The Horseman on the Roof (21 page)

She had listened without moving a muscle. This time the silence was just a little longer. Then she said:

“So I expect you're hungry?”

“That's why I came down to look,” said Angelo. “I thought the house was empty.”

“Be thankful that it isn't,” said the young woman with a smile. “My aunts leave deserts behind them.”

She drew back, though still lighting the landing.

“Come in,” she said.

“I don't want to intrude,” said Angelo. “I shall be disturbing your company.”

“You're not intruding,” she said, “I am inviting you. And you aren't disturbing any company: I am alone. Those ladies left five days ago. I myself have found it very hard to get enough to eat since they left. Even so, I'm better off than you.”

“Aren't you afraid?” said Angelo, moving toward her.

“Not the least bit.”

“If not of me—and a thousand thanks for that—” said Angelo, “what about the plague?”

“Don't thank me, monsieur,” she said. “Come in. Our doorway compliments are absurd.”

Angelo entered a fine drawing-room. He immediately saw his own reflection in a tall mirror. He had eight days' growth of beard and long streaks of black sweat all over his face. His shirt hanging in ribbons over his bare arms and chest covered with black hair, his dusty breeches still bearing traces of the plaster from his entry through the garret window, his torn stockings from which two rather savage feet emerged, conferred on him a highly regrettable appearance. All he had in his favor was his eyes, which still, in spite of everything, had an attractive warmth.

“I'm terribly sorry,” he said.

“What are you terribly sorry about?” said the young woman, who was lighting the wick of a small spirit lamp.

“I realize,” said Angelo, “that you have every reason to mistrust me.”

“What makes you think I mistrust you? I'm making you some tea.”

She moved without a sound over the carpets.

“I suppose you haven't had anything hot to drink for a long time?”

“I can't remember how long!”

“Unfortunately I have no coffee. Anyhow, I wouldn't know where to find the coffeepot. Outside one's own home one can never find anything. I arrived here eight days ago. My aunts left nothing behind them; I'd be surprised if they had done anything else. This is some tea, which I luckily thought of bringing with me.”

“Please excuse me,” said Angelo in a stifled voice.

“This is no time for apologies,” she said. “What are you doing, standing there? If you really want to reassure me, behave in a reassuring way. Sit down.”

Docilely, Angelo placed the tip of his backside on the edge of an exquisite chair.

“Some cheese that smells of goats (indeed, that's why they left it), the bottom of a pot of honey, and, of course, some bread. Will that do?”

“I've quite forgotten the taste of bread.”

“This bread is hard. You need good teeth. How old are you?”

“Twenty-five,” said Angelo.

“As old as that?” she said.

She had cleared the corner of a table and laid on it a huge soup bowl on a plate.

“You are too kind,” said Angelo. “I thank you with all my heart for anything you care to give me, for I'm dying of hunger. But I'll take it away; I couldn't sit down and eat in front of you.”

“Why not?” she said. “Am I repulsive? And what would you take your tea away in? I couldn't possibly lend you any bowl or dish, put that out of your head. Take plenty of sugar, and break your bread as you would to dip it in soup. I've made the tea very strong, and it's boiling. Nothing could be better for you. If I embarrass you, I can go out.”

“It's my dirtiness that embarrasses me,” said Angelo. He had spoken abruptly, but he added: “I feel shy.” And he smiled.

She had green eyes and could open them so wide that they filled the whole of her face.

“I don't dare give you anything to wash in,” she said softly. “All the water in this town is contaminated. Just now it is much wiser to be dirty but well. Eat quietly. The only advice I can give you,” she added, smiling in turn, “is to wear shoes if you can, from now on.”

“Oh!” said Angelo, “I've got some boots up there, indeed very handsome ones. But I had to pull them off to be able to walk on the tiles, which are slippery, and also to come down into the houses without making any noise.”

“I'm a perfect idiot,” he said to himself, but a sort of critical sense added: “At least you are naturally so.”

The tea was excellent. At the third spoonful of soaked bread, he no longer thought of anything but eating voraciously and drinking the boiling liquid. For the first time in a long while he was quenching his thirst. He actually did not think any more about the young woman. She was walking across the carpet. As a matter of fact she was busy preparing a second pot of tea. As he was finishing, she refilled his bowl to the brim.

He would have liked to say something, but his throat had begun to work madly. He couldn't stop swallowing saliva. He felt as if he were making a terrible noise. The young woman was watching him wide-eyed, but she did not appear to be astonished.

“Now I shan't give in to you any more,” he said firmly when he had finished his second bowl of tea. (“I've managed to speak firmly but politely,” he told himself.)

“You haven't been giving in to me,” said she. “You've been giving in to a hunger even greater than I'd supposed, and above all to thirst. This tea is a real blessing.”

“I've made you go short?”

“No one's making me go short,” she said; “don't worry.”

“I'll accept one of your cheeses and a piece of bread to take away, if you'll let me, and ask your leave to withdraw.”

“Where to?” she said.

“Just now I was up in your attic,” said Angelo. “Needless to say, I shall leave it at once.”

“Why needless to say?”

“I suppose I don't really know.”

“If you don't know, you might just as well stay there tonight. You can decide tomorrow when day comes.”

Angelo bowed.

“May I make a suggestion?” he said.

“Please do.”

“I have two pistols, one of them empty. Will you accept the loaded one? These exceptional times have let loose a lot of exceptional passions.”

“I'm pretty well provided for,” she said; “see for yourself.”

She lifted a shawl that had been lying all this time beside the spirit lamp. It covered two powerful horse pistols.

“You are better equipped than I,” said Angelo coldly, “but those are heavy weapons.”

“I'm used to them,” she said.

“I should have liked to thank you.”

“You've done so.”

“Good night, madame. Tomorrow, first thing, I shall have left the attic.”

“Then it is for me to thank you,” said she.

He was at the door. She stopped him.

“Would a candle be of help to you?”

“The greatest help, madame, but I've only tinder in my box; I can't strike a flame.”

“Would you like a few matches?”

Returning to the attic, Angelo was astonished to find the cat still at his heels. He had forgotten this creature whose company had given him so much pleasure.

“I'm going to have to squeeze through that narrow window once more,” he told himself, “but in all decency a gentleman can't remain alone with so young and pretty a woman; even cholera is no excuse in such cases. She kept perfect control over herself, but there's no denying my presence in the attic could easily be an embarrassment to her. Ah well! I'll squeeze through that narrow window once more.”

The tea had given him strength and, above all, a great feeling of well-being. He was full of admiration for everything the young woman down below had done. “Had I been in her place,” he said to himself, “would I have carried off as well as she that air of cold scorn for danger? Could I have played as well as she did, a hand where I had everything to lose? One must admit I'm pretty terrifying to look at; even, what's worse, repellent.” He was forgetting the light in his eyes.

“She didn't once give a trick away, and yet she is hardly twenty; let us say twenty-one or two at the most. I always find women old, but I can see that this one is young.”

Her reply on the subject of the horse pistols also intrigued him greatly. Angelo had plenty of wits, above all in the matter of weapons. But even in these cases he only had an
esprit d'escalier.
A solitary man acquires, once and for all, the habit of brooding over his own dreams; he can no longer react immediately to the assault of suggestions from outside. He is like a monk at his breviary in the middle of a ball game, or a skater who takes too much trouble with his form and can only answer calls for help by describing a long curve.

“I was angular and all of a piece,” said Angelo to himself. “I ought to have behaved like a brother. That would have been a splendid way of playing my own cards. The horse pistols were a good opening. I should have told her that a small weapon well handled is more dangerous, inspires more respect than a big and heavy weapon, which is a great nuisance, especially when there is such a difference in size as there is between her hand and the thick butt, fat barrels, and heavy metalwork of those pistols. It's true she's facing dangers of a quite different kind, and one can't fire pistols at the tiny flies that carry the cholera.”

At this point he was overcome by a thought so appalling that he started up from the divan where he was lying.

“What if I have given her the plague myself?” This “myself” froze him with terror. He always responded to the most trivial acts of generosity by a debauch of generosity. The idea of having probably brought death to that brave and lovely young woman, and after she had made tea for him, was intolerable. “I've been with, I've not only been with, I've touched, I've tended cholera victims. No doubt I am covered with vapors that don't attack me, or perhaps haven't attacked me yet, but may well attack and kill that woman. She was very sensibly keeping out of it, shut up in her house; and I forced my way in, she received me nobly, and she will perhaps die for that nobility, for that unselfishness, from which I've been the one to benefit.”

He was overwhelmed.

“I went all through the house from cellar to attic where the dry cholera had struck down that woman with the lovely golden hair before she could reach the door. This one is darker than the night, but dry cholera strikes like terrible lightning and people haven't even time to call for help. And … have I gone mad, or what does the color of a woman's hair count in a case of dry cholera?”

He listened with ferocious attention. The whole house was silent.

“In any case,” he tried to reassure himself, “this famous dry cholera has not bothered me up to now. To give it, one must have it. No: to give it, one need only carry it, and you've done all a man could to carry more than enough of it. Still, you didn't touch anything in the house. You just about did your duty, like the poor little Frenchman who'd have done much more and would certainly have been conscientious enough to look under the beds. Come, what are you imagining? Vapors aren't bristling with hooked feelers like burdock seeds, and the fact that you stepped over that corpse doesn't mean that they necessarily stuck to you.”

He was half asleep. He again saw himself striding over the woman's corpse, and his half-sleep was likewise filled with comets and horse-shaped clouds. He tossed about on his divan so much that he disturbed the cat as it lay close by him.

All at once he was frozen with terror. “The cat spent a long time in that house, and not only the fair woman but at least two other persons died there. It may be carrying cholera in its fur.”

He could no longer remember if the cat had gone into the drawing-room down below or had stayed out on the landing. He tortured himself with this thought during a great part of the night.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was still dark when Angelo went out through the window. Facing east, it nevertheless framed a small rectangle of pale gray in the direction of the extinguished stars. Angelo waited for sunrise, crouching against the little wall.

Still the same white dawn.

Beyond the convent's long rooftops there rose a square tower, surmounted by a spike that must be a sort of lightning-conductor or a former flagstaff. Angelo had not yet gone as far as there. He did so with the first rays of the sun.

It was a small belfry. The wooden louver boards had been gnawed by wind and rain, and it was easy to slide through into the dwelling-place of the bells. From there, a ladder went down to a spiral staircase that led finally to a door—which opened. It gave onto the aisle of a church.

The rising sun, striking in through the windows high in the vault, disclosed all the signs of a hasty exodus. The high altar had been stripped of its candlesticks and all its linen; even the door of the tabernacle had been left open. In the nave, the benches were stacked against a pillar. Straw, rags evidently used for packing, planks bristling with nails, and even a hammer and a roll of wire were lying on the floor.

The sacristy was empty. From it, a low door led into a cloister. This enclosed the garden of box and laurel in which, the day before, Angelo had seen the nuns bustling about. All was peaceful. The height of the walls maintained there a coolness favorable to the scent of green things.

Reaching the corner of the arcade that ran round the garden, Angelo perceived at the other end a body lying on the flagstones. He was so accustomed to corpses that he was nonchalantly approaching when the body stirred, sat up, then rose to its feet. It was an old nun. She was round as a barrel. Two claws of little black mustache clipped her mouth together at each side.

“What do you want?” she said.