Later, sated by love, they lay silent for a long moment, glancing now at the carved-wood ceiling, now at the window whose half-open shutters revealed a slice of 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 arise again. With a caressing touch that smoothed a lock of her 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 Stres summoned his deputy so that he might report on the conclusions he had drawn from examining the Vranaj archives. The man still looked haggard, and Stres thought him even paler than usual.
“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 would have imagined that prolonged contact with archives could give anyone that papier-mâché expression, Stres said to himself.
“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 mock 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 certain letters, one in particular, written long ago, the old woman alludes to an unnatural feeling on the part of her son Constantine 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, emphasizing that it happens particularly in families in which there is but one daughter, as was the case with Doruntine. However, it takes attention and care to bring this somewhat perverse feeling back 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, tapping his fingers nervously.
“Their subsequent letters make no further mention of the matter,” the aide went on. “One has the impression 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 Constantine 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 far-away marriage that had just been arranged, she wrote that she herself, Doruntine, and most of her sons had long hesitated, concerned that the distance was too great, but that this time it was Constantine who argued vigorously for the prospective marriage. In his letter of congratulation, the count tells the old woman, in particular, that Constantine’s attitude toward the marriage is not at all surprising, that on the contrary, in view of what she had told him it was understandable that Constantine, angered 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’s eyes were fixed on 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 written to the count that after the church ceremony Constantine paced back and forth like a madman, 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 tabletop.
“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 Constantine’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 life.”
“In his life?” Stres asked.
“Yes,” said the deputy, raising his voice for no apparent reason. “I am convinced that Constantine’s unslaked incestuous desire was so strong that death itself could not still it.”
“Hm,” Stres said.
“Incest unrealized survived death,” his aide went on. “Constantine 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 Constantine’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 Constantine harbored 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, lest he be forbidden to continue.
“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 evenly.
His aide opened his mouth, but Stres leapt to his feet and, leaning close to the man’s face, shouted:
“I forbid you to speak, do you hear? Stop or I’ll arrest you, here and 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 a long moment at his deputy’s face, pale with 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, his tone indulgent. “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 lead to.
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 mobilize 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 the eleventh of October. The idea that Doruntine might have been brought back by one of Constantine’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? And in any event, Constantine’s friends had little trouble proving that all four had been at the 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. But Stres found that hard to believe.
One day he saw them making their way, single file, to the abandoned house to take up their mourning, as was the custom. Tall, slim, wrapped in his dark cloak, its collar emblazoned with the insignia of an officer of the prince—the white deer-antler—he had stopped at the side of the road as, dressed all in black, their faces already moist with the tears to come, they passed before him, indifferent. Stres had the feeling that they had recognized him, 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 idea 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 neighboring 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.
Towards the middle of November the first snow fell. 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, per
fectly clear. 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 man you have loved but realize 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, though Stres still could not bring himself to believe that the 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 mattered little, in truth, whether it was all in her mind or in the minds of others. In the end, it was a story that could happen to anyone, in any land, in any time. For where, indeed, is the person who has never dreamed of someone who returns from afar, from the lands beyond, to pause a moment that both may sit astride the same horse together? Where is the person in this world who does not harbor some yearning for one departed and has never said, If only he could come back one time, just once, that I might kiss him (but something stops me from kissing him)? Even though it can never happen, and will never happen forever and ever, for surely this is one of the great sorrows of this dreary world, a sorrow that will envelop it like mist until its very end.