The Ghost Rider by Ismaíl Kadaré

first kind can be experienced and appreciated at market days, crossroads or coaching inns. As for the second, each of us takes them in, or is consumed by them, in solitude. It soon became apparent that the funeral belonged to both categories at once. Although at first sight it seemed to belong to the crowd and the street, what people said about it brought to the surface all that had been whispered or imagined within the walls of every house, and brought confusion to everyone’s mind.
    Like any disquiet that gestates at first in solitary pain before coming out into the open, rumours about Doruntine grew and swelled up, changing in the most unforeseeable ways. An endless stream of people dragged the story behind them but were yet drawn forward by it. As theysought to give it a shape they found acceptable, they were themselves altered, bruised or crushed by it.
    High-born folk with family arms painted on their carriage doors, wandering monks, ruffians and all manner of other people filled and then emptied the high road as they made their way on horseback, in vehicles, but mostly on foot to the county town.
    Funeral services had been set for Sunday. The bodies lay in the great reception hall that had been unused since the death of the Vranaj sons. In the gleam of the candles the family’s ancient emblems, the arms and icons on the walls, as well as the masks of the dead, seemed covered with a silver dust.
    Beside the majestic bronze coffins (Lady Mother had stipulated in her will that a large sum be set aside for her funeral), four professional mourners, seated on carved chairs, led the lamentations. Twenty hours after the deaths, the wailing of the mourners in the reddish gleam of the coffins’ reflection had become more regulated, though more solemn. Now and then the mourners broke their keening with lines of verse. One by one, or all four in unison, they recalled various episodes in the saga of this unprecedented tragedy.
    In a trembling voice, one of the mourners sang of Doruntine’s marriage and of her departure for a distant land. A second, her voice more tremulous still, lamented the nine boys who, so soon after the wedding, had fallen in battle against the plague-ridden army. The third took up the theme and sang of the grief of the mother left alone. The fourth, recalling the mother’s visit to the cemetery to put her curse upon the son who had broken his besa , sang these words:

    A curse be on thee, Kostandin!
    Do you recall the solemn promise you made?
    Or has your besa rotted with you in the grave?
    Then the first mourner sang of the resurrection of the son who had been cursed, and of his journey by night to the land where his married sister lived:
    If it’s joy that brings you here
    I’ll wear a dress that’s fair.
    If it’s grief that brings you here
    Weeds is what I must wear.
    While the third responded with the dead man’s words:
    Come, sister mine, come as you are.
    Then the fourth and first mourners, responding one to the other, sang together of the brother’s and sister’s journey, and of the astonishment of the birds they passed on the way:
    Strange things have we seen beyond count
    Save a living soul and a dead man
    Riding by on the same mount.
    The third mourner told of their arrival at the house and of Kostandin’s flight towards the graveyard. Then the fourth concluded the lament, singing of Doruntine’s knocking at the door, of the words with which she told her mother that her brother had brought her home, so as to keep hispromise, and of her mother’s response from within the house:
    Kostandin died and was buried as he must.
    Three years have gone since he was laid to rest.
    Why then is he not now just soil and dust?
    After a chorus of lamentations by all the women present, the mourners rested briefly, then took up their chants again. The words with which they punctuated their wailing varied from song to song. Some verses were repeated, others changed or were replaced completely. In these