Captain Stres
Of the torture he had ordered inflicted on the prisoner down below in the basement, Stres said not a word. He closed the envelope carefully, sealed it, and instructed a courier to set out at once to deliver it to the capital of the principality. A more or less identical letter was sent to the archbishop at the Monastery of the Three Crosses, with a notice asking that it be forwarded to him in the capital if necessary.
CHAPTER SIX
It had started snowing again, but this snow was different from the last, somehow closer to the world of men. That which was meant to be whitened was whitened, and that which was fated to stay dark remained so. The first icicles hung from the eaves, some of the rivulets had frozen as usual, and the layer of ice was just strong enough to support the weight of the birds. It soon appeared that this would be one of those winters the earth could live with.
Under roofs weighed down by their heavy burden the people talked of Doruntine. By now everyone knew of the arrest of the man who had brought her back, and though they had heard only bits and pieces of the tale he had told, it was enough to cover the world with words, just as a handful of wheat can sow a field.
Many were the messengers who fanned out from the capital through the province during those days, while others, equally numerous, were dispatched from the province to the capital. It was said that a great assembly was being prepared, at which all the rumours and agitation aroused by the alleged resurrection of one of the Vranaj brothers would be laid to rest once and for all. Stres was said to be preparing a detailed report to be presented at the meeting. He had kept the prisoner in isolation, his whereabouts unknown, safe from prying eyes and ears.
Those snippets of the prisoner’s confession that had somehow leaked out were now spreading far and wide, carried by word of mouth on puffs of steam in the winter air and borne by carriage from road to road and inn to inn. People travelled less than usual because of the cold, but strangely, the rumours spread just as fast as they would have in more clement weather. It was as if, hardened to crystalline brilliance by the winter frost, they could flow more surely than the rumours of summer, for they were unimpeded by damp and suffocating heat, by the numbing of minds and the jangling of nerves. But that did not prevent them from changing daily as they spread, from swelling, from becoming lighter or darker. And as if all this were not enough, there were still those who said, “Just wait, even stranger things will come.” Others, drifting off, would simply sigh, “What next, Lord, what next?”
Everyone awaited the great assembly at which the whole affair would be sifted through in minute detail. The arrival of many nobles from all the principalities of Albania was announced. Rumour had it that the prince himself would attend. Other voices whispered that high church dignitaries from Byzantium would participate, while others, less numerous, even suggested that the Patriarch himself would come in person.
In fact, contrary to what might have been expected, echoes of the Doruntine affair had spread far indeed. The news had even reached Constantinople, capital of the Orthodox religion, and everyone was aware that such things were never pardoned in that city. The highest ecclesiastical authorities were worried, people said. The Emperor himself had been apprised of the incident, which had given him sleepless nights. The issue had proven far more scandalous than it had seemed at first. It was not a simple case of a ghostly apparition, nor even one of those typical calumnies that the Church had always punished with the stake and always would. No, this was far more serious, something that, may God protect us, was shaking the Orthodox religion to its foundations. It concerned the coming of a new messiah — in God’s name, lower your voice! — yes, a new messiah, for one man alone had been able to rise from his grave, and that was Jesus Christ, and whosoever affirmed this new resurrection was thereby guilty of an unpardonable sacrilege: belief in a new resurrection, which was tantamount to admitting that there could be two Jesus Christs, for if one believed that someone today had succeeded in doing what Jesus had done in His time, then it was but one small step to admitting — may God preserve us! — that this someone else might be His rival.
Not for nothing had Rome, in its hostility, paid the most careful attention to the development of the case. The Catholic monks had surely outdone themselves in propagating this fable of Kostandin’s resurrection, thereby attempting to deal the Orthodox religion a mortal blow by accusing it of bi-Christicism, which was a monstrous heresy. Things had got so tense that there was now talk of a universal war of religion. Some even hinted that the impostor who had brought Doruntine back was himself an agent of the Roman Church entrusted with just that mission. Others went further still, claiming that Doruntine herself had fallen into Catholic clutches and had agreed to do their bidding. O great God above, people intoned, may it not be our lot to hear such things! That is how entangled the case had become. But the Orthodox Church of Byzantium, which had spared neither patriarchs nor emperors for infractions of this magnitude, had finally taken the matter in hand and would clear it all up soon enough. The enemies of the Church would be utterly routed.
So said some. Others shook their heads. Not because they disagreed, but because they suspected that the rumour of Kostandin’s return from the grave might well have been generated not by the intrigues and rivalry of the world’s two major religions but by one of those mysterious disturbances which, like a wicked wind, periodically plague the minds of men, robbing them of judgement, numbing them, and driving them thus dazed and blinded beyond life and death. For life and death, as they saw it, enveloped man in endless successive concentric layers, so that just as there was death within life, so death ought to contain life, which in turn contained death; or perhaps life, itself enveloped in death, harboured death in turn, and so on to infinity. Enough, objected the first group: forget the hair-splitting ratiocination, just say what you mean. The others then sought to explain their point of view more clearly, talking fast lest a mist descend upon their reasoning once more. This alleged resurrection of Kostandin, they said, was in no sense real, and the hoax had been born not at that churchyard grave but in the minds of the people, who, it seemed, had been somehow gripped by a powerful yearning to spin this tale of the mingling of life and death, just as they are sometimes gripped by collective madness. This yearning had cropped up in scattered places, with one, then with another; it had infected them all, so as to turn, at last — abomination of abominations — into a common desire of the quick and the dead to give themselves over to this collective outburst. Short-sighted as they were, people gave no real thought to the abomination they had wrought, for though it is true that everyone feels the urge to see their dead once more, that longing is ephemeral, always arising after some time of turmoil (Something stopped me from kissing him, Doruntine had said). If the dead ever really came back and sat before us big as life, you’d see just how terrifying it would be. You think it’s difficult to get along with a nonagenarian? Well, imagine dealing with a 900-year-old!