The Ghost Rider Page 8

  As they walked they spoke again of the young woman’s mysterious journey. Whatever the circumstances, there could be no justification for such a flight.

  “Did she seem unhappy in your country?” Stres asked. “I mean, surely she must have missed her family.”

  “Naturally,” one of them answered.

  “And at first, I suppose, the fact that she did not know your language must surely have increased her sense of solitude. Was she worried about her family?”

  “Very much so, especially in recent times.”

  In such terrible solitude …

  “Especially in recent times?” Stres repeated.

  “In recent times, yes. Since none of her relatives had come to visit her, she was in a state of constant anxiety.”

  “A state of anxiety?” Stres said. “Then surely she must have asked to come herself?”

  “Oh yes, on several occasions. My cousin had told her, ‘If no one from your family comes to see you by spring, I will take you there myself.’”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes. And in truth she was not alone in her anxiety, for we had all begun to fear that something might have happened here.”

  “Apparently she didn’t want to wait until spring,” Stres said.

  “It would seem so.”

  “When he learned of her flight, her husband must surely—”

  The two strangers looked at one other.

  “Of course. It was all very strange. Her brother had come to fetch her, but how was it he had made no appearance at the house, not even for a moment? Admittedly there had been an incident between Kostandin and our cousin, but so much time had passed since then—”

  “An incident? What sort of incident?” Stres interrupted.

  “The day of the wedding,” his deputy answered, lowering his voice. “The old woman speaks of it in her letters.”

  “But notwithstanding this incident,” the stranger continued, “her brother’s behaviour – if indeed it really was her brother – was not justifiable.”

  “Forgive me,” Stres said, “but I wanted to ask you whether her husband thought, even for an instant, that it might not be her brother?”

  They looked at each other again.

  “Well – how shall I put it? Naturally he suspected it. And needless to say, if it was not her brother, then it was someone else. Anything can happen in this world. But no one would ever have anticipated such a thing. They’d been getting along very well. Her circumstances, it must be admitted, were far from easy, being a foreigner as she was, not knowing the language, and especially worrying so much about her family. But they were fond of each other in spite of everything.”

  “All the same, to run away like that so suddenly,” Stres interrupted.

  “Yes, it is strange, we must admit. And it was just in order to clarify things that, at our cousin’s request, we set out on this long journey. But here we have found an even more complicated situation.”

  “A complicated situation,” Stres said. “In one sense that is true enough, but it doesn’t alter the fact that Doruntine actually returned to her own people.”

  He spoke these words softly, like a man who finds it difficult to express himself, and in his own heart he wondered, why on earth are you still defending her?

  “That is true,” one of the strangers answered. “And in one sense, seen in that light, we find it reassuring. Doruntine indeed came back to her people. But here we have a new mystery: the brother with whom she is said to have made the journey is long since dead. One may therefore wonder who it was that brought her back, for surely someone must have accompanied her here, is that not so? And several women saw the horseman. Why, then, did she lie?”

  Stres lowered his head thoughtfully. The puddles in the road were strewn with rotting leaves. He thought it superfluous to tell them that he had already asked himself all these questions. And it seemed equally futile to tell them of his conjecture about an impostor. Now more than ever he doubted its validity.

  “I simply don’t know what to tell you,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He felt weary.

  “Nor do we know what to say,” commented one of them, the one who had spoken least so far. “It is all very sad. We are leaving tomorrow. There is nothing more for us to do here.”

  Stres did not answer him.

  It’s true, he thought, his mind numb. There is nothing more for them to do here.

  The strangers left the next day. Stres felt as though he had only been awaiting their departure to make a cool-headed attempt, perhaps the last, to clear up the Doruntine affair. It was quite evident that the two cousins had come to find out whether Doruntine had told the truth in her note, since her husband had at first suspected infidelity. And perhaps he had been right. Perhaps the story was far more simple than it appeared, as is often true of certain events which, however simple in themselves, seem to have the power to sow confusion in people’s minds, as if to prevent discovery of their very simplicity. Stres sensed that he was finally unravelling the mystery. Up to now he had always assumed that there was an impostor in the case. But the reality was otherwise. No one had deceived Doruntine. On the contrary, it was she who had deceived her husband, her mother, and finally everyone else. She tricked us all, Stres thought with a mixture of exasperation and sorrow.

  The suspicion that Doruntine had been lying had sprung up in his mind from time to time, only to vanish immediately in the mist that surrounded the whole affair. And that was understandable enough, for there were so many unknowns in the case. Stres had only to recall his initial doubts that the horseman and the night ride were real, or his suspicion that Doruntine had actually left her husband’s home months, even years, before. Yes, he had only to remember his theory that she had been suffering from mental illness and all his elegant reasoning seemed merely specious. But the visit of the Bohemian strangers had dispelled all these doubts. Now there was a note, which he had seen with his own eyes, and in it she made mention of her flight with someone. Several women had seen the horseman. And most important of all, a date had been established: 29 September. Now you’re stuck, Stres said to himself, not without regret. His satisfaction at the prospect of an early resolution of the mystery was rather muted. Perhaps he had become sentimentally attached to the mystery, and would rather not have seen it brought to light. He even felt himself to have been somehow betrayed.

  The whole thing, then, notwithstanding the macabre background, had been no more than a commonplace romance. That was the heart of it. All the rest was secondary. His wife had been right to see it that way from the start. Women sometimes have a special flair for this sort of thing. Yes, that must be it, Stres repeated to himself, as if trying to convince himself as thoroughly as possible. A journey with her lover, though love and sex may well have been blended with grief. But that was just the thing that gave the whole story its special flavour. What wouldn’t I give, she had said, to make that journey once more. Yes, of course, Stres said to himself, of course.

  He thought of her without resentment, but felt somehow weary. Tentatively at first, then ever more doggedly, his mind began churning in the usual way, trying to reconstruct what might have happened. He thought of the two strangers, now on their way to the heart of Europe and certainly thinking things over just as he was. They must be speaking much more openly between themselves than they did here. They must be mulling over the clues they had turned up themselves or had heard reported by others, the suggestions that this foreign woman, this Doruntine, had had a tendency to deceive her husband.

  Little by little Stres filled in the blanks. Some time after her wedding Doruntine comes to realise that she no longer loves her husband. She sulks, regrets having married him. Her distress is compounded by her ignorance of the language, her solitude and her yearning for her family. She recalls the long deliberations over this marriage, the hesitation, the arguments for and against, and all this only deepens her sorrow. To make matters worse, none of her brothers comes to see her. Not even Kostan
din, despite his promise. Sometimes she worries, fearing that some misfortune has befallen her family, but she spurns these bleak notions, telling herself that she has the good fortune to have not just one or two brothers but nine, all in the prime of life. She believes it more likely that they have simply forgotten her. They have sent their only sister away, dispatched her beyond the horizon, and now they no longer spare her a thought. Her sadness is paired with mounting hostility towards her husband. She blames him for everything. From the end of the world he had come to fetch her, to ruin her life. Her constant sadness, her lack of joy, becomes tied in her mind with the idea of seeking revenge upon her husband. She resolves to leave him, to go away. But where? She is a young woman of twenty-three, all alone, completely alone, in the middle of a foreign continent. In these circumstances, quite naturally, her only consolation would be some romantic attachment. In an effort to fill the void in her life she initiates one, perhaps not even realising what she is doing. She gives herself to the first man who courts her. It may have been with any passing traveller (for are not all her hopes bound up with the highway?). Without further thought she decides to go away with him. At first she thinks to run off without a word to anyone, but then, at the last minute, moved by a final twinge of remorse for her husband, or perhaps by mere courtesy (for she was raised in a family that held such rules dear), she decides to leave him a note. Here again she may have hesitated. Should she tell him the truth or not? Probably out of simple human respect, in an effort not to injure his self-esteem, she decides to tell him that she is going away with her brother Kostandin. Which is particularly plausible since Kostandin had given his besa that he would fetch her on occasions of celebration or grief, and everyone, including her husband, was aware of Kostandin’s promise.

  So, with no other thought in her head, she rides off with her lover. It matters little whether or not they planned to marry. Maybe she meant to return to her family with him some time later, to explain the situation to her mother and her brothers, to share with them her torment, her solitude (it was so lonely), and perhaps, after hearing her explanation, they might forgive her this adventure and she could live among them with her second husband, never to go away again, ever.

  But she thinks all this vaguely. Thrilled by her present joy, she is not inclined to worry too much about the future. She has time, and later she will see. Meanwhile she roams from inn to inn with her lover (they must have sold her jewellery), drunk with happiness.

  But this happiness does not last long. In one of these inns (the things one learns in those inns with their great fireplaces during the long autumn nights!) she hears of the tragedy that has befallen her family. Perhaps she learns the full truth, perhaps only a part, or perhaps she simply imagines what must have happened, for she has heard talk of the foreign army sick with the plague that has ravaged half of Albania. She is near to madness. Remorse, horror and anguish drive her to the brink of insanity. She begs her lover to take her home right away, and he agrees. So it is she, Doruntine, who leads the unknown horseman, finding her way with difficulty from country to country, from one principality to the next.

  The closer they get to the Albanian border, the more she thinks about what she will say when she is asked, “Who brought you back?” Until now she has given the matter little thought. If only she can get home, she will think of something then. But now the family hearth is no longer far off. She will have to account for her arrival. If she says that she was accompanied by an unknown traveller, she has little chance of being believed. To say openly that she came with her lover is also impossible. Earlier she had thought of these things incoherently, bringing little logic to bear, for the issue seemed of scant importance under the burden of her grief. But now it becomes ever more pressing. As her mind goes in every direction looking for a solution, she suddenly recalls Kostandin’s besa and makes her decision: she will say that Kostandin kept his word and brought her home. Which means that she knows that he will not be there, that he is absent, therefore she knows that he is dead. She is not yet aware of the scope of the disaster that has struck her family, but she has learned of his death. Apparently she has asked after him in particular. Why? It is only natural for him to occupy a larger place in her mind than the others, since it was he who had promised to come and fetch her. Through the long days of sorrow in her husband’s home she had been waiting for him to appear on the dusty road.

  And now the house is near. She is so agitated that she has no time to invent a new lie even if she wanted to. She will say that the dead man brought her back. And so she finally knocks at the door. She tells her lover to stay off to one side, to be careful not to be seen; perhaps she arranges to meet him somewhere several days hence. From within the house her mother asks the expected question: With whom have you come? And she answers: With Kostandin. Her mother tells her that he is dead, but Doruntine already knows it. Her lover insists on one last kiss before the door opens, and takes her in his arms in the half-darkness. That is the kiss the old woman glimpses through the window. She is horrified. Does she believe that her son has risen from the grave to bring her daughter back to her? It is a better bet that she assumes that it is not her son, but someone unknown to her. However that may be, whether she thought that Doruntine was kissing a dead man or a living one, the horror she feels is equal. But there’s a good chance that the mother thought she saw her kissing a stranger. Her daughter’s lie seems all the more macabre: though in mourning, she takes her pleasure with unknown travellers like a common slut.

  No one will ever know what happened between mother and daughter, what explanations, curses or tears were exchanged once the door swung open.

  Events then move rapidly. Doruntine learns the full dimensions of the tragedy and, needless to say, loses all contact with her lover. Then the dénouement. Stres’s mistake was to have asked, in his very first circular to the inns and relay stations, for information about two riders (a man and woman riding the same horse or two horses) coming into the principality. He should have asked that equal effort be concentrated on a search for any solitary traveller heading for the border. But he had corrected the lapse in his second circular, and he now hoped that the unknown man might still be apprehended, for he must have remained in hiding for some time waiting to see how things would turn out. Even if it proved impossible to capture him here, there was every chance that some trace of his passage would be found, and the neighbouring principalities and dukedoms, strongly subject to Byzantium’s influence, could be alerted to place him under arrest the moment he set foot in their territory.

  Before going home for lunch, Stres again asked his aide whether he had heard anything from the inns. He shook his head. Stres threw his cloak over his shoulders and was about to leave when his deputy added:

  “I have completed my search through the archives. Tomorrow, if you have time, I will be able to present my report.”

  “Really? And how do things look?”

  His deputy stared at him.

  “I have an idea of my own,” he replied evenly, “quite different from all current theories.”

  “Really?” Stres said again, smiling without looking at the man. “Goodbye, then. Tomorrow I’ll hear your report.”

  As he walked home his mind was nearly blank. He thought several times of the two strangers now riding back to Bohemia, going over the affair in their own minds again and again, no doubt thinking what he, in his own way, had imagined before them.

  “You know what?” he said to his wife the moment he came in, “I think you were right. There’s a very strong chance that this whole Doruntine business was no more than an ordinary romantic adventure after all.”

  “Oh really?” Beneath her flashing eyes, her cheeks glowed with satisfaction.

  “Since the visit of the husband’s two cousins it’s all becoming clear,” he added, slipping off his cloak.

  As he sat down by the fire, he had the feeling that something in the house had come to life again, an animation sensed more than seen or heard.
His wife’s customary movements as she prepared lunch were more lively, the rattling of the dishes more brisk, and even the aroma of the food seemed more pleasant. As she set the table he noticed in her eyes a glimmer of gratitude that quickly dispelled the sustained chill that had marked all their recent days. During lunch the look in her eyes grew still softer and more meaningful, and after the meal, when he told the children to go take their naps, Stres, stirred by a desire he had felt but rarely in these last days, went to their bedroom and waited for her. She came in a moment later, the same gleam in her eyes, her hair, just brushed, hanging loose upon her shoulders. Stres thought suddenly that in days to come, the dead woman would come back often, bringing them physical warmth, as now, or else an icy chill.

  He made love to his wife with heightened sensuality. She too was, so to speak, at fever pitch. She offered herself to him by pushing her pelvis as high as it would go, and he entered her as deeply as he could, as if he were seeking out a second passageway inside her. He managed to get close to it, he felt, to a place where a different kind of damp darkness began, then the lips of the inner vagina drew him in further and invited him to an apparently inaccessible realm. An inhuman aah escaped him as his seed managed to spill, or so it seemed, into that other place, the dark kingdom where he would never go. Good God, he mumbled involuntarily as the tension subsided and he could feel himself collapsing all at once.

  A few minutes later, lying beside his wife, whose blushing cheeks were lit by a smile, he heard her whisper words which, despite their long intimacy through many years of marriage, she had never dared say to him before. She confessed she had rarely had such strong pleasure and that his organ had never before been so … hard …

  In other circumstances her lack of modesty would have taken him aback, but not today.

  “It seems to me,” he said without looking at his wife, “that you’ve got something else to say.”