The Ghost Rider Read online

  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.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  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:

  We hereby dispatch to you this report on the capture of the adventurer suspected of having deceived and brought back Doruntine Vranaj. The information in this report has been taken from that which has been handed over to our authorities, along with the adventurer in question, by the authorities of the neighbouring county, who captured him in their territory, in accordance with our request.

  The vagabond was arrested on 14 November in the highway establishment known as the Inn of the Two Roberts. He had been brought there unconscious the night before by two peasants who found him lying in the road in high fever. His appearance and, in particular, his delirious raving immediately aroused the suspicions of the innkeeper and the customers. The snatches of sentences he spoke amounted more or less to this: “There is no need to hurry so. What will we say to your mother? Hold on tight, I can’t go any faster, it’s dark, you know, I can’t see anything. That’s what you’ll say if anyone asks you who brought you back. Don’t be afraid, none of your brothers is still alive.”

  The innkeeper alerted the local authorities, who, after hearing his testimony and that of the customers, decided to arrest the vagabond and, in accordance with our request, to hand him over to us at once. In keeping with the instructions that I have received from the capital, I will send him on to you immediately, but I thought it useful also to send you this information by a swift messenger as well, so that you might be fully informed about the matter in case you wish to interrogate the prisoner at once.

  I send you my greetings.

  Captain Gjikondi, of the border region.

  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!”

  Stres stared at him. The fettered man bore his scrutiny calmly.

  “Well,” said Stres, “be that as it may, once again I ask you the question you find so insane. This will be the last time. Think carefully before you answer. Did you bring a young woman named Doruntine Vranaj here from Bohemia or from any other far-off place?”

  “No,” the prisoner replied firmly.

  “Wretch,” said Stres, turning his eyes from the man. “Put him to the torture,” he ordered.

  The man’s eyes widened in terror. He opened his mouth to speak or to scream, but Stres charged out of the dungeon. As he followed a guard carrying a lantern up the stairs, he quickened his pace so as not to hear the prisoner’s cries.

  A few minutes later he was on his way home, alone. The rain had stopped, but the path was dimpled with puddles. He let his boots splash in the water as he strode along distractedly. It’s dark, you know, I can’t see anything, he muttered to himself, repeating the words of the seller of icons.

  He thought he heard a voice in the distance, but it was a barking that moved farther away and faded little by little, like ripples on water, in the expanse of the night.

  It must be foggy, he thought, or the shadows would
not be so deep.

  He thought he heard that voice again, and even the muffled sound of footsteps. He started and looked back. Now he could make out the gleam of a lantern swaying in the distance, lighting the broken silhouette of a man in its wan glow. He stopped. The lantern and the splashing of the puddles, which seemed to rise up from a nightmare, were still quite far off when he first heard the voice. He cupped his hand to his ear, trying to make out the words. There were uhs and ehs, but he heard nothing more distinct. When the man with the lantern had finally come closer, Stres called out.