Doruntine (6 page)

The burial took place on Sunday morning as planned. The road was too narrow to accommodate the crowd, and the long cortege made its way with some difficulty to the church. Many were compelled to cross the ditches and cut through the fields. A good number of these people had been guests at Doruntine's wedding not so long ago, and the doleful tolling of the death knell reminded them of that day. The road was the same from the Vranaj house to the church, the same bells tolled, but on this day with a very different sound. There had been almost as many guests at the wedding as now marched in the funeral procession, and then as now, many accompanied the cortege along the edges of the road.

Between Doruntine's marriage and her burial, her nine brothers had died. That was like a nightmare
of which no more than a confused memory remains. It had lasted two weeks, the chain of calamity seemingly endless, as though death would be satisfied only when it had closed the door of the house of Vranaj forever. After the first two deaths, which happened on a single day, it seemed as if fate had at last spent its rage against the family, and no one could have imagined what the morrow would bring. No one thought that two more brothers, borne home wounded the evening before, would die just three days later. Their wounds had not seemed dangerous, and the members of the household had thought them far less serious than the afflictions of the two who had died. But when they were found dead on that third day, the family, already in mourning, this new grief compounding the old, was struck by an unendurable pain, a kind of remorse at the neglect with which the two wounded brothers had been treated, at the way they had been abandoned (in fact they had not been abandoned at all, but such was the feeling now that they were dead). They were mad with sorrow—the aged mother, the surviving brothers, the young widowed brides. They remembered the dead men's wounds, which in hindsight seemed to gape. They thought of the care they ought to have lavished on them, care which they now felt they had failed to provide, and they were stricken with guilt. The death of the wounded men was doubly painful, for they felt that they had held two lives in their hands
and had let them slip away. A few days later, when death visited their household again with an even heavier tread, carrying off the five remaining brothers, the aged mother and the young widows sank into despair. God himself, people said, doesn't strike twice in the same place, but calamity had struck the house of Vranaj as it had never done to anyone. Only then did people hear that the Albanians had been fighting against an army sick with the plague, and that the dead, the wounded, and most of those who had returned from the war alive would probably suffer the very same fate.

In three months the great house of Vranaj, once so boisterous and full of joy, was transformed into a house of shadows. Only Doruntine, who had left not long before, was unaware of the dreadful slaughter.

The churchbell continued to toll the death-knell, but among the many who had come to this burial it would have been hard to find a single one who had any distinct memory of the funerals of the nine brothers. It had all happened as if in a nightmare, in deep shadow. Coffins were carried out of the Vranaj house nearly every day for more than a week. Many could not recall clearly the order in which the young men had died, and before long would be hard pressed to say which of the brothers fell on the battlefield, which died of illness, and which of the combination of his wounds and the terrible disease.

Doruntine's marriage, on the contrary, was an event each and every one remembered in minute detail, one of those that time has a way of embellishing, not necessarily because they are so unforgettable in and of themselves, but because they somehow come to embody everything in the past that was beautiful, or considered so, but is no more. Moreover, it was the first time a young girl of the country had married so far away. This kind of marriage had stirred controversy since time immemorial. Various opinions were expressed, and there were conflicts, clashes, and tragedies having to do with distance in space and kinship alike, which often coincided. There were those who advocated marriage within clan and
katund
, the village with its hamlets and isolated farms, and some were prepared to uphold this custom at any cost, while others were prepared to fight for the opposite view, that marriages should be concluded at the greatest possible distance. While the first group maintained that home marriages protected the clan against disruption, the second argued the contrary. Indeed, they frightened people by warning of the effects of inbreeding. The two camps fought it out for a long time, and little by little the idea of distant marriages gained the upper hand. But although those who feared inbreeding were easily dissuaded from local marriages, they were equally pained by the prospect of separation. In the beginning, then, the distances were kept small, and marriages two, four,
even seven mountains away were countenanced. But then came the striking separation with Doruntine, divided from her family by half a continent.

Now, as the throng following along behind the procession of invited guests headed slowly toward the church, people talked, whispered, recalled the circumstances of Doruntine's marriage, the reluctance of her mother and the brothers who opposed the union, Constantine's insistence that the marriage take place and his
bessa
to his mother that he would always bring Doruntine back to her. As for Doruntine herself, no one knew whether she had freely consented to the marriage. More beautiful than ever, on horseback among her brothers and relatives—who were also mounted—misty with the tears custom requires of every young bride, she already belonged to the horizon more than to them.

All this now came to mind as the procession followed the same path as the throng of guests had taken then. And just as crystal shines the more brightly on a cloth of black velvet, so the memory of Doruntine's marriage against the background of grief now gained in brilliance in the minds of all those present. Henceforth it would be difficult for people to think of the one without the other, especially since everyone felt that Doruntine looked as beautiful in her coffin as she had astride the horse caparisoned for the wedding. Beautiful, but to what end, they murmured. No one had enjoyed her beauty. Now the earth alone would profit from it.

Others, in voices even more muted, spoke of her mysterious return, repeating what people had told them or denying it. It seems, someone said, that Stres is trying to solve the mystery. The prince himself has ordered him to get to the root of it. Believe me, a companion interrupted, there's no mystery about it. She returned to close the circle of death, that's all. Yes, but how did she come back? Ah, that we shall never know. It seems that one of her brothers rose from the grave by night to go and fetch her. That's what I heard, astounding as it may seem. But some people claim that—I know, I know, but don't say it, it's a sin to say such things, especially on the day of her burial. Yes, you're right.

And people cut short their discussions, tacitly agreeing that a few days hence, perhaps even on the morrow, once the dead were buried and tranquility restored, they would speak of this again, and of other things as well, and surely more at their ease.

Which is exactly what happened. Once the burial was over and the whole story seemed at an end, a great clamor arose, the like of which had rarely been heard. It spread in waves through the surrounding countryside and rolled on farther, sweeping to the frontiers of the principality, spilling over its borders and cascading through neighboring principalities and counties. Apparently the many people who had attended the burial had carried bits of it away to sow throughout the land.

Passing from mouth to mouth and ear to ear, the
waves of sound bore, of course, many regrets, of the sort that everyone refrains from expressing directly but is prepared, in such circumstances, to evoke in roundabout ways. And as it grew more distant it began to evaporate, changing shape like a wandering cloud, though its essence remained the same: a dead man had come back from the grave to keep the promise he had made to his mother: to bring his married sister back to her from far away whenever she wished.

Barely a week had gone by since the burial of the two women when Stres was urgently summoned to the Monastery of the Three Crosses. The archbishop of the principality awaited him there, having come expressly on a matter of the greatest importance.

Expressly on a matter of the greatest importance, Stres repeated to himself again and again as he crossed the plain on horseback. What could the archbishop possibly want of him? The prelate rarely left the archiepiscopal seat, and even if there had been some matter that concerned Stres, the archbishop could have spoken to the captain's superiors or summoned him to his headquarters in the principality's capital, thus sparing himself the long journey to the Monastery of the Three Crosses. Perhaps there was some misunderstanding, Stres said to himself, some mixup on the part of officials or messengers. In any event, there was little point
in worrying too soon.

A chill wind blew across the plain, which was covered with an autumn frost. On either side of the road all the way to the horizon haystacks seemed to wander bleakly. Stres pulled up the hood of his cloak. What if this was about the Doruntine affair, he said to himself. But he rejected that possibility out of hand. Ridiculous! What had the archbishop to do with that? He had enough thorny problems of his own, especially since the recent paroxysm of tension between the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches. Some years before, when the spheres of influence of Catholicism and Orthodoxy had become more or less defined, the principality remaining under the sway of the Byzantine church, Stres had thought that this endless quarrel was at last drawing to a close. But not at all. The two churches had once more taken up their struggle for the allegiance of the Albanian princes and counts. Information regularly reported to Stres from the inns and relay stations suggested that in recent times Catholic missionaries had intensified their activities in the principalities. Perhaps that was the reason for the archbishop's visit—but then, Stress himself was not involved in those matters. It was not he who issued safe-conduct passes. No, Stres said to himself, I have nothing to do with that. It must be something else.

He told himself again that he would find out soon enough what it was all about. There was no
point in racking his brains now. There was probably a simple explanation: the archbishop may have come for some other reason—a tour of inspection, for example—and decided incidentally to avail himself of Stres's services in resolving this or that problem. The spread of the practice of magic, for instance, had posed a problem for the church, and that did fall within Stres's purview. Yes, he told himself, that must be it, sensing that he had finally found some solid ground. Nevertheless, it was only a small step from the practice of magic to a dead man's rising from his grave. No!—he almost said it aloud—the archbishop must have nothing to do with Doruntine! And spurring his horse, he quickened his pace.

It was very cold. The houses of a hamlet loomed briefly somewhere off to his right, but soon he could see nothing but the plain again, with the haystacks drifting toward the horizon.

The Monastery of the Three Crosses was still far off. Along that stretch of road, Stres kept turning the same ideas over in his mind, but in a different order now. He brought himself up short more than once: nonsense, ridiculous, not possible. But though he resolved repeatedly not to think about it for the rest of his journey, he could not stop wondering why the archbishop had summoned him.

It was the first time Stres had ever been close to the archbishop. Without the chasuble in which
Stres had seen him standing in the nave of the church in the capital, the archbishop seemed thin, slender, his skin so pale, so diaphanous, that you almost felt that you could see what was happening inside that nearly translucent body if you looked hard enough. But Stres lost that impression completely the moment the archbishop started to speak. His voice did not match his physique. On the contrary, it seemed more closely related to the chasuble and miter which he had set aside, but would no doubt have kept by him had they not been replaced by that strangely powerful voice.

The archbishop came straight to the point. He told Stres that he had been informed of an alleged resurrection said to have occurred two weeks before in this part of the country. Stres took a deep breath. So that was it after all! The most improbable of all his guesses had been correct. What had happened, the archbishop went on, was disastrous, more disastrous and far-reaching than it might seem at first sight. He raised his voice. Only frivolous minds, he said, could take things of this kind lightly. Stres felt himself blush and was about to protest that no one could accuse him of having taken the matter lightly, that on the contrary he had informed the prince's chancellery at once, while doing his utmost to throw light on the mystery. But the archbishop, as if reading his mind, broke in:

“I was informed of all this from the outset and issued express instructions that the whole affair be
buried. I must admit that I never expected the story to spread so far.”

“It is true that it has spread beyond all reason,” said Stres, opening his mouth for the first time. Since the archbishop himself admitted that he had not foreseen these developments, Stres thought it superfluous to seek to justify his own attitude.

“I undertook this difficult journey,” the archbishop went on, “in order to gauge the scope of the repercussions for myself. Unfortunately, I am now convinced that they are catastrophic.”

Stres nodded agreement.

“Nothing less would have induced me to take to the highway in this detestable weather,” the prelate continued, his penetrating eyes still riveted on Stres. “Now, do you understand the importance the Holy Church attaches to this incident?”

“Yes, Monsignor,” said Stres. “Tell me what I must do.”