Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

Everyone awaited the great assembly at which the whole affair would be sifted through in minute detail. The arrival of many nobles from all the principalities of Albania was announced. Rumour had it that the prince himself would attend. Other voices whispered that high church dignitaries from Byzantium would participate, while others, less numerous, even suggested that the Patriarch himself would come in person.

In fact, contrary to what might have been expected, echoes of the Doruntine affair had spread far indeed. The news had even reached Constantinople, capital of the Orthodox religion, and everyone was aware that such things were never pardoned in that city. The highest ecclesiastical authorities were worried, people said. The Emperor himself had been apprised of the incident, which had given him sleepless nights. The issue had proven far more scandalous than it had seemed at first. It was not a simple case of a ghostly apparition, nor even one of those typical calumnies that the Church had always punished with the stake and always would. No, this was far more serious, something that, may God protect us, was shaking the Orthodox religion to its foundations. It concerned the coming of a new messiah — in God’s name, lower your voice! — yes, a new messiah, for one man alone had been able to rise from his grave, and that was Jesus Christ, and whosoever affirmed this new resurrection was thereby guilty of an unpardonable sacrilege: belief in a new resurrection, which was tantamount to admitting that there could be two Jesus Christs, for if one believed that someone today had succeeded in doing what Jesus had done in His time, then it was but one small step to admitting — may God preserve us! — that this someone else might be His rival.

Not for nothing had Rome, in its hostility, paid the most careful attention to the development of the case. The Catholic monks had surely outdone themselves in propagating this fable of Kostandin’s resurrection, thereby attempting to deal the Orthodox religion a mortal blow by accusing it of bi-Christicism , which was a monstrous heresy. Things had got so tense that there was now talk of a universal war of religion. Some even hinted that the impostor who had brought Doruntine back was himself an agent of the Roman Church entrusted with just that mission. Others went further still, claiming that Doruntine herself had fallen into Catholic clutches and had agreed to do their bidding. O great God above, people intoned, may it not be our lot to hear such things! That is how entangled the case had become. But the Orthodox Church of Byzantium, which had spared neither patriarchs nor emperors for infractions of this magnitude, had finally taken the matter in hand and would clear it all up soon enough. The enemies of the Church would be utterly routed.

So said some. Others shook their heads. Not because they disagreed, but because they suspected that the rumour of Kostandin’s return from the grave might well have been generated not by the intrigues and rivalry of the world’s two major religions but by one of those mysterious disturbances which, like a wicked wind, periodically plague the minds of men, robbing them of judgement, numbing them, and driving them thus dazed and blinded beyond life and death. For life and death, as they saw it, enveloped man in endless successive concentric layers, so that just as there was death within life, so death ought to contain life, which in turn contained death; or perhaps life, itself enveloped in death, harboured death in turn, and so on to infinity. Enough, objected the first group: forget the hair-splitting ratiocination, just say what you mean. The others then sought to explain their point of view more clearly, talking fast lest a mist descend upon their reasoning once more. This alleged resurrection of Kostandin, they said, was in no sense real, and the hoax had been born not at that churchyard grave but in the minds of the people, who, it seemed, had been somehow gripped by a powerful yearning to spin this tale of the mingling of life and death, just as they are sometimes gripped by collective madness. This yearning had cropped up in scattered places, with one, then with another; it had infected them all, so as to turn, at last — abomination of abominations — into a common desire of the quick and the dead to give themselves over to this collective outburst. Short-sighted as they were, people gave no real thought to the abomination they had wrought, for though it is true that everyone feels the urge to see their dead once more, that longing is ephemeral, always arising after some time of turmoil ( Something stopped me from kissing him , Doruntine had said). If the dead ever really came back and sat before us big as life, you’d see just how terrifying it would be. You think it’s difficult to get along with a nonagenarian? Well, imagine dealing with a 900-year-old!

Kostandin’s presence, too, like that of any other dead man returned to the land of the living, would be welcome for no more than the briefest lapse of time ( You go on, I have something to do at the church ), for his dead life’s proper place was there, in the grave. They say there was a time when dead and living, men and gods, all lived together and sometimes even intermarried, engendering hybrid creatures. But that was an era of barbarism that would never return.

Others listened to these morbid words but preferred to look at matters more simply. If this was all some yearning for resurrection, they said, why bother trying to decide whether it was good or ill? God, after all, would set the date of the Apocalypse, and none save He was entitled to pass judgement on the matter, and still less to decree its advent. But that, others replied, is exactly what’s wrong with this rumour of Kostandin’s resurrection. The alleged resurrection is taken as a sign that the Apocalypse could occur without an order from the Lord. And the Roman Church accuses ours of having sanctioned this travesty. Now, however, everything will be put right. The Church of Byzantium will not be found wanting. Stres had finally unmasked the great hoax, and the whole country — nay, the whole world, from Rome to Constantinople — would soon learn the truth. Stres would surely be awarded high honours for his achievement.

The light in his window was the last to go out each night. He must be preparing his report. Who can say what we’re going to find out, everyone repeated. Blessed are the deaf! In times like these, they are the only people who can sleep soundly.

The sky, though low, seemed particularly distant. Boorishly blocking the view of all four points of the compass, it made not only the old folk but everyone else too complain of the crushing humidity.

But that did not stop them from gossiping. Every day brought new chapters to the story of Doruntine, or else erased parts of it. Only the mourners remained steadfast in their ritual. On the day of the dead, as people made the traditional visits to the graves of their relatives, these women mourned the Vranaj with the very same songs they had sung before:

Woe betide thee, Kostandin!

What have you done with your word?

Does it lie in the grave as you do?

Stres listened to all this talk with an enigmatic smile. He had stopped railing at the old crones or calling them snakes with forked tongues. He’d grown paler of late, but pallor quite suited his looks in winter.

“What exactly does the besa mean to you?” he would ask of Kostandin’s companions — having recently found pleasure in their company.

The young men looked at one another. There were four of them: Shpend, Milosao, and the two Radhen boys. Stres met them nearly every afternoon at the New Inn, where they used to pass the time when Kostandin was alive. People shook their heads in wonder when they saw Stres with them. Some said that he befriended them as a matter of official duty. Others maintained that he was just killing time. He has finished his report, they said, and now he’s taking time off. Others simply shrugged. Who knows why he spends his time with them? He’s deep as a well, that Stres. You can never guess why he does one thing rather than another.