The Ghost Rider (10 page)

But his deputy was still staring, still hesitating.

“Are you trying to suggest that his unsated incestuous desire for his sister lifted the dead man from his grave?” asked Stres, his voice icy.

“Precisely!” his aide cried out. “That macabre escapade was their honeymoon.”

“Enough!” Stres bellowed. “You’re talking nonsense!”

“I suspected, of course, that you would not share my view, but that is no reason to insult me, sir.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Stres said. “Completely out of your mind.”

“No, sir, I am not out of my mind. You are my superior. You have the right to punish me, to dismiss me, even to arrest me, but not to insult me. I, I—”

“You, you, you what?”

“I have my own view of this matter, and I believe it to be no more than a case of incest, for Kostandin’s actions can be explained in no other way. As for the theory, which I have lately heard expressed, that he insisted that his sister marry into a distant family because he had some inkling of the calamity that was soon to befall the family and did not wish to see her so cruelly hurt, I consider it absurd. It is true that Kostandin harboured dark forebodings, but it was the threat of incest that tormented him, and if he sent his sister away, it was to remove her from this danger rather than to ensure that she would escape a calamity of some other kind …”

The deputy spoke rapidly, not even pausing for breath, apparently afraid that he would be prevented from speaking all his mind.

“But as I said, neither distance nor death itself allowed him to escape incest. Thus it was that one stifling night he rose from his grave to do what he had dreamed of doing all his life – let me speak, please, do not interrupt – he rose from the earth on that wet and sultry October night and, mounting his gravestone become a horse, set out to live his life’s dream. And thus did that sinister honeymoon journey come about, the girl riding from inn to inn, just as you said, not with a living lover but with a dead one. And it was just that heinous fact that her aged mother discovered before she opened the door. Yes, she saw Doruntine kiss someone in the shadows, not the lover or impostor you believed, but her dead brother. What the old woman had feared all her life had finally happened. That was the disaster she discovered, and that was what brought her to her grave—”

“Madman,” said Stres, more softly this time, as though murmuring the word to himself. “I forbid you to continue,” he said with composure.

His aide opened his mouth, but Stres leapt to his feet and, leaning close to the man’s face, shouted, “Not another word, do you hear? Or I’ll have you thrown in jail, on the spot, right now. Do you understand?”

“I have spoken my mind,” the man replied, breathing with difficulty. “Now I shall obey.”

“It’s you who are sick,” Stres said. “You’re the one who’s sick, poor man.”

He looked for a long moment at his deputy’s face, wan from insomnia, and suddenly felt keenly sorry for him.

“I was wrong to assign you to all that research in the
family archives. So many long hours of reading, for someone unused to books—”

The man’s feverish eyes remained fixed on his chief.

“You may go now,” said Stres in a kindlier voice. “Get some rest. You need rest, do you hear? I am prepared to forget all this nonsense, provided you forget it too, do you follow me? You may go.”

His aide rose and left. Stres, smiling stiffly, watched the man’s unsteady gait.

I must find that adventurer right away, he said to himself. The archbishop was right, the whole business should have been nipped in the bud to avoid the dangerous consequences it will surely have.

He began to pace the room. He would tighten precautions at every crossing point, assign all his men to the task, suspend all other activity to mobilise them for this one case. He would set everything in motion, he would spare no effort until the mystery was cleared up. I must find the truth, he told himself, as soon as possible. Or else we’ll all go mad.

Despite the efforts of Stres’s men, acting in concert with Church officiants who lectured the faithful day after day, those who believed that Doruntine had returned with her lover were many fewer than those inclined to think that the dead man had brought her back.

Stres himself examined the list of people who had been out of the district between the end of September and 11 October. The idea that Doruntine might have been brought back by one of Kostandin’s friends so that his promise might be fulfilled came to him from time to time,
but each time it struck him as hardly credible. Even after the complete list of absentees had been submitted to him and he found, as he had hoped, that the names of four of the dead man’s closest friends were on it, he could not bring himself to accept the conjecture. After all, hadn’t he himself been away on duty during just that time? On the night he got back his cloak had been so filthy that his wife had asked, Stres, just
where
have you been? Doubt is the mind’s first action, and just as he had suspected others, so others had the right to suspect him. And in any event, Kostandin’s friends had little trouble proving that all four had been at the Great Games held annually in Albania’s northernmost principality. Two of them had even taken part and had won prizes.

In the meantime, it would soon be forty days since the death of mother and daughter. The day would be celebrated according to custom, and the mourners would certainly sing their distressing ballads, without changing a damned word. Stres was well acquainted with the obtuse stubbornness of those little old women. On the seventh day after the deaths, also celebrated according to custom, they had changed nothing despite the warning he had sent them, and they had done the same on the four Sundays that followed. The old crows will caw for another few days, the priest had said, but in the end they’ll be quiet. Stres was not too sure about that.

One day he saw them making their way in single file to the abandoned house to take up their mourning, as was the custom. Stres stood, tall and still, at the roadside, dressed in his black cape with the white antler on its collar signifying his rank as an officer of the prince, and he
watched the women pass by, dressed all in black, with their cheeks already wetted by the tears they had yet to shed, paying him no attention at all. Stres surmised that they had recognised him, nonetheless, for he thought he could detect in their eyes a glint of irony directed at him, the destroyer of legends. He nearly burst out laughing at the thought that he was engaged in a duel with these mourners, but to his astonishment the thought suddenly turned into a shiver.

In the meantime, the archbishop, to everyone’s surprise, had remained at the Monastery of the Three Crosses, though Stres was no longer annoyed about it. Absorbed in his pursuit of the wandering adventurer, he paid little attention to anything else. He had received no clear information from the innkeepers. There had been three or four arrests on the basis of their reports, but all the suspects had been released for lack of evidence. Information was awaited from neighbouring principalities and dukedoms, especially in the northern districts through which the road to Bohemia passed. At times, Stres entertained new doubts and built new theories, only to set them aside at once.

The first snow fell towards the middle of November. Unlike the snow that falls in October, it did not melt, but blanketed the countryside in white. One afternoon, as he was on his way home, Stres, almost unconsciously, turned his horse into the street leading to the church. He dismounted at the cemetery gate and went in, trampling the immaculate snow. The graveyard was deserted, the crosses against the blanket of snow looked even blacker. A few birds, equally dark, circled near the far side of the
cemetery. Stres walked until he thought he had found the group of Vranaj graves. He leaned forward, deciphered the inscription on one of the stones, and saw that he had made no mistake. There were no footprints anywhere around. The icons seemed frozen. What am I doing here, he asked himself with a sigh. He felt the peace of the graveyard sweep over him, and the feeling brought with it a strange mental clarity. Dazzled by the glare of the snow, he found himself unable to look away, as if he feared that the clarity might desert him. All at once Doruntine’s story seemed as simple as could be, pellucid. Here was a stretch of snow-covered earth in which was buried a group of people who had loved one another intensely and had promised never to part. The long separation, the great distance, the terrible yearning, the unbearable solitude (
It
was so lonely
…) had tried them sorely. They had strained to reach one another, to come together in life and in death in a state partaking of death and life alike, dominated now by the one, now by the other. They had tried to flout the laws that bind the living together and prevent them from passing back from death to life; they had thereby tried to violate the laws of death, to attain the inaccessible, to gather together once more. For a moment, they thought they had managed it, as in a dream when you encounter a dead person you have loved but realise that it is only an illusion (
I could not kiss him, something held me back
). Then, in the darkness and chaos, they parted anew, the living making her way to the house, the dead returning to his grave (
You go ahead, I have something to do at the church
), and though nothing of the kind had really happened, and quite apart from the fact that Stres could not bring himself
to believe that a dead man had risen from his grave, in some sense that was exactly what had happened. The horseman–brother had appeared at a bend in the road and said to his sister, “Come with me.” It did not really matter whether it was all in her mind or in the minds of other people. At bottom, it was something that could happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. For who has never dreamed of someone coming back from far away to spend another moment with them, to sit astride the same horse for a while? Who in the world has not yearned for a loved one, has never said, If only he or she could come back just once, just one more time, to be kissed – but somehow, something stops you from giving that kiss? Despite the fact that it can never happen, never ever. Surely this is the saddest thing about our mortal world, and its sadness will go on shrouding human life like a blanket of fog until its final extinction.

That’s what it was all about, Stres said to himself again. All the rest – surmises, inquiries, arguments – was just a pack of mean little lies signifying nothing. He would have liked to linger a while longer on that high ground where his thought flowed so freely, but he could feel the pull of the ordinary world dragging him forever downwards, faster and faster, making him tumble down from on high as soon as it could. He hurried away before he could hit bottom. Looking as drained as a sleepwalker, he stumbled towards his horse, vaulted into the saddle and galloped away, as stiff as ice.

It was a wet afternoon, drenched in a fine, steady rain, one of those afternoons when one feels that nothing could possibly happen. Stres, dressed and dozing in an armchair (what else could he do on such a day?), felt his wife’s hand gently touch his shoulder.

“Stres, there are people here to see you.”

He woke with a start.

“What is it? Was I sleeping?”

“They’re asking for you,” his wife said. “It’s your deputy, and another man with him.”

“Oh? Tell them I’ll be right down.”

His aide and someone Stres didn’t know, their hair dripping, stood waiting on the porch.

“Captain,” said his deputy the moment he saw his chief, “the man who brought Doruntine back has been captured.”

Stres was taken aback.

“How can that be?” he asked.

His deputy was astonished at the surprise evident in
the face of his chief, who showed no sign of satisfaction, as if he hadn’t spent weeks trying to find the man.

“Yes, they’ve caught him at last,” he said, still not sure whether his chief had fully grasped what he was talking about.

Stres went on staring at them quizzically. In fact he had understood perfectly. What he wasn’t sure of was whether or not the news pleased him.

“But how?” he asked. “How could it happen so suddenly?”

“So suddenly?” his deputy said.

“What I mean is, it seemed so unlikely …”

What in the world am I talking about? he said to himself. He had become aware of his own confusion.

It seemed obvious now that the suspicion that had occasionally occurred to him from the deepest recesses of his mind – the suspicion that his wish to track down the supposed lover was in competition with an even fiercer desire never to lay hands on the man at all – was proving to be justified.

“Upon my soul,” he mumbled, by way of a reaction, like a man who looks up at the sky to ready himself for growling, “What filthy weather”, then asked, “But how did they catch him? And where?”

“They’re bringing him in now,” answered his deputy. “He’ll be here before nightfall. This man is the messenger who brought the news, as well as a report.”

The stranger reached into the lining of his leather tunic and took out an envelope.

“He was captured in the next county, in a place called the Inn of the Two Roberts,” the deputy said.

“Oh?”

“Here is the re … re … report,” said the stranger, who had a stammer.

Stres took it from him brusquely. Little by little the vague feeling of sadness and regret at the resolution of the mystery gave way to a first surge of cold and dangerous light-headedness. He unsealed the envelope, took out the report, turned it towards the light and began to read the lines written in a handwriting that looked like a pile of angrily scattered pins:

Stres looked up from the sheet he was holding and glanced quickly at his deputy, then at the messenger. So it was just as he had imagined: she had run off with a lover.

His recent dreaminess was instantly supplanted by a wave of anger among the most violent he had ever experienced. It was like a blast of wind that choked his breathing, clouded his mind, and probably affected his speech as well. Like a stinging nettle, it allowed no exemptions. Now they’ll find out who Stres really is! They’ll soon see what happens when you try to take him for a ride! He would show them, scoundrels all, and this time the gloves would be off! He was going to make a clean sweep of all that filth and shit! What he was about to do would make those crooks and parasites lose their taste for wasting his
time for a hundred years – and he’d do the same to those slimy mourners, those snakes in the grass who’d been boiled in their own venom! He’d put an end to their evil propaganda! To think that he, fearless Stres, had yielded to those crazy hags! Such lies they told, O Lord, such abominations …

Troubled by his own irritation, and realising he had gone too far, Stress suddenly retreated into silence.

“When are they due to arrive?” he asked the messenger after a long pause.

“In two hours, three at most.”

It was only then that Stres noticed that the messenger’s boots were caked with mud to the knees. He took a deep breath. The ideas that had come to him in the graveyard snow three days before seemed very far away.

“Wait for me,” he said, “while I get my cape.”

He went back inside and, donning his long riding cape, told his wife, “The man who brought Doruntine back has been captured.”

“Really?” she said. She could not see his face, for a flap of his cape, like the wing of a great black bird, had come between them and kept their eyes from meeting.

Stres kept his mouth shut all the way, but despite that, as he watched the captain’s stride, especially the way his boots dealt with the puddles, his companion grasped that the police chief was still just as angry and that his indignation could be read in the movement of his legs just as accurately, if not more so, as from his speech.

They had been waiting more than two hours for the carriage that was to bring the prisoner. The floorboards creaked
plaintively under Stres’s boots as he paced back and forth, as was his custom, between his work table and the window. His deputy dared not break the silence; and the messenger, whose wet clothes gave off a musty odour, sat slumped in a wooden chair, and snored.

Stres could not help stopping at the window from time to time. As he gazed out at the plain and waited for the carriage to appear, he felt his mind turn slowly numb. The same steady and monotonous rain had been falling since morning, and anyone’s arrival, from whatever quarter, seemed quite inconceivable under its dreary regularity.

He touched the thick paper of the report with his fingers as if to convince himself that the man he was waiting for was really coming. We can’t go any faster, it’s dark, you see. He repeated to himself the delirious prisoner’s words. Don’t be afraid, none of your brothers is still alive …

He’s the one, Stres said to himself. Now he was sure of it. Just as he had imagined. He recalled the moment in the cemetery, that day in the snow when he told himself that it was all lies. Well, it wasn’t all lies, he now thought, his eyes fixed on the chilly expanse. The plain stretched to infinity in the grey rain, and the snow itself had melted or withdrawn into the distance without a trace, as if to help him forget everything that that great day had pumped into the captain’s head.

The dusk was getting thicker. On either side of the road an occasional idler could be seen, no doubt awaiting the arrival of the carriage. News of the arrest had apparently spread.

The messenger, dozing in his corner, made a sound like a groan. The deputy seemed lost in thought. Stres had heard no further mention of that incest theory of his. He must be embarrassed now.

The messenger let out another groan and half opened his eyes. They had a demented look.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Are they here yet?”

No one answered. Stres went to the window for perhaps the hundredth time. The plain was now so gloomy that it was hard to make out anything. But soon the arrival of the carriage was heralded, first by a far-off rumbling, and then by the clatter of its wheels.

“Good Lord! At last,” said Stres’s deputy, shaking the messenger by the shoulder.

Stres ran down the stairs, followed by his aide and the messenger. The carriage was rolling up as they got to the threshold. A few people were following along in the dark. Others could be heard running from farther off. The carriage came to a halt and a man dressed in the uniform of an officer of the prince got off.

“Where is Captain Stres?” he asked.

“I am he,” said Stres.

“I believe you have been informed that—”

“Yes,” Stres interrupted. “I know all about it.”

The man in uniform seemed about to add something, but then turned and headed for the carriage, leaned in through the window and said a few words to the people inside.

“Light a lantern,” someone called out.

The curtain over the carriage window was drawn back, revealing a forest of legs that jiggled about in such
a way that you could not tell whether the people attached to them were embracing each other or having a fight.

Stres knew from experience that the way the legs of a criminal or his escort moved told you everything about the rest of the man, and so he understood that the prisoner had been restrained in the severest fashion, with his hands tied behind his back.

“It’s him! It’s him!” whispered the people who had gathered around.

The flickering gleam of the lantern revealed no more than half the face of the man in irons, a face bizarrely streaked with mud. The men who had brought him handed him over to two of Stres’s men, who took hold of him, as the first ones had, by the armpits. The shackled man offered no resistance.

“To the dungeon,” Stres said shortly. “What about you, what do you mean to do now?” he added, addressing the man in uniform, who seemed to be the commander of the small detachment.

“We’re going back at once,” he replied.

Stres stood there until the carriage shook into motion, then turned towards the building. At the very last moment he paused on the threshold. He sensed the presence of people in the half-darkness. In the distance he heard the footsteps of a man running towards them.

“What are you all waiting for, good people?” Stres asked quietly. “Why don’t you go home and go to bed? We have to stay up, it’s part of our job, but why should you stand around here?”

No answer came from the shadows. The light of the
lantern flickered briefly as if terrified by those waxy twisted faces, then abandoned them to the darkness.

“Good night,” said Stres, entering the building and, lantern in hand, following his deputy down the staircase that led to the dungeon. The smell of mould choked him. He felt suddenly uneasy.

His aide pushed open the iron door of the dungeon and stood aside to let his chief pass. The prisoner was slumped on a pile of straw. Sensing a presence, he looked up. Stres could just make out his features in the gleam of the lantern. He seemed handsome, even marked as he was by the mud and the blows he had suffered. Stres’s eyes were drawn involuntarily to the man’s lips, and those human lips – cracked in the corners by fever, yet strangely alien to those shackles, those guards, those orders – suggested to Stres more than any other detail that he had before him the man who had made love to Doruntine.

“Who are you?” asked Stres icily.

The prisoner looked up. His expression, like his lips, seemed foreign to the setting. Seducer’s eyes, Stres said to himself.

“I am a traveller, officer,” the man answered. “An itinerant seller of icons. They arrested me. Why, I don’t know. I am very sick. I shall lodge a complaint.”

He spoke a laboured but correct Albanian. If he really was a seller of icons, he had apparently learned the language for his trade.

“Why did they arrest you?”

“Because of some woman I don’t even know, whom I’ve never seen. Someone called Doruntine. They told me
I made a long journey on horseback, with her behind me, and all sorts of other rubbish.”

“Did you really travel with a woman? More precisely, did you bring a woman here from far away?” Stres asked.

“No, sir, I did not. I have travelled with no woman at all, at least not in several years.”

“About a month ago,” said Stres.

“No. Absolutely not!”

“Think about it,” said Stres.

“I don’t have to think about it,” said the shackled man in a booming voice. “I am sorry to see, sir, that you too apparently subscribe to this crazy idea. I am an honest man. I was arrested while lying on the roadside in agony. It’s inhuman! To suffer like a dog and wake up in chains instead of finding help or care. It is truly insane!”

“I am no madman,” said Stres, “as I think you will have occasion to find out.”

“But what you’re doing is pure madness,” the man in shackles replied in the same stentorian voice. “At least accuse me of something plausible. Say that I stole something or killed someone. But don’t come and tell me, You travelled on horseback with a woman. As if that was a crime! I would have done better to admit it from the outset, then you would all have been satisfied: yes, I travelled on horseback with a woman. And what of it? What’s wrong with that? But I am an honest man, and if I did not say it, it is because I am not in the habit of lying. I intend to lodge a complaint about this wherever I can. I’ll go to your prince himself. Higher still if need be, to Constantinople!”