Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

“I made my way back to the highway, to the place where I had left my horse and, mounting, I wandered awhile looking for shelter for the night. We had agreed to meet secretly in two days, but at that point I knew that I would never see her again. The next day and in the days that followed, as I saw the turmoil caused by her arrival, I became convinced not only that I would never see her again but that I had better leave these parts as quickly as possible. I had in the meantime heard of the orders you had issued, and was sure that I was guilty of something impious which, however unaware of it I may have been, might cost me dear indeed. I wanted to slip away as quickly as possible, but how? All the inns, all the relay stations, had been alerted to arrest me on sight. At first I thought of turning myself in and confessing: yes, it was I who brought this woman back, forgive me if I did something wrong, but if I did, it was without realising it. Then I changed my mind. Why take such a risk? With a bit of skill I could evade the traps that were set for me and be quit of the whole affair. Yet I had a premonition that the honeymoon I had spent with that young woman would turn out to be deadly poisonous. I moved about very cautiously, far from the roads and inns, and mostly by night, like a fox in the woods, as people say. A thousand pardons, I’m getting lost in pointless details again … I thought that if I could cross the border of your principality I would be out of danger. I didn’t know that the neighbouring principalities and counties had also been notified. And that’s how I came to grief. I caught a cold while fording a stream by the baneful name of Ujana e keqe — I think that was the name, the ‘Evil Uyana’ — and I am not quite sure what happened to me next. I was burning with fever, and I remember nothing until I came to and found myself bound hand and foot in an inn. And that’s it, Captain. I don’t know if I have explained everything properly, but you can ask me any detail at all, and I’ll tell you everything. I’m sorry that I didn’t behave as I should have from the very beginning, but I hope you’ll understand my situation. I’ll do everything I can to make amends by answering all your questions honestly.”

At last he fell silent, and he sat unblinking under Stres’s inspection. His mouth was dry, but he dared not ask for water. Stres stared at him for a long moment. Then, as he opened his mouth to speak, a smile crossed his face like a flash of lightning.

“Is that the truth?” Stres asked.

“Yes, Captain. The whole truth.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. The whole truth, Captain.”

Stres rose and, his neck stiff as a board, slowly turned his head towards his deputy and the two guards.

“Put him to the torture,” he ordered.

Not only the prisoner, but the three other men as well, stiffened in astonishment.

“Torture?” asked his deputy, as though afraid he had misunderstood.

“Yes,” said, Stres, his tone icy. “Torture. And don’t look at me like that. I know what I’m doing.”

He turned on his heels, but at that instant, behind him, the prisoner began to scream, “Captain, no! No! My God, what is this? Why, why?”

Stres climbed the stairs quickly, but he still heard the clanking of the chains with which they secured the prisoner, and his cries as well, which were no less poignant for being muffled.

Stres returned to his office, took up a pencil and began drafting a report for the prince’s chancellery:

Report on the arrest of the man who brought back Doruntine Vranaj

Last night Captain Gjikondi of the border detachment delivered to me the man suspected of having brought Doruntine back. In the first interrogation he admitted nothing and denied even knowing a woman by that name, much less having travelled with her. Then, under the threat of torture, he confessed everything, finally throwing light on the mystery of this affair. The events seem to have happened in this manner: at the end of September of this year the man, finding himself in Bohemia in the course of his peregrinations as a seller of icons, made the acquaintance of D. V., and hearing her express her despair at having had no news of her family, promised to take her to her parents’ home. He persuaded her to lie to her husband and to write him a letter saying that she had left with her brother Kostandin. The two of them then left Bohemia. On the way he managed to seduce her. At the conclusion of this trying journey, after revealing to her that her brother Kostandin was long dead and finding no other lie with which to justify the journey she had just made with a stranger, he persuaded her to tell her mother that she had been brought back by the ghost of her dead brother, who had thereby fulfilled the promise he had made while he was alive. Subsequently, taking fright, he tried to flee unnoticed and was finally arrested, under circumstances that are well known to you, in the neighbouring county, in an establishment called the Inn of the Two Roberts. He is now being held, on my orders, in complete isolation. I await your instructions on the measures to be taken in this case .

Captain Stres

Of the torture he had ordered inflicted on the prisoner down below in the basement, Stres said not a word. He closed the envelope carefully, sealed it, and instructed a courier to set out at once to deliver it to the capital of the principality. A more or less identical letter was sent to the archbishop at the Monastery of the Three Crosses, with a notice asking that it be forwarded to him in the capital if necessary.

It had started snowing again, but this snow was different from the last, somehow closer to the world of men. That which was meant to be whitened was whitened, and that which was fated to stay dark remained so. The first icicles hung from the eaves, some of the rivulets had frozen as usual, and the layer of ice was just strong enough to support the weight of the birds. It soon appeared that this would be one of those winters the earth could live with.

Under roofs weighed down by their heavy burden the people talked of Doruntine. By now everyone knew of the arrest of the man who had brought her back, and though they had heard only bits and pieces of the tale he had told, it was enough to cover the world with words, just as a handful of wheat can sow a field.

Many were the messengers who fanned out from the capital through the province during those days, while others, equally numerous, were dispatched from the province to the capital. It was said that a great assembly was being prepared, at which all the rumours and agitation aroused by the alleged resurrection of one of the Vranaj brothers would be laid to rest once and for all. Stres was said to be preparing a detailed report to be presented at the meeting. He had kept the prisoner in isolation, his whereabouts unknown, safe from prying eyes and ears.

Those snippets of the prisoner’s confession that had somehow leaked out were now spreading far and wide, carried by word of mouth on puffs of steam in the winter air and borne by carriage from road to road and inn to inn. People travelled less than usual because of the cold, but strangely, the rumours spread just as fast as they would have in more clement weather. It was as if, hardened to crystalline brilliance by the winter frost, they could flow more surely than the rumours of summer, for they were unimpeded by damp and suffocating heat, by the numbing of minds and the jangling of nerves. But that did not prevent them from changing daily as they spread, from swelling, from becoming lighter or darker. And as if all this were not enough, there were still those who said, “Just wait, even stranger things will come.” Others, drifting off, would simply sigh, “What next, Lord, what next?”