Doruntine Read online

  Having repaired to the site and tried to speak with the two unfortunate women, I concluded that neither showed any sign of mental irresponsibility, though what they now claim, whether directly or indirectly, is completely baffling and incredible. It is as well to note 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 Constantine, the mother by informing her daughter that Constantine, 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 summarized more or less as follows:

  One night not long ago (she does not recall the exact date), in the small city of central Europe in which she had been living with her husband since her marriage, she was told that a traveler was asking for her. On going out, she saw the horseman who had just arrived and who seemed to her to be Constantine, although the dust of the long journey had rendered him almost unrecognizable. But when the traveler, still in the saddle, said that he was indeed Constantine, 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, Constantine’s insistence that the marriage take place, and finally his solemn promise, his bessa, that he would bring her back himself whenever their mother yearned for her daughter’s company.)

  Doruntine confided to me that her brother’s behavior 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 holiday dress, and if it was one of sorrow, she would wear her mourning clothes—he said, with no further explanation, “Come as you are.” His behavior 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 traveled 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.

  On the way, pressed against the horseman as she was, she noticed quite unmistakably that his hair was not just dusty, but covered with mud that was barely dry, and that his body smelled of sodden earth. Two or three times she questioned him about it. He answered that he had been caught in the rain several times on his way there and that the dust on his body and in his hair, thus moistened, had turned to clots of mud.

  When, towards midnight of October eleventh, Doruntine and the unknown man (for let us so designate the man the young woman took to be her brother) finally approached the residence of the Lady Mother, he reined in his horse and told his companion to dismount and go to the house, for he had something to do at the church. Without waiting for an answer, he rode toward the church and the cemetery, while she ran to the house and knocked at the door. The old woman asked who was there, and then the few words exchanged between mother and daughter—the latter having said that it was she and that she had come with Constantine, the former replying that Constantine was three years dead—gave to both the shock that felled them.

  This affair, which one is bound to admit is most puzzling, may be explained in one of two ways: either someone, for some reason, deceived Doruntine, posing as her brother with the express purpose of bringing her back, or Doruntine herself, for some unknown reason, has not told the truth and has concealed the manner of her return or the identity of the person who brought her back.

  I thought it necessary to make a relatively detailed report about these events because they concern one of the noblest families in the principality and because they are of a kind that might seriously trouble people’s minds.

  Captain Stres

  After initialing his report, Stres sat staring absently at his slanting handwriting. Two or three times he picked up his pen and was tempted to lean over the sheets of paper to amend, recast, or perhaps correct some passage, but each time he was about to put pen to paper his hand froze, and in the end he left his text unaltered.

  He got up slowly, put the letter into an envelope, sealed it, and called for a messenger. When the man had gone, Stres stood for a long moment looking out the window, feeling his headache worsen. A crowd of theories jostled one another to enter his head as if through a narrow door. He rubbed his forehead as though to stem the flood. Why would an unknown traveler have done it? And if it was not some imposter, the question was even more delicate: What was Doruntine hiding? He paced back and forth in his office; when he came near the window he could see the messenger’s back, shrinking steadily as he threaded his way through the bare poplars. And what if neither of these suppositions was correct, he suddenly said to himself. What if something else had happened, something the mind cannot easily comprehend?

  He stopped for a moment, his eyes fixed on one particular spot on the floor, then suddenly he made for the door, hurried down the stairs, hailed his deputy on the way down the hallway, and went out into the street.

  “Let’s go to the church,” he said to his deputy when he heard the man’s footsteps, then his panting, at his back. “Let’s have a look at Constantine’s grave.”

  “A good idea. When all is said and done, the story makes sense only if someone came back from the grave.”

  “I’m not thinking of anything so insane. I have something else in mind.”

  His stride lengthened as he said to himself, why am I taking this business so much to heart? After all, there had been no murder, no serious crime, nor indeed any offense of the kind he was expected to investigate in his capacity as regional captain. A few moments ago, as he was drafting his report, this thought had come to him several times: Am I not being too hasty in troubling the Prince’s chancellery about a matter of no importance? But some inner voice told him he was not. That same voice told him that something outrageous had occurred, something that went beyond mere murder or any other crime, something that made assassination and similar heinous acts seem mere trifles.

  The little church, with its freshly repaired bell tower, was now very near, but Stres suddenly veered off and went straight into the cemetery, not through the iron grille, but through an inconspicuous wooden gate. He had not been in the cemetery for a long time, and he had trouble getting his bearings.

  “This way,” said his deputy as he strode along, “the graves of the Vranaj sons must be over here.”

  Stres fell in step beside him. The ground was soft in places. Small icons, half-blackened where candle wax had dripped, exuded quiet sadness. Some of the graves were overgrown with moss. It must be very cool here in summer, Stres thought.

  The deputy, who had gone on ahead of him, was walking among the graves, looking this way and that. Stres stooped to right an overturned cross, but it was heavy and he had to leave it. He walked on. He saw his deputy beckon in the distance: he had found them at last.

  Stres approached him. The graves, neat
ly aligned and covered with slabs of black stone, were identical. Their shape was reminiscent of a cross, a sword, or a man standing with his arms stretched out. At the head of each grave was a small niche for an icon and candles. Under it the dead man’s name was carved.

  “There’s his grave,” said the deputy, his voice hushed. Stres looked up and saw that the man had gone pale.

  “What’s the matter?”

  His deputy pointed at the grave.

  “Take a good look,” he said. “The stones have been moved.”

  “What?” Stres leaned forward to see what his aide was pointing to. For a long moment he examined the spot carefully, then stood up straight. “Yes, it’s true. Something’s been disturbed here.”

  “Just as I told you,” said the deputy, his satisfaction in seeing that his chief shared his view mixed with a new surge of fear.

  “But after all, that doesn’t mean much,” Stres remarked.

  His deputy turned, disconcerted. His eyes seemed to say, sure, a commander must preserve his dignity in all circumstances, but there comes a time to forget about rank, duty, and all that.

  “No, it doesn’t mean anything,” Stres said. “For one thing, the slabs could have tipped over by themselves, as happens eventually in most graves. Moreover, even if someone did move them, it might well have been an unknown traveler who moved the gravestones before perpetrating his hoax in order to make it seem more plausible that the dead man had risen from his grave.”

  The deputy listened open-mouthed. He was about to say something, perhaps to raise some objection, but Stres went on talking.

  “In fact, it is more likely that he did it after leaving Doruntine near the house. It’s possible he came here then and moved the gravestones before he went off.”

  Stres, who now seemed weary, let his gaze wander over the field that stretched before him, as if seeking the direction in which the unknown traveler had ridden off. From where they stood they could see the two-story Vranaj house, part of the village, and the highway, which disappeared into the horizon. It was here on this ground, between the church and that house of sorrow, that the mysterious event of the night of October eleventh had occurred. Go on ahead. I have something to do at the church. . . .

  “That’s how it must have happened,” Stres said. “Unless Doruntine is lying.”

  His deputy kept staring at him. Little by little the color had returned to his cheeks.

  “I will find that man,” Stress said suddenly. The words came harshly through his teeth, with a menacing ring, and his deputy, who had known Stres for years, felt that the passion his chief brought to the search for the unknown man went well beyond the duties of his office.

  CHAPTER II

  Stres issued an order that reached all the inns and most relay-stations along the roads and waterways before the day was out. In it he asked that he be informed if anyone had seen a man and woman riding the same horse or two separate mounts, or traveling together by some other means, before midnight on October eleventh. If so, he wanted to be told which roads they had taken, whether they had stayed at an inn, whether they had ordered a meal for themselves or fodder for their horse or horses, and, if possible, what their relationship seemed to be. Finally, he also wanted to know whether anyone had seen a woman traveling alone.

  “They can’t escape us now,” Stres said to his deputy when the chief courier reported that the circular containing the order had been sent to even the most remote outposts. “A man and a woman riding on the same horse. Now that was a sight you wouldn’t forget, would you? For that matter, seeing them on two horses ought to have had more or less the same effect.”

  “That’s right,” his deputy said.

  Stres stood up and began pacing back and forth between his desk and the window.

  “We should certainly find some sign of them, unless they sailed in on a cloud.”

  His deputy looked up.

  “But that’s exactly what this whole affair seems to amount to: a journey in the clouds!”

  “You still believe that?” Stres asked with a smile.

  “Everyone believes that,” his aide replied.

  “The others can believe what they like, but we can’t.”

  A gust of wind suddenly rattled the windows, and a few drops of rain splattered against them.

  “The middle of autumn,” Stres said thoughtfully. “I have always noticed that the strangest things seem to happen in autumn.”

  The room grew silent. Stres propped his forehead with his right hand and stood for a moment watching the fine rain fall. But of course he could not stay like that for long. Through the emptiness of his thoughts, the question rose again, persistent, pressing: who could that unknown horseman have been? Within a few minutes dozens of possibilities crossed his mind. Clearly, the man was aware, if not of every detail, at least of the depth of the tragedy that had befallen the Vranaj family. He knew of the death of the brothers, and of Constantine’s bessa. And he knew the way from that central European region to Albania. But why? Stres almost shouted. Why had he done it? Had he hoped for some reward? Stres opened his mouth wide, feeling that the movement would banish his weariness. The notion that the motive had been some expected reward seemed crude, but not wholly out of the question. Everyone knew that after the death of her sons, the Lady Mother had sent three letters to her daughter, one after the other, imploring her to come to her. Two of the messengers had turned back, claiming that it had been impossible to carry out their mission: the distance was too great, and the road passed through warring lands. In keeping with their agreement with her, they refunded the old woman half the stipulated fee. The third messenger had simply disappeared. Either he was dead or he had reached Doruntine but she had not believed him. More than two years had passed since then, and the possibility that he had brought her back so long after he set out was more than remote. Perhaps the mysterious traveler meant to extort some reward from Doruntine, but had been unable to pass himself off to her as Constantine. No, Stres thought, the reward theory doesn’t stand up. But then why had the unknown man gone to Doruntine in the first place? Was it just a commonplace deception, an attempt to kidnap her and sell her into slavery in some god-forsaken land? But that made no sense either, for he had in fact brought her back. The idea that he had set out with the intention of kidnapping her and had changed his mind en route seemed incredible to Stres, who understood the psychology of highwaymen. Unless it was a family feud, some vendetta against her house or her husband’s. But that seemed implausible too. Doruntine’s family had been so cruelly stricken by fate that human violence could add nothing to its distress. Nevertheless, a careful consultation of the great family’s archives—the testaments, acts of succession, ancient trials—might be prudent. Perhaps something could be found that would shed a ray of light on these events. But what if it was only the trick of an adventurer who simply felt like trooping across the plains of Europe with a young woman of twenty-three in the saddle? Stres breathed a deep sigh. With all his soul he wanted to believe it, but he just couldn’t. Something held him back, maybe his long years at the trade, in the course of which he had dedicated himself to hunting down crime and solving mysterious cases.

  A thousand ideas whirled through his mind, but he kept coming back to the same question: who was this night rider? Doruntine claimed that she had not seen him clearly at first; she thought he was Constantine, but he was covered with dust, and almost unrecognizable. He had never dismounted, had declined to meet anyone from his brother-in-law’s family (though they knew each other, for they had met at the wedding), and had wanted to travel only by night. So he was determined to keep himself hidden. Stres had forgotten to ask Doruntine whether she had ever caught a glimpse of the man’s face. He absolutely had to ask her that question. In any event, it could not reasonably be doubted that the traveler had been careful to conceal his identity. It was insane to imagine that it could really have been Constantine, although that was by no means the only issue at stake here. Obviously he
wasn’t Constantine, but by this time Stres was even beginning to doubt that the girl was Doruntine.

  He pushed the table away violently, stood up and left in haste, striding across the field. The rain had stopped. Here and there the weeping trees were shaking off the last shining drops. Stres walked with his head down. He reached the door of the Vranaj house faster than he would have thought, strode through the long corridor where those who had come to attend the two unfortunate women were even more numerous, and entered the room where they both languished. From the door he saw Doruntine’s pale face, purple ringing her staring eyes. How could he have doubted it? Of course it was she, with that look, with those same features which that far-off marriage had not changed at all, except perhaps to sprinkle them with some intangible mystery.

  “How do you feel?” he asked softly as he sat down beside her, already regretting the doubts he had harbored.

  Doruntine’s eyes were riveted on him. There was something unbearable in them, and Stres was the first to look away.

  “I’m sorry to have to ask you this question,” he said, “but it’s very important. Please understand me, Doruntine, it’s important for you, for your mother, for all of us. I want to ask you whether you ever saw the face of the man who brought you back.”

  Doruntine still stared at him.

  “No,” she finally answered, her voice very faint.

  Stres sensed a sudden rift in the delicate relations between them. He had a mad desire to seize her by the shoulders and shout, Why don’t you tell me the truth! How could you have traveled for days and nights with a man you believed was your brother without ever looking into his face? Didn’t you want to see him again? To kiss him?