“She was beside herself in her anxiety about what she could say to her brothers and her mother to explain her arrival. What would she answer when they asked her, ‘Who brought you back?’ Would she tell the truth? Would she lie? And, if so, what would she say?
“So I found myself compelled to tell her a part of the truth; that is, of the terrible misfortune. I gave her to understand that her brother Kostandin, the one who had promised to bring her back, had died, together with some of his brothers.
“You can well imagine that she went mad with grief, but neither the fatigue of the journey nor her sorrow lessened her worry over the explanation she would have to give for her sudden arrival. It was I who had the idea of explaining her journey in terms of some supernatural intervention. Though I racked my brain, I could find no better explanation. ‘There is no other way,’ I told her. ‘You have to repeat the lie you’ve already used with your husband. You’ll say that Kostandin brought you back.’ ‘But I was able to lie to my husband,’ she replied, ‘because he believed my brother was still alive. How can I say the same thing about someone they know is dead?’ ‘But it’ll be even easier,’ I told her, ‘just because he isn’t alive. You’ll say that it was your brother who brought you, and they can take it any way they like. What I mean is, they have only to imagine that it was his ghost who brought you back. After all, didn’t he promise that, dead or alive, he would fetch you? Everyone knows the exact words of his promise, and they will believe you.’
“Since I knew that her mother alone was still alive, I found the matter quite simple, but she, thinking as she did that at least half of her brothers were alive, scarcely hoped to be believed. But, like it or not, she had to yield to my reasoning. There was no other way. We had no time to think of a more plausible explanation, and in any case neither of us was thinking clearly by then.
“And so, the last night came, the night of 11 October, if I am not mistaken, when, slipping through the darkness like ghosts, we came up to the house. I won’t try to tell you about her state of mind — I couldn’t describe it. It was past midnight. As we had decided, I stood out of sight, hiding in the half-darkness as she approached the door. But she was in no condition to walk. So I had to lead her to the door where, her hand trembling, she knocked, or more accurately she rested her hand on the knocker, for it was I in fact who moved her hand, cold as a corpse’s. I wanted to run off at once, but she was terrified and wouldn’t let go of me. In order to calm her, I stroked her hair with my other hand one last time, but at that instant, God be praised, she not only let go but pushed me away in terror. I heard the old woman’s voice from behind the door: ‘Who is it?’ then her answer: ‘Open, Mother, it’s me, Doruntine,’ then the old woman’s voice again: ‘What did you say?’ I had moved away and could not hear the other words clearly, the more so because they were increasingly faint and interrupted with exclamations.
“I made my way back to the highway, to the place where I had left my horse and, mounting, I wandered awhile looking for shelter for the night. We had agreed to meet secretly in two days, but at that point I knew that I would never see her again. The next day and in the days that followed, as I saw the turmoil caused by her arrival, I became convinced not only that I would never see her again but that I had better leave these parts as quickly as possible. I had in the meantime heard of the orders you had issued, and was sure that I was guilty of something impious which, however unaware of it I may have been, might cost me dear indeed. I wanted to slip away as quickly as possible, but how? All the inns, all the relay stations, had been alerted to arrest me on sight. At first I thought of turning myself in and confessing: yes, it was I who brought this woman back, forgive me if I did something wrong, but if I did, it was without realising it. Then I changed my mind. Why take such a risk? With a bit of skill I could evade the traps that were set for me and be quit of the whole affair. Yet I had a premonition that the honeymoon I had spent with that young woman would turn out to be deadly poisonous. I moved about very cautiously, far from the roads and inns, and mostly by night, like a fox in the woods, as people say. A thousand pardons, I’m getting lost in pointless details again … I thought that if I could cross the border of your principality I would be out of danger. I didn’t know that the neighbouring principalities and counties had also been notified. And that’s how I came to grief. I caught a cold while fording a stream by the baneful name of Ujana e keqe — I think that was the name, the ‘Evil Uyana’ — and I am not quite sure what happened to me next. I was burning with fever, and I remember nothing until I came to and found myself bound hand and foot in an inn. And that’s it, Captain. I don’t know if I have explained everything properly, but you can ask me any detail at all, and I’ll tell you everything. I’m sorry that I didn’t behave as I should have from the very beginning, but I hope you’ll understand my situation. I’ll do everything I can to make amends by answering all your questions honestly.”
At last he fell silent, and he sat unblinking under Stres’s inspection. His mouth was dry, but he dared not ask for water. Stres stared at him for a long moment. Then, as he opened his mouth to speak, a smile crossed his face like a flash of lightning.
“Is that the truth?” Stres asked.
“Yes, Captain. The whole truth.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. The whole truth, Captain.”
Stres rose and, his neck stiff as a board, slowly turned his head towards his deputy and the two guards.
“Put him to the torture,” he ordered.
Not only the prisoner, but the three other men as well, stiffened in astonishment.
“Torture?” asked his deputy, as though afraid he had misunderstood.
“Yes,” said, Stres, his tone icy. “Torture. And don’t look at me like that. I know what I’m doing.”
He turned on his heels, but at that instant, behind him, the prisoner began to scream, “Captain, no! No! My God, what is this? Why, why?”
Stres climbed the stairs quickly, but he still heard the clanking of the chains with which they secured the prisoner, and his cries as well, which were no less poignant for being muffled.
Stres returned to his office, took up a pencil and began drafting a report for the prince’s chancellery:
Report on the arrest of the man who brought back Doruntine Vranaj
Last night Captain Gjikondi of the border detachment delivered to me the man suspected of having brought Doruntine back. In the first interrogation he admitted nothing and denied even knowing a woman by that name, much less having travelled with her. Then, under the threat of torture, he confessed everything, finally throwing light on the mystery of this affair. The events seem to have happened in this manner: at the end of September of this year the man, finding himself in Bohemia in the course of his peregrinations as a seller of icons, made the acquaintance of D. V., and hearing her express her despair at having had no news of her family, promised to take her to her parents’ home. He persuaded her to lie to her husband and to write him a letter saying that she had left with her brother Kostandin. The two of them then left Bohemia. On the way he managed to seduce her. At the conclusion of this trying journey, after revealing to her that her brother Kostandin was long dead and finding no other lie with which to justify the journey she had just made with a stranger, he persuaded her to tell her mother that she had been brought back by the ghost of her dead brother, who had thereby fulfilled the promise he had made while he was alive. Subsequently, taking fright, he tried to flee unnoticed and was finally arrested, under circumstances that are well known to you, in the neighbouring county, in an establishment called the Inn of the Two Roberts. He is now being held, on my orders, in complete isolation. I await your instructions on the measures to be taken in this case.