Chapter 4

The day after his return from the Monastery of the Three Crosses Stres set to work again to unravel the enigma of Doruntine's return. He drafted a new more detailed directive, ordering the arrest of all suspects, offering in addition a reward to anyone who helped capture the impostor directly or by providing information leading to his arrest. He also instructed his deputy to make a list of all those who had been out of town between the end of September and 11 October, and to look discreetly into the activities of every person on the list. In the meantime, he ordered one of his men to set out at once for the far reaches of Bohemia, in order to investigate locally the circumstances of Doruntine's departure.

The man hadn't yet left when a second directive, even more compelling than the first, came from the prince's chancellery, demanding that the entire matter be brought to light as soon as possible. Stres understood at once that the archbishop must have been in touch with the prince and that the latter, aware of his captain's reluctance to obey Church injunctions, had decided that a fresh personal intervention was required. The directive emphasised that the tense political situation of recent times, in particular relations with Byzantium, required caution and understanding on the part of all officials of the prince.

Meanwhile, the archbishop remained inside the Monastery of the Three Crosses. Why on earth had he holed up there and not moved on? Stres wondered. The old fox had obviously decided to keep an eye on things.

Stres felt more and more nervous. His aide was coming to the end of all that research in the archives. His eyes bleary from the long sessions of reading, he went around looking dreamy.

"You seem sunk in deep meditation," Stres observed jokingly, at a break in his own hectic schedule. "Who knows what you're going to pull out of those archives for us?"

Instead of smiling, the deputy looked strangely at Stres, as if to say you may think it's a laughing matter, but it will take your breath away.

Sometimes, walking to the window as if to rest his eyes on a view of the wide plain, Stres wondered if the truth about Doruntine's tale might not be completely different from what they all assumed, if that macabre ride with an unknown

horseman was in fact no more than the product of the girl's sick mind. After all, no one had seen that horseman, and Doruntine's old mother, who had opened the door for her and who was the only witness, had made no such assertion. Good God, he said to himself, could it be that the whole thing never happened? Perhaps Doruntine had somehow learned of the disaster that had befallen her family and, driven mad by the shock, had set out for home on her own. In a state of such deep distress she might have taken much time indeed – months, even years – to complete a journey she believed had taken a single night. That might well explain the flocks of stars she thought she saw streaming across the sky. Besides, someone who believed that the ten-day-and-night journey from Bohemia (for that was the least it could take) had lasted but a single night might well feel that a hundred nights were one. And of course a person in such a state might fall prey to all sorts of hallucinations.

In vain, Stres sought to recall Doruntine's face as it had looked when he saw her for the last time, so that he might detect some sign of mental illness. But her image eluded him. In the end he resolved to drive the theory of madness from his mind, for he feared it might dampen his zeal for the investigation. It will all be cleared up soon enough, he told himself. As soon as my man comes back from Bohemia.

Thirty-six hours after the man's departure, Stres was informed that some relatives of Doruntine's husband had just arrived. At first it was rumoured that her husband himself had come, but it soon became clear that the visitors were his two first cousins.

After dispatching a second messenger to overtake the first and tell him to turn back, Stres hurried to meet the new arrivals, who had taken lodgings at the inn at the crossroads.

The two young men were so alike in bearing and appearance that they might have been taken for twins, though they were not. They were still tired from their long journey and had not yet had time to wash or change their clothes when Stres arrived. He couldn't help staring at their dust-covered hair, and looked at them in so odd a fashion that one, with just the hint of a guilty smile, passed his fingers through his hair and spoke a few words in an incomprehensible tongue.

"What language do they speak?" Stres asked his deputy, who had arrived at the inn shortly before him.

"God knows," was the reply. "It sounds to me like German laced with Spanish. I sent someone to the Old Monastery to fetch one of the monks who speaks foreign languages. He shouldn't be long."

"I have a hard time making myself understood with the little Latin I know," said the innkeeper. "And they massacre it too."

"Perhaps they need to wash and rest a bit," Stres said to the innkeeper. "Tell them to go upstairs if they like, until the interpreter gets here."

The innkeeper passed on Stres's message in his fractured Latin. The visitors nodded agreement and, one behind the other, began climbing the wooden stairs, which creaked as if it might collapse. Stres could not help staring at their dusty cloaks as he watched them go up.

"Did they say anything?" he asked when the staircase had stopped creaking. "Do they know that Doruntine is dead?"

"They learned of her death and her mother's while on their way here," the deputy answered, "and surely other things as well."

Stres began pacing back and forth in the large hall, which also served as the reception room. The others – his aide, the innkeeper and a third man – watched him come and go without daring to break the silence.

The monk from the Old Monastery arrived half an hour later. The two foreigners came down the wooden stairs, whose creaking seemed more and more sinister to Stres's ear. Their hair, now free of most of the journey's dust, was very blond.

Stres turned to the monk and said, "Tell them that I am Captain Stres, responsible for keeping order in this district. I believe they have come to find out what happened to Doruntine, have they not?"

The monk translated these words for the strangers, but they looked blankly at one another, seeming not to understand.

"What language are you speaking?" Stres asked the monk. "I'll try another," he said without answering the question.

He spoke to them again. The two strangers leaned forward with the pained expressions of men straining to understand what is being said to them. One of them spoke a few words, and this time it was the monk whose face took on a troubled expression. These exchanges of words and grimaces continued for some time until finally the monk spoke several long sentences to which the strangers now listened with nods of great satisfaction.

"Finally found it," said the monk. "They speak a German dialect mixed with Slavonic. I think we'll be able to understand one another."

Stres spoke immediately.

"You have come just in time," he said. "I believe you have heard what happened to your cousin's wife. We are all dismayed."

The strangers' faces darkened.

"When you arrived I had already sent someone to your country to find out the circumstances of her leaving there," Stres went on. "I hope that we may be able to learn something from you, as you may learn something from us. I believe that all of us have an equal interest in finding out the truth."

The two strangers nodded in agreement.

"When we left," said one of them, "we knew nothing, save that our cousin's wife had gone off suddenly, under rather strange circumstances, with her brother Kostandin."

He stopped and waited for the monk, who kept his pale eyes fixed upon him, to translate his words.

"While en route," the stranger continued, "still far from your country, we learned that our cousin's wife had indeed arrived at her parents' home, but that her brother Kostandin, with whom she said she had left, had departed this life three years ago."

"Yes," said Stres, "that's correct."

"On the way we also learned of the old woman's death, news that grieved us deeply."

The stranger lowered his eyes. A silence followed, during which Stres motioned to the innkeeper and two or three onlookers to keep their distance.

"You wouldn't have a room where we could talk, would you?" Stres asked the owner.

"Yes, of course, Captain. There is a quiet place just over there. Come."

They filed into a small room. Stres invited them to sit on carved wooden chairs.

"We had but one goal when we set out," one of the two strangers continued, "and that was to satisfy ourselves about her flight. In other words, first of all to make sure that she had really reached her own family, and secondly to learn the reason for her flight, to find out whether or not she meant to come back, among other things that go without saying in incidents of this kind."

As the monk translated, the stranger stared at Stres as if trying to guess whether the captain grasped the full meaning of his words.

"For an escapade of this kind, as I'm sure you must realise, arouses …" "Of course," said Stres. "I quite understand."

"Now, however," the visitor continued, "another matter has arisen: this question of the dead brother. Our cousin, Doruntine's husband, knows nothing of this, and you may well imagine that this development gives rise to yet another

mystery. If Doruntine's brother has been dead for three years, then who was the man who brought her here?"

"Precisely," Stres replied. "I have been asking myself that question for several days now, and many others have asked it too."

He opened his mouth to continue, but suddenly lost his train of thought. In his mind, he knew not why, he saw in a flash the white bones of the horse lying on the plain that afternoon, as if they had tumbled there from some troubled dream.

"Did anyone see the horseman?" he asked.

"Where? What horseman?" the two strangers said, almost in one voice.

"The one believed to have been her brother, the man who brought Doruntine here."

"Oh, I see. Yes, there were women who happened to be close by. They said they saw a horseman near our cousin's house, and that Doruntine hurried to mount behind him. And then there's also the note she left."

"That's right," Stres said. "She told me about a note. Have you read it?"

"We brought it with us," said the second stranger, the one who had spoken least.

"What? You have the note with you?"

Stres could scarcely believe his ears, but the stranger was already rummaging through his leather satchel, from which he finally took out a letter. Stres leaned forward to examine it.

"It's her handwriting, all right," said the deputy, peering over Stres's shoulder. "I recognise it."

Stres stared with wide eyes at the crude letters, which seemed to have been formed by a clumsy hand. The text, in a foreign language, was incomprehensible. One word, the last, had been crossed out.

"What does it say?" asked Stres, leaning even closer. Only one word was recognisable, her brother's name, spelled differently than in Albanian: Cöstanthin. "What do these other words mean?" Stres asked.

"I am going away with my brother Kostandin," the monk translated. "And the word that's scratched out?"

"It means 'if'."

"So: 'I am going away with my brother Kostandin. And if …'" Stres repeated. "What was the 'if' for, and why did she cross it out?"

Was she trying to hide something? Stres thought suddenly. Looking for a way to camouflage the truth? Or was this a final attempt to reveal something? But

then why did she suddenly change her mind?

"It could be that she found it hard to explain in this language," said the monk, without taking his eyes from the paper. "The other words, too, are full of mistakes."

All were silent.

Stres's thoughts were focused on one point: he finally had a genuine piece of evidence. From all the fog-shrouded anguish there had at last come a piece of paper bearing words written in her own hand. And the horseman had been seen by those women, so he too was real.

"What day did this happen?" he asked. "Do you remember?" "It was 29 September," one of them answered.

Now the chronology in turn was coming out of that blanket of fog. One very long night, Doruntine had said, with flocks of stars streaming across the sky. But in fact it was a journey of twelve or, to be exact, thirteen days.

Stres felt troubled. The concrete, incontrovertible evidence with which he had just been provided – Doruntine's note, the horseman who had taken her up behind him, the thirteen-day journey – far from giving him any sense that he was finally making some progress and stood on solid ground, left him with no more than a feeling of great emptiness. It seemed that coming closer to the unreal, far from diminishing it, made it even more terrifying. Stres was not sure quite what to say.

"Would you like to go to the cemetery?" he finally asked. "Yes, of course," chorused the strangers.

They all went together on foot. From the windows and verandas of the houses, dozens of pairs of eyes followed their path to the church. The cemetery watchman had already opened the gate. Stres went through first, clods of mud sticking to the heels of his boots. The strangers looked absently at the rows of tombstones.

"This is where her brothers lie," said Stres, stopping before a row of black slabs. And here are the graves of the Lady Mother and Doruntine," he continued, pointing to two small mounds of earth into which temporary wooden crosses had been sunk.

The newcomers stood motionless for a moment with their heads bowed.

Their hair now resembled the melted candle wax on either side of the icons. "And that grave over there is Kostandin's."

Stres's voice seemed far away. The gravestone, canted slightly to the right, hadn't been straightened. Stres's deputy searched his chief's face, but understood

from his expression that he was not to mention that the gravestone had been moved. The cemetery watchman, who had accompanied the small group and now stood a little to one side, also held his tongue.

"And there you are," Stres said when they had returned to the road. "A row of graves is all that remains of the whole family."

"Yes, it is very sad indeed," said one of the strangers.

"All of us here were most disturbed by Doruntine's return," Stres went on. "Perhaps even more than you were in your land over her departure."

As they walked they spoke again of the young woman's mysterious journey.

Whatever the circumstances, there could be no justification for such a flight. "Did she seem unhappy in your country?" Stres asked. "I mean, surely she

must have missed her family." "Naturally," one of them answered.

"And at first, I suppose, the fact that she did not know your language must surely have increased her sense of solitude. Was she worried about her family?"

"Very much so, especially in recent times."

In such terrible solitude …

"Especially in recent times?" Stres repeated.

"In recent times, yes. Since none of her relatives had come to visit her, she was in a state of constant anxiety."

"A state of anxiety?" Stres said. "Then surely she must have asked to come herself?"

"Oh yes, on several occasions. My cousin had told her, 'If no one from your family comes to see you by spring, I will take you there myself.'"

"Indeed?"

"Yes. And in truth she was not alone in her anxiety, for we had all begun to fear that something might have happened here."

"Apparently she didn't want to wait until spring," Stres said. "It would seem so."

"When he learned of her flight, her husband must surely—" The two strangers looked at one other.

"Of course. It was all very strange. Her brother had come to fetch her, but how was it he had made no appearance at the house, not even for a moment? Admittedly there had been an incident between Kostandin and our cousin, but so much time had passed since then—"

"An incident? What sort of incident?" Stres interrupted.

"The day of the wedding," his deputy answered, lowering his voice. "The old

woman speaks of it in her letters."

"But notwithstanding this incident," the stranger continued, "her brother's behaviour – if indeed it really was her brother – was not justifiable."

"Forgive me," Stres said, "but I wanted to ask you whether her husband thought, even for an instant, that it might not be her brother?"

They looked at each other again.

"Well – how shall I put it? Naturally he suspected it. And needless to say, if it was not her brother, then it was someone else. Anything can happen in this world. But no one would ever have anticipated such a thing. They'd been getting along very well. Her circumstances, it must be admitted, were far from easy, being a foreigner as she was, not knowing the language, and especially worrying so much about her family. But they were fond of each other in spite of everything."

"All the same, to run away like that so suddenly," Stres interrupted.

"Yes, it is strange, we must admit. And it was just in order to clarify things that, at our cousin's request, we set out on this long journey. But here we have found an even more complicated situation."

"A complicated situation," Stres said. "In one sense that is true enough, but it doesn't alter the fact that Doruntine actually returned to her own people."

He spoke these words softly, like a man who finds it difficult to express himself, and in his own heart he wondered, why on earth are you still defending her?

"That is true," one of the strangers answered. "And in one sense, seen in that light, we find it reassuring. Doruntine indeed came back to her people. But here we have a new mystery: the brother with whom she is said to have made the journey is long since dead. One may therefore wonder who it was that brought her back, for surely someone must have accompanied her here, is that not so? And several women saw the horseman. Why, then, did she lie?"

Stres lowered his head thoughtfully. The puddles in the road were strewn with rotting leaves. He thought it superfluous to tell them that he had already asked himself all these questions. And it seemed equally futile to tell them of his conjecture about an impostor. Now more than ever he doubted its validity.

"I simply don't know what to tell you," he said, shrugging his shoulders. He felt weary.

"Nor do we know what to say," commented one of them, the one who had spoken least so far. "It is all very sad. We are leaving tomorrow. There is nothing more for us to do here."

Stres did not answer him.

It's true, he thought, his mind numb. There is nothing more for them to do here.

The strangers left the next day. Stres felt as though he had only been awaiting their departure to make a cool-headed attempt, perhaps the last, to clear up the Doruntine affair. It was quite evident that the two cousins had come to find out whether Doruntine had told the truth in her note, since her husband had at first suspected infidelity. And perhaps he had been right. Perhaps the story was far more simple than it appeared, as is often true of certain events which, however simple in themselves, seem to have the power to sow confusion in people's minds, as if to prevent discovery of their very simplicity. Stres sensed that he was finally unravelling the mystery. Up to now he had always assumed that there was an impostor in the case. But the reality was otherwise. No one had deceived Doruntine. On the contrary, it was she who had deceived her husband, her mother, and finally everyone else. She tricked us all, Stres thought with a mixture of exasperation and sorrow.

The suspicion that Doruntine had been lying had sprung up in his mind from time to time, only to vanish immediately in the mist that surrounded the whole affair. And that was understandable enough, for there were so many unknowns in the case. Stres had only to recall his initial doubts that the horseman and the night ride were real, or his suspicion that Doruntine had actually left her husband's home months, even years, before. Yes, he had only to remember his theory that she had been suffering from mental illness and all his elegant reasoning seemed merely specious. But the visit of the Bohemian strangers had dispelled all these doubts. Now there was a note, which he had seen with his own eyes, and in it she made mention of her flight with someone. Several women had seen the horseman. And most important of all, a date had been established: 29 September. Now you're stuck, Stres said to himself, not without regret. His satisfaction at the prospect of an early resolution of the mystery was rather muted. Perhaps he had become sentimentally attached to the mystery, and would rather not have seen it brought to light. He even felt himself to have been somehow betrayed.

The whole thing, then, notwithstanding the macabre background, had been no more than a commonplace romance. That was the heart of it. All the rest was secondary. His wife had been right to see it that way from the start. Women sometimes have a special flair for this sort of thing. Yes, that must be it, Stres

repeated to himself, as if trying to convince himself as thoroughly as possible. A journey with her lover, though love and sex may well have been blended with grief. But that was just the thing that gave the whole story its special flavour. What wouldn't I give, she had said, to make that journey once more. Yes, of course, Stres said to himself, of course.

He thought of her without resentment, but felt somehow weary. Tentatively at first, then ever more doggedly, his mind began churning in the usual way, trying to reconstruct what might have happened. He thought of the two strangers, now on their way to the heart of Europe and certainly thinking things over just as he was. They must be speaking much more openly between themselves than they did here. They must be mulling over the clues they had turned up themselves or had heard reported by others, the suggestions that this foreign woman, this Doruntine, had had a tendency to deceive her husband.

Little by little Stres filled in the blanks. Some time after her wedding Doruntine comes to realise that she no longer loves her husband. She sulks, regrets having married him. Her distress is compounded by her ignorance of the language, her solitude and her yearning for her family. She recalls the long deliberations over this marriage, the hesitation, the arguments for and against, and all this only deepens her sorrow. To make matters worse, none of her brothers comes to see her. Not even Kostandin, despite his promise. Sometimes she worries, fearing that some misfortune has befallen her family, but she spurns these bleak notions, telling herself that she has the good fortune to have not just one or two brothers but nine, all in the prime of life. She believes it more likely that they have simply forgotten her. They have sent their only sister away, dispatched her beyond the horizon, and now they no longer spare her a thought. Her sadness is paired with mounting hostility towards her husband. She blames him for everything. From the end of the world he had come to fetch her, to ruin her life. Her constant sadness, her lack of joy, becomes tied in her mind with the idea of seeking revenge upon her husband. She resolves to leave him, to go away. But where? She is a young woman of twenty-three, all alone, completely alone, in the middle of a foreign continent. In these circumstances, quite naturally, her only consolation would be some romantic attachment. In an effort to fill the void in her life she initiates one, perhaps not even realising what she is doing. She gives herself to the first man who courts her. It may have been with any passing traveller (for are not all her hopes bound up with the highway?). Without further thought she decides to go away with him. At first she thinks to run off without a word to anyone, but then, at the last minute, moved by a final

twinge of remorse for her husband, or perhaps by mere courtesy (for she was raised in a family that held such rules dear), she decides to leave him a note. Here again she may have hesitated. Should she tell him the truth or not? Probably out of simple human respect, in an effort not to injure his self-esteem, she decides to tell him that she is going away with her brother Kostandin. Which is particularly plausible since Kostandin had given his besa that he would fetch her on occasions of celebration or grief, and everyone, including her husband, was aware of Kostandin's promise.

So, with no other thought in her head, she rides off with her lover. It matters little whether or not they planned to marry. Maybe she meant to return to her family with him some time later, to explain the situation to her mother and her brothers, to share with them her torment, her solitude (it was so lonely), and perhaps, after hearing her explanation, they might forgive her this adventure and she could live among them with her second husband, never to go away again, ever.

But she thinks all this vaguely. Thrilled by her present joy, she is not inclined to worry too much about the future. She has time, and later she will see. Meanwhile she roams from inn to inn with her lover (they must have sold her jewellery), drunk with happiness.

But this happiness does not last long. In one of these inns (the things one learns in those inns with their great fireplaces during the long autumn nights!) she hears of the tragedy that has befallen her family. Perhaps she learns the full truth, perhaps only a part, or perhaps she simply imagines what must have happened, for she has heard talk of the foreign army sick with the plague that has ravaged half of Albania. She is near to madness. Remorse, horror and anguish drive her to the brink of insanity. She begs her lover to take her home right away, and he agrees. So it is she, Doruntine, who leads the unknown horseman, finding her way with difficulty from country to country, from one principality to the next.

The closer they get to the Albanian border, the more she thinks about what she will say when she is asked, "Who brought you back?" Until now she has given the matter little thought. If only she can get home, she will think of something then. But now the family hearth is no longer far off. She will have to account for her arrival. If she says that she was accompanied by an unknown traveller, she has little chance of being believed. To say openly that she came with her lover is also impossible. Earlier she had thought of these things incoherently, bringing little logic to bear, for the issue seemed of scant

importance under the burden of her grief. But now it becomes ever more pressing. As her mind goes in every direction looking for a solution, she suddenly recalls Kostandin's besa and makes her decision: she will say that Kostandin kept his word and brought her home. Which means that she knows that he will not be there, that he is absent, therefore she knows that he is dead. She is not yet aware of the scope of the disaster that has struck her family, but she has learned of his death. Apparently she has asked after him in particular. Why? It is only natural for him to occupy a larger place in her mind than the others, since it was he who had promised to come and fetch her. Through the long days of sorrow in her husband's home she had been waiting for him to appear on the dusty road.

And now the house is near. She is so agitated that she has no time to invent a new lie even if she wanted to. She will say that the dead man brought her back. And so she finally knocks at the door. She tells her lover to stay off to one side, to be careful not to be seen; perhaps she arranges to meet him somewhere several days hence. From within the house her mother asks the expected question: With whom have you come? And she answers: With Kostandin. Her mother tells her that he is dead, but Doruntine already knows it. Her lover insists on one last kiss before the door opens, and takes her in his arms in the half- darkness. That is the kiss the old woman glimpses through the window. She is horrified. Does she believe that her son has risen from the grave to bring her daughter back to her? It is a better bet that she assumes that it is not her son, but someone unknown to her. However that may be, whether she thought that Doruntine was kissing a dead man or a living one, the horror she feels is equal. But there's a good chance that the mother thought she saw her kissing a stranger. Her daughter's lie seems all the more macabre: though in mourning, she takes her pleasure with unknown travellers like a common slut.

No one will ever know what happened between mother and daughter, what explanations, curses or tears were exchanged once the door swung open.

Events then move rapidly. Doruntine learns the full dimensions of the tragedy and, needless to say, loses all contact with her lover. Then the dénouement. Stres's mistake was to have asked, in his very first circular to the inns and relay stations, for information about two riders (a man and woman riding the same horse or two horses) coming into the principality. He should have asked that equal effort be concentrated on a search for any solitary traveller heading for the border. But he had corrected the lapse in his second circular, and he now hoped that the unknown man might still be apprehended, for he must have remained in

hiding for some time waiting to see how things would turn out. Even if it proved impossible to capture him here, there was every chance that some trace of his passage would be found, and the neighbouring principalities and dukedoms, strongly subject to Byzantium's influence, could be alerted to place him under arrest the moment he set foot in their territory.

Before going home for lunch, Stres again asked his aide whether he had heard anything from the inns. He shook his head. Stres threw his cloak over his shoulders and was about to leave when his deputy added:

"I have completed my search through the archives. Tomorrow, if you have time, I will be able to present my report."

"Really? And how do things look?" His deputy stared at him.

"I have an idea of my own," he replied evenly, "quite different from all current theories."

"Really?" Stres said again, smiling without looking at the man. "Goodbye, then. Tomorrow I'll hear your report."

As he walked home his mind was nearly blank. He thought several times of the two strangers now riding back to Bohemia, going over the affair in their own minds again and again, no doubt thinking what he, in his own way, had imagined before them.

"You know what?" he said to his wife the moment he came in, "I think you were right. There's a very strong chance that this whole Doruntine business was no more than an ordinary romantic adventure after all."

"Oh really?" Beneath her flashing eyes, her cheeks glowed with satisfaction. "Since the visit of the husband's two cousins it's all becoming clear," he

added, slipping off his cloak.

As he sat down by the fire, he had the feeling that something in the house had come to life again, an animation sensed more than seen or heard. His wife's customary movements as she prepared lunch were more lively, the rattling of the dishes more brisk, and even the aroma of the food seemed more pleasant. As she set the table he noticed in her eyes a glimmer of gratitude that quickly dispelled the sustained chill that had marked all their recent days. During lunch the look in her eyes grew still softer and more meaningful, and after the meal, when he told the children to go take their naps, Stres, stirred by a desire he had felt but rarely in these last days, went to their bedroom and waited for her. She came in a moment later, the same gleam in her eyes, her hair, just brushed, hanging loose upon her shoulders. Stres thought suddenly that in days to come, the dead

woman would come back often, bringing them physical warmth, as now, or else an icy chill.

He made love to his wife with heightened sensuality. She too was, so to speak, at fever pitch. She offered herself to him by pushing her pelvis as high as it would go, and he entered her as deeply as he could, as if he were seeking out a second passageway inside her. He managed to get close to it, he felt, to a place where a different kind of damp darkness began, then the lips of the inner vagina drew him in further and invited him to an apparently inaccessible realm. An inhuman aah escaped him as his seed managed to spill, or so it seemed, into that other place, the dark kingdom where he would never go. Good God, he mumbled involuntarily as the tension subsided and he could feel himself collapsing all at once.

A few minutes later, lying beside his wife, whose blushing cheeks were lit by a smile, he heard her whisper words which, despite their long intimacy through many years of marriage, she had never dared say to him before. She confessed she had rarely had such strong pleasure and that his organ had never before been so … hard …

In other circumstances her lack of modesty would have taken him aback, but not today.

"It seems to me," he said without looking at his wife, "that you've got something else to say."

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 recognised 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.

That's what it was all about, Stres said to himself again. All the rest – surmises, inquiries, arguments – was just a pack of mean little lies signifying nothing. He would have liked to linger a while longer on that high ground where his thought flowed so freely, but he could feel the pull of the ordinary world dragging him forever downwards, faster and faster, making him tumble down from on high as soon as it could. He hurried away before he could hit bottom. Looking as drained as a sleepwalker, he stumbled towards his horse, vaulted into the saddle and galloped away, as stiff as ice.