CHAPTER SEVEN
Turning his head towards the window to see if day had yet broken, Stres noticed a fine blond hair on his pillow. What’s that? he wondered, but sleep dragged him down before he could think about it any further.
When he woke up properly later on it was already broad daylight. He looked at his pillow as if trying to find something, then got out of bed noiselessly and went over to the window, where he inspected the catch to check whether or not it had been forced during the night. He could not have said whether he had just imagined Doruntine’s grave opening up and her hair waving in the wind or whether he had seen such a thing in a dream. Then he glanced at his pillow again. Really, his nerves must be in a terrible state if it took only a moment for his mind to wander off in such directions. He was so convinced he had seen that hair that he stopped to look at the house over the street, where, a few weeks previously, he had seen a girl brushing her hair at the window. If it had been summertime, and windows had been left open, he could have believed that the wind had just blown one of her hairs into his bedroom.
“Stres?” his wife said, still drowsing. “You’re up at the crack of dawn once again. Brrr …”
She mumbled something incomprehensible but instead of then burying her head under the pillows as she usually did when her husband woke her up, she propped herself on an elbow and shot him a pitying glance:
“They’ll be the death you with their … what do you call them … with their conferences!”
Said by his wife, “conferences” sounded just as foreign to him as the mumbling that had preceded it.
“Conferences,” he muttered to himself, as if trying to summon up the word’s original meaning. It was an everyday kind of word, but there was an unprecedented air of horror hanging over it now. A horror that, unlike many others, did not spring up from the depths of the past but was prompted by a vision of the future.
Stres kept his eyes on the grey horizon. These days, his mind turned more and more towards the future, but far from giving him any relief, it only made him more distraught.
He left the house an hour later and from outside he glanced up at the window whence the blond hair had perhaps floated, then strode rapidly to his office.
“What’s new?” he asked his deputy.
The aide listed the latest events that he had received note of during the night.
“Nothing else?” Stres inquired. “Nothing unusual? No graves profaned? These days anything can happen, can’t it?”
His deputy reported that he had received no information about any acts of that kind.
“Really? Well then, take me to the Old Monastery. We’ll see how the preparations are coming along.”
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. Tarpaulins were strung up in case of rain.
The meeting was to take place on the first Sunday in April, 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 neighbouring 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 those 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 realise the full import, the truly enormous significance, of this whole affair, which, at first, on that night of 11 October, had been considered simply a ghost story.
Stres and his deputy went in through an ill-lit side door. Once the preparations had been completed, the carpenters had gathered up their tools and left. The open stands were wet beneath the steady drizzle. Stres went up to the podium where he was going to speak and stared at the empty benches.
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 realise 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 — 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 to learn, at all costs, 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 grey goatskins to protect themselves from the cold and especially the rain, they watched the arrival of the endless procession of horses and carriages from which the invited guests descended. They looked glum already, as if what was about to flood into the arena and invade their very breasts would turn out to be worse than a whirlwind. But no matter. They had all come here to confront a scourge — or else a divine revelation.
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 towards the podium, apparently to open the meeting. A wave of shushing among the crowd allowed silence to settle gradually 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, loud voice, but outside the vaulted dome of his cathedral he could not make his voice really boom. He seemed annoyed at the feebleness of his diction and cleared his throat, but his tone 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 great meeting that had been called 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 intonation of someone’s and some gave his audience to understand that he disdained to cite the names of Kostandin 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 alleged journey of the sister with her dead brother really was, what happened afterwards, and how the truth was brought to light.”