The Ghost Rider Read online

  She smiled.

  “Well, yes,” she replied, “it’s a curious sensation … I was thinking that it wasn’t just very hard … but also, how can I put it … very cold.”

  Now it was his turn to smile. He explained that it was a feeling a woman has when she herself is at fever pitch.

  As their breathing slowed they lay silent, gazing alternately at the carved wooden ceiling and through the half-shuttered window at the low late autumn sky.

  “Look,” she said, “a stork. I thought they’d gone long ago.”

  “A few sometimes stay behind. Laggards.”

  He could not have said why, but he felt that the conversation about Doruntine, suspended since lunch, now threatened to return. Caressing a lock of hair on her temple, he turned his wife’s eyes from the sky, convinced that he had managed, in this way, to escape any further talk of the dead woman.

  The next day, before summoning his deputy to get his report on the Vranaj archives, Stres glanced at the files on crimes committed in the last seven days. One burglary. Two murders. One rape.

  He ran through the report on the murders. Both of them honour killings. Presumably taking advantage of all the commotion about Doruntine, the killers had seized an opportunity to take back the blood in accordance with the ancient kanun. Even so, you won’t get away with it, Stres muttered. When he reached the sentence, “The marksmen have been arrested,” Stres crossed out “marksmen” and replaced it with “murderers”. Then he added in the margin: “Put them in chains like ordinary criminals”.

  “You thought you would get treated as special one more time”, he grunted. After lying dormant for many years, the kanun seemed for some reason to have come back to life and to be rising from its own ashes. Despite repeated and unambiguous warnings from the prince, who was adamant that only the laws of the state and not those of the kanun now held sway, family killings had gone on increasing in number.

  Stres underlined “ordinary criminals” before reading the last file. Maria Kondi, aged twenty-seven. Married. Died suddenly as she left mass on Sunday. Raped at night two days after her burial. No bodily harm. Jewellery and wedding ring not stolen.

  He rubbed his forehead. It was the second case of necrophilia in recent years. Good God, he sighed, in a sudden fit of weariness. But it wasn’t a true rape, just ordinary sex. Almost normal …

  His deputy looked just as worried as he had the previous day. He also looked very unwell, Stres thought.

  “As I have said before, and as I repeated to you yesterday,” he began, “my research in these archives has led me to a conclusion about this disturbing incident quite different from those commonly held.”

  I never imagined that lengthy contact with archives could make a man’s face look so much like cardboard, Stres thought.

  “And,” the deputy went on, “the explanation I have come to is also very different from what you yourself think.”

  Stres raised his eyebrows in astonishment.

  “I’m listening,” he said as his aide seemed to hesitate.

  “This is not a figment of my imagination,” the deputy went on. “It is a truth that became clear to me once I had scrupulously examined the Vranaj archives, especially the correspondence between the old woman and Count Thopia.”

  He opened the folder he was holding and took out a packet of large sheets of paper yellowed by time.

  “And just what do these letters amount to?” Stres asked impatiently.

  His deputy took a deep breath.

  “From time to time the old woman told her friend her troubles, or asked his advice about family affairs. She had the habit of making copies of her own letters.”

  “I see,” said Stres. “But please, try to keep it short.”

  “Yes,” replied his deputy, “I’ll try.”

  He took another breath, scratched his forehead.

  “In some letters, one in particular, written long ago, the old woman alludes to an unnatural feeling on the part of her son Kostandin for his sister, Doruntine.”

  “Really?” said Stres. “What sort of unnatural feeling? Can you be more specific?”

  “This letter gives no details, but bearing in mind other things mentioned in later letters, particularly Count Thopia’s reply, it is clear that it was an incestuous feeling.”

  “Well, well.”

  Thick drops of sweat stood out on the deputy’s forehead. He continued, pretending not to notice his chief’s ironic tone.

  “In fact, the count immediately understood what she meant, and in his reply,” said the aide, slipping a sheet of paper across the table to Stres, “he tells her not to worry, for these were temporary things, common at their ages. He even mentions two or three similar examples in families of his acquaintance, emphasising that it happens particularly in families in which there is only one daughter, as was the case with Doruntine. ‘However, alertness and great caution are needed to make this somewhat unnatural emotion revert to normal. In any event, we’ll talk about this at length when we see each other again’.”

  The deputy looked up to see what impression the reading had had on his chief, but Stres was staring at the tabletop, drumming his fingers nervously.

  “Their subsequent letters make no further mention of the matter,” the aide went on. “It seems that, as the count predicted, the brother’s unhealthy feeling for his sister had become a thing of the past. But in another letter, written several years later, when Doruntine was of marriageable age, the old woman tells the count that Kostandin is unable to conceal his jealousy of any prospective fiancé. On his account, she says, we have had to reject several excellent matches.”

  “And what about Doruntine?” Stres interrupted.

  “Not a word about her attitude.”

  “And then what?”

  “Later, when the old woman told the count of the distant marriage that had just been arranged, she wrote that she herself, alongside Doruntine and most of her sons, had long hesitated, concerned that the distance was too great, but that this time it was Kostandin who argued vigorously for the prospective marriage. In his letter of congratulations, the count told the old woman, among other things, that Kostandin’s attitude towards the marriage was not at all surprising, that, on the contrary, in view of what she had told him it was understandable that Kostandin, irritated by the possibility of any local marriage which would have forced him to see his sister united with a man he knew, could more easily resign himself to her marriage to an unknown suitor, preferably a foreigner as far out of his sight as possible. It is a very good thing, the count wrote, that this marriage has been agreed upon, if only for that reason.”

  The deputy leafed through his folder for a few moments. Stres was staring hard at the floor.

  “Finally,” the aide continued, “we have here the letter in which the old woman described the wedding to her correspondent, and, among other things, the incident that took place there.”

  “Ah yes, the incident,” said Stres, as if torn from his somnolence.

  “Though this incident passed largely unnoticed, or in any event was considered natural enough in the circumstances, it was only because people were unaware of those other elements I have just told you about. The Lady Mother, on the other hand, who was well acquainted with these elements, offers the proper explanation of the event. Having told the count that, after the church ceremony, Kostandin paced back and forth like a madman, and that when they had accompanied the groom’s kinsmen as far as the highway, he accosted his sister’s husband, saying to him: ‘She is still mine, do you understand, mine!’ the old woman tells her friend that this, thank God, was the last disgrace she would have to bear in the course of this long story.”

  Stres’s subordinate, apparently fatigued by his long explanation, paused and swallowed.

  “That’s what these letters come to,” he said. “In the last two or three, written after her bereavement, the old woman complains of her loneliness and bitterly regrets having married her daughter to a man so far
away. There’s nothing else. That’s it.”

  The man fell silent. For a moment the only sound came from Stres’s fingers tapping on the table.

  “And what does all this have to do with our case?”

  His deputy looked up.

  “There is an obvious, even direct, connection.”

  Stres looked at him with a questioning air.

  “I think you will agree that there is no denying Kostandin’s incestuous feelings.”

  “It’s not surprising,” Stres said. “These things happen.”

  “You will also admit, I imagine, that his stubborn desire to have his sister marry so far away is evidence of his struggle to overcome that perverse impulse. In other words, he wanted his sister to have a husband as far from his sight as possible, so as to remove any possibility of incest.”

  “That seems clear enough,” said Stres. “Go on.”

  “The incident at the wedding marks the last torment he was to suffer in his own lifetime.”

  “In his lifetime?” Stres asked.

  “Yes,” said the deputy, raising his voice for no apparent reason. “I am convinced that Kostandin’s unslaked incestuous desire was so strong that death itself could not still it.”

  “Hmm,” Stres said.

  “Incest unrealised survived death,” his aide went on. “Kostandin believed that his sister’s distant marriage would enable him to escape his yearning, but, as we shall see, neither distance nor even death itself could deliver him from it.”

  “Go on,” Stres said drily.

  His aide hesitated for a moment. His eyes, burning with an inner flame, stared at his chief, as if to make sure that he had leave to continue.

  “Go on,” said Stres a second time.

  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 recogni
sed 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.