“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.