Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

As they watched the carriages parade down the highway — most of their doors decorated with coats of arms, the passengers dressed in gaudy clothes often embroidered with the same coats of arms as those on their coaches — the people, chatting with one another, learned more in those few days about princely courts, ceremonies, dignitaries and religious and secular hierarchies than they had in their whole lifetime. It was only then that they came to realise the full import, the truly enormous significance, of this whole affair, which, at first, on that night of 11 October, had been considered simply a ghost story.

Stres and his deputy went in through an ill-lit side door. Once the preparations had been completed, the carpenters had gathered up their tools and left. The open stands were wet beneath the steady drizzle. Stres went up to the podium where he was going to speak and stared at the empty benches.

He stared at them for a long time, then suddenly turned his head sharply right and left, as though someone had called him or he had heard shouts. The hint of a bitter smile crossed his face; then, with long strides, he walked away.

Finally the long-awaited day dawned. It was cold, one of those days that seems all the more icy when you realise it’s Sunday. The high clouds were motionless, as if moored to the heavens. From early morning the monastery’s inner courtyard was packed with spectators — except for the stands reserved for high-ranking officials and guests — and the innumerable latecomers, hoping to be able to hear something, had no choice but to assemble outside in the empty field that ringed the walls. They had to learn, at all costs, what was said at the gathering, and quickly, for they formed the first circle the news must reach so that it might spread in waves throughout the world.

Bundled up in grey goatskins to protect themselves from the cold and especially the rain, they watched the arrival of the endless procession of horses and carriages from which the invited guests descended. They looked glum already, as if what was about to flood into the arena and invade their very breasts would turn out to be worse than a whirlwind. But no matter. They had all come here to confront a scourge — or else a divine revelation.

In the courtyard the stands were gradually filling up. Last to take their seats were the personal envoy of the prince, the delegates from Byzantium (accompanied by the archbishop of the principality), and Stres, dressed in his black uniform with the deer antler insignia, looking taller, but also paler, than usual.

The archbishop left the group of guests and walked towards the podium, apparently to open the meeting. A wave of shushing among the crowd allowed silence to settle gradually over the great courtyard. Only when it had become almost complete was that silence broken by a rumbling that had hitherto been inaudible. It was the noise of the crowd outside the monastery walls.

The archbishop tried to speak in a strong, loud voice, but outside the vaulted dome of his cathedral he could not make his voice really boom. He seemed annoyed at the feebleness of his diction and cleared his throat, but his tone was muffled mercilessly by the vastness of the courtyard whose walls, had they not been so low, might perhaps have given resonance and volume to his eloquence. But the prelate spoke on nonetheless. He briefly mentioned the purpose of this great meeting that had been called to shed light upon the great hoax that had so regrettably been born in this village with “someone’s alleged return from the grave and his journey with some living woman.” (His intonation of someone ’s and some gave his audience to understand that he disdained to cite the names of Kostandin and Doruntine.) He mentioned the spread of this hoax throughout the principality, beyond its borders, and indeed even beyond the confines of Albania; he suggested what unimaginable catastrophes could result if such heresies were permitted to spread freely. And finally he noted the efforts by the Church of Rome to exploit the heresy, using it against the Holy Byzantine Church, as well as the measures taken by the latter to unmask the imposture.

“And now,” he concluded, “I yield the platform to Captain Stres, who was entrusted with the investigation of this matter and who will now present a detailed report on all aspects of it. He will explain to you, step by step, how the hoax was conceived; he will tell you who was behind the story of the dead man returned from the grave, what the alleged journey of the sister with her dead brother really was, what happened afterwards, and how the truth was brought to light.”

A deep rumbling drowned out his final words as Stres rose from his seat and headed for the platform.

He raised his head, looked out at the crowd and waited for the first layer of silence to fall over it once more. He spoke his first words in a voice that seemed very soft. Little by little, as the crowd’s silence grew deeper, it sounded louder. In chronological order he set out the events of the night of 11 October and after; he recalled Doruntine’s arrival, her claim to have returned in the company of her dead brother, and his own initial suspicions: that an impostor had deceived Doruntine, that Doruntine herself had lied both to her mother and to him, that the young woman and her partner had hatched the hoax in concert, or even that it was no more than a belated vendetta of some kind, a settling of scores or a struggle for succession. He then reviewed the measures taken to discover the truth, the research into the family archives, the checks on the inns and relay stations, and finally the failure of all these various efforts to shed any light at all on the mystery. Then he recalled the spread of the first rumours, mentioning the mourners, his suspicion that Doruntine had gone mad and that the trip with her brother was no more than the product of a diseased imagination. But at that point, he continued, the arrival of two members of the husband’s family had confirmed that the journey had really occurred and that the horseman who had taken Doruntine up behind him had been seen. Stres then described the fresh measures that he and other officials of the principality had been compelled to take in their effort to solve the mystery, measures that led at length to the capture of the impostor — the man who had played the role of the dead brother — at the Inn of the Two Roberts in the next county.

“I interrogated him myself,” Stres continued. “At first he denied knowing Doruntine. In fact he denied everything, and it was only when I ordered him put to the torture that he confessed. Here, according to him, is what really happened.”

Stres then recounted the prisoner’s confession. His every word brought murmurs of relief from the crowd. It was as if they had all been yearning for this bleak story, hitherto so macabre, to be freshened by the gentle breeze of the itinerant merchant’s tale of romantic adventure. The rippling murmur breached the monastery walls and spread into the field beyond, just as silence, shuddering and terror in turn had spread before.

“This, then, is what the prisoner stated,” Stres said, raising his voice. He paused for a moment, waiting for silence. “It was midnight …”

The silence grew deeper, but the murmur rising from the most distant rows, and especially from outside the walls, was still audible.

“It was midnight when he finished his account, and it was then that I—”

Here he paused again, in one final effort to unroll the carpet of silence as far as possible.

“Then, to the astonishment of my aides, I ordered him put to the torture again.”

A sulphurous light seemed to glow in Stres’s eyes. He gazed for a moment at those silent faces, at the darkened features of the people in the grandstands, and spoke again.