The Horseman on the Roof (28 page)

After a detour, Angelo found himself at the approach to a sort of amphitheater surrounded by tall oaks, where a religious meeting was in progress. About a hundred men and women kneeling in the grass were giving the responses to a litany. The priest chanting it was standing a few paces in front of the farther trees and between two big fires so stoutly fed that the flames stood up straight like scarlet columns.

A woman, who at first sight seemed old though she was dressed in white, was playing the portable organ. She was not playing a concert piece; she was just accompanying the priest's words and the responses in an uninterrupted flow, or, to be more precise, with music like the endless unrolling of a chain connecting earth and heaven.

Angelo thought at once of the angels ascending and descending Jacob's ladder.

The glare of the fires, which lit the vaults, flying buttresses, and ribs of the branches, the green frescoes of foliage, built a natural temple over the worshippers.

“And here's what simple folk come to,” said Angelo. “The nun and I may have washed with our own hands and prepared for Judgment Day the father, mother, brother, sister, husband, or wife of one of these men or women here, simply begging all the saints to pray for them. They are right. This way is much easier. It can't help being the solution. We ought to have something like this in politics. If it doesn't exist already, we must invent one.”

After a benediction and a sign of the cross the priest withdrew from between his two braziers and went to sit under an oak at the edge of the shadow, while the faithful too sat down on the grass. The organist raised her arms and arranged her bun. She continued to make the pedals hum.

She was a young woman. She seemed nearsighted. She gazed at the assembly, plainly without seeing it. She seemed affected only by the silence, in which nothing but the crackle of the braziers could be heard. She wiped her forehead and resumed playing.

Freed from religious trappings, the music affected Angelo violently. Even the priest, back there in the shadow and the flickering firelight, was now only a sort of gilded insect. Every face was turned toward the organist. Angelo noticed some handsome profiles. They belonged to various grave men whose sunburn was reddened still more by the light, and to certain women who looked like Junos and Minervas. What with these faces, the great fires, and the depth of the woods, the music created a world without politics, where the cholera was no more than an exercise in style. Finally, with nothing by way of warning that the end of this world was drawing near, the young woman raised her hands and, after letting the instrument sigh away, closed the lid over the keyboard.

Angelo perceived that he had not followed Féraud's directions. At the spot where he had descended into the ravine, he should have gone up the slope on the other side, straight ahead. He had followed the shades, he had kept along the ravine, descending. It was no good counting on finding the place again in the dark. The simplest thing was now to follow straight down the path. Patrols, quarantines, lanterns would be seen approaching. These famous patrols were unlikely to rake the plain with too fine a comb. There should be ways of passing between the teeth.

He had not walked half an hour when he found himself facing an orchard whose every tree carried at least one lantern. Sometimes they bore two or three, especially along the roadside. It was an orchard where an infirmary had been set up. Indeed, one could see, far back under the trees, the white patch of the tents, some of them lit up inside and looking like huge phosphorescent caterpillars. He heard continuous groans, conversations, and all at once some sharp cries, while the tent from which these came began to rock its lantern like a boat caught by a squall in the night.

He had noticed a very rough, thick hedge that ran between some willows. He went toward it. Fortunately he was walking in a field where his steps made no sound, and he took the precaution of concealing himself behind a willow trunk before taking refuge in the hedge. He heard someone at the foot of the hedge calling in a whisper a name that he couldn't catch. A voice replied from up in the willow, which stood in the hedge itself.

“Not yet,” it said, “it's a bit early, but I can see some of them up there; there's no doubt they're getting ready.”

Angelo looked in the direction of the hill. The fires were no longer throwing up any flames, but the embers were very bright; against their redness could be seen in certain places the silhouettes of people all very busy and sometimes stooping toward the ground.

“Are we in a good place?” resumed the voice from the hedge.

“They're certainly going to try to dump them down here this evening,” replied the man in the willow.

The speakers were middle-class townsmen. Even so two or three gun-barrels could be seen gleaming along the hedge.

For quite a long while there was no further sound.

“It's extraordinary,” thought Angelo. “Can these bourgeois really be capable of mounting guard properly? If so, they might give us a good beating before they're through.”

He kept his ears peeled, but there was not another word to be heard, not even the sound of someone clearing his throat. They had even put the guns out of sight.

“If I didn't know they were there, I'd fall into the trap myself,” he thought.

He was full of admiration for their efficiency.

“Here's something I must tell Giuseppe about.”

Suddenly on the left there was a noise of rustling leaves, as if an animal were trying to break through the hedge. Several shadows were moving at the edge of the light from the lanterns.

Angelo had to admit that these bourgeois knew how to crawl and spring out as well as anyone. All he heard was a slight clink of weapons, then he saw black shapes pass swiftly in front of the lantern. The patrol had just caught two men in the act of swinging a corpse over the hedge.

They had not won the day yet, all the same. The two men caught in the act seemed very excited and were gesticulating violently.

“Keep quiet or we shoot,” shouted someone. “We know who you are, and if you run away we'll come and get you up there in your grove. The law applies to everybody.”

“Let them go, messieurs,” begged a heart-rending girl's voice. “They're my brothers. It's our father we've brought. We couldn't bury him up there.”

They continued to harangue and bully.

“This is the last straw! Poisoning everybody! You have to declare your dead and be quarantined. We don't want to die like flies.”

“It's in your quarantines that people die like flies.”

“Shut up and come here. I'll shoot you just as soon as the men.”

A few low cries came from the girl.

“Doesn't she know that these bourgeois are always caught short by the unforeseen?” said Angelo to himself. “If she suddenly takes a good jump backward, she'll escape them. Or simply if I shout ‘Halt!' rather loudly, from here.

“Hold on,” he added. “Are you going to get yourself knocked off by a pack of bourgeois? Keep quiet.”

He had just remembered the sentinel in the willow. Had he stayed at his post, or had he run off with the others?

“Who'd have thought these shopkeepers could stump me in my own trade?”

He had the sense to lie low and keep quiet.

Two men of the patrol led away the prisoners, who were now subdued.

The others returned to mount guard.

“Who was it?” asked the voice in the willow.

“The sons and daughter of Thomé.”

“Was it old Thomé they dumped?”

“Yes. He seems quite dry. They must have kept him at least two days. They're stubborn as mules. There's no stopping them.”

“A firm hand's the only thing.”

“That Marguerite tried to soft-soap me, but you heard me tell her I'd shoot her just as soon as a man.”

“Did they catch anybody down on the right?” asked another voice.

“They haven't budged.”

“Thanks for the information,” thought Angelo. “So there are others, down on the right, and perhaps down ahead, and down on the left. This is good to know. So you want to play at war, do you? Well, war isn't like hunting, my boys. When you score a hit, you have to be as careful afterward as before. These fellows will always be amateurs. If we can't beat them in open battle, we can win in a skirmish.”

He took advantage of the fact that the conversation was quietly receding. He soon found, with the tip of his boot, one of those streams that divide fields in two. It was dry as tinder and deep enough to hide a man crawling on all fours. It also ran under a little bank, and the lanterns cast no light there.

Angelo passed close to another patrol huddled against an enormous willow trunk, and he met a third party walking along with their weapons slung. This time he had only to lie flat in the stream and it concealed him completely. One member of the patrol stepped over him totally unawares. Angelo wouldn't have traded his place for anything.

He was so delighted with his own skill that he stood up to his full height as soon as the patrol had passed. He was just a few yards away from a thick shadow, into which he leaped. He tripped over a kneeling figure and fell full-length on top of a man who said: “Don't say a word; let me go; I'll give you a sugar loaf.”

“What are you doing with a sugar loaf?” said Angelo.

“Ah! You're not one of those fellows?”

“What fellows do you mean?”

“Keep still. They're coming.”

Angelo heard the patrol returning. He remained lying, motionless, on top of the man—who was only a little boy.

The patrol beat the bushes with their rifle-butts at the edge of the shadow, but they did not come closer.

“If you moved a little I'd be able to get up,” said the boy, when the patrol had moved off.

“I'll let you up when you've told me all about your sugar loaf,” said Angelo, still in the full tide of happiness. He had even spoken out loud, very pleasantly.

“I was helping a friend,” said the boy. “His sister died this afternoon, and we came to leave her down here, because the infirmary people bury all the bodies they find. But if they catch you, they take you off to quarantine. That's why I hid when they went by; then just afterward you fell on top of me.”

“How about your sugar loaf—what's it got to do with all this?”

“Sometimes they let you go if you grease their palms.”

“A sugar loaf isn't very much. You can get one for a dozen sous.”

“That's what you think. Since the plague started, not many people have sugar with their coffee. My family own a grocery. And there's some people who've come with louis to spend and gone away empty-handed. If you really let me up, I'll give
you
the sugar loaf. Don't you believe me?”

“Of course,” said Angelo, “but I don't want your sugar loaf.”

They both stood up and instinctively stepped back several paces deeper into the shadow.

“You scared me so much I can hardly stand up,” said the boy.

“What's happened to your friend?”

“Oh, don't worry about him, he's a fast runner!”

“He left you here?”

“Of course. What was the use of us both getting caught?”

“You're a decent lad, I must say.”

“And who are you? Did you bring a body down too?”

“No. I'm just passing by. I'm looking for a road.”

“It's dangerous to look for it over there.”

“I'm tough,” said Angelo. “Besides, what am I risking?”

“They're tougher than you. Don't you trust them. If they catch you, they'll put you in quarantine.”

“And what then? One fine day they'll have to let me go.”

“They won't ever let you go. Everyone dies in quarantine. Of all those who've gone in, not one's come out.”

“Because their quarantine hasn't finished.”

“Something else has finished for a lot of them. We've got eyes in our heads: we've seen them building a big trench. They tried to do it on the sly, at the bottom of the ravine, but we saw their spades shining.”

“That was to bury the other dead.”

“Then why did they dig it right in front of the quarantine area? And why did they wait till three in the morning, when everyone was asleep, to put the bodies in? And why was there all that coming and going of lanterns between the quarantine and the trench? Don't think we were asleep!… We wanted to see. Well! we saw. And why, since yesterday, is there no sentinel any more at the quarantine?”

“Doubtless because you're right,” said Angelo.

“Where are you going?” asked the boy.

“I'm trying to get to that hill planted with almond trees, which must be over there, I think. I'm no longer exactly sure which way it is.”

“Just about where you said, but it's hard to get up there from where you are now. You'd have to go right through all the part where the infirmaries are. If you escaped some, you'd fall into the others.”

“I've got my pistol,” said Angelo.

“They've got guns and they don't mind using them. They are either bird shot or rock salt. Just enough to shoot you.”

“That's a real bourgeois idea,” thought Angelo. Not for all the gold in the world did he want to make a fool of himself by getting wounded with rock salt or bird shot.

“I'll take you, if you like,” said the boy.

“You know the way?”

“I know a way nobody else knows. It leads straight there.”

“All right, let's go,” said Angelo. “At any rate, if they catch us I'll kick up a row; while that's going on, you get away.”

“Right,” said the boy. “Don't worry.”

They walked more than an hour through a maze of very dark sunken lanes. After gradually becoming convinced that there was no danger, Angelo stopped playing the game that had so delighted him, and started to chat with the boy. The boy told him that here they might think themselves lucky: in Marseille, in certain streets, the dead were piled higher than the doors of the shops. Aix, too, was devastated. An appalling variety of the epidemic was raging there. The sick were first attacked by a sort of drunkenness, which set them running in every direction, staggering and uttering horrible cries. They had blazing eyes, hoarse voices, and appeared to have rabies. Friends fled from friends. A mother had been seen with her son running after her, a daughter pursued by her mother, newlyweds hunting one another; the town was now no better than a hunting-ground. They had recently decided, it seemed, to beat the sick senseless: instead of stretcher-bearers the roads were patrolled by a sort of dog-catcher armed with cudgels and lassos. Avignon was also in delirium; the sick threw themselves into the Rhone, or hanged themselves, hacked their throats with razors, tore open the veins of their wrists with their teeth. In certain places the sick were so burned up with fever that their corpses turned into tinder and would catch fire suddenly of their own accord, whenever a breath of wind passed over them, or just from their own excessive dryness, and they had set fire to the town of Die. The stretcher men had to wear leather gantlets, like blacksmiths.