The Horseman on the Roof (33 page)

There were about two hundred who left, with Giuseppe at their head, taking charge of everything, very animated, giving fatherly advice and urging all speed. Lavinia went along. She had asked Angelo what he proposed to do.

“You go with him,” said Angelo. “I shall follow too.”

After having tended some hundreds of sick he was obliged to recognize that he was of no use. The four or five fellows who had joined him at the outset had long since given up. Not only had he failed to save a single life, but now, when he approached, the victims associated his presence so closely with certain death that they passed at once into a final convulsion. He was nicknamed “the crow,” the name given to those dirty, drunken men who buried the dead with indecent, repellent brutality. He had to admit that he was not popular.

He found Giuseppe and his troop established in a delightful spot. It was a deep ravine carpeted with thick grass under gigantic oak trees. A fresh spring flowed into an old kneading-trough sunk in the ground. The place, though well sheltered by the leaves, was none the less aired by the north winds. At one time it had held a sheepfold, of which a few stumps of walls still remained. The murmur of the leaves was very soothing. The architecture of the enormous oaks, the interlacing branches, suggested sturdiness and strength.

When Angelo arrived, Giuseppe had just posted an armed sentry near the fountain. He had also allotted everyone a camping-place, grouping several families together. There was much talk of laws. Proud talk. The militiamen were armed. Angelo wondered where they came from, all these healthy, ruddy, and sturdy men. He hadn't seen any down below. One of these robust men died suddenly with all the usual symptoms. He tumbled over while he was eating a hunk of bread beside some stacked rifles.

“Down below,” said Giuseppe, “these men were in charge of the supplies. That's why you never saw them. Did you imagine that the potatoes, rice, and maize flour that Lavinia cooked were gifts of God? How did you suppose everyone was able to have something to eat? We had stores; everybody was rationed. These healthy men guarded the supplies: doesn't that make sense? What would you have proposed, after all? Tell me once and for all. D'you know what cutting one's losses means?”

The dying man did not stay on the grass a minute more than was necessary. He was carried off at once. Four men, with their shirts outside their trousers and thus wearing the regular uniform of crows, arrived with a stretcher. Angelo noted that the stretcher was made of newly peeled branches. The four crows, for their part, had a special camping-place, more than a hundred yards from the camps of the community. Giuseppe had summoned them by whistling.

For two or three days everyone was absorbed in definite, organized jobs. Fatigue parties of strong young men, escorted by armed militiamen, carried out the moving of the supplies from the lower depot. Other fatigues constructed latrines, rubbish-pits. The orders regulating this work were anonymous. Some militiaman or other would arrive with his rifle slung over his shoulder and say: “I must have…”—“I must have so many men to do so-and-so.” Giuseppe only spoke directly to give a piece of advice: this was to dig the latrines a long way downwind. He spoke so amusingly about bad smells that he managed to make the women laugh, and even the men. Almost every evening ten very burly and red militiamen held a meeting at the eastern edge of the ravine, the side from which night was coming. After they had been met for some time and everybody was gazing westward where the glow of twilight still remained, Giuseppe would join them.

Three or four people died but were carried off even before they were dead. They began to call the four men who had put their shirts outside their trousers crows in earnest. Angelo noticed their faces: he was stupefied.

There were again, in quick succession, about ten deaths, six of them in one day. A woman, who had just lost at one and the same time her husband and her son, shrieked and fought with the crows. They carried her off too while she was still shrieking, violently kicking, and waving her arms like a swimmer. They set her down on her feet, far beyond the trees, on a wild slope overlooking shadowy valleys. The militiamen could be seen making signs to her to leave, to go straight ahead. She went. The wind fluttered her undone hair.

The scene had caused great agitation. There was a sound of conversation almost as loud as the rustling of the leaves. Giuseppe climbed on to a stump of the ruined sheepfold. He spoke to them all familiarly about this woman who was departing into the wild valleys; and he said some very touching things about her. Misfortune must be respected, and comforted. Beyond the woods, as everyone knew, there was a village, which she would undoubtedly reach. Its hospitality was well known; it had even become proverbial. He had not the slightest doubt that, after she passed through the woods, the woman would be made welcome there, fed, looked after. He wished to draw attention to something very important. He would say once more: misfortune was to be respected. There was no need to dwell longer on that point. One thing was certain: the dead were a great danger to the living. It was therefore pure and simple common sense to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Two or three minutes more made no difference in the matter of sentiment; on the other hand, they made a great difference as regards the contagion. When a dear one dies, you rush to him, you kiss him, you clasp him in your arms, you try to hold him back by every means. It was absolutely certain that none of these means were of any help, alas! in keeping anyone on this side when death had decided to summon them to the other. But these embraces helped greatly to spread the plague. In his opinion, it was these embraces that were to blame for the duplication of disaster that often struck the same family. It was again a question of common sense, pure and simple. Well! there it was: that was all he had to say to them.

Lavinia glanced covertly at Angelo.

During the night there were four, five, six, seven, eight, nine deaths. The crows and the militiamen went round with lanterns. Giuseppe sighed on his bed, spoke to Lavinia in Piedmontese. He called to Angelo, who was sleeping six feet away from them. “Talk to me,” he said.

In the morning the ravine was clear: there was no trace of agitation nor of death. Only, a few circles of trodden grass, marking where hearths had been, were deserted.

One man more died that morning. He was carried away before the final cry. His wife and son did up their bundles and without a word followed the militiamen, who led them out of the ravine.

That was the only death of the day. Toward evening, Angelo was smoking a little cigar when he heard a sound similar to that of a light wind among the leaves. It was the sound of conversation from group to group, starting up again.

The night was peaceful. Several times, however, Giuseppe spoke to Lavinia in Piedmontese. She did not reply. He called to Angelo and said: “Talk to me.” Angelo talked to him for a long while about Piedmont, about the chestnut woods, and finally set himself to imagine all the
beffas
with which one could make a fool of Messer Giovanni-Maria Stratigopolo. Every time he stopped to recover his breath, Giuseppe would say: “And then, what else could one do to him?”

The next day there was no death. A light breeze blew from the north, gay and lively. It was wonderful to hear the stout branches gently creaking. The militiamen who were keeping order around the fountain were obeyed at a gesture or a glance. Their ruddy, sensual faces now reflected a grave, almost spiritual confidence. This phenomenon astonished Angelo. Giuseppe took a walk around the encampment. He was greeted with considerable respect. Even Lavinia was greeted, although she was becoming more and more allegoric.

“I greet thee, Goddess of Reason,” Angelo said to her.

She gave a sibylline smile.

Angelo led Giuseppe toward the edge of the wood, on the westward side.

“It's good,” he said, “that people should realize that you're protecting me.”

And he showed his teeth under his mustache.

“Don't laugh,” replied Giuseppe, “I'm quite aware that last night you talked about Stratigopolo simply to distract me. I won't hide it; this disease disgusts me. You want me to tell you I'm frightened? Well, I will! My hide peels back like the hide of a skinned rabbit. D'you want to know what I really think? One isn't required to be brave in cases like this. The danger's too great. Seeming to be brave is enough; it gets you to the same place and at least it gets you there alive; this, in spite of that little laugh of yours which I don't like, is the most important thing. Look at it any way you wish: death is total defeat. People must be able to use others. That's natural and everybody understands it, even those you use as mattresses to block up your windows. Men stop bullets better than wool. Everyone has that much common sense in his blood. That's why I'm closer to the people than you are. You appear mad. You don't inspire their confidence. They can't believe in virtues they can't imagine. Just make an experiment. Tell them you had to hold my hand all night like a child, or show them you don't take me seriously, and you see if they don't smash your face in.”

Below them opened the wild valley down which, two days before, the first exile had been driven. It was filled with enormous blue beeches. There was no village to be seen, but everywhere blue woods.

Angelo said nothing.

“Let's go back to Italy,” he said at last, “and get killed.”

“All right,” said Giuseppe. “How?”

“I'll put on my colonel's uniform, you your hussar's, and we'll go back arm in arm to the barracks.”

“And suppose they don't kill us? All the quartermasters are
Carbonari.
There are twenty N.C.O.'s who are heads of
vendite.
Half an hour later, the officers are dead, and work has to be begun in the streets of Turin with a thousand conscripts shouting: ‘Long live Colonel Pardi!' But they'll shout it a good deal less the next day when there's only five hundred of them left. And how could we enlist the factory workers? Nothing's possible without them, and they won't like your gold braid and the Castle of La Brenta. Not to mention the explanations to be given to all those who've already set out the laws of Italian liberty on paper or in their heads. Don't forget there are lawyers and teachers.”

“I'll get arrested without uniform.”

“But Bonetto, who wants to become Minister of War, or perhaps even of Justice, will shout your arrest from the housetops. That, I must admit, will cool off my quartermasters and noncoms, who think you're an eagle; they will imagine that you've been made a fool of, or even that you've betrayed the cause and that the whole thing's a transparent trick. But that doesn't prevent you from becoming a color-bearer. There are none better than the
agents provocateurs.
Even if all our people believe you've betrayed us, the people whose job it is to look after public opinion will concoct a whole romance out of your imprisonment. That represents at least two hundred scuffles, if they take eight days to sentence you. At two deaths per clash, and we must reckon on that, there you'll be with four hundred deaths on your conscience and perhaps our slavery prolonged by ten years. If they shoot you, there'll be a pretty little firework display besides. Not to mention the intrigues of your mother, myself who'll go around stabbing people in the streets, and our Carlotta who'll test her claws right and left. Which represents a further two or three hundred dead, and that's being moderate. If they lock you up for the rest of your days, then the blame's on us, because we'll have to leave you to die in prison, even (what am I saying? above all!) when Italy is free. Are you depressed? I admit our present situation isn't calculated to raise the spirits.”

“The cholera doesn't worry me,” said Angelo. “That's a way of dying that settles everything. I can't be happy neglecting my duty.”

“I forbid you to die,” said Giuseppe, “especially in that way. As for duty, why worry about everybody's duty? I thought you had more pride. Make yourself a personal duty!”

CHAPTER TEN

The cholera was now stalking like a lion over towns and woods. After a few days' respite, the people in the ravine were again attacked by the contagion. The dead were pitilessly taken away, even shortly before they were really dead. The survivors of each family affected, those who had tended the victims, were driven away.

“Where are you sending them?” asked Angelo.

“Down where we came from: under the almond trees.”

Angelo went back down. He returned sickened. He said that it was a charnel house where there were still a few living people, reduced to skeletons, reeling over the corpses left unburied among flocks of carrion birds. He spoke of it stiffly.

Giuseppe's first retort was that they were not downwind and that those corpses were not dangerous. But immediately after he corrected himself and said:

“You must get away from here.”

“So must you,” said Angelo.

Unexpectedly, Giuseppe raised few objections.

“You are too important in the fight for liberty,” Angelo told him. “You must be saved. Your death would serve no purpose. I've made myself a personal duty, as you advised me. It is, in the first place, to preserve the troops intact before the fight.”

He even gave him other reasons, still more specious and very neatly put.

“Here, you are frightened,” he said, “and yet I know your courage. In fact, sometimes I've experienced it. So there must be peremptory reasons for your fear, and these peremptory reasons are simply that you're afraid of a pointless death.”

He talked at great length about this.

“It's the honest truth,” said Giuseppe when he had done: “that is my nature exactly. But these workmen whom I've armed are used to have me command them; they now might force me to.”

“Anyway,” said Angelo, “I don't matter to them; they've made that quite clear: they consider me a crow. Without your protection, I'd have been sent back down there long ago
by your command.
If I disappear, they'll hardly notice it, or they'll think I've gone off to die in some corner. I'll go ahead and buy some horses. Does that village of yours on the other side of the valley really exist?”