The Ghost Rider

  Stres listened attentively to his deputy, although the latter had the impression that his chief’s attention sometimes wandered.

  “And here,” Stres finally asked, “what are they saying here?”

  The deputy looked at him, puzzled.

  “Here,” Stres repeated. “Not in the archives, but here among the people, what are they saying about it?”

  His deputy raised his arms helplessly.

  “Naturally everyone is talking about it.”

  Stres let a moment pass before adding, “Yes, of course. That goes without saying. It could hardly be otherwise.”

  He closed his desk drawer, pulled on his cloak and left, bidding his deputy a good night.

  His path home took him past the gates and fences of the single-storey houses that had sprung up since the town, not long ago as small and quiet as the surrounding villages, had become the county seat. The porches on which people whiled away the summer evenings were deserted now, and only a few chairs or hammocks had been left outside in the apparent hope of another mild day or two before the rigours of winter set in.

  But though the porches were empty, young girls, sometimes in the company of a boy, could be seen whispering at the gates and along the fences. As Stres approached, they stopped their gossiping and watched him pass with curiosity. The events of the night of 11 October had stirred everyone’s imagination, girls and young brides most of all. Stres guessed that each one must now be dreaming that someone – brother or distant friend, man or shadow – would some day cross an entire continent for her.

  “So,” his wife said to him when he got home, “have you finally found out who she came back with?”

  Taking off his cloak, Stres glanced covertly at her, wondering whether there was not perhaps a touch of irony in her words. She was tall and fair, and she looked back at him with the hint of a smile, and in a fleeting instant it occurred to Stres that though he was by no means insensitive to his wife’s charms, he could not imagine her riding behind him, clinging to him in the saddle. Doruntine, on the other hand, seemed to have been born to ride like that, hair streaming in the wind, arms wrapped around her horseman.

  “No,” he said drily.

  “You look tired.”

  “I am. Where are the children?”

  “Upstairs playing. Do you want to eat?”

  He nodded yes and lowered himself, exhausted, into a chair covered with a shaggy woollen cloth. In the large fireplace tepid flames licked at two big oak logs but were unable to set them ablaze. Stres sat and watched his wife moving back and forth.

  “As if all the other cases were not enough, now you have to search for some vagabond,” she said through a clinking of dishes.

  She made no direct reference to Doruntine, but somehow her hostility came through.

  “Nothing I can do about it,” said Stres.

  The clatter of dishes got louder.

  “Anyway,” his wife went on, “why is it so important to find out who that awful girl came home with?” This time the reproach was aimed in part at Stres.

  “And what makes her so awful?” he said evenly.

  “What, you don’t think so? A girl who spends three years wallowing in her own happiness without so much as a thought for her poor mother stricken with the most dreadful grief? You don’t think she’s an ingrate?”

  Stres listened, head down.

  “Maybe she didn’t know about it.”

  “Oh, she didn’t know? And how did she happen to remember so suddenly three years later?”

  Stres shrugged. His wife’s hostility to Doruntine was nothing new. She had shown it often enough; once they had even fought about it. It was two days after the wedding, and his wife had said, “How come you’re sitting there sulking like that? Are all of you so sorry to see her go?” It was the first time she had ever made such a scene.

  “She left her poor mother alone in her distress,” she went on, “and then suddenly took it into her head to come back just to rob her of the little bit of life she had left. Poor woman! What a fate!”

  “It’s true,” Stres said. “Such a desert—”

  “Such hellish solitude, you mean,” she broke in. “To see her daughters-in-law leave one after the other, most of them with small children in their arms, her house suddenly dark as a well. But her daughters-in-law, after all, were only on loan, and though they were wrong to abandon their mother-in-law in her time of trouble, who can cast a stone at them when the first to abandon the poor woman was her only daughter?”

  Stres sat looking at the brass candelabra, astonishingly similar to the ones he had seen that memorable morning in the room where Doruntine and her mother lay in their sickbeds. He now realised that everyone, each in his own way, would take some stand in this affair, and that each person’s attitude would have everything to do with their station in life, their luck in love or marriage, their looks, the measure of good or ill fortune that had been their lot, the events that had marked the course of their life, and their most secret feelings, those that people sometimes hide even from themselves. Yes, that would be the echo awakened in everyone by what had happened, and though they would believe they were passing judgement on someone else’s tragedy, in reality, they would simply be giving expression to their own.

  In the morning a messenger from the prince’s chancellery delivered an envelope to Stres. Inside was a note stating that the prince, having been informed of the events of 11 October, ordered that no effort be spared in bringing the affair to light so as to forestall what Stres himself feared, any uneasiness or misapprehension among the people.

  The chancellery asked that Stres notify the prince the moment he felt that the matter had been resolved.

  Hmm, Stres said to himself after reading the laconic note a second time. The moment he felt that the matter had been resolved. Easy enough to say. I’d like to see you in my shoes.

  He had slept badly, and in the morning he again encountered the inexplicable hostility of his wife, who hadn’t forgiven him for failing to endorse her judgement of Doruntine with sufficient ardour, though he had been careful not to contradict her. He had noticed that this sort of friction, though it did not lead to explosions, was in fact more pernicious than an open dispute, which was generally followed by reconciliation.

  Stres was still holding the letter from the chancellery when his deputy came in to tell him that the cemetery watchman had something to report.

  “The cemetery watchman?” Stres said in astonishment, eying his aide reproachfully. He was tempted to ask, “You’re not still trying to convince me that someone has come back from the grave?” but just then, through the half-open door, he saw what appeared to be the watchman in question.

  “Bring him in,” Stres said coldly.

  The watchman entered, bowing deferentially.

  “Well?” said Stres looking up at the man, who stood rigid as a post.

  The watchman swallowed.

  “I am the watchman at the church cemetery, Mister Stres, and I would like to tell you—”

  “That the grave has been violated?” Stres interrupted. “I know all about it.”

  The watchman was taken aback.

  “I, I,” he stammered, “I meant—”

  “If it’s about the gravestone being moved, I know all about it,” Stres interrupted again, unable to hide his annoyance. “If you have something else to tell me, I’m listening.”

  Stres expected the watchman to say, “No, I have nothing to add,” and had already leaned over his desk again when, to his great surprise, the man spoke.

  “I have something else to tell you.”

  Stres raised his head and looked sternly at him, making it clear that this was neither the time nor the place for jokes.

  “So you have something else to tell me?” he said in a sceptical tone. “Well, let’s hear it.”

  The watchman, still disconcerted by the coolness of his reception, watched Stres lift his hands from the papers spread out on his desk as if to say, ?
??Well, you’ve taken me away from my work, are you satisfied? Now let’s hear your little story.”

  “We are uneducated people, Mister Stres,” the man said timidly. “Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, please excuse me, but I thought that, well, who knows—”

  Suddenly Stres felt sorry for the man and said in a milder tone, “Speak. I’m listening.”

  What’s the matter with me? he wondered. Why do I take out on others the irritation I feel over this business?

  “Speak,” he said again. “What is it you have to tell me?”

  The watchman, somewhat reassured, took a deep breath and began.

  “Everyone claims that one of the Lady Mother’s sons came back from the grave,” he said, staring straight at Stres. “You know more about all that than I do. Some people have even come over to the cemetery to see whether any stones have been moved, but that’s another story. What I wanted to say is about something else—”

  “Go on,” said Stres.

  “One Sunday, not last Sunday or the one before, but the one before that, the Lady Mother came to the cemetery, as is her custom, to light candles at the graves of each of her sons.”

  “Three Sundays ago?” Stres asked.

  “Yes, Mister Stres. She lit one candle for each of the other graves, but two for Kostandin’s. I was standing very near her at the time, and I heard what she said when she leaned towards the niche in the gravestone.”

  The watchman paused briefly again, his eyes still fixed on the captain. Three Sundays ago; in other words, Stres thought to himself, not knowing quite why he made the calculation, a little more than two weeks ago.

  “I have heard the lamentations of many a mother,” the watchman went on, “hers included. But never have I shuddered as I did at the words she spoke that day.”

  Stres, who had raised his hand to his chin, listened avidly.

  “These were not the usual tears and lamentations,” the watchman explained. “What she spoke was a curse.”

  “A curse?”

  The watchman took another deep breath, making no attempt to conceal his satisfaction at having finally captured the captain’s undivided attention.

  “Yes, sir, a curse, and a frightful one.”

  “Go on,” Stres said impatiently. “What kind of curse?”

  “It is hard to remember the exact words, I was so shaken, but it went something like this: ‘Kostandin, have you forgotten your promise to bring Doruntine back to me whenever I longed for her?’ As you probably know, Mister Stres, I mean almost everybody does, Kostandin had given his mother his besa to—”

  “I know, I know,” said Stres. “Go on.”

  “Well, then she said: ‘Now I am left alone in the world, for you have broken your promise. May the earth never receive you!’ Those were her words, more or less.”

  The watchman had been observing Stres’s face as he spoke, expecting the captain to be horrified by his terrible tale, but when he’d finished it seemed clear that Stres was thinking of other things. The watchman’s self-assurance vanished.

  “I thought I ought to come and tell you, in case it was any use,” he said. “I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”

  “No, not at all,” Stres hastened to answer. “On the contrary, you did well to come. Thank you very much.”

  The watchman bowed respectfully and left, still wondering whether or not he had made a mistake in coming to tell his story.

  Stres still seemed lost in thought. A moment later, he felt another presence in the room. He looked up and saw his deputy, but quickly dismissed him. How could we have been so stupid? he said to himself. Why in the world didn’t we talk to the mother? Though he had gone twice to the house, he had questioned only Doruntine. The mother might well have her own version of events. It was an unpardonable oversight not to have spoken to her.

  Stres looked up. His deputy stood before him, waiting.

  “We have committed an inexcusable blunder,” Stres said.

  “About the grave? To tell you the truth, I did think of it, but—”

  “What are you babbling about?” Stres interrupted. “It has nothing to do with the grave and all these ghost stories. The moment the watchman told me of the old woman’s curse, I said to myself, how can we account for our failure to talk to her? How could we have been such idiots?”

  “That’s a point,” said the deputy guiltily. “You’re right.”

  Stres stood up abruptly.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “We must make amends at once.”

  A moment later they were in the street. His deputy tried to match Stres’s long strides.

  “It’s not only the curse,” Stres said. “We have to find out what the mother thinks of the affair. She might be able to shed new light on the mystery.”

  “You’re right,” said the deputy, whose words, punctuated by his panting, seemed to float off with the wind and fog. “Something else struck me while I was reading those letters,” he went on. “Certain things can be gleaned from them – but I won’t be able to explain until later. I’m not quite sure of it yet, and since it’s so out of the ordinary—”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Please don’t ask me to say more about it just yet. I want to finish going through the correspondence. Then I’ll give you my conclusions.”

  “For the time being, the main thing is to talk to the mother,” Stres said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Especially in view of the curse the cemetery watchman told us about. I don’t think he would have invented that.”

  “Certainly not. He’s an honest, serious man. I know him well.”

  “Yes, especially because of that curse,” Stres repeated. “For if we accept the fact that she uttered that curse, then there is no longer any reason to believe that when Doruntine said, from outside the house, ‘Mother, open the door, I’ve come back with Kostandin’ (assuming she really spoke those words), the mother believed what she said. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes. Yes I do.”

  “The trouble is, there’s another element here,” Stres went on without slowing his pace. “Did the mother rejoice to see that her son had obeyed her and had risen from the grave or was she sorry to have disturbed the dead? Or is it possible that neither of these suppositions is correct, that there was something even darker and more troubling?”

  “That’s what I think,” said the deputy.

  “That’s what I think too,” added Stres. “The fact that the old mother suffered so severe a shock suggests that she had just learned of a terrible tragedy.”

  “Yes, just so,” said the aide. “That tallies with the suspicion I mentioned a moment ago …”

  “Otherwise there’s no explanation for the mother’s collapse. Doruntine’s is understandable, for now she learns of the death of her nine brothers. The mother’s, on the other hand, is harder to understand. Wait a minute, what’s going on here?”

  Stres stopped short.

  “What’s going on?” he repeated. “I think I hear shouts—”

  They weren’t far from the Vranaj residence and they peered at the old house.

  “I think I do too,” said the aide.

  “Oh my God,” said Stres, “I hope the old woman’s not dead! What a ghastly mistake we’ve made!”

  He set off again, walking faster. He splashed through the puddles and the mud, trampling rotting leaves.

  “What madness!” he muttered, “what madness!”

  “Maybe it’s not her,” said the deputy. “It could be Doruntine.”

  “What?” Stres cried, and his aide realised that the very idea of the young woman’s death was unthinkable to his chief.

  They covered the remaining distance to the Vranaj house without a word. On both sides of the road tall poplars dismally shook off the last of their leaves. Now they could clearly make out the wailing of women.

  “She’s dead,” said Stres. “No doubt about it.”

  “Yes, the courtyard is thick with people.”


  “What’s happened?” Stres asked the first person they met.

  “At the Vranaj’s!” the woman said. “Both are dead, mother and daughter.”

  “It can’t be!”

  She shrugged and walked away.

  “I can’t believe it,” Stres muttered again, slowing his pace. His mouth was dry and tasted terribly bitter.

  The gates of the house yawned wide. Stres and his deputy found themselves in the courtyard surrounded by a small throng of townspeople milling about aimlessly. Stres asked someone else and got the same answer: both of them were dead. From inside came the wailing of the mourners. Both of them, Stres repeated to himself, stunned.

  He felt himself being jostled on all sides. He no longer had the slightest desire to pursue the inquiry further, or even to try to think clearly about it. In truth, the idea that it might be Doruntine who was dead had assailed him several times along the road, but he had rejected it each time. He simply could not believe that both no longer lived. At times, even though the idea horrified him, it was Doruntine’s death that had seemed to him most likely, for in riding with a dead man, which was what she herself believed she had done, she had already moved, to some degree, into the realm of death.