Doruntine (15 page)

Thus spoke Constantine on those memorable afternoons they used to pass at the New Inn. As for myself, he said, I shall give my mother my
bessa
to bring Doruntine back to her from her husband's home whenever she desires. And whatever happens—if I am lying on my deathbed, if I have but one hand or one leg, if I have lost my sight, even if—I will never break that promise.

“Even if. . . . ?” Stres repeated. “Tell me, Milosao, don't you think he meant ‘even if I'm dead'?”

“Perhaps,” the young man answered absently, looking away.

“But how can you account for that?” Stres asked. “He was an intelligent man, he didn't believe in ghosts. I have a report from the bishop stating that at Easter you and he laughed at people's faith in the resurrection of Christ. So how could he have believed in his own resurrection?”

They looked at one another, each suppressing a smile.

“You are right, Captain, so long as you are speaking of the present world, the existing world. But you must not forget that he, that all of us, in our words and thoughts, had in mind another world, one with a new dimension, a world in which the
bessa
reigned supreme. In that world
everything would be different.”

“Nevertheless, you live in our world, in this existing world,” said Stres.

“Yes. But a part of our being, perhaps the best, lies in the other.”

“In the other,” he repeated softly. Now it was he who suppressed a smile.

They took no notice of it, or pretended not to, and went on discussing Constantine's other ideas, the reasons why he held that this reorganization of life in Albania was necessary. These had to do with the great storms he saw looming on the horizon and with Albania's location, caught in a vise between the religions of Rome and Byzantium, between two worlds, West and East. Their clash would inevitably bring appalling turmoil, and Albania would have to find new ways to defend itself. It had to create structures more stable than “external” laws and institutions, structures eternal and universal, lying within man himself, inviolable and invisible and therefore indestructible. In short, Albania had to change its laws, its administration, its prisons, its courts and all the rest, had to fashion them so that they could be severed from the outside world and anchored within men themselves as the tempest drew near. It had to do this or it would be wiped from the face of the earth. Thus spoke Constantine. And he held that this new organization would begin with the
bessa
.

“Then of course,” Stres said, “Constantine's own
default, the violation of his promise, was all the more serious and inadmissible, was it not?”

“Oh yes, certainly. Especially after his mother's curse. Except for one thing, Captain Stres: there was no default. He kept his promise in the end. Somewhat belatedly, of course, but he had a good enough reason for being late: he was dead. In the end he kept his word in spite of everything.”

“But he was not the one who brought Doruntine back,” said Stres. “You know that as well as I do.”

“For you, perhaps, it wasn't him. We see it differently.”

“Truth is the same for all. Almost anyone could have brought Doruntine here, but certainly not he.”

“Nevertheless, it was he who brought her back.”

“So you believe in resurrection?”

“That's secondary. It has nothing to do with the heart of the matter.”

“Just the same, if you don't accept the resurrection of the dead, how can you persist in claiming that he made that journey with his sister?”

“But that is of no importance, Captain Stres. That is completely secondary. The essential thing is that it was he who brought Doruntine here.”

“Maybe it's this business about two worlds that prevents us from understanding one another,” Stres said. “What is a lie in one may be the truth in the other, is that the idea?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps.”

Meanwhile, the country seethed as it awaited the great assembly. Words, calculations, forebodings, and news fluttered in the wind like yellowing leaves before a storm, falling to earth only to be raised anew. Messengers plied to and fro between the capital and the provinces. No one was sure just when the meeting would take place, but everyone knew that it would not be long.

It was in an inner courtyard of the Old Monastery, large enough to hold some two thousand people, that the great assembly was to be held. Carpenters spent several days setting up wooden grandstands for the guests and a platform from which Stres would speak. Canvas covers were strung up in case of rain.

The meeting was to take place on the first Sunday in December, but by mid-week most of the region's inns were full, not only those closest to the Old Monastery, but also the ones along the highway. Guests, clergy and laymen alike, poured in
from the four corners of the principality and from neighboring principalities, dukedoms, and counties. Visitors were expected from the farthest principalities, and envoys from the Holy Patriarchate in the Empire's capital.

As they watched the carriages parade down the highway—most of their doors decorated with coats of arms, the passengers dressed in gaudy clothes often embroidered with the same coats of arms as the one on their coaches—the people, chatting with one another, learned more in those few days about princely courts, ceremonies, dignitaries, and religious and secular hierarchies than they had in their whole lifetime. It was only then that they came to realize the full import, the truly enormous significance, of this whole affair, which at first, on that night of October eleventh, had been considered simply a ghost story. On the eve of the assembly, Stres went to the Old Monastery to inspect the meeting place. Their preparations complete, the carpenters had gathered up their tools and gone. A fine rain had dampened the exposed tiers of seats. Stres mounted the platform from which he was to speak and stood there a moment, eyes fixed on the empty stands.

He stared at them for a long time, then suddenly turned his head sharply right and left, as though someone had called him or he had heard shouts. The hint of a bitter smile crossed his face; then, with long strides, he walked away.

Finally the long-awaited day dawned. It was cold, one of those days that seems all the more icy when you realize it's Sunday. The high clouds were motionless, as if moored to the heavens. From early morning the monastery's inner courtyard was packed with spectators—except for the stands reserved for high-ranking officials and guests from other principalities and Constantinople—and the innumerable latecomers, hoping to be able to hear something, had no choice but to assemble outside in the empty field that ringed the walls. They had at all costs to learn what was said at the gathering, and quickly, for they formed the first circle the news must reach so that it might spread in waves throughout the world.

Bundled up in gray goatskins to protect themselves from the cold and the rain, they watched the arrival of the endless procession of horses and carriages from which the invited guests descended. In the courtyard the stands were gradually filling up. Last to take their seats were the personal envoy of the prince, the delegates from Byzantium (accompanied by the archbishop of the principality), and Stres, dressed in his black uniform with the deer antler insignia, looking taller, but also paler, than usual.

The archbishop left the group of guests and walked toward the platform, apparently to open the meeting. Many took up the hissing “ssh” as silence gradually settled over the great courtyard.
Only when it had become almost complete was that silence broken by a rumbling that had hitherto been inaudible. It was the noise of the crowd outside the monastery walls.

The archbishop tried to speak in a strong, sonorous voice, but without the cathedral cupola he could not be truly resounding. He seemed annoyed at the weakness of his voice and cleared his throat, but its timbre was muffled mercilessly by the vastness of the courtyard whose walls, had they not been so low, might perhaps have given resonance and volume to his eloquence. But the prelate spoke on nonetheless. He briefly mentioned the purpose of this enlarged meeting, convoked to shed light upon the great hoax that had so regrettably been born in this village with “someone's alleged return from the grave and his journey with some living woman.” (His tone as he spoke the words
someone's
and
some
gave his audience to understand that he disdained to cite the names of Constantine and Doruntine.) He mentioned the spread of this hoax throughout the principality, beyond its borders, and indeed even beyond the confines of Albania; he suggested what unimaginable catastrophes could result if such heresies were permitted to spread freely. And finally he noted the efforts by the Church of Rome to exploit the heresy, using it against the Holy Byzantine Church, as well as the measures taken by the latter to unmask the imposture.

“And now,” he concluded, “I yield the platform to Captain Stres, who was entrusted with the investigation of this matter and who will now present a detailed report on all aspects of it. He will explain to you, step by step, how the hoax was conceived; he will tell you who was behind the story of the dead man returned from the grave, what the pretended journey of the sister with her dead brother really was, what happened afterwards, and how the truth was brought to light.”

A deep rumbling drowned out his final words as Stres rose from his seat and headed for the platform.

He raised his head, looked out at the crowd, and waited for the first layer of silence to fall over it once more. He spoke his first words in a voice that seemed very soft. Little by little, as the crowd's silence grew deeper, it gained strength. In chronological order he set out the events of the night of October eleventh and after; he recalled Doruntine's arrival, her claim to have returned in the company of her dead brother, and his own initial suspicions: that an impostor had deceived Doruntine, that Doruntine herself had lied both to her mother and to him, that the young woman and her partner had hatched the hoax in concert, or even that it was no more than a belated vendetta of some kind, a settling of accounts or struggle for succession. He then reviewed the measures taken to discover the truth, the research into the family archives, the
checks on the inns and relay stations, and finally the failure of all these various efforts to shed any light at all on the mystery. Then he recalled the spread of the first rumors, mentioning the mourners, his suspicion that Doruntine had gone mad and that the trip with her brother was no more than the product of a diseased imagination. But at that point, he continued, the arrival of two members of the husband's family had confirmed that the journey had really occurred and that the horseman who had taken Doruntine up behind him had been seen. Stres then described the fresh measures that he and other officials of the principality had been compelled to take in their effort to solve the mystery, measures that led at length to the capture of the impostor—the man who had played the role of the dead brother—at the Inn of the Two Roberts in the next county.

“I interrogated him myself,” Stres continued. “At first he denied knowing Doruntine. In fact he denied everything, and it was only when I ordered him put to the torture that he confessed. Here, according to him, is what really happened.”

Stres then recounted the prisoner's confession. His every word brought murmurs of relief from the crowd. It was as if they had all been yearning for this bleak story, hitherto so macabre, to be freshened by the gentle breeze of the itinerant merchant's tale of romantic adventure. The rippling murmur
breached the monastery walls and spread into the field beyond, just as silence, shuddering, and terror in turn had spread before.

“So much, then, for what the prisoner stated,” Stres said, raising his voice. He paused for a moment, waiting for silence. “So much, then,” he repeated, “for what the prisoner stated. It was midnight.”

The silence grew deeper, but the murmur rising from the most distant rows, and especially from outside the walls, was still audible.

“It was midnight when he finished his account, and it was then that I—”

Here he paused again, in one final effort to unroll the carpet of silence as far as possible.

“Then, to the astonishment of my aides, I ordered him put to the torture again.”

A sulfurous light seemed to glow in Stres's eyes. He gazed for a moment at those silent faces, at the darkened features of the people in the grandstands, and spoke again only when he was convinced that he had wrung the very last reserves of silence from the crowd.

“If I had him put to the torture again, it was because I doubted the truth of his tale.”

Silence still reigned, but Stres thought he felt what could have been a mild earthquake. Now! he said to himself, intoxicated, now! Bring it all down!

“He resisted the torture for a week. Then, on the
eighth day, he confessed the truth at last. That is to say, he admitted that everything he had said until then had been nothing but lies.”

The earthquake, which he had been the first to sense, had now in fact begun: its roar was rising, a muffled thunder, out of phase, of course, like any earthquake, but powerful nonetheless. A lightning glance to his right showed all was still mute there. But those frozen faces in the grandstands had suddenly clouded over.

“It was nothing but a tissue of lies from start to finish,” Stres continued, surprised that he had not been interrupted. “The man had never met Doruntine, had never spoken to her, had neither traveled with her nor made love to her, any more than he had brought her back on the night of October eleventh. He had been paid to perpetrate the hoax.”

Stres raised his head, waiting for something that he himself could not have defined.

“Yes,” he went on, “paid. He himself confessed it, paid by persons whose names I shall not mention here.”

He paused briefly once again. What reigned around him now resembled strangulation more than silence.