leaving the roads altogether. We made love wherever we could. In one of the few inns in which we were forced to take shelter from foul weather, I learned the terrible truth about her brothers. Everyone was talking about the great sorrow that had befallen that illustrious house. All her brothers were dead, Kostandin among them. The innkeeper knew the whole story. I began to fear that she would be recognised. As we came closer to her home, we strained our wits to find some acceptable explanation for her arrival. Believing her brothers still alive, she was more frightened than she need have been, whereas for me, knowing the truth as I did, things seemed simpler. In any event, it was easier to account to an old woman stunned by misfortune than to nine brothers.

“She was beside herself in her anxiety about what she could say to her brothers and her mother to explain her arrival. What would she answer when they asked her, ‘Who brought you back?’ Would she tell the truth? Would she lie? And, if so, what would she say?

“So I found myself compelled to tell her a part of the truth; that is, of the terrible misfortune. I gave her to understand that her brother Kostandin, the one who had promised to bring her back, had died, together with some of his brothers.

“You can well imagine that she went mad with grief, but neither the fatigue of the journey nor her sorrow lessened her worry over the explanation she would have to give for her sudden arrival. It was I who had the idea of explaining her journey in terms of some supernatural intervention. Though I racked my brain, I could find no better explanation. ‘There is no other way,’ I told her. ‘You have to repeat the lie you’ve already used with your husband. You’ll say that Kostandin brought you back.’ ‘But I was able to lie to my husband,’ she replied, ‘because he believed my brother was still alive. How can I say the same thing about someone they know is dead?’ ‘But it’ll be even easier,’ I told her, ‘just because he isn’t alive. You’ll say that it was your brother who brought you, and they can take it any way they like. What I mean is, they have only to imagine that it was his ghost who brought you back. After all, didn’t he promise that, dead or alive, he would fetch you? Everyone knows the exact words of his promise, and they will believe you.’

“Since I knew that her mother alone was still alive, I found the matter quite simple, but she, thinking as she did that at least half of her brothers were alive, scarcely hoped to be believed. But, like it or not, she had to yield to my reasoning. There was no other way. We had no time to think of a more plausible explanation, and in any case neither of us was thinking clearly by then.

“And so, the last night came, the night of 11 October, if I am not mistaken, when, slipping through the darkness like ghosts, we came up to the house. I won’t try to tell you about her state of mind — I couldn’t describe it. It was past midnight. As we had decided, I stood out of sight, hiding in the half-darkness as she approached the door. But she was in no condition to walk. So I had to lead her to the door where, her hand trembling, she knocked, or more accurately she rested her hand on the knocker, for it was I in fact who moved her hand, cold as a corpse’s. I wanted to run off at once, but she was terrified and wouldn’t let go of me. In order to calm her, I stroked her hair with my other hand one last time, but at that instant, God be praised, she not only let go but pushed me away in terror. I heard the old woman’s voice from behind the door: ‘Who is it?’ then her answer: ‘Open, Mother, it’s me, Doruntine,’ then the old woman’s voice again: ‘What did you say?’ I had moved away and could not hear the other words clearly, the more so because they were increasingly faint and interrupted with exclamations.