The Horseman on the Roof (57 page)

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but we must reach that road before dark. We'll go to that post house and you shall sleep in a bed. Come on, it's the last lap.”

He suggested she should again ride on the mule. She vehemently refused and stepped out, still half asleep but with an enchanting smile.

Shortly before nightfall they reached the edge of the plateau. Everything was as the man in the riding-coat had described it. The main road lay a few hundred yards below them.

“And there's the little poplar wood,” said Angelo, “with its cluster of houses. And the post house.”

But she was looking at him stupidly. Before he could cry: “What's the matter, Pauline?” she gave a sort of reflection of a still charming little smile and dropped down, slowly, folding her knees, bending her neck, her arms dangling.

As he rushed to her side, she opened her eyes and plainly tried to speak, but belched out a small flood of white, clotted matter, like rice paste.

Angelo tore the pack off the mule, spread his big cloak on the grass, and wrapped the young woman in it. He tried to make her drink some rum. Her neck was already as hard as wood and yet it shuddered, as if from tremendous blows struck deep inside her.

Angelo listened to those strange appeals to which the whole body of the young woman was responding. He was empty of ideas. He was only conscious that evening was falling, that he was alone. In the end he thought of the little Frenchman, but as of something minute. Then he dragged the young woman's body further away from the road, more into the bushes. This place where the infection had as yet claimed no victim would be liable to every excess of egoism at the first sign of attack, and he remembered the man with the sack of loaves they had passed the same morning on this road.…

He pulled off the young woman's boots. Her legs were already stiff. Her calves were trembling. Her straining muscles protruded from the flesh. From her mouth, still plastered with its flow of rice, came little, shrill moans. He noticed that her lips were curling back over her teeth and that the young woman had a sort of cruel, almost carnivorous laugh on her face. Her cheeks were fallen in and palpitating. He began to massage her icy feet with all his strength.

He remembered the woman he had treated on the doorstep of the barn at Peyruis. He had needed the old gentleman's skill to undress her. He had to undress Pauline. He had also to light a fire and heat some big stones. He dared not stop massaging her feet, which remained like marble.

At length he told himself: “If I think about it, I'm done for. Let's do things properly.” He had suddenly lost hope. He stood up and unpacked all the heavy garments that might give some warmth. He found enough twigs and even a thick pine log. He lit a fire, heated some stones, set a sort of cushion under the head whose face he could no longer recognize and whose weight astonished him. The hair, flowing over his hands, was harsh and as though tortured by a desert heat.

Angelo had placed some large pebbles in the fire. When they were very hot, he wrapped them in some linen and laid them close to the young woman's stomach. But the feet had turned purple. He began to massage again. He could feel the cold fleeing from his fingers and climbing up the leg. He raised the skirts. An icy hand seized his.

“I'd rather die,” said Pauline.

Angelo gave some answer, he knew not what. That voice, though a stranger's, put him in a sort of tender rage. He shook off the hand brutally and tore out the laces binding the skirt at the waist. He undressed the young woman the way one skins a rabbit, dragging off the petticoats and drawers bordered with lace. He immediately massaged the thighs but, feeling them warm and soft, he withdrew his hands as though from live charcoal and returned to the legs and knees, which were already in a grip of ice and turning blue. The feet were snow-white. He uncovered the belly and studied it attentively. He felt it with both hands, all over. It was supple and warm but traversed with shudders and cramps. He could see it was inhabited by bluish shapes, swimming about and rising to strike the surface of the skin.

The young woman's groans now came rather loudly with each spasm. They made a continuous complaint, betraying no very great pain but accompanying the deep workings of some sort of ambiguous state, which was waiting, even hoping (or so it seemed), for a paroxysm when the cry would become savage and, as it were, delirious. These spasms that shook the whole body recurred every minute, making Pauline's stomach and thighs crack and arch each time, leaving her exhausted under Angelo's hands after each assault.

He never stopped massaging. He had thrown off his jacket. At each cry he could feel the cold make a fresh advance in its climb up the legs. He at once attacked the thighs, which were beginning to be peacock-patterned with blue spots. He renewed the little nest of burning-hot stones around the stomach.

He suddenly noticed that it was pitch dark, that the mule had gone. “I'm alone,” he thought. For all his fear of egoism, he called out. His voice made a little insect noise. At one moment he heard, down on the main road, the rumble of a tilbury, the trotting of a horse. He saw the lantern of someone going on his way, a hundred yards or two below him.

He had massaged with such vigor and for so long that he was broken with fatigue and aching all over, but after feeding the fire he returned to those thighs and stomach. Pauline had begun to foul herself below. He cleaned everything carefully and placed under her buttocks a draw-sheet made of embroidered underclothes that he had taken out of the little case.

“She must be forced to drink some rum,” he thought. With his fingertip he unblocked the mouth, choked with fresh vomitings of rice pudding. He struggled to unlock the teeth. He succeeded. The mouth opened. “The smell isn't nauseating,” he thought, “no, it doesn't smell bad.” He poured in the rum, little by little. At first it was not swallowed, but then the alcohol vanished like water in sand.

He automatically raised the bottle to his own lips and drank. He realized in a flash that he had that instant been holding the neck of the bottle to Pauline's mouth, but said to himself: “And so what?”

The cyanosis seemed to have settled in above the thighs. Angelo energetically massaged the folds of the groin. The diarrhea had ceased. The young woman was breathing feebly, first hiccuping, then panting heavily as though after a struggle that had left her breathless. Her stomach was still shuddering with memories. The moaning had ceased.

She continued to disgorge clotted, whitish matter. Angelo noticed a frightful stench spreading. He wondered where it came from.

For some hours on end he had been asking himself: “What have I got in the way of remedies? What must I do?” All he had was a little case full of feminine underwear, his own case, his saber, his pistols. For a moment he thought of using gunpowder. He did not know for what. But it seemed to him that there was some power in it, what power did not matter, that might reinforce his own. He thought of mixing this gunpowder with the
eau de vie
and making Pauline drink it. He told himself: “This isn't the first time I've tended someone with cholera, and I'd have given my life for the little Frenchman. There's no doubt about that. This time I'm outmatched.”

He could only massage without stopping. His hands ached. He massaged with
eau de vie.
He kept renewing the hot stones. He carefully dragged the young woman as close as possible to the fire.

The night had become extremely dark and silent.

“This isn't the first time,” thought Angelo, “but they've all died in my hands.”

The absence of hope, rather than despair, and above all physical exhaustion now made him more and more frequently turn to gaze into the night. He was not seeking help but some repose.

Pauline seemed to be slipping away. He dared not question her. The words of the man in the riding-coat were still too recent. He remembered the lucidity of which the man had spoken, and he dreaded lucidity from this mouth, still discharging its whitish mud.

He was amazed, even rather terrified, by the emptiness of the night. He wondered how he had managed not to be frightened till now, especially of things so menacing. Yet he never ceased to labor with his hands to bring back warmth to that groin at the edges of which the cold and marble hue still lurked.

At length a whole series of little, highly colored, brightly lit thoughts came to him, some of them absurd and laughable, and, at the end of his tether, he rested his cheek on that stomach, now shuddering only feebly, and fell asleep.

A pain in his eyes woke him; he saw red, opened his eyes. It was day.

He could not think what the soft, warm thing was on which his head was resting. He could see he was covered to the chin by the folds of his cloak. He breathed deeply. A cool hand touched his cheek.

“I covered you up,” said a voice. “You were cold.”

He was on his feet in an instant. The voice was not entirely unfamiliar. Pauline was looking at him with almost human eyes.

“I fell asleep,” he thought, but said it aloud and in a miserable tone of voice.

“You were at the end of your tether,” she said.

He asked some incoherent questions and made several futile journeys between the pack-saddle and Pauline's pillow, not knowing either what he wanted to fetch or what ought to be done. At length he had the sense to feel the patient's pulse. It was beating quite strongly and its speed was on the whole reassuring.

“You've been ill,” he said emphatically and as if it were necessary to find an excuse for something: “you still are; you mustn't move; I'm very glad.”

He caught sight of the naked stomach and thighs, and turned purple in the face.

“Cover yourself up well,” he said.

He fetched all the contents of his case and made the young woman a nicely banked-up bed with plenty of hot stones. He placed several at her feet and as high as he dared up the legs, almost to the knees. In doing so he could not help brushing the back of his hand against her flesh. It seemed to have recovered some of its warmth.

The morning was as joyful as that of the day before.

Angelo remembered the maize water Teresa used to make him take when he was small: apparently it cured everything, particularly dysentery. He had never once thought of maize water since he had dedicated himself to the fight for the good of mankind. This morning, everything spoke of it: the air, the light, and the fire. He remembered that sticky, insipid but very refreshing infusion.

He at once set some water to boil and made an excellent infusion, concentrating solely on what he was doing.

The young woman drank greedily, several times. Towards noon the cramps were plainly over.

“I'm only exhausted,” she said, “but you…”

“I'm fine,” said Angelo. “It's enough to see that shy pink beginning to come to the right place in your cheeks. Just there it never means fever. Now let me feel your pulse.”

It was clearly much stronger and more regular than two hours before. The afternoon passed in ever renewed attentions, in quickly dissipated alarms. It was warm, and although not sleepy, far from it, Angelo received the images of the world's splendor in a head quite empty but ready to seize on anything with drunken joy.

He renewed the hot stones ceaselessly.

At length the young woman announced that she now felt as warm and soft as a chick in its egg.

Evening fell. Angelo made coffee with the handful of beans given him by the man in the riding-coat.

“Did you disinfect yourself?” said the young woman suddenly.

“Of course,” said Angelo. “Don't worry.”

He drank the coffee and a generous bumper of rum. He lay down, wrapped in his jacket near the fire.

“Give me your hand,” said Pauline.

He held out his hand and the young woman put hers in it. He was already half asleep. Slumber seemed to him a sure and peaceful refuge.

“But the hot stones are no longer necessary,” he told himself.

“You've torn my clothes,” said Pauline next morning. “You've wrenched off the fastenings of my skirt, and look what you've done to these pretty lace drawers. How am I going to dress? I feel quite well.”

“That's out of the question,” said Angelo. “I'm going down to the road—it's no distance—to watch out for some passer-by who'll take a message to the post house. Our mule's gone. And I insist on your lying where you are. You're going home in a carriage. This evening we'll be at Théus.”

“I'm anxious about you,” she said. “I've had cholera, there's no doubt about that. It's not my skirt fastenings and drawers that have made my stomach so sore. I must have been horrible! And you, haven't you been rash?”

“Yes, but in these cases the infection shows at once. I've got a night's start on death,” said Angelo, “and it won't catch me up.”

He had not been five minutes by the roadside before he saw a small, empty hay cart coming from the direction of Saint-Martin. He advanced to meet it. It was led by a peasant who at first glance seemed rather stupid. Between its side racks, along with pitchforks and tarpaulins, was an old woman in a red petticoat.

Angelo told them straight out that over in the bushes was a woman who had been ill; now she had recovered, he asked them to be so good as to transport her as far as the post house. Moreover, he would pay for it. This made no impression either on the stupid man or the old woman.

They stopped the cart and followed Angelo stolidly into the thicket.

“But it's Madame la Marquise!” said the old woman.

She had been daily woman for a whole winter at Théus. She was now living with her son-in-law, the simpleton. Proudly she gave orders. At length, toward three in the afternoon, Pauline was lying in a big, soft bed in the postmaster's house, asleep in the midst of hot-water bottles.

“No one's scared here,” thought Angelo. Indeed everyone spoke to him with all the respect two gold pieces he had distributed on arrival could procure. They kept calling him “Marquis,” and he had to be extremely firm in order to avoid this tiresome misunderstanding, which made him blush each time. He did not altogether succeed. They saw him leave the dining-room hourly and go upstairs. He would open the bedroom door, look at Pauline as she slept, and even feel her pulse, which was still excellent. And, well, you know, here a bed was a bed, especially with a young woman in it who did not appear very ill. They were making a lot of fuss about nothing down in the plains and by the sea, if that was what the sick looked like in the end. The carters there had in any case decided that it wasn't plague at all; that this woman with such lovely hair and such a friendly smile for everyone was indeed ill, but simply with the vapors. A Marquise, in their opinion (and the old woman of Saint-Martin had done all she could to see that no one forgot who Pauline was), was subject to vapors. As for the Marquis, they said, he was young. He'd learn. “He'll end by drinking his punch quietly like everyone else, if he doesn't come to a bad end.”