Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

Stres listened attentively to his deputy, although the latter had the impression that his chief’s attention sometimes wandered.

“And here,” Stres finally asked, “what are they saying here?”

The deputy looked at him, puzzled.

“Here,” Stres repeated. “Not in the archives, but here among the people, what are they saying about it?”

His deputy raised his arms helplessly.

“Naturally everyone is talking about it.”

Stres let a moment pass before adding, “Yes, of course. That goes without saying. It could hardly be otherwise.”

He closed his desk drawer, pulled on his cloak and left, bidding his deputy a good night.

His path home took him past the gates and fences of the single-storey houses that had sprung up since the town, not long ago as small and quiet as the surrounding villages, had become the county seat. The porches on which people whiled away the summer evenings were deserted now, and only a few chairs or hammocks had been left outside in the apparent hope of another mild day or two before the rigours of winter set in.

But though the porches were empty, young girls, sometimes in the company of a boy, could be seen whispering at the gates and along the fences. As Stres approached, they stopped their gossiping and watched him pass with curiosity. The events of the night of 11 October had stirred everyone’s imagination, girls and young brides most of all. Stres guessed that each one must now be dreaming that someone — brother or distant friend, man or shadow — would some day cross an entire continent for her.

“So,” his wife said to him when he got home, “have you finally found out who she came back with?”

Taking off his cloak, Stres glanced covertly at her, wondering whether there was not perhaps a touch of irony in her words. She was tall and fair, and she looked back at him with the hint of a smile, and in a fleeting instant it occurred to Stres that though he was by no means insensitive to his wife’s charms, he could not imagine her riding behind him, clinging to him in the saddle. Doruntine, on the other hand, seemed to have been born to ride like that, hair streaming in the wind, arms wrapped around her horseman.

“No,” he said drily.

“You look tired.”

“I am. Where are the children?”

“Upstairs playing. Do you want to eat?”

He nodded yes and lowered himself, exhausted, into a chair covered with a shaggy woollen cloth. In the large fireplace tepid flames licked at two big oak logs but were unable to set them ablaze. Stres sat and watched his wife moving back and forth.

“As if all the other cases were not enough, now you have to search for some vagabond,” she said through a clinking of dishes.

She made no direct reference to Doruntine, but somehow her hostility came through.

“Nothing I can do about it,” said Stres.

The clatter of dishes got louder.

“Anyway,” his wife went on, “why is it so important to find out who that awful girl came home with?” This time the reproach was aimed in part at Stres.

“And what makes her so awful?” he said evenly.

“What, you don’t think so? A girl who spends three years wallowing in her own happiness without so much as a thought for her poor mother stricken with the most dreadful grief? You don’t think she’s an ingrate?”

Stres listened, head down.

“Maybe she didn’t know about it.”

“Oh, she didn’t know? And how did she happen to remember so suddenly three years later?”

Stres shrugged. His wife’s hostility to Doruntine was nothing new. She had shown it often enough; once they had even fought about it. It was two days after the wedding, and his wife had said, “How come you’re sitting there sulking like that? Are all of you so sorry to see her go?” It was the first time she had ever made such a scene.

“She left her poor mother alone in her distress,” she went on, “and then suddenly took it into her head to come back just to rob her of the little bit of life she had left. Poor woman! What a fate!”

“It’s true,” Stres said. “Such a desert—”

“Such hellish solitude, you mean,” she broke in. “To see her daughters-in-law leave one after the other, most of them with small children in their arms, her house suddenly dark as a well. But her daughters-in-law, after all, were only on loan, and though they were wrong to abandon their mother-in-law in her time of trouble, who can cast a stone at them when the first to abandon the poor woman was her only daughter?”

Stres sat looking at the brass candelabra, astonishingly similar to the ones he had seen that memorable morning in the room where Doruntine and her mother lay in their sickbeds. He now realised that everyone, each in his own way, would take some stand in this affair, and that each person’s attitude would have everything to do with their station in life, their luck in love or marriage, their looks, the measure of good or ill fortune that had been their lot, the events that had marked the course of their life, and their most secret feelings, those that people sometimes hide even from themselves. Yes, that would be the echo awakened in everyone by what had happened, and though they would believe they were passing judgement on someone else’s tragedy, in reality, they would simply be giving expression to their own.

In the morning a messenger from the prince’s chancellery delivered an envelope to Stres. Inside was a note stating that the prince, having been informed of the events of 11 October, ordered that no effort be spared in bringing the affair to light so as to forestall what Stres himself feared, any uneasiness or misapprehension among the people.

The chancellery asked that Stres notify the prince the moment he felt that the matter had been resolved.

Hmm, Stres said to himself after reading the laconic note a second time. The moment he felt that the matter had been resolved. Easy enough to say. I’d like to see you in my shoes.

He had slept badly, and in the morning he again encountered the inexplicable hostility of his wife, who hadn’t forgiven him for failing to endorse her judgement of Doruntine with sufficient ardour, though he had been careful not to contradict her. He had noticed that this sort of friction, though it did not lead to explosions, was in fact more pernicious than an open dispute, which was generally followed by reconciliation.

Stres was still holding the letter from the chancellery when his deputy came in to tell him that the cemetery watchman had something to report.

“The cemetery watchman?” Stres said in astonishment, eying his aide reproachfully. He was tempted to ask, “You’re not still trying to convince me that someone has come back from the grave?” but just then, through the half-open door, he saw what appeared to be the watchman in question.

“Bring him in,” Stres said coldly.

The watchman entered, bowing deferentially.

“Well?” said Stres looking up at the man, who stood rigid as a post.

The watchman swallowed.

“I am the watchman at the church cemetery, Mister Stres, and I would like to tell you—”

“That the grave has been violated?” Stres interrupted. “I know all about it.”

The watchman was taken aback.

“I, I,” he stammered, “I meant—”

“If it’s about the gravestone being moved, I know all about it,” Stres interrupted again, unable to hide his annoyance. “If you have something else to tell me, I’m listening.”

Stres expected the watchman to say, “No, I have nothing to add,” and had already leaned over his desk again when, to his great surprise, the man spoke.

“I have something else to tell you.”

Stres raised his head and looked sternly at him, making it clear that this was neither the time nor the place for jokes.