Chapter 7 - The End

Turning his head towards the window to see if day had yet broken, Stres noticed a fine blond hair on his pillow. What's that? he wondered, but sleep dragged him down before he could think about it any further.

When he woke up properly later on it was already broad daylight. He looked at his pillow as if trying to find something, then got out of bed noiselessly and went over to the window, where he inspected the catch to check whether or not it had been forced during the night. He could not have said whether he had just imagined Doruntine's grave opening up and her hair waving in the wind or whether he had seen such a thing in a dream. Then he glanced at his pillow again. Really, his nerves must be in a terrible state if it took only a moment for his mind to wander off in such directions. He was so convinced he had seen that hair that he stopped to look at the house over the street, where, a few weeks previously, he had seen a girl brushing her hair at the window. If it had been summertime, and windows had been left open, he could have believed that the wind had just blown one of her hairs into his bedroom.

"Stres?" his wife said, still drowsing. "You're up at the crack of dawn once again. Brrr …"

She mumbled something incomprehensible but instead of then burying her head under the pillows as she usually did when her husband woke her up, she propped herself on an elbow and shot him a pitying glance:

"They'll be the death you with their … what do you call them … with their

conferences!"

Said by his wife, "conferences" sounded just as foreign to him as the mumbling that had preceded it.

"Conferences," he muttered to himself, as if trying to summon up the word's original meaning. It was an everyday kind of word, but there was an unprecedented air of horror hanging over it now. A horror that, unlike many others, did not spring up from the depths of the past but was prompted by a vision of the future.

Stres kept his eyes on the grey horizon. These days, his mind turned more and more towards the future, but far from giving him any relief, it only made him more distraught.

He left the house an hour later and from outside he glanced up at the window whence the blond hair had perhaps floated, then strode rapidly to his office.

"What's new?" he asked his deputy.

The aide listed the latest events that he had received note of during the night. "Nothing else?" Stres inquired. "Nothing unusual? No graves profaned?

These days anything can happen, can't it?"

His deputy reported that he had received no information about any acts of that kind.

"Really? Well then, take me to the Old Monastery. We'll see how the preparations are coming along."

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. Tarpaulins were strung up in case of rain.

The meeting was to take place on the first Sunday in April, 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 neighbouring 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 those 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 realise the full import, the truly enormous significance, of this whole affair, which, at first, on that night of 11 October, had been considered simply a ghost story.

Stres and his deputy went in through an ill-lit side door. Once the preparations had been completed, the carpenters had gathered up their tools and left. The open stands were wet beneath the steady drizzle. Stres went up to the podium where he was going to speak and stared at the empty benches.

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 realise 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 – 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 to learn, at all costs, 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 grey goatskins to protect themselves from the cold and especially the rain, they watched the arrival of the endless procession of horses and carriages from which the invited guests descended. They looked glum already, as if what was about to flood into the arena and invade their very breasts would turn out to be worse than a whirlwind. But no matter. They had all come here to confront a scourge – or else a divine revelation.

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 towards the podium, apparently to open the meeting. A wave of shushing among the crowd allowed silence to settle gradually 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, loud voice, but outside the vaulted dome of his cathedral he could not make his voice really boom. He seemed annoyed at the feebleness of his diction and cleared his throat, but his tone 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 great meeting that had been called 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 intonation of someone's and some gave his audience to understand that he disdained to cite the names of Kostandin 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 alleged 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 sounded louder. In chronological order he set out the events of the night of 11 October 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 scores or a 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 rumours, 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.

"This, then, is what the prisoner stated," Stres said, raising his voice. He paused for a moment, waiting for silence. "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 sulphurous 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.

"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 clouded over entirely.

"It was nothing but a tissue of lies from start to finish," Stres continued, surprised that he hadn't been interrupted. "The man had never met Doruntine, had never spoken to her, had neither travelled with her nor made love to her, any more than he had brought her back on the night of 11 October. 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 as much; paid by persons whose names I shall not mention here."

He paused briefly once again. The crowd now suddenly seemed very far away. Maybe people's screams could no longer reach him. Or their spears. Or their nails.

"At first," Stres went on, "when this impostor denied knowing Doruntine, he played his role to perfection, and he did equally well afterwards, 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. In his attempt to be persuasive, and especially by rejoicing too soon at having achieved his aim, he was led to supply irrelevant details. That his how he tore the mask from his own face. 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 towards 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 stands, at the foot of which the guards stood with their arms akimbo.

"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 allowed 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 Kostandin."

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 Kostandin," he repeated as if he feared

that he had been misunderstood. But people's stupefaction was evidence enough that his words had reached them. He thought that their silence was perhaps excessive, as it can be in response to fear.

"Just as I promised you, noble sirs, and you, honoured 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 to be consummated with a man from so distant a country, would never have taken place if Kostandin, 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 besa, 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 Kostandin, in accordance with his oath, his besa, who brought Doruntine back. There is no other explanation for that journey, nor could there be. It matters little whether or not Kostandin returned from the grave to accomplish his mission, just as it matters little who was the horseman who set out on that dark 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 Kostandin's besa 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 Kostandin, brought Doruntine back."

Stres swallowed.

"Aha!" the archbishop thundered from his seat, "at last you confess to your own part in this abomination!"

"All our parts …" Stres said, as he tried to make his meaning clear, but the archbishop's voice overrode his own.

"Speak for yourself!" the prelate yelled. "And by the way, I would really like

to know where you were between 30 September and 11 October. Where were you, exactly?"

Stres kept his composure but his face had turned as white as a sheet. "Answer, Captain!" someone shouted.

"All right, I'll tell you," Stres responded. "During the period alluded to I was on a secret mission."

"Aha! More mysteries!" the archbishop screamed. "So be it! But so we may know the truth of the matter, we would like you to tell us what the mission consisted of."

"It was the kind of job that even we officers seek to forget once it is done. I have nothing to add."

This time the rumbling of the crowd that echoed from the walls took longer to abate. Stres took a deep breath.

"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 besa, of its spread among the Albanians. As he spoke he saw someone in the crowd coming towards him, holding what seemed to be a heavy object, perhaps a stone. They're already coming, he thought, and with his elbow he touched the pommel of his sword beneath his cloak. But as the man drew nearer, 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. The question is this: in these new conditions of the worsening of the general atmosphere in the world, in this time of crime and hateful treachery that could be called unbelief, who should the Albanian be? What face shall he show the world? Shall he espouse evil or stand against it? Shall he disfigure himself, changing his features to suit the masks of the age, seeking thus to assure his survival, or shall he keep his countenance unchanged … I am a servant of the state and have little interest in the personal aspects of Kostandin's journey, if in fact there are any. Each of us, commoners and lords alike, be we Caesar or Christ, is the shroud of unfathomable mysteries. But, functionary that I am, I have spoken of the general point, the one that concerns Albania. 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 besa, that shows us that Albania is making the right choice. Albania aims to keep its eternal image. That's the main thing, to my mind. She will keep her face not by retreating from the world like a wild animal at bay, but by joining the world. It was to carry that message to Albania and to the world beyond that Kostandin 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. He thought he saw the gleam of tears here and there. But the people's eyes were, in fact, empty.

"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 on 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 held high, walked through the crowd, which parted at his passing with a mixture of respect 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, porters 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 rumour 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 recognised 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:

"Sometimes I wonder if he didn't bring Doruntine back himself."

"How dare you say such a thing?"

"What would be so surprising?" the man answered. "As for myself, I have not been surprised by anything since the day she returned."

As was only to be expected, the old dispute over local versus foreign marriages arose once again. Proponents of local marriages now seemed likely to prevail, but the other faction proved obstinate. Each side had its own explanation of the dead man's ride. The distant marriage faction emphasised respect of the besa and obviously saw Kostandin as its standard bearer. The other side treated his journey as an act of repentance, in other words as a resurrection intended to make good a fault. A third group, who saw in the man's long ride an attempt to reconcile opposites – distance and proximity – that had torn him apart as much as his incestuous yearnings, was much less prominent.

With the idea of local marriage constantly gaining ground, the sad story of Maria Matrenga was quoted more and more often, despite the fact that, like some predestined counterweight, Palok the Idiot wandered around the village alleyways ever more visibly.

When the poor yokel was found dead one fine morning, people's initial distress was quickly replaced by an understanding that his murderers would never be identified. The incident was accounted for, as many are, in two different ways. Supporters of distant marriages maintained that Palok had been slaughtered by his own kin, that is to say by defenders of local unions, so as to remove from the street this visible evidence that did their cause harm every day of the week. But their adversaries obstinately insisted that the killing had been done by the supporters of exogamy, so as to show that even though their ideals were on the wane, they were still prepared to defend them, even by spilling blood.

All the same, despite this new bone of contention, things proceeded as they always do when a simpleton is killed, for unlike cases where dogs are put down, they often lead to reconciliation. Tension between the two factions went into sharp decline.

While time now seemed to be on the side of local marriages, an event took place which could have seemed ordinary in any other season, but was not at all normal in mid-winter. A young woman of the village married and left to join her husband in some far-off place. Everyone was shocked to hear talk of a new Doruntine at such a time of year. People thought that after the uproar over all that had taken place in the village, the bride's family would break the engagement or at least put off the wedding for a while. But the ceremony took

place on the appointed day, the groom's relatives came over from their country, which some people said was six days away, while others said eight. After they had done with all their feasting and drinking and singing of songs, they took the young woman away with them. Almost the entire village walked with them from the church, as they had done years before with sorry Doruntine, and seeing the bride looking so beautiful, almost wraith-like in her white veil, many must have wondered whether on some moonless night some ghost might not go and bring her back home again. But the bride, for her part, astride her white horse, showed not the slightest sign of worry about her fate. People watching her leave nodded their heads, saying, "Good Lord, maybe young brides nowadays like that sort of thing, maybe they like riding at night, hanging on to a shadow, through the dark and the void …"