“But that is of no importance, Captain Stres. That is completely secondary. The essential thing is that it was he who brought Doruntine here.”
“Maybe it’s this business about two worlds that prevents us from understanding one another,” Stres said. “What is a lie in one may be the truth in the other, is that the idea?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps.”
Meanwhile, the country seethed as it awaited the great assembly. Words, calculations, forebodings, and news fluttered in the wind like yellowing leaves before a storm, falling to earth only to be raised anew. Messengers plied to and fro between the capital and the provinces. No one was sure just when the meeting would take place, but everyone knew that it would not be long.
CHAPTER VII
It was in an inner courtyard of the Old Monastery, large enough to hold some two thousand people, that the great assembly was to be held. Carpenters spent several days setting up wooden grandstands for the guests and a platform from which Stres would speak. Canvas covers were strung up in case of rain.
The meeting was to take place on the first Sunday in December, but by mid-week most of the region’s inns were full, not only those closest to the Old Monastery, but also the ones along the highway. Guests, clergy and laymen alike, poured in from the four corners of the principality and from neighboring principalities, dukedoms, and counties. Visitors were expected from the farthest principalities, and envoys from the Holy Patriarchate in the Empire’s capital.
As they watched the carriages parade down the highway—most of their doors decorated with coats of arms, the passengers dressed in gaudy clothes often embroidered with the same coats of arms as the one on their coaches—the people, chatting with one another, learned more in those few days about princely courts, ceremonies, dignitaries, and religious and secular hierarchies than they had in their whole lifetime. It was only then that they came to realize the full import, the truly enormous significance, of this whole affair, which at first, on that night of October eleventh, had been considered simply a ghost story. On the eve of the assembly, Stres went to the Old Monastery to inspect the meeting place. Their preparations complete, the carpenters had gathered up their tools and gone. A fine rain had dampened the exposed tiers of seats. Stres mounted the platform from which he was to speak and stood there a moment, eyes fixed on the empty stands.
He stared at them for a long time, then suddenly turned his head sharply right and left, as though someone had called him or he had heard shouts. The hint of a bitter smile crossed his face; then, with long strides, he walked away.
Finally the long-awaited day dawned. It was cold, one of those days that seems all the more icy when you realize it’s Sunday. The high clouds were motionless, as if moored to the heavens. From early morning the monastery’s inner courtyard was packed with spectators—except for the stands reserved for high-ranking officials and guests from other principalities and Constantinople—and the innumerable latecomers, hoping to be able to hear something, had no choice but to assemble outside in the empty field that ringed the walls. They had at all costs to learn what was said at the gathering, and quickly, for they formed the first circle the news must reach so that it might spread in waves throughout the world.
Bundled up in gray goatskins to protect themselves from the cold and the rain, they watched the arrival of the endless procession of horses and carriages from which the invited guests descended. In the courtyard the stands were gradually filling up. Last to take their seats were the personal envoy of the prince, the delegates from Byzantium (accompanied by the archbishop of the principality), and Stres, dressed in his black uniform with the deer antler insignia, looking taller, but also paler, than usual.
The archbishop left the group of guests and walked toward the platform, apparently to open the meeting. Many took up the hissing “ssh” as silence gradually settled over the great courtyard. Only when it had become almost complete was that silence broken by a rumbling that had hitherto been inaudible. It was the noise of the crowd outside the monastery walls.
The archbishop tried to speak in a strong, sonorous voice, but without the cathedral cupola he could not be truly resounding. He seemed annoyed at the weakness of his voice and cleared his throat, but its timbre was muffled mercilessly by the vastness of the courtyard whose walls, had they not been so low, might perhaps have given resonance and volume to his eloquence. But the prelate spoke on nonetheless. He briefly mentioned the purpose of this enlarged meeting, convoked to shed light upon the great hoax that had so regrettably been born in this village with “someone’s alleged return from the grave and his journey with some living woman.” (His tone as he spoke the words someone’s and some gave his audience to understand that he disdained to cite the names of Constantine and Doruntine.) He mentioned the spread of this hoax throughout the principality, beyond its borders, and indeed even beyond the confines of Albania; he suggested what unimaginable catastrophes could result if such heresies were permitted to spread freely. And finally he noted the efforts by the Church of Rome to exploit the heresy, using it against the Holy Byzantine Church, as well as the measures taken by the latter to unmask the imposture.
“And now,” he concluded, “I yield the platform to Captain Stres, who was entrusted with the investigation of this matter and who will now present a detailed report on all aspects of it. He will explain to you, step by step, how the hoax was conceived; he will tell you who was behind the story of the dead man returned from the grave, what the pretended journey of the sister with her dead brother really was, what happened afterwards, and how the truth was brought to light.”
A deep rumbling drowned out his final words as Stres rose from his seat and headed for the platform.
He raised his head, looked out at the crowd, and waited for the first layer of silence to fall over it once more. He spoke his first words in a voice that seemed very soft. Little by little, as the crowd’s silence grew deeper, it gained strength. In chronological order he set out the events of the night of October eleventh and after; he recalled Doruntine’s arrival, her claim to have returned in the company of her dead brother, and his own initial suspicions: that an impostor had deceived Doruntine, that Doruntine herself had lied both to her mother and to him, that the young woman and her partner had hatched the hoax in concert, or even that it was no more than a belated vendetta of some kind, a settling of accounts or struggle for succession. He then reviewed the measures taken to discover the truth, the research into the family archives, the checks on the inns and relay stations, and finally the failure of all these various efforts to shed any light at all on the mystery. Then he recalled the spread of the first rumors, mentioning the mourners, his suspicion that Doruntine had gone mad and that the trip with her brother was no more than the product of a diseased imagination. But at that point, he continued, the arrival of two members of the husband’s family had confirmed that the journey had really occurred and that the horseman who had taken Doruntine up behind him had been seen. Stres then described the fresh measures that he and other officials of the principality had been compelled to take in their effort to solve the mystery, measures that led at length to the capture of the impostor—the man who had played the role of the dead brother—at the Inn of the Two Roberts in the next county.
“I interrogated him myself,” Stres continued. “At first he denied knowing Doruntine. In fact he denied everything, and it was only when I ordered him put to the torture that he confessed. Here, according to him, is what really happened.”
Stres then recounted the prisoner’s confession. His every word brought murmurs of relief from the crowd. It was as if they had all been yearning for this bleak story, hitherto so macabre, to be freshened by the gentle breeze of the itinerant merchant’s tale of romantic adventure. The rippling murmur breached the monastery walls and spread into the field beyond, just as silence, shuddering, and terror in turn had spread before.
“So much, then, for what the prisoner stated,” Stres said, raising his voice. He paused
for a moment, waiting for silence. “So much, then,” he repeated, “for what the prisoner stated. It was midnight.”
The silence grew deeper, but the murmur rising from the most distant rows, and especially from outside the walls, was still audible.
“It was midnight when he finished his account, and it was then that I—”
Here he paused again, in one final effort to unroll the carpet of silence as far as possible.
“Then, to the astonishment of my aides, I ordered him put to the torture again.”
A sulfurous light seemed to glow in Stres’s eyes. He gazed for a moment at those silent faces, at the darkened features of the people in the grandstands, and spoke again only when he was convinced that he had wrung the very last reserves of silence from the crowd.
“If I had him put to the torture again, it was because I doubted the truth of his tale.”
Silence still reigned, but Stres thought he felt what could have been a mild earthquake. Now! he said to himself, intoxicated, now! Bring it all down!
“He resisted the torture for a week. Then, on the eighth day, he confessed the truth at last. That is to say, he admitted that everything he had said until then had been nothing but lies.”
The earthquake, which he had been the first to sense, had now in fact begun: its roar was rising, a muffled thunder, out of phase, of course, like any earthquake, but powerful nonetheless. A lightning glance to his right showed all was still mute there. But those frozen faces in the grandstands had suddenly clouded over.
“It was nothing but a tissue of lies from start to finish,” Stres continued, surprised that he had not been interrupted. “The man had never met Doruntine, had never spoken to her, had neither traveled with her nor made love to her, any more than he had brought her back on the night of October eleventh. He had been paid to perpetrate the hoax.”
Stres raised his head, waiting for something that he himself could not have defined.
“Yes,” he went on, “paid. He himself confessed it, paid by persons whose names I shall not mention here.”
He paused briefly once again. What reigned around him now resembled strangulation more than silence.
“At first,” Stres went on, “when this impostor denied knowing Doruntine, he played his role to perfection, and he did equally well afterward, when he affirmed that in fact he had brought her back. But just as great impostors often betray themselves in small details, so he gave himself away with a trifle. Thus this impostor, this imaginary companion of Doruntine—”
“Then who brought the woman back?” shouted the archbishop from his seat. “The dead man?”
Stres turned toward him.
“Who brought Doruntine back? I will answer you on that very point, for I was in charge of this case. Be patient, Your Eminence, be patient, noble sirs!”
Stres took a deep breath. So many hundreds of lungs swelled along with his that he felt as if all the air about them had been set in motion. Once again he glanced slowly across the packed courtyard to the steps of the stands at the foot of which stood the guards, their arms crossed.
“I expected that question,” said Stres, “and am therefore prepared to answer it.” He paused again.
“Yes, I have prepared myself with the greatest care to answer it. The painstaking investigation I conducted is now closed, my file complete, my conviction unshakable. I am ready, noble sirs, to answer the question: Who brought Doruntine back?”
Stres allows yet another brief moment of silence, during which he glanced in all directions as if seeking to convey the truth with his eyes before expressing it with his voice.
“Doruntine,” he said, “was in fact brought back by Constantine.”
Stres stiffened, expecting some sound—laughter, jeers, shouts, an uproar of some kind, even a challenging cry: “But for two months you’ve been trying to convince us of the contrary!” Nothing of the kind came from the crowd.
“Yes, Doruntine was brought back by Constantine,” he repeated as if he feared that he had been misunderstood. But the silence continued and he thought that that silence was perhaps excessive. It is all so trying, he sighed in his confusion. But then he felt an inspiration so powerful that it pained his chest, and the words poured out.
“Just as I promised you, noble sirs, and you, honored guests, I will explain everything. All I ask is that you have the patience to hear me out.”
At that moment Stres’s only concern was to keep his mind clear. For the time being he asked for nothing more.
“You have all heard,” he began, “some of you before setting out for this gathering, others on your way here or upon your arrival, of the strange marriage of Doruntine Vranaj, the marriage that lies at the root of this whole affair. You are all aware, I imagine, that this far-off marriage, the first concluded with a man from so distant a country, would never have taken place if Constantine, one of the bride’s brothers, had not given his mother his word that he would bring Doruntine back to her whenever she desired her daughter’s presence, on occasions of joy or sorrow. You also know that not long after the wedding the Vranaj, like all of Albania, were stricken with unspeakable grief. Yet no one brought Doruntine back, for he who had promised to do so was dead. You are aware of the curse the Lady Mother uttered against her son for his violation of the bessa, and you know that three weeks after that curse was spoken, Doruntine at last appeared at the family home. That is why I now affirm, and reaffirm, that it was none other than her brother Constantine, in accordance with his oath, his bessa, who brought Doruntine back. There is no explanation for that journey, nor could there be. It matters little whether or not Constantine returned from the grave to accomplish his mission, just as it matters little who was the horseman who set out on that black night or what horse he saddled, whose hands held the reins, whose feet pressed against the stirrups, whose hair was matted with the highway dust. Each of us has a part in that journey, for it is here among us that Constantine’s bessa germinated, and that is what brought Doruntine back. Therefore, to be more exact I would have to say that it was all of us—you, me, our dead lying there in the graveyard close by the church—who, through Constantine, brought Doruntine back.”
Stres swallowed.
“Noble sirs, I have not yet finished. I would like to tell you—and most of all to tell our guests from distant lands—just what this sublime power is that is capable of bending the laws of death.”
Stres paused again. His throat felt dry and he found it hard to form his words. But he kept speaking just the same. He spoke of the bessa, of its spread among the Albanians. As he spoke he saw someone in the crowd coming toward him, holding what seemed to be a heavy object, perhaps a stone. Now it begins, he said to himself, his elbow brushing the pommel of his sword beneath his cloak. But when the man had come near, Stres saw that it was one of the Radhen boys, and that he carried not a stone to strike him with, but a small pitcher.
Stres smiled, took the pitcher and drank.
“And now,” he went on, “let me try to explain why this new moral law was born and is now spreading among us.”
He spoke briefly of the gravity of the world situation, of the troubled future, heavy with dark clouds, that now loomed because of the friction between great empires and religions; he spoke of the plots, the trickery, the faithlessness that flourished far and wide, and of Albania’s position in the midst of that sea of storms and raging waves.
“Any people in danger,” he continued, “hones the tools of its defense and, what is more important, it forges new ones. It would be short-sighted indeed not to realize that Albania faces great upheavals. Sooner or later they will reach its borders, if they have not already done so. So the question is this: in these new conditions of the worsening of the general atmosphere in the world, in this time of trial, of crime and hateful treachery, who should the Albanian be? What face shall he show the world? Shall he espouse the evil or stand against it? Shall he disfigure himself, changing his features to suit the masks of the age, seeking thus t
o assure his survival, or shall he keep his countenance unchanged at the risk of bringing upon himself the wrath of the age? Albania’s time of trial is near, the hour of choice between these two faces. And if the people of Albania, deep within themselves, have begun to fashion institutions as sublime as the bessa, that shows us that Albania is making its choice. It was to carry that message to Albania and to the world beyond that Constantine rose from his grave.”
Once more Stres’s glance embraced the numberless crowd that stretched before him, then the stands to his right and left.
“But it is not easy to accept this message,” he went on. “It will require great sacrifices by successive generations. Its burden will be heavier than the cross of Christ. And now that I have come to the end of what I had to tell you”—and here Stres turned to the stands where the envoys of the prince were seated—”I would like to add that, since my words are at variance with my duties, or at least are at variance with them for the moment, I now resign my post.”
He raised his right hand to the white-antler insignia sewn to the left side of his cloak and, pulling sharply, ripped it off and let it fall to the ground.
Without another word he descended the wooden stairway and, his head high, walked through the crowd, which parted at his passing with a mixture of respect, fear, and dread.
From that day forward, Stres was never seen again. No one, neither his deputies nor his family, not even his wife, knew where he was—or at least no one would say.
At the Old Monastery the wooden grandstands and platform were dismantled, workmen carried off the planks and beams, and in the inner courtyard there was no longer any trace of the assembly. But no one forgot a word that Stres had spoken there. His words passed from mouth to mouth, from village to village, with unbelievable speed. The rumor that Stres had been arrested in the wake of his speech soon proved unfounded. It was said that he had been seen somewhere, or at least that someone had heard the trot of his horse. Others insisted they had caught a glimpse of him on the northern highway. They were sure they had recognized him, despite the dusk and the first layer of dust that covered his hair. Who can say? people mused, who can say? How much, O Lord, must our poor minds take in! And then someone said, his voice trembling as if shivering with cold: