The Ghost Rider

by Ismail Kadare

  Stres climbed the stairs quickly, but he still heard the clanking of the chains with which they secured the prisoner, and his cries as well, which were no less poignant for being muffled.

  Stres returned to his office, took up a pencil and began drafting a report for the prince’s chancellery:

  Report on the arrest of the man who brought back Doruntine Vranaj

  Last night Captain Gjikondi of the border detachment delivered to me the man suspected of having brought Doruntine back. In the first interrogation he admitted nothing and denied even knowing a woman by that name, much less having travelled with her. Then, under the threat of torture, he confessed everything, finally throwing light on the mystery of this affair. The events seem to have happened in this manner: at the end of September of this year the man, finding himself in Bohemia in the course of his peregrinations as a seller of icons, made the acquaintance of D. V., and hearing her express her despair at having had no news of her family, promised to take her to her parents’ home. He persuaded her to lie to her husband and to write him a letter saying that she had left with her brother Kostandin. The two of them then left Bohemia. On the way he managed to seduce her. At the conclusion of this trying journey, after revealing to her that her brother Kostandin was long dead and finding no other lie with which to justify the journey she had just made with a stranger, he persuaded her to tell her mother that she had been brought back by the ghost of her dead brother, who had thereby fulfilled the promise he had made while he was alive. Subsequently, taking fright, he tried to flee unnoticed and was finally arrested, under circumstances that are well known to you, in the neighbouring county, in an establishment called the Inn of the Two Roberts. He is now being held, on my orders, in complete isolation. I await your instructions on the measures to be taken in this case.

  Captain Stres

  Of the torture he had ordered inflicted on the prisoner down below in the basement, Stres said not a word. He closed the envelope carefully, sealed it, and instructed a courier to set out at once to deliver it to the capital of the principality. A more or less identical letter was sent to the archbishop at the Monastery of the Three Crosses, with a notice asking that it be forwarded to him in the capital if necessary.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It had started snowing again, but this snow was different from the last, somehow closer to the world of men. That which was meant to be whitened was whitened, and that which was fated to stay dark remained so. The first icicles hung from the eaves, some of the rivulets had frozen as usual, and the layer of ice was just strong enough to support the weight of the birds. It soon appeared that this would be one of those winters the earth could live with.

  Under roofs weighed down by their heavy burden the people talked of Doruntine. By now everyone knew of the arrest of the man who had brought her back, and though they had heard only bits and pieces of the tale he had told, it was enough to cover the world with words, just as a handful of wheat can sow a field.

  Many were the messengers who fanned out from the capital through the province during those days, while others, equally numerous, were dispatched from the province to the capital. It was said that a great assembly was being prepared, at which all the rumours and agitation aroused by the alleged resurrection of one of the Vranaj brothers would be laid to rest once and for all. Stres was said to be preparing a detailed report to be presented at the meeting. He had kept the prisoner in isolation, his whereabouts unknown, safe from prying eyes and ears.

  Those snippets of the prisoner’s confession that had somehow leaked out were now spreading far and wide, carried by word of mouth on puffs of steam in the winter air and borne by carriage from road to road and inn to inn. People travelled less than usual because of the cold, but strangely, the rumours spread just as fast as they would have in more clement weather. It was as if, hardened to crystalline brilliance by the winter frost, they could flow more surely than the rumours of summer, for they were unimpeded by damp and suffocating heat, by the numbing of minds and the jangling of nerves. But that did not prevent them from changing daily as they spread, from swelling, from becoming lighter or darker. And as if all this were not enough, there were still those who said, “Just wait, even stranger things will come.” Others, drifting off, would simply sigh, “What next, Lord, what next?”

  Everyone awaited the great assembly at which the whole affair would be sifted through in minute detail. The arrival of many nobles from all the principalities of Albania was announced. Rumour had it that the prince himself would attend. Other voices whispered that high church dignitaries from Byzantium would participate, while others, less numerous, even suggested that the Patriarch himself would come in person.

  In fact, contrary to what might have been expected, echoes of the Doruntine affair had spread far indeed. The news had even reached Constantinople, capital of the Orthodox religion, and everyone was aware that such things were never pardoned in that city. The highest ecclesiastical authorities were worried, people said. The Emperor himself had been apprised of the incident, which had given him sleepless nights. The issue had proven far more scandalous than it had seemed at first. It was not a simple case of a ghostly apparition, nor even one of those typical calumnies that the Church had always punished with the stake and always would. No, this was far more serious, something that, may God protect us, was shaking the Orthodox religion to its foundations. It concerned the coming of a new messiah – in God’s name, lower your voice! – yes, a new messiah, for one man alone had been able to rise from his grave, and that was Jesus Christ, and whosoever affirmed this new resurrection was thereby guilty of an unpardonable sacrilege: belief in a new resurrection, which was tantamount to admitting that there could be two Jesus Christs, for if one believed that someone today had succeeded in doing what Jesus had done in His time, then it was but one small step to admitting – may God preserve us! – that this someone else might be His rival.

  Not for nothing had Rome, in its hostility, paid the most careful attention to the development of the case. The Catholic monks had surely outdone themselves in propagating this fable of Kostandin’s resurrection, thereby attempting to deal the Orthodox religion a mortal blow by accusing it of bi-Christicism, which was a monstrous heresy. Things had got so tense that there was now talk of a universal war of religion. Some even hinted that the impostor who had brought Doruntine back was himself an agent of the Roman Church entrusted with just that mission. Others went further still, claiming that Doruntine herself had fallen into Catholic clutches and had agreed to do their bidding. O great God above, people intoned, may it not be our lot to hear such things! That is how entangled the case had become. But the Orthodox Church of Byzantium, which had spared neither patriarchs nor emperors for infractions of this magnitude, had finally taken the matter in hand and would clear it all up soon enough. The enemies of the Church would be utterly routed.

  So said some. Others shook their heads. Not because they disagreed, but because they suspected that the rumour of Kostandin’s return from the grave might well have been generated not by the intrigues and rivalry of the world’s two major religions but by one of those mysterious disturbances which, like a wicked wind, periodically plague the minds of men, robbing them of judgement, numbing them, and driving them thus dazed and blinded beyond life and death. For life and death, as they saw it, enveloped man in endless successive concentric layers, so that just as there was death within life, so death ought to contain life, which in turn contained death; or perhaps life, itself enveloped in death, harboured death in turn, and so on to infinity. Enough, objected the first group: forget the hair-splitting ratiocination, just say what you mean. The others then sought to explain their point of view more clearly, talking fast lest a mist descend upon their reasoning once more. This alleged resurrection of Kostandin, they said, was in no sense real, and the hoax had been born not at that churchyard grave but in the minds of the people, who, it seemed, had been somehow gripped by a powerful yearning to spin this tale of the mingl
ing of life and death, just as they are sometimes gripped by collective madness. This yearning had cropped up in scattered places, with one, then with another; it had infected them all, so as to turn, at last – abomination of abominations – into a common desire of the quick and the dead to give themselves over to this collective outburst. Short-sighted as they were, people gave no real thought to the abomination they had wrought, for though it is true that everyone feels the urge to see their dead once more, that longing is ephemeral, always arising after some time of turmoil (Something stopped me from kissing him, Doruntine had said). If the dead ever really came back and sat before us big as life, you’d see just how terrifying it would be. You think it’s difficult to get along with a nonagenarian? Well, imagine dealing with a 900-year-old!

  Kostandin’s presence, too, like that of any other dead man returned to the land of the living, would be welcome for no more than the briefest lapse of time (You go on, I have something to do at the church), for his dead life’s proper place was there, in the grave. They say there was a time when dead and living, men and gods, all lived together and sometimes even intermarried, engendering hybrid creatures. But that was an era of barbarism that would never return.

  Others listened to these morbid words but preferred to look at matters more simply. If this was all some yearning for resurrection, they said, why bother trying to decide whether it was good or ill? God, after all, would set the date of the Apocalypse, and none save He was entitled to pass judgement on the matter, and still less to decree its advent. But that, others replied, is exactly what’s wrong with this rumour of Kostandin’s resurrection. The alleged resurrection is taken as a sign that the Apocalypse could occur without an order from the Lord. And the Roman Church accuses ours of having sanctioned this travesty. Now, however, everything will be put right. The Church of Byzantium will not be found wanting. Stres had finally unmasked the great hoax, and the whole country – nay, the whole world, from Rome to Constantinople – would soon learn the truth. Stres would surely be awarded high honours for his achievement.

  The light in his window was the last to go out each night. He must be preparing his report. Who can say what we’re going to find out, everyone repeated. Blessed are the deaf! In times like these, they are the only people who can sleep soundly.

  The sky, though low, seemed particularly distant. Boorishly blocking the view of all four points of the compass, it made not only the old folk but everyone else too complain of the crushing humidity.

  But that did not stop them from gossiping. Every day brought new chapters to the story of Doruntine, or else erased parts of it. Only the mourners remained steadfast in their ritual. On the day of the dead, as people made the traditional visits to the graves of their relatives, these women mourned the Vranaj with the very same songs they had sung before:

  Woe betide thee, Kostandin!

  What have you done with your word?

  Does it lie in the grave as you do?

  Stres listened to all this talk with an enigmatic smile. He had stopped railing at the old crones or calling them snakes with forked tongues. He’d grown paler of late, but pallor quite suited his looks in winter.

  “What exactly does the besa mean to you?” he would ask of Kostandin’s companions – having recently found pleasure in their company.

  The young men looked at one another. There were four of them: Shpend, Milosao, and the two Radhen boys. Stres met them nearly every afternoon at the New Inn, where they used to pass the time when Kostandin was alive. People shook their heads in wonder when they saw Stres with them. Some said that he befriended them as a matter of official duty. Others maintained that he was just killing time. He has finished his report, they said, and now he’s taking time off. Others simply shrugged. Who knows why he spends his time with them? He’s deep as a well, that Stres. You can never guess why he does one thing rather than another.

  “So, what does besa mean to you? Or rather, what did it mean to him, to Kostandin?”

  None had been more deeply moved by Kostandin’s death than these four young men. He had been more than a brother to them, and even now, three years after his death, so strong was his presence in their words and thoughts that many people, half-seriously, half-jokingly, called them “Kostandin’s disciples”. They looked at one another again. Why was Stres asking them this question?

  They had not accepted the captain’s company with good grace. Even when Kostandin was alive they had been cool towards him, but in the past few months, as Stres laboured to unravel the mystery of Doruntine’s return, the chill had turned icy, bordering on hostility. Stres’s first efforts to win them over had run up against this wall. But then, surprisingly, their attitude had changed completely so that they accepted the captain’s presence. Young people today are not stupid, was the popular comment at church on Sunday; they know what they’re doing.

  “It’s a term that was used in olden days,” Stres went on, “but the meaning attached to it nowadays seems to me more or less new. It has come up more than once in trial proceedings.”

  They pondered in silence. During their afternoons and evenings with Kostandin, so different from the morose sessions that were now their lot, they had discussed many subjects with great passion, but the besa had always been their favourite topic. And for good reason, too: it was a sort of fulcrum, the theme on which all the rest was based.

  They had begun to weigh their words with greater care after the bishop issued warnings to all their families. But that was before Kostandin’s death. What would they do now that the man they had loved so much was gone? Stres seemed to be familiar with their ideas already; that being the case, all he really had to do was sit and listen. After all, they weren’t afraid to express their views. On the contrary, given the opportunity, they were prepared to proclaim them quite openly. What they feared was that their views might be distorted.

  “What did Kostandin think about the besa?” said Milosao, repeating Stres’s question. “It was part of his more general outlook. It would be difficult to explain it without showing its connection with his other convictions.”

  And they set about explaining everything to him in detail. Kostandin, as the captain must surely know, was an oppositionist, a dissident, as were they, come to that. He was opposed to existing laws, institutions, decrees, prisons, police and courts, which he considered no more than a pack of coercive rules raining down on man like hail. He believed that these laws ought to be abolished and replaced by laws arising from within man himself. By this he did not mean purely spiritual standards dependent on conscience alone, for he was no naive dreamer who assumed that humanity could be ruled solely by conscience. He believed in something far more tangible, something the seeds of which he had detected scattered here and there in Albanian life in recent times, something he said should be nurtured, encouraged to blossom into a whole system. In this system there would be no further need for written laws, courts, jails or police. This new order, of course, would not be wholly free of tragedy, of murder and violence, but man himself would judge his neighbour and be judged by him quite apart from any rigid judicial structure. He would kill or be executed, he would imprison himself or leave prison, when he thought it appropriate.

  “But how could such an order be achieved?” asked Stres. Didn’t it still come down to conscience in the end, and did not they themselves consider it merely a dream?

  They replied that in this new world, existing institutions would have been replaced by immaterial and invisible rules that were nonetheless not at all chimerical or idyllic. In fact they would be rather bleak and tragic, and therefore as weighty as the old ones, if not more so. Except that they would lie within man, not in the form of remorse or some similar sentiment, but as a well-defined ideal, a faith, an order understood and accepted by everyone, but realised within each individual, not secret but revealed for all the world to see, as if man’s breast were transparent and his greatness or anguish, his pain, his tragedy, his decisions and doubts, were plainly visible.
These were the main lines of an order of this kind. The besa was one of them, perhaps the principal one.

  Stres butted in to remind them politely that this was quite at odds with the ancient kanun the Albanians had inherited from their Illyrian ancestors, whose customary laws, as everyone knew, had been very similar to those of the Ancient Greeks, who had given them the very word kanun. Just a year ago he’d read a stage play written by a Greek fifteen hundred years before, and he had been stunned by it …

  They knew all this, just as they knew that law courts had superseded the kanun long before. But they thought that humankind had been inadequately prepared for the transition. They reckoned that in their own era it was more appropriate to renovate the old kanun than to adopt a new system of government. The besa was a good example …

  It was still very rare: delicate, like a wild flower needing tender care, its shape as yet undefined. To illustrate their thesis, they reminded Stres of an incident that had occurred some years before, when Kostandin was still alive. In a village not far off, a man had killed his guest. Stres had heard talk of the case. It was then that the expression “He violated the besa” had been used. Everyone in the village, young and old, had been deeply shaken by the event. Together they decided that no such disgrace would ever befall them again. In fact they went further still, decreeing that anyone, known or unknown, who entered the territory of their village would stand under the protection of the besa and would thereby be declared a friend and be protected as such, that the doors of the village would be opened to anyone, at any hour of the night or day, and that any passer-by must be given food and his safety assured. In the marketplace of the capital they were the butt of jokes. Anyone want a free meal? Just head for that village and knock on any door; talk about consideration, they’ll escort you to the village border as if you were a bishop. But the villagers, ignoring the mockery, went even further. They requested – and received – the prince’s permission to punish those who violated the besa. No one guilty of such an offence could leave the territory of the village alive. Another village, quite far from the first, asked the prince to grant them the same right, on terms that were no less curious: the villagers requested that protection of their besa cover not only their own place of habitation, but also a sector of the highway, including two inns and a mill. But the prince was afraid that if he allowed the new rule to spread it would interfere with traffic along the highway and complicate the administration of that part of the country, and so he refused.