Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

The old woman covered her eyes with one hand, then her head moved in a way that told him she had lost consciousness. Stres took her hand and found her pulse with difficulty. Her heart was still beating.

“Call one of the women,” Stres said quietly to his deputy.

His aide soon returned with one of the women who had just left the room. Stres let go of the old woman’s hand and walked noiselessly, as before, to the bed where Doruntine lay. He could see her blond hair on the pillow. He felt his heart wrench, but the sensation had nothing to do with what was happening now. An ancient pang that went back to that wedding three years before. On that day, as she rode off on the white bridal steed amidst the throng of relatives and friends, his own heart was suddenly so heavy that he wondered what had come over him. Everyone looked sad, not only Doruntine’s mother and brother, but all her relatives, for she was the first girl of the country to marry so far away. But Stres’s sorrow was quite unique. As she rode away, he suddenly realised that the feeling he had had for her these last three weeks had been nothing other than love. But it was a love without shape, a love which had never condensed, for he himself had gently prevented it. It was like the morning dew that appears for the first few minutes after sunrise, only to vanish during the other hours of day and night. The only moment when that bluish fog had nearly condensed, had tried to form itself into a cloud, was when she left. But it had been no more than an instant, quickly forgotten.

Stres stood at Doruntine’s bed, looking steadily into her face. She was as beautiful as ever, perhaps even more beautiful, with those lips that seemed somehow full and light at the same time.

“Doruntine,” he said in a very soft voice.

She opened her eyes. Deep within them he sensed a void that nothing could fill. He tried to smile at her.

“Doruntine,” he said again. “Welcome home.”

She stared at him.

“How do you feel?” he said slowly, carefully, unconsciously taking her hand. She was burning hot. “Doruntine,” he said again, more gently, “you came last night after midnight, didn’t you?”

Her eyes answered “yes.” He would rather have put off asking the question that troubled him, but it rose up of itself.

“Who brought you back?”

The young woman’s eyes stared steadily back at his own.

“Doruntine,” he asked again, “who brought you back?” His voice seemed alien to him. The very question was so fraught with terror that he almost wanted to take it back. But it was too late.

Still she stared at him with those eyes in whose depths he glimpsed a desperate void.

Get it over with now, he told himself.

“You told your mother that it was your brother Kostandin, didn’t you?”

Again her look assented. Stres searched her eyes for some sign of madness, but could find no meaning in their utter emptiness.

“I think you must have heard that Kostandin left this world three years ago,” he said in the same faint voice. He felt tears well up within him before they suddenly filled her eyes. But hers were tears unlike any others, half-visible, almost impalpable. Her face, bathed by those tears, seemed even more remote. “What’s happening to me?” her eyes seemed to say. “Why don’t you believe me?”

He turned slowly to his deputy and to the other woman standing near the mother’s bed and motioned to them to leave. Then he leaned towards the young woman again and stroked her hand.

“How did you get here, Doruntine? How did you manage that long journey?”

It seemed to him that something strained to fill those unnaturally enlarged eyes.

Stres left an hour later. He looked pale, and without turning his head or speaking a word to anyone, he made his way to the door. His deputy, following behind, was tempted several times to ask whether Doruntine had said anything new, but he didn’t dare.

As they passed the church, Stres seemed about to enter the cemetery, but changed his mind at the last minute.

His deputy could feel the glances of curious onlookers as they walked along.

“It’s not an easy case,” Stres said without looking at his deputy. “I expect there will be quite a lot of talk about it. Just to anticipate any eventuality, I think we would do well to send a report to the prince’s chancellery.”

To His Highness’s Chancellor. Urgent

I believe it useful to bring to your attention events that occurred at dawn on this 11 October in the noble house of Vranaj and which may have unpredictable consequences .

On the morning of 11 October, the aged Lady Vranaj, who, as everyone knows, has been living alone since the death of her nine sons on the battlefield, was found in a state of profound distress, along with her daughter, Doruntine, who, by her own account, had arrived the night before, accompanied by her brother Kostandin, who died three years ago, alongside all his brothers .

Having repaired to the site and tried to speak with the two unfortunate women, I concluded that neither showed any sign of mental instability, though what they now claim, whether directly or indirectly, is completely baffling and incredible. It should be noted at this point that they had given each other this shock, the daughter by telling her mother that she had been brought home by her brother Kostandin, the mother by informing her daughter that Kostandin, with all her brothers, had long since departed this world .

I tried to discuss the matter with Doruntine, and what I managed to glean from her, in her distress, may be summarised more or less as follows:

One night, not long ago (she does not recall the exact date), in the small city in central Europe where she had been living with her husband since her marriage, she was told that an unidentified traveller was asking for her. On going out, she saw the horseman who had just arrived and who seemed to her to be Kostandin, although the dust of the long journey he had just completed made him almost unrecognisable. But when the traveller, still in the saddle, said that he was indeed Kostandin, and that he had come to take her to her mother as he had promised before her marriage, she was reassured. (Here we must recall the stir caused at the time by Doruntine’s engagement to a man from a land so far away, the opposition of the other brothers, and especially the mother, who did not want to send her daughter so far off, Kostandin’s insistence that the marriage take place, and finally his solemn promise, his besa, that he would bring her back himself whenever their mother yearned for her daughter’s company.)

Doruntine told me that her brother’s behaviour seemed rather strange, since he did not get off his horse and refused to go into the house. He insisted on taking her away as soon as possible, and when she asked him why she had to leave in such haste — for if the occasion was one of joy, she would don a fine dress, and if it was one of sorrow, she would wear mourning clothes — he said, with no further explanation, “Come as you are.” His behaviour was scarcely natural; moreover, it was contrary to all the rules of courtesy. But since she had been consumed with yearning for her family for these three years (“I lived in the most awful solitude,” she says), she did not hesitate, wrote a note to her husband, and allowed her brother to lift her up behind him .

She also told me that it had been a long journey, though she was unable to say exactly how long. She says that all she remembers is an endless night, with myriad stars streaming across the sky, but this vision may have been suggested by an endless ride broken by longer or shorter intervals of sleep. It is interesting to note that she does not recall having travelled by day. She may have formed this impression either because she dozed or slept in the saddle all day, so that she no longer remembers the daylight at all, or because she and her escort retired at dawn and went to sleep, awaiting nightfall to continue their journey. Were this to prove correct, it would suggest that the rider wished to travel only by night. In Doruntine’s mind, exhausted as she was (not to mention her emotional state), the ten or fifteen nights of the trip (for that is generally how long it takes to travel here from Bohemia) may have blended into a single long — indeed endless — nocturnal ride .