The Horseman on the Roof (48 page)

“It's something else,” she said. “We're being watched. I can feel it; something presses on my shoulders whenever I turn my back on the houses. The little boy who was there just now hitting the euphorbia with his whip wasn't doing it naturally. I've whipped euphorbias like everyone else. I know what it's like. It doesn't fit in with the sly glances he was throwing in our direction. He was watching us.”

“It's just that we're strangers, and further we're bound to behave differently from the people of Saint-Dizier, or anywhere else, after our recent adventures. I've never seen eyes as big as yours.”

“Well then, I must tell you what happened to me this morning. I'd gone into the bushes. On my way back I met the woman who sold you the chicken. She had obviously been waiting for me, without wishing to show it. She said: ‘Show me the ring on your finger?' I assure you it didn't sound like a joke. I showed it to her. ‘Will you give it to me?' she said. I said: ‘No,' very firmly. One doesn't go into the bushes with a pistol, but she didn't scare me. And now there's the old boy and the one who called him at the right moment. And the little boy. And a face I just saw now, watching us from behind the pillar of the barn—don't look—on the right. It's just gone.”

“I hadn't noticed that ring. You weren't wearing it these last days?”

“No, I put it on yesterday morning, under the ilex, when you were on patrol.”

“I saw the man hiding behind the pillar of the barn, sure enough. He does indeed seem to be following all our movements. It's the young man who was drawing water from the well this morning. How many are there altogether in this hamlet?”

“I've counted nine: four women and five men, including the old man and the boy. The women are sturdily built.”

“They'd better have their hearts in the right place too, if it comes to a fight. I intend to shoot straight into them and not at their legs. We won't attack but we'll take our precautions. Let's pack. You're not afraid?”

“I'd gladly crack the head of that woman who noticed my ring before you did,” said the young woman. “Trust me, I've a steady hand and I'm not boasting. We've fallen among a bunch of those brigands we've been hearing about.”

“No,” said Angelo, “we've fallen among worthy people who no longer fear the gendarmes. That's worse. They'd cut off your head with an ear-pick, even if it took them a hundred tries.”

They made up the pack. Angelo watched the houses out of the corner of his eye. He rejoiced in this slight atmosphere of war, with nothing to fear but gunshots. “If there's something behind all this,” he thought, “our packing up will bring it out in the open.”

In fact, a door opened, and a man took a few swift steps in their direction. He was holding a gun. The other doors had opened and the men and women came out, even the old man. But there was only one gun, and even before it was leveled, Angelo had turned to face them, holding his two pistols well aimed. They all stopped in their tracks.

They could hear the surf of the wind.

More than the pistols (and the young woman had hers raised too, but she was hardly noticed) Angelo's attitude had disconcerted and frightened them. These peasants could see that he was bursting with joy. He was not on the defensive, he was attacking, and with a far from ordinary vigor. He had the little saber under his arm.

“Stand behind me,” he said loudly to the young woman. And, taking two paces toward the group of peasants: “At the slightest movement, blow in the faces of those two freaks with the sticks, over on my right. I'll take care of the ones in front. Throw down that gun, you; throw down those sticks. And step back to the wall.”

He continued to advance on them, and they retreated. But they didn't throw down either gun or sticks. And suddenly the young woman's pistol thundered. It made so extraordinary a noise that in a flash the weapons were thrown down and everyone was lined up against the wall, except for a young man who had fallen. He got up and ran to line up with the others. He had his right hand riddled with buckshot, perhaps even a finger blown off. His blood was dripping on to the grass.

“Reload your pistol,” said Angelo coldly; “I'm holding them.”

And he held them, in fact, without a glance at the wounded man and without a word.

“They'll have to get it into their heads…” he said to himself.

“It's done,” said the young woman quickly.

“Whose is the horse that was harrowing the other morning?”

“It's a mule,” said the man who had had the gun.

“Saddle it and bring it out,” said Angelo. “Pauline, keep an eye on him while he does it. Until we're gone, and in our own time, no one will touch that hand. That fellow's bleeding like a pig, hurry up.”

The saddled mule was quickly brought out, and the young woman loaded the baggage onto it. Angelo was in heaven. At last he could forget the cholera, which was always in his thoughts and was so mystifying. Here, the peasants were simply like urchins caught in some mischief. They clearly still had their hearts set on it: that could be seen in their eyes and furtive looks. The unexpected business of the mule was on the point of giving them courage. Angelo gripped the butts of his pistols with great conviction.

“Here's a remedy and I know how to use it,” he thought.

He made a little speech.

“I'm not a thief,” he said. “And yet, what is there to stop me? We were friends. I paid you for the chicken, the vegetables, even the salt. I gave your spy a cigar. It's you who are responsible for what has just happened. And if I choose not only to take away your mule without paying for it but also to slaughter the lot of you, it would be easy and I'd be within my rights. We have four shots to fire and, as you've seen, this lady knows how to use her weapons. After that, look what I've got under my arm. It could chop you into little pieces and, at the slightest movement, I shan't hesitate to do so. I shall pay you thirty francs for the mule; that's a reasonable price. Anyhow, you've no choice but to accept it. What's more, let me tell you I'm the cousin of your
préfet,
and, if I'm not satisfied with you, I'll send the soldiers. That's why I wasn't worried and you couldn't frighten me. I shall add ten francs for the gun, which I'm taking away to avoid all risks. That makes exactly two louis. I shall throw them to you as soon as we are on the road. My pistols carry fifteen yards perfectly well. You have been warned.”

The young woman took the mule's bridle, and the little troop retired in splendid style. Nothing was left to chance. Angelo walked backward and kept the peasants in view. They had been impressed by his speech. No one had ever spoken to them at such length, looking them in the eyes and, after all, using valid arguments. They were also keen to see the two louis. At heart they were interested in any number of things that no longer demanded assaulting anyone. They were wondering if it would be easy to find the gold coins in the grass where that thin person with the eyes of fire would surely throw them.

Angelo was naturally cunning enough to throw the money some distance, and well away from the road. At the same time he set his troop at the double and so gained some ground.

“Let's stay on the road,” he said. “There it goes, straight over the plateau. However much they feel like following us, we shall see them a long way off. And we've got their gun. Let's go towards Saint-Dizier: evidently it's a town, and they won't like that because there must be soldiers there, or at any rate the sort of men they're afraid of—notary, bailiff, wholesalers. They wouldn't risk murdering anyone in their presence, you may be sure. Anyhow, we've gained a half-mount. Walking's easier when there's an animal to carry the baggage. When you're tired, you can sit on the crupper.”

It was three in the afternoon and still fine weather. After forcing the pace for a league, they slowed down. They had the plateau to themselves.

“We still have an hour of daylight and two hours of dusk. That's enough to bring us to the outskirts of this Saint-Dizier without hurrying. We'll see what it's best to do about the place: avoid it, as I think, or sample it cautiously. At any rate, I have an idea the cholera isn't so strong around here.”

“I don't know,” said the young woman, “I don't agree. The boldness of those peasants seems to prove the contrary.”

“My congratulations on just now. You reloaded your pistol disconcertingly fast.”

“I wanted to disconcert: I didn't reload at all. The most important thing was to make them believe we were wonders. That's often more useful than a charge of powder. Who could imagine I was lying?”

“Even I didn't,” said Angelo. “Nevertheless, although that trick isn't beyond me, it's wiser for me to be warned. In war, I like to do my own lying.”

They were still walking too fast for any consecutive conversation.

Angelo accused himself of having perhaps spoken rather sharply.

“It's true, Christian names are very convenient under fire,” he said, after some time. But he lacked sincerity.

The sun had disappeared behind the mountains. Evening was falling. The warmth, the gold of the day, the peace, all that had made its glory lingered on faintly in spite of the shadows. The road led over the plateau. Tall lilac mountains, till then hidden under the light, were rising on all sides. The depths of distant valleys rumbled at the least movement of the air.

The mule was docile and sturdy.

They saw, quite a long way off, a man walking ahead of them. Gradually they caught him up. He was well-equipped for the road, with gaiters, a haversack, and a stick. He was also wearing a charming straw hat like a harvester's. Seen up close, he had a gray beard, bright blue eyes, and an expression of great charm. One might have given him about sixty years, but he strode vigorously like the Wandering Jew himself.

“Are you going to Saint-Dizier?” he asked, after greeting them. “I hope you don't mind my asking, since we seem to be in the same boat and I've heard bad things about that place.”

From what he said, it was a town of two or three thousand inhabitants, and had been decimated by the plague in a particularly beastly way. Apparently it lay in an unhealthy hollow, beside one of those little streams that dry up in summer. Having barely enough drinking-water, Saint-Dizier was even in normal times a heap of filth. The latrines streaked its walls with hieroglyphs easily deciphered by the nose. The people had vied with each other in dying. Only a quarter of the population, it seemed, was left—completely dazed and yet contriving, so he understood, to recover the enjoyment of a day-to-day, animal existence.

“It's far from funny, it seems. I was advised to give it a wide berth. Seeing a lady, I took the liberty of speaking, to warn you.”

His manners were easy. He also kept, with marked discretion, to his side of the road. Angelo judged him to be brave and to belong to the category of clear-visioned misanthropes.

“We've just had a foretaste of that,” Angelo told him.

He described their adventure at the hamlet.

“That doesn't surprise me,” said the man. “But for your presence of mind and your pistols, you'd have been in the soup, that's certain. I'm like you: I know what decent people are made of. It seems that in normal times they welcome you here most hospitably. That's quite possible, but the question remains whether what they call normal isn't what we are seeing now. I once knew a monkey that had been trained to smoke a pipe. You can do anything with a whip; even make decent people harmless.”

“If you don't mind my asking,” said Angelo, “have you come a long way?”

“I don't mind in the least,” said the man. “What are we doing, you and I, on the roads? There's no need to ask, it's plain to see. We're beating it. And inevitably, in that case, one comes from a long way off. I've been tramping the roads for more than two months. I've come from Marseille.”

It had been quite an expedition. He had left the town toward the end of August, at the moment when the flames of the plague were raging at their height. From eight to nine hundred people more than usual were dying every day. Food changed hands at fantastic prices under the counter. “Crows,” gravediggers, and even medical attendants had been recruited from the prisons, as elsewhere. Besides the cholera, all sorts of deaths were possible. Looters were shot. It was very easy to be a looter. The solid citizens killed seven or eight fountain-poisoners each day. Bourgeois had been discovered sprinkling doorways and even shop windows with green powder. They had been dealt with in a jiffy. The number of loose women openly selling their charms on the cours Belsunce increased along with the number of deaths. There was such a confusion of limbs of every kind, sugared over with rice powder, that, in defiance of all reason, fits of irresistible lust came over one. It's easy to say: “Get thee behind me.” In short, the towns, and Marseille in particular, never places for choirboys, had done nothing but strengthen and adorn the cholera. The survivors took it on themselves to carry out, over and above their own duties, the crimes and lubricities abandoned by the dead.

This man had played solo clarinet at the city opera. He described how he had spent two months of terror and chattering teeth over trifles. He had, like everyone else, been through everything. No one who had not experienced it could ever know what it was like to live in streets hemmed in by houses on every floor of which people were dying. One searched for rat-holes to burrow in. One caught oneself straining to use one's muscles like a grasshopper, dying with desire to leap toward that little strip of pure sky above the streets. Dying was the exact word—one was dying to do almost anything. Besides, just then, it was calm weather, the most calmly crushing weather there could be, the most sumptuous, the most magnificent, with cloth of gold, lapis lazuli, carbuncles on the smallest wrinkle of the sea.