Doruntine

by Ismail Kadare

  “Sometimes I wonder if he didn’t bring Doruntine back himself.”

  “How dare you say such a thing?”

  “What would be so surprising?” the man answered. “As for myself, I have not been surprised by anything since the day she returned.”

  During this time people began to talk more than ever of the harm caused by far-off marriages. Though no one would admit it, everyone felt a vague nostalgia for local marriages, an echo of an even more secret longing—for marriages within the clan itself. Those days were gone, but people missed them. Was it not repentance that had raised Constantine from his grave?

  That’s what people said. And it was just then that something happened which would have seemed only too natural at any other time: a young village bride set off to join her husband in a far-off land. Everyone was astounded to hear of this new Doruntine at a time when it was thought that the very idea of distant marriages had suffered its coup de grâce. After everything that had just happened, it was expected that the bride’s family would break the engagement, or at least postpone the marriage. But no. The wedding took place on the scheduled date, the groom’s relatives arrived from their country, which some said lay six days distant, others eight, and after much eating, drinking, and song, they led the young bride away. Nearly all the village accompanied her from the church, as once they had walked with the unfortunate Doruntine, and as they gazed upon the young bride so beautiful and misty in her white veil, there were many who must have wondered whether a ghost would carry her home some moonless night. But she, mounted on a white horse, showed not the slightest apprehension about her fate. And the people, following her with their eyes, shook their heads and said, “Good God, maybe young brides today like this sort of thing. Perhaps they like to ride by night, clasping a shadow, through the gloom and the void. . . .”

  Tirana, October 1979