The Horseman on the Roof (47 page)

“I don't like carrying baggage,” he had kept saying to himself.

He unrolled the cloaks and made a comfortable bed.

“Lie down,” he said to the young woman, “and if I may give some advice, take off your breeches. You'll rest better. We can't tell what's ahead of us, except that, judging by what we've already seen, it won't be easy sailing. Let's try to be ready for anything. If we reach a town, ten to one it'll be putrid and full of soldiers. We don't have horses any more. We're going to have to hoof it. I now think those two bowling along so charmingly in the cabriolet must have been fools. Walking isn't at all the same as riding. If you get blisters, your wounds don't heal and you can't walk any more. It would be absurd to die stupidly where you are from having neglected your thighs.”

He spoke to her as to a trooper. She was too tired to give any other reply than: “You're right.” She quickly did as he said. Besides, he
was
right. She slept deeply for twenty minutes, then roused herself and said: “You've nothing over you! You've put my cloak under me and yours on top of me!”

“I'm quite all right,” said Angelo. “I've slept on the hard ground in the bitterest cold with nothing to cover me but my dolman. And that's not much. Now I've got my good velvet jacket, I'm in no danger, but since you're awake, wait.”

And he gave her some brown sugar to eat and a small tot of alcohol to drink.

“We've empty stomachs. The tea we drank in the window recess and the little handful of maize flour are a long way back. A sleep's not always as good as a dinner, especially after a march like the one we've just done. We should have lit a fire and cooked some polenta, but I confess I'm tired. This'll keep us going for at least an hour or two.”

Angelo did not fall asleep at once. His shoulders were aching. He had never carried a pack; he was worn out.

He wondered whether the road they were on really led to a town, and whether that was to be desired or dreaded. Were there garrisons and quarantines everywhere? The two travelers in the cabriolet had not seemed to be worrying. Perhaps they were archbishop's children with passports of the kind that get saluted. He remembered the dry cholera that had leaped upon the captain in the open countryside and unhorsed him. There was a certain equality, after all. He was seeing the black side of things.

He reckoned that for the past six days they had been traveling blindly. There was no clear reason for supposing that the village near Gap was to the northwest of the spot where they now were. He told himself that the cause of liberty had nothing to do with that village near Gap. He recognized that it was now impossible to return to the place of rendezvous Giuseppe had fixed, but he saw himself on a horse, or he did not see himself at all. The foot-slogging and, above all, the pack, had made him melancholy. He was not very sure, either, of having made a real escape from the quarantine at Vaumeilh. Burning a little powder in the wood of a door was not a sufficient event to make one sure of the thing and of oneself. He thought, too, of Dupuis, who had neglected to take the pistols from the baggage, and had even let him keep the little saber: all for ten francs, perhaps indeed for nothing and from indifference. The soldiers had not even searched him.

“Everybody is becoming an official,” he thought, “and I don't see what place there is for me in such a world.”

The moon, however, now almost at the end of its descent and half buried in the mists of the horizon, was sliding long pink rays under the ilex branches. The young woman was sleeping steadily and heaving faint, charming sighs.

Angelo thought of his little cigars. He smoked one with such pleasure that he lit a second from the stump of the first.

If Giuseppe had been there he would at once have been pleased to explain to him that things were not so stupid as people thought. No one was guarding the quarantine at Vaumeilh. People were picked up, packed into four walls. They stayed put. There was no need to bother about them. They guarded themselves. The able ones even did a little business.

“I blundered,” Angelo thought: “all I need have done was to go down to the grille and say: ‘Open up, I'm leaving.' ‘This is rather a surprise,' they'd have replied, ‘but yes, no doubt you don't belong here.' Now, one can easily die simply through lacking that simple sort of initiative. I don't die, but I do make three times the gestures necessary. If Giuseppe were here I'd say: ‘I know exactly what to expect. You'll rob me of my horse legally and make me carry a pack.' He'd get angry and reply: ‘You're not stupid, but what can we do for the people, then?' For he doesn't believe he's one of them. And that's what he's proud of. They make revolutions to become dukes. I do too, but they'll rob me of my horse. Only the cholera is genuine.”

Ever since they had taken to the country roads, they had seen very few dead, except for that arrogant captain whom they had found on the road, curled up like a child in its mother's lap, with his stripes and his spurs. But Angelo remembered Manosque, and his horror on the roofs when he could not close his eyes without finding himself immediately covered with birds who knew what they wanted. He remembered, too, the infernal heat, the braziers where the corpses were being burned, and the droning of the flies.

Despite the coolness of the morning (dawn was not far off) and the utter silence of the forest, asleep over its vast expanse, he saw in his mind's eye with great precision the agonies and the deaths that must be still laying waste the inhabited places.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The tea was made and the polenta cooking on a magnificent fire when the young woman awoke.

“Don't move,” said Angelo, “you're still exhausted.”

He gave her some boiling hot, very sweet, tea.

“I've been on my little patrol,” he said; “fifty yards from here, there's a crossroads with a signpost. According to this, we're five leagues west of Saint-Dizier. Don't you remember passing through a place of that name on the journey you told me about? It does seem to be our way.”

“No, I don't remember Saint-Dizier. But let me get up and help you.”

“You're helping me by staying where you are. If you get up, in five minutes you'll be in the absurd position of having to lie down again. I haven't told you everything. Immediately after the crossroads, the road goes down into a valley, and just on the slope, a hundred yards at most from where we are, there's the most charming hamlet of four houses one could hope to see. What's so extraordinary, the people there are behaving quite normally. Just now, a woman was feeding her chickens. A man started harvesting a field and is still there. If it weren't for the rim of the valley and these trees, you'd hear him speaking to his horse. I shouldn't be surprised if there were children playing outside. In any case, I didn't show myself, but an old woman put a chair in the sun outside her door, sat down, and is knitting. There are also at least three quite old men smoking their pipes and talking about rain and fine weather, standing with their hands in their pockets.”

“It's incredible!”

“I had my eyes mostly on the chickens,” said Angelo. “Still, you'll see for yourself how the land lies presently, when I allow you to try your knees. But take my word for it, you'd better lie still and keep warm. We're going to need our legs. We're on a hilltop with the finest view in the world. I'll tell you why I had my eyes mostly on the chickens. Now that you've drunk your tea, stay nice and quiet. This is what I'm going to do. Here are your pistols, put them by your head, but there's nothing to worry about for leagues around. I'm going to buy a chicken and some vegetables. I shall borrow a pot. We're going to stew a chicken. That'll put some heart into us. We're famished: at least, I am.”

The people of the hamlet were very hospitable. They wanted to make some coffee for Angelo, but he, seized with qualms, talked to them frankly about the cholera and how unwise it was to let strangers into their houses.

“You wouldn't be the first to come in and drink from my bowls,” said the woman to whom he had spoken. “We don't see so many people on the roads these days because of the soldiers, but a while ago we had swarms of them. We've always done what we should and no one's died of it. Don't leave your lady in the woods; bring her here. If you really insist on staying out of doors, come and set yourselves up on the green. Then I can keep a closer eye on the pot I'm lending you. It's worth more than the chicken you're buying.”

Angelo returned with this good news to the camp under the ilex. He found the young woman up and ready. She had tidied herself a bit, undone her bun, and braided her hair. This made her look like a little girl. Her face, framed in black tresses, now had the perfect shape of a lance-point.

Angelo and the young woman stayed two days in this hamlet, sleeping out near the houses, eating chicken and potatoes baked in the ashes. After the recent orgies of maize and brown sugar, nothing could have been better than the rock salt. Angelo still refused the homemade bread, though its cheapness was tempting, and the wine, which, being drawn from a cask, one could not be sure of.

“Let's boil everything,” he said to the young woman, “and eat nothing that hasn't been boiled under our eyes. The question is whether we want to profit from all the remote tracks we've taken, or whether we're going to be at the mercy of this bread, which, I admit, makes my mouth water too. I've heard it repeated a thousand times, as you have, that neither the cholera nor the plague—so they say—gets into bread. But when one's been through all we have, and especially six hours on foot, one doesn't want to get fooled by putting the wrong thing in one's mouth.”

The countryside had a majestic vastness. It was a gently undulating plateau (what Angelo had called a valley, where the hamlet's four houses stood, was just a depression, barely perceptible, like the hollow of the hand). The land, sulphur-yellow or tender green, extended to infinity, bearing on its rolling back lopsided trees and bushes as light and transparent as foam. It was at the fullness of that heat which lingers into autumn. The wind was languishing, yet, across these open spaces, it had the voice of the sea, even in its faintest sighs. A pale light gilded the vast circle of mountains all around the horizon.

Angelo pointed out that there was not a single bird to be heard. Normally, during these Indian summers, the thrushes sing, the tits go mad and hurl splashes of blue at the sun. Here there was nothing of the kind; only the wind brushing its peaceful surf over the tiles of the houses and the bare branches of the trees. Sometimes the dust rose from some dry heath and enlivened the expanse with its floating columns.

The man living in the house nearest to the road came and sat down on the green. He was an old man of over eighty. He said he looked after all his own needs.

“Do
you
believe in this cholera?” he added.

Double chins of long standing hung in scarves about his scrawny neck. His face was shriveled like a nut. His black lips moved as he chewed his quid.

He stared at the cloaks.

“That's good cloth you've got there, monsieur. Is it tartan or what? Or maybe it's navy stuff? I know Toulon. I was a carpenter at the arsenal. Where do they make cloth like that? Winter's on its way up here. People say there's too much dying. Where do they get that idea? It isn't a very new one. Now they're in a panic. Are you on the run too? What've you got in those bags? That's real leather if I ever saw any. There's been more than one went down this road! A regular parade! Where did they go to? It must be twenty years since I set foot in Saint-Dizier. Do you know Saint-Dizier?”

“No,” said Angelo, “we were just wondering if it's big and if it's on the road to Gap.”

“What's Gap?”

“A place we're heading for.”

“No, it can't be. Saint-Dizier isn't on the roads. There's the one that goes in and the one going out. Period. And that's all, and it's enough. It's not the Toulon road. I've been there. Look at that crooked almond tree; it was the size of my finger at the time. It was growing out of an old stump. I walked by it at four in the morning one summer. I said to myself: ‘What's he up to here, the little bastard?' He's grown. I was young. First-rate carpenter and sawyer. One knocks about the world. You haven't got three sous?”

He had slid his behind across the grass to get near the cloaks and feel their cloth between fingers that looked like iron.

“It's the devil's own job getting a bit of tobacco; they've made a plug cost its weight in gold. Vices cost money. And in the end we all wind up the same way! That's for sure. The fat fellow who came every year in March to buy the kids, you'd have given him a hundred years with cheeks like his. He's as dead as a doornail, like the others. You should see this country in March, it's a fair sight. Sometimes we have twenty kids. The breath he'd waste for a sou! He's kicked the bucket. It's bound to happen. What do you expect? He was getting on!”

Angelo gave him a little cigar. He broke it in two and stuffed half of it into his mouth at once.

“You must be rich to smoke these,” he said. “They cost a sou apiece.”

He kept on trying to find out what was in the bags, squinting also at the case, and ceaselessly fingering the cloaks. Finally he became too familiar and Angelo was about to make him move off when a man came out of the house behind the little chestnut tree, just at the right moment, and called the old man, who hastened to obey. Angelo and the young woman thought afterward that this man must have been there a long time, watching them. Perhaps indeed he had arranged it.…

“This place seems queer to me,” said the young woman several times. “Believe me, we're not safe.”

“They claim that soldiers never come this way, and we've every reason to believe it.”