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.