The Horseman on the Roof (7 page)

Angelo first took a good puff at his cigar. “I don't claim to be braver than another man,” he said; “I've only the character nature gave me. I'm rather likely to be scared by something unexpected that upsets my nerves. But as soon as I've had a quarter of an hour to think it over, I become completely indifferent to danger. That said, and if you've no objection, I'll stay with you until those ten soldiers you mentioned just now get here. I'll lend you a hand. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but you're obviously all in.”

“As soon as I saw you,” said the young man, blinking, “I'd have bet forty to one that you were one of those who act the fool as naturally as they breathe; and I'd have won. In your place I'd give a couple of cigars to the imbecile with full powers in this valley of Jehoshaphat and I'd cut out for the Drôme, where you have some chance of escaping this mess, if what they say is true. At any rate, I'd have a try. One only lives once. That said—as you put it—I won't hide the fact that I'm in a cold sweat at the thought of spending one more night all alone in these blessed regions. You are obviously stronger than I am, and I can't send you on your way by force. You can't imagine,” he added, “how nice it is to talk and hear someone talk; I could let it lull me to sleep.…” It is a fact that Angelo, too, took pleasure in talking in very long sentences. The young man's eyes had lost all irony.

“Take a rest,” said Angelo.

“Hell, no,” he replied; “a dose of medicine, and let's get going. They creep off to die in the most unlikely corners sometimes; I'd so much like to save one or two. It's the sort of thing one remembers with pleasure in fifty years' time. Take care of the cigars. We'll reward ourselves with one after the dirty work.”

Angelo checked his arsenal. He had two pistols and ten rounds for each. “Five for the big pigs,” said the young man. “We'll club the small ones. Keep the other rounds, we may need them. Seriously,” he went on, “thanks for staying with me. I feel quite fit. You're taking a huge risk—there, I've given you fair warning! Anyway, thank you; I know now that when there's cholera, especially the
morbus,
the only way to pry you loose would be to snip off your snout, like a tick. I'm a bit drunk, you know, but the thanks are sincere. And now to work!”

The animals had clearly not been fed for some days. As soon as the doors were opened the sheep galloped off across the fields toward the mountain. The horses' tethers had to be cut. They were so maddened by their empty racks that they shot out like rockets. Once free, they made for the stream, and from there, soon after, they could be seen setting off in groups in the same direction as the sheep. Angelo blew out the brains of three huge pigs; they were mad with rage and had already devoured half the door of their sty. From the top of a low wall the young man bashed in a sow's head with a billhook. This one was ferocious and charged the man like a bull. She had eaten her piglets.

“Well, now it's silent as a tomb,” said the young man. It was true: there was now no longer any sound except the silky fluttering of the birds; they gave no cry.

“I'm going to take a look inside there,” said the young man. “You wait here.”

“What do you take me for?” said Angelo. “Besides, I've already been in; that's where I killed the rats.”

“Excuse me, Your Highness,” said the young man.

“You're laughing at my clean coat,” thought Angelo, “but you'll find I can dirty it just as well as you.”

“Unquestionably done for,” said the young man before the spectacle of the corpses. “Did you look in the corners?” He opened the cupboards and the door of a low scullery, and began to rummage, striking a light from his tinderbox.

“What are you looking for?” said Angelo, who needed to talk.

“The last one,” said the young man. “The last one must have dragged himself off to some unspeakable corner. As he's the one who has a chance, he's the one we have to find. I'm not here just to look around. When they've got the strength, they travel. I bet you there are some stretched out under the broom bushes. But in cases of sudden collapse, they go burrowing into places you'd never dream of. I wasn't born yesterday, you know. Let me talk, don't mind me. It keeps me occupied. Yesterday, I talked all day to myself. It's no joke finding blue people in rat-holes. At Montfroc, just now, I ran one to earth in the dovecot. A quarter of an hour sooner and I might have done something for him, but he had hidden himself too well. I wouldn't have saved him, but I could have done something for him. He'd have had a much more attractive death. Well! there's nothing here, old man, except something extremely precious for you and me, and anyone we come across who needs rubbing.”

He emerged from the scullery with a bottle of a white liquid like water.
“Eau de vie,”
he said, “the well-named. That's something we can let ourselves steal. It's a remedy. I ran out of my last drops of laudanum and ether long ago. I still have a little morphine left, but I'm saving it. To tell you the truth, I give 'em rather potluck treatment. Anyhow, with this we can do a first-rate massage. I'd have preferred to find something to get my teeth into, but that, of course, is taboo. Talk,” he added, “talk without stopping, it relaxes the nerves.”

They went over the house from top to bottom. The young man ferreted in the darkest recesses.

In one of those houses, apart from the main group, into which Angelo had not yet penetrated, they found a man who was not quite dead. He had hidden himself in a storeroom, behind some sacks of grain. He was doubled up in his death agony; his mouth was disgorging over his knees floods of that whitish matter like rice pudding, which Angelo had already noticed in the mouths of the corpses.

“Can't be helped,” said the young man, “we're not here for fun. Grab him by the shoulders.” They laid him on the storeroom floor. His legs were drawn up and had to be forced flat. “Cut me a twig from that heather broom,” said the young man. He made a little mop with some lint from his satchel and cleaned the man's mouth. Angelo had not yet touched the sick man except, and with great repugnance, to haul him out of his hiding-place. “Unbutton his trousers,” said the young man, “and pull them off. Rub his legs and thighs with the alcohol,” he went on, “and rub hard.” He had poured some
eau de vie
into the sick man's mouth, which kept emitting a harsh rattle and a sharp hiccup. Angelo hastened to obey. He puffed out his cheeks to stem great retchings of wind that rose up from his stomach. At length, after a long struggle, rubbing those spindly legs and thighs with all his strength, though they remained blue and icy, Angelo heard the young man telling him to stop; there was nothing more to be done.

“Not one will let me have the pleasure of saving him,” said the young man. “Hold on there, don't do more than you have to.” Angelo hadn't realized that he had remained kneeling by the corpse, his hands spread flat on the thin thighs soiled with rice pudding. “Quite enough have got it, without your trying to catch it,” said the young man. “Don't you think I have enough patients as it is? Pour some
eau de vie
over your hands and come here.” He struck a light and set fire to the alcohol with which Angelo's hands were covered. “Better a few blisters than the squitters at a time like this, believe me. Anyhow, it only burns the hairs. Don't wipe them, let them alone, and come and smoke a cigar outside amid the beauties of nature. We've earned it!”

“The devil! I've hardly got the strength left to puff at your cheap stogy,” he said when they were stretched on the dry grass, under the mulberry tree to which they had tied their horses.

“Go to sleep,” said Angelo.

“D'you think it's as easy as that?” said the young man. “I may never be able to sleep again in my life without a nurse holding my hand.” To his stupefaction Angelo saw that the young man's eyes were filled with tears. He did not, of course, dare give him his hand to hold or even go on looking at him. The afternoon was drawing to an end. Great layers of dusty mist covered the mountain and filled up the distances into which the road plunged. There was total silence.

“A fit of depression,” said the young man. “It's my empty stomach, pay no attention.”

When the night came, Angelo lit a small fire in case the soldiers should arrive.

Up till about midnight the young man did not speak another word, although he remained with his eyes wide open. From time to time Angelo put wood on the fire and cocked an ear in the direction of the road. All at once there was a queer sound, as though from an animal entangled in the bush five or six paces off. Angelo thought it might be an escaped pig, and loaded his pistol. But the thing gave a little moan, which was not that of a pig. For the length of a shiver Angelo felt the extremely disagreeable closeness of those houses full of dead lying in the shadows. He was clutching his pistol like a perfect fool when he saw a small boy advance into the firelight.

He might have been ten or eleven and seemed quite indifferent to everything. He even had his hands ostentatiously stuck into his pockets. The young man made him drink some of the drug and the little boy began to talk in patois. He stood sturdily planted on legs set well apart, and several times took his hands out of his pockets, to stuff them back again after hitching up his trousers. He seemed placid and sure of himself; even when he was looking at the thick night beyond the fire.

“Can you understand what he's saying?” asked the young man.

“Not altogether,” said Angelo. “I think it's about his father and mother.”

“He says they died yesterday evening. But I gather his sister was still more or less alive when he left. They're woodcutters who live in huts an hour from here. I think I'd better go up there. He claims one can get there on horseback. You'd better stay here, to keep up the fire and wait for the soldiers.” Angelo muttered that the soldiers could perfectly well manage by themselves, if they were worthy of the name. And he swung into his saddle. “You're a damned conceited fellow,” said the young man.

“Come here, you,” he said to the child, “climb up on this horse, you can show us the way.

“Hi, you there!” he shouted suddenly to Angelo, who had started off ahead. “Get down and come back here. This little idiot's sick as a dog.”

As he approached the horse, the child had begun to tremble from head to foot. “Shove some wood on the fire,” said the young man, “and heat some big flat stones.” He took off his coat and spread it on the ground.

“Will you keep that on your back, you fool!” said Angelo. He unbuckled his kit and threw his big raincloak and his bedding onto the grass.

“It'll be ruined,” said the young man.

“You deserve one on the jaw for that,” said Angelo. “Use these things and keep your thoughts to yourself.”

The child had fallen on his side without removing his hands from his pockets. He had convulsions, and they could hear his teeth chattering. They made a bed with Angelo's things and laid the child on it.

“Damned fool of a kid with his hands in his pockets,” said the young man. “Look at him! To show the world, eh? Where do they get it from? What a clever kid! Wouldn't you have said, when he arrived…? What kept him on his feet? Pride, eh? You didn't want to be yellow, eh? Little bastard!” He undressed him. “Give me some hot stones. Take the bottle of
eau de vie.
Rub him. Harder! Don't be afraid of hurting him. His skin'll grow back.”

Under Angelo's hands the body was ice-cold and hard. It was clouding over with purple marblings. The boy began to vomit and to let out a foaming diarrhea that spurted from beneath him as if Angelo were squeezing a leather bottle. “Stop,” said the young man, “he's now got eight grains of calomel in his tummy. We shall see.”

They flanked him on both sides with about ten big stones, burning hot and wrapped in Angelo's shirts, and covered him over completely with the folds of the huge raincloak, which they had padded with the rest of the linen.

The child retched for a moment, then vomited a huge mouthful of rice pudding. “I'll give him another four grains and damn the risk,” said the young man. “If you can, go on rubbing him, but don't uncover him; put your hands underneath.”

“I don't know what it is,” said Angelo after a while, “but it's all wet.”

“Dysentery,” said the young man. “I'll burn your hands. Get on with it. Now that we've begun.”

“It's not that,” said Angelo, “I'd give ten years of my life—”

“No sentimentality,” said the young man.

The child's face, grown waxen and minute, was lost in the thick cloth folds of the cloak. They opened the cloak to renew the hot stones. They had to change the linen; it was copiously fouled. Angelo was amazed at the child's sudden thinness. The whole cage of his ribs was visible, sticking to the skin of his chest; his thighbones, shins, and kneecaps stood out starkly in his blue flesh. “Take the powder out of your pistol,” said the young man, “soak it in the
eau de vie
and make me some poultices with handkerchiefs, or you can tear up this shirt; I'm going to try blistering on his back and over the heart. He isn't doing well. His breathing's too damned short. My impression is, he's sinking damned fast.”

On account of his ceaseless massaging of that visibly thinning and bluing body, Angelo was covered with sweat. The blistering had no effect. The patches of cyanosis were growing darker and darker. “What do you expect?” said the young man. “I'm sent to hunt tigers with butterfly nets. Gunpowder isn't a therapeutic! They wouldn't give me remedies. They were too scared to part with anything. Thought the earth was going to vanish from under their feet. We haven't begun yet. He could be saved. If only I had some belladonna … I told them: ‘What do you expect me to damn well do with your ether? It's not disinfecting I'm after, to hell with that! It's not to save my life, it's to help others in time.' They don't realize that anyone wants to save lives. Oh, to hell with the dirty cowards! They were in too much of a funk to kick me out, but if I'd laid a hand on their box of tricks they'd have bitten me. And now we're in for it, trying to get this blood going with our thumbs.” He too was massaging all the time, back, arms, shoulders, hips, and chest. Every few minutes he renewed the wall of hot stones and the stomach wrapping—a flannel waistcoat that Angelo kept warming at the fire. The vomiting and diarrhea had ceased, but the breathing was increasingly short and spasmodic. At length, the child's face, hitherto vacant and indifferent, was kneaded by convulsive grimaces.