A deep rumbling drowned out his final words as Stres rose from his seat and headed for the platform.
He raised his head, looked out at the crowd and waited for the first layer of silence to fall over it once more. He spoke his first words in a voice that seemed very soft. Little by little, as the crowd’s silence grew deeper, it sounded louder. In chronological order he set out the events of the night of 11 October and after; he recalled Doruntine’s arrival, her claim to have returned in the company of her dead brother, and his own initial suspicions: that an impostor had deceived Doruntine, that Doruntine herself had lied both to her mother and to him, that the young woman and her partner had hatched the hoax in concert, or even that it was no more than a belated vendetta of some kind, a settling of scores or a struggle for succession. He then reviewed the measures taken to discover the truth, the research into the family archives, the checks on the inns and relay stations, and finally the failure of all these various efforts to shed any light at all on the mystery. Then he recalled the spread of the first rumours, mentioning the mourners, his suspicion that Doruntine had gone mad and that the trip with her brother was no more than the product of a diseased imagination. But at that point, he continued, the arrival of two members of the husband’s family had confirmed that the journey had really occurred and that the horseman who had taken Doruntine up behind him had been seen. Stres then described the fresh measures that he and other officials of the principality had been compelled to take in their effort to solve the mystery, measures that led at length to the capture of the impostor — the man who had played the role of the dead brother — at the Inn of the Two Roberts in the next county.
“I interrogated him myself,” Stres continued. “At first he denied knowing Doruntine. In fact he denied everything, and it was only when I ordered him put to the torture that he confessed. Here, according to him, is what really happened.”
Stres then recounted the prisoner’s confession. His every word brought murmurs of relief from the crowd. It was as if they had all been yearning for this bleak story, hitherto so macabre, to be freshened by the gentle breeze of the itinerant merchant’s tale of romantic adventure. The rippling murmur breached the monastery walls and spread into the field beyond, just as silence, shuddering and terror in turn had spread before.
“This, then, is what the prisoner stated,” Stres said, raising his voice. He paused for a moment, waiting for silence. “It was midnight …”
The silence grew deeper, but the murmur rising from the most distant rows, and especially from outside the walls, was still audible.
“It was midnight when he finished his account, and it was then that I—”
Here he paused again, in one final effort to unroll the carpet of silence as far as possible.
“Then, to the astonishment of my aides, I ordered him put to the torture again.”
A sulphurous light seemed to glow in Stres’s eyes. He gazed for a moment at those silent faces, at the darkened features of the people in the grandstands, and spoke again.
“If I had him put to the torture again, it was because I doubted the truth of his tale.”
Silence still reigned, but Stres thought he felt what could have been a mild earthquake. Now! he said to himself, intoxicated, now! Bring it all down!
“He resisted the torture for a week. Then, on the eighth day, he confessed the truth at last. That is to say, he admitted that everything he had said until then had been nothing but lies.”
The earthquake, which he had been the first to sense, had now in fact begun: its roar was rising, a muffled thunder, out of phase, of course, like any earthquake, but powerful nonetheless. A lightning glance to his right showed all was still mute there. But those frozen faces in the grandstands had clouded over entirely.
“It was nothing but a tissue of lies from start to finish,” Stres continued, surprised that he hadn’t been interrupted. “The man had never met Doruntine, had never spoken to her, had neither travelled with her nor made love to her, any more than he had brought her back on the night of 11 October. He had been paid to perpetrate the hoax.”
Stres raised his head, waiting for something that he himself could not have defined.
“Yes,” he went on, “paid. He himself confessed as much; paid by persons whose names I shall not mention here.”
He paused briefly once again. The crowd now suddenly seemed very far away. Maybe people’s screams could no longer reach him. Or their spears. Or their nails.
“At first,” Stres went on, “when this impostor denied knowing Doruntine, he played his role to perfection, and he did equally well afterwards, when he affirmed that in fact he had brought her back. But just as great impostors often betray themselves in small details, so he gave himself away with a trifle. In his attempt to be persuasive, and especially by rejoicing too soon at having achieved his aim, he was led to supply irrelevant details. That his how he tore the mask from his own face. Thus this impostor, this imaginary companion of Doruntine—”
“Then who brought the woman back?” shouted the archbishop from his seat. “The dead man?”
Stres turned towards him.
“Who brought Doruntine back? I will answer you on that very point, for I was in charge of this case. Be patient, Your Eminence, be patient, noble sirs!”
Stres took a deep breath. So many hundreds of lungs swelled along with his that he felt as if all the air about them had been set in motion. Once again he glanced slowly across the packed courtyard to the stands, at the foot of which the guards stood with their arms akimbo.
“I expected that question,” said Stres, “and am therefore prepared to answer it.” He paused again. “Yes, I have prepared myself with the greatest care to answer it. The painstaking investigation I conducted is now closed, my file complete, my conviction unshakable. I am ready, noble sirs, to answer the question ‘Who brought Doruntine back?’”
Stres allowed yet another brief moment of silence, during which he glanced in all directions as if seeking to convey the truth with his eyes before expressing it with his voice.
“Doruntine,” he said, “was in fact brought back by Kostandin.”
Stres stiffened, expecting some sound — laughter, jeers, shouts, an uproar of some kind, even a challenging cry: “But for two months you’ve been trying to convince us of the contrary!” Nothing of the kind came from the crowd.
“Yes, Doruntine was brought back by Kostandin,” he repeated as if he feared that he had been misunderstood. But people’s stupefaction was evidence enough that his words had reached them. He thought that their silence was perhaps excessive, as it can be in response to fear.
“Just as I promised you, noble sirs, and you, honoured guests, I will explain everything. All I ask is that you have the patience to hear me out.”
At that moment Stres’s only concern was to keep his mind clear. For the time being he asked for nothing more.
“You have all heard,” he began, “some of you before setting out for this gathering, others on your way here or upon your arrival, of the strange marriage of Doruntine Vranaj, the marriage that lies at the root of this whole affair. You are all aware, I imagine, that this far-off marriage, the first to be consummated with a man from so distant a country, would never have taken place if Kostandin, one of the bride’s brothers, had not given his mother his word that he would bring Doruntine back to her whenever she desired her daughter’s presence, on occasions of joy or sorrow. You also know that not long after the wedding the Vranaj, like all of Albania, were stricken with unspeakable grief. Yet no one brought Doruntine back, for he who had promised to do so was dead. You are aware of the curse the Lady Mother uttered against her son for his violation of the besa, and you know that three weeks after that curse was spoken, Doruntine at last appeared at the family home. That is why I now affirm, and reaffirm, that it was none other than her brother Kostandin, in accordance with his oath, his besa, who brought Doruntine back. There is no other explanation for that journey, nor could there be. It matters little whether or not Kostandin returned from the grave to accomplish his mission, just as it matters little who was the horseman who set out on that dark night or what horse he saddled, whose hands held the reins, whose feet pressed against the stirrups, whose hair was matted with the highway dust. Each of us has a part in that journey, for it is here among us that Kostandin’s besa germinated, and that is what brought Doruntine back. Therefore, to be more exact I would have to say that it was all of us — you, me, our dead lying there in the graveyard close by the church — who, through Kostandin, brought Doruntine back.”