Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

Once more Stres’s glance embraced the numberless crowd that stretched before him, then the stands to his right and left. He thought he saw the gleam of tears here and there. But the people’s eyes were, in fact, empty.

“But it is not easy to accept this message,” he went on. “It will require great sacrifices by successive generations. Its burden will be heavier than the cross of Christ. And now that I have come to the end of what I had to tell you” — and here Stres turned to the stands where the envoys of the prince were seated — “I would like to add that, since my words are at variance with my duties, or at least are at variance with them for the moment , I now resign my post.”

He raised his right hand to the white antler insignia sewn on the left side of his cloak and, pulling sharply, ripped it off and let it fall to the ground.

Without another word he descended the wooden stairway and, his head held high, walked through the crowd, which parted at his passing with a mixture of respect and dread.

From that day forward, Stres was never seen again. No one, neither his deputies nor his family, not even his wife, knew where he was — or at least no one would say.

At the Old Monastery the wooden grandstands and platform were dismantled, porters carried off the planks and beams, and in the inner courtyard there was no longer any trace of the assembly. But no one forgot a word that Stres had spoken there. His words passed from mouth to mouth, from village to village, with unbelievable speed. The rumour that Stres had been arrested in the wake of his speech soon proved unfounded. It was said that he had been seen somewhere, or at least that someone had heard the trot of his horse. Others insisted they had caught a glimpse of him on the northern highway. They were sure they had recognised him, despite the dusk and the first layer of dust that covered his hair. Who can say? people mused, who can say? How much, O Lord, must our poor minds take in! And then someone said, his voice trembling as if shivering with cold:

“Sometimes I wonder if he didn’t bring Doruntine back himself.”

“How dare you say such a thing?”

“What would be so surprising?” the man answered. “As for myself, I have not been surprised by anything since the day she returned.”

As was only to be expected, the old dispute over local versus foreign marriages arose once again. Proponents of local marriages now seemed likely to prevail, but the other faction proved obstinate. Each side had its own explanation of the dead man’s ride. The distant marriage faction emphasised respect of the besa and obviously saw Kostandin as its standard bearer. The other side treated his journey as an act of repentance, in other words as a resurrection intended to make good a fault. A third group, who saw in the man’s long ride an attempt to reconcile opposites — distance and proximity — that had torn him apart as much as his incestuous yearnings, was much less prominent.

With the idea of local marriage constantly gaining ground, the sad story of Maria Matrenga was quoted more and more often, despite the fact that, like some predestined counterweight, Palok the Idiot wandered around the village alleyways ever more visibly.

When the poor yokel was found dead one fine morning, people’s initial distress was quickly replaced by an understanding that his murderers would never be identified. The incident was accounted for, as many are, in two different ways. Supporters of distant marriages maintained that Palok had been slaughtered by his own kin, that is to say by defenders of local unions, so as to remove from the street this visible evidence that did their cause harm every day of the week. But their adversaries obstinately insisted that the killing had been done by the supporters of exogamy, so as to show that even though their ideals were on the wane, they were still prepared to defend them, even by spilling blood.

All the same, despite this new bone of contention, things proceeded as they always do when a simpleton is killed, for unlike cases where dogs are put down, they often lead to reconciliation. Tension between the two factions went into sharp decline.

While time now seemed to be on the side of local marriages, an event took place which could have seemed ordinary in any other season, but was not at all normal in mid-winter. A young woman of the village married and left to join her husband in some far-off place. Everyone was shocked to hear talk of a new Doruntine at such a time of year. People thought that after the uproar over all that had taken place in the village, the bride’s family would break the engagement or at least put off the wedding for a while. But the ceremony took place on the appointed day, the groom’s relatives came over from their country, which some people said was six days away, while others said eight. After they had done with all their feasting and drinking and singing of songs, they took the young woman away with them. Almost the entire village walked with them from the church, as they had done years before with sorry Doruntine, and seeing the bride looking so beautiful, almost wraith-like in her white veil, many must have wondered whether on some moonless night some ghost might not go and bring her back home again. But the bride, for her part, astride her white horse, showed not the slightest sign of worry about her fate. People watching her leave nodded their heads, saying, “Good Lord, maybe young brides nowadays like that sort of thing, maybe they like riding at night, hanging on to a shadow, through the dark and the void …”

Tirana, October 1979

The following pages contain an extract from The Siege , one of Ismail Kadare’s masterpieces, an unforgettable account of the clash of two civilisations and a timeless depiction of individual pain, uncertainty and fear that resonates today.

It is the early fifteenth century and as winter falls away, the people of Albania know that their fate is sealed. They have refused to negotiate with the Ottoman Empire, and war is now inevitable.

The Siege tells the enthralling story of the weeks and months that follow — of the exhilaration and despair of the battlefield, the constantly shifting strategies of war, and those whose lives are held in the balance. For those trapped inside the citadel, and for the Pasha, technicians, artillerymen, astrologer, blind poet and his harem of women outside, the siege is inescapable and increasingly oppressive. From this dramatic setting Kadare has created a profound novel that is as moving as it is compelling.

“A brilliant historical novel by one of the world’s greatest living writers.”

Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Young Stalin

“Brilliant … A candidly prophetic novel of our age.”

Irish Times

“Great books, books that last, are shape-shifting books. The Siege is about what it is about — a siege in the fifteenth century. It is also a universal evocation of human violence.”

Sunday Times

£7.99

ISBN 978 1 84767 122 6

As winter fell away and the Sultan’s envoys departed, we realised that war was our ineluctable fate. They had pressured us in every way to accept being vassals of the Sultan. First they used flattery, promising us a part in governing their vast empire. Then they accused us of being renegades in the pay of the Frankish knights, that is to say, slaves of Europe. Finally, as was to be expected, they made threats .

You seem mighty sure of your fortresses, they said to us, but even if they are as sturdy as you think, we’ll throttle you with an altogether more fearsome iron band — hunger and thirst. At each season of harvest and threshing, the only seeded field you’ll see will be the sky, and your only sickle the moon .