The Horseman on the Roof (17 page)

“Die!” said Angelo, clenching his teeth. He was trembling from head to foot, his legs were giving beneath him, but he kept his eyes fixed on that man and woman who, a few steps from the mutilated corpse, were still racked with convulsions. He wanted to miss nothing of their lonely agony, which gave him a bitter pleasure.

But he was rudely forced to look to himself. His legs had ceased to support him, and even his arms, still clinging to the chimney, were beginning to loosen their grip. He felt a great chill on his neck, and the edge of the roof was only three feet away. He managed at last to lie down between two rows of tiles. Swiftly the blood returned to his head, and he recovered the use of his limbs.

He made his way back to the gallery.

“I'm a prisoner of these roofs,” he told himself. “If I go down into the street, that is the fate that awaits me.”

He remained for a long time in a kind of hypnotic trance. He could no longer think. The bell in the steeple struck. He counted the chimes. It was eleven o'clock.

“What about food?” he said to himself. And he began to suffer again from hunger. “And drink? Do they do things here as in Piedmont? There's always a storeroom just below the roof. That's what I have to find. And drink. Especially up here in this heat! I can, it's true, get down to the cellar of this house, but they're all dead of cholera down there. That's one indiscretion I won't commit. I've got to find a house where the people are still alive; but live ones will give me trouble. All the same, that's what I've got to do.”

The gray cat he had disturbed in the drawing-room the night before put its head out of the cat-hole, slipped through, drawing its feet through the opening one after the other, and came to rub up against him, purring.

“How plump you are,” he said to it, scratching it affectionately between the eyes. “What do you feed on, you? Birds? Pigeons? Rats?”

The light and heat were now intolerable. The white sky was grinding the roofs to dust. There were no longer any swallows. Only the flies, clouds of them. The sugary stench had thickened. Even this house was now exhaling a sour breath from its depths.

A hundred yards from where he was, toward the rotunda of the church, Angelo made out through the mists of the sun another, rather higher gallery, on which some linen was hung out on wires.

“Those who take the trouble to wash and dry things are alive,” said Angelo to himself. “That's the place to go to. But watch out, you poor bastard; don't go getting your face bashed in.”

He took off his boots. He still had to make up his mind whether to put them down and establish his headquarters here, where there were sacks to sleep on, or to set off by the grace of God across the roofs, in which case he must carry the boots with him. He found a piece of string, and that decided him. He passed the string through the straps, tied the boots together, and hung them round his neck. This left his hands free.

But the clay of the tiles, gorged with sunshine, burned like an oven-plate. It was impossible to walk on them barefoot or even in stockings. After a few steps Angelo had to beat a hasty retreat to the gallery. Finally he managed to make himself some slippers out of small, very thick sacks, into which he put his feet, tying them around his legs. He began to navigate over the rooftops. The cat followed him attentively like a dog.

It was relatively easy provided one could avoid being sickened by certain slopes that fell away toward inner courtyards, black and seductive, like well-mouths. These gulfs would appear abruptly, one could not avoid them. They lurked in funnels of shelving roofs, or concealed behind ridges. One only saw them on reaching the crest. Even from there they were, if not concealed, at least hypocritically covered over by sun vapors.

It was most unpleasant. On several occasions when Angelo, having reached the top of a gable (one of those black triangles he had seen in the night) found himself suddenly face to face with the dark pit that opened up behind it, he tottered, he even had to steady himself with his hands on the tiles and crawl off obliquely on all fours. Those depths were breathing.

But these fits of giddiness kept coming, and even when, having reached the other side of a ridge, Angelo saw nothing at the bottom of the slope but another roof rising in turn, he would let himself slide into this wave-hollow as instinctively as a sleepwalker. Yet his mind was alert, and he suffered cruelly from these lapses of physical strength. Fear gripped him by the stomach and each time he vomited a little bile.

As he neared a small tower, Angelo was abruptly enveloped in some thick black material that began to flutter, crackling and creaking. It was a pile of jackdaws that had just risen. The birds were unafraid. They spun slowly around him, keeping close and striking him with their wings. He could feel thousands of little gold eyes, if not malicious, at any rate extraordinarily cold, staring at him. He defended himself by flailing with his arms, but several beaks pecked him hard on the hands and even on the head. He succeeded in ridding himself of the birds only after a violent struggle, and he even struck down one or two of them as he swung around with his fists. As they fell they gave a moan that made the whole flock veer off behind the gable of a roof, and their claws rattled like hail on its tiles.

Other flocks of jackdaws and crows had by this time risen from the places where they were dozing, and they drifted up in ragged bands. But seeing Angelo on his feet and active, they slid away on stiffened wings, and settled once more on the roofs.

There were vast colonies of them. Gray with dust, their plumage blended with the dingy gray of the tiles and even with the pink of the sun-baked clay. They were invisible until they flew, but in all the time Angelo had been up here, this was the first occasion they had done so. Till now they had clung like black hoods to certain houses, through whose skylights, windows, and crevasses they need only pour to feed at their ease.

Angelo looked toward the gallery from which he had set out. It was very difficult to recognize places. The sun directly overhead, the reflections from the roofs, the uniform glitter of the chalk sky, filled his eyes with red moons. This expanse of roofs was not so flat as the light led one to believe. At length he recognized the place where he had slept. It was a sort of belvedere. He had not suspected this. Retreat was always possible in this direction. His sacking slippers were doing their job well. They prevented him from slipping, and he did not feel the heat of the tiles too keenly. He sat down in the shade of a chimney and recovered his breath. But he had to shut his eyes: the whole expanse had begun to turn and sway around him as though on a badly pinned axle. The cat rubbed against his arm and, raising itself up, pushed its head against his cheek. He felt its stiff little whiskers tickling the corner of his mouth.

“I'm not used to gutters, old man,” he said.

He ached from hunger, but even more from thirst. It gave him no respite. He thought ceaselessly of cold water. He could not think of anything else save as a side issue and at the cost of enormous effort.

At last he reached his objective and, behind the linen hung out on wires, saw some cages containing yellow balls. They were hens.

He only realized that he had found an egg long after he had broken it and licked it up out of his hand. His mouth was full of shell, which he spat out. The white had eased his cardboard throat. He searched less feverishly in the straw of the chicken run. The hens, brooding in a corner in their midday sleep, did not cackle. He found two other eggs, and gulped them down in a more seemly fashion.

The door connecting this gallery with the rest of the house was shut, but on a simple latch that only needed raising to open it. It led on to a small landing, which was reached from below by a ladder. Below was the void of a staircase; silent.

“Have I dropped in again on the dead?” Angelo wondered. “In any case, eggs are safe.” It was then that he noticed some maize freshly scattered in the hencoops. “There's someone alive here.” Yet the house was completely silent.

He ventured down the ladder. He had hardly reached the bottom when a discreet mewing made him look up: it was the cat, which could not get down and was calling to him. He climbed up to fetch it.

His slippers made no sound, but they hampered him. He took them off, hid them under the ladder, and walked in his stockings.

“There may be people down here who stamp your head in with their heels,” he told himself. “I must be nimble.” He was not afraid. He even added: “It's the theory of the forager on active service. How often have you drummed it into thick heads on Coni? But, I'm damned if I ever thought that one day I'd go foraging with a cat!”

He was descending step by step, ears alert to the silence, when he suddenly froze. A door had just opened down below, on the first floor. Footsteps crossed the landing, then started to climb. The cat went down to meet them.

There was a startled exclamation.

“What is it?” asked a man's voice from below.

“A cat,” said a boy's voice.

“What do you mean, a cat?”

“A cat.”

“What's it like?”

“Gray.”

“Chase it away.”

“Don't touch it,” said a woman's voice. “Come down. Come. Come. Come down. Don't touch it. Come.”

All these voices were strained and fearful. The footsteps went down the stairs and hurried across the landing. The door was shut.

The cat came up again.

“Bravo!” said Angelo.

He breathed again. He climbed back to the foot of the ladder and sat down on the bottom rungs.

“Frightened people are the most terrible adversaries I know,” he said to himself, “even if they don't dare touch me, and they won't, they'll go running outside and rouse the whole neighborhood.” He saw himself being pursued across the roofs, and it was not a pleasant prospect.

He waited for a long while. There was no further sound.

At last he said to himself: “I can't stay here forever. They're afraid of their own shadows; I'm thirsty. Let's get going. And if sparks fly, well! sparks will have to fly. I'm a big enough boy to take care of the whole damned town, if it's just a question of not losing face before that damned policeman who is so embarrassing with his kitchen garden.”

Nevertheless, he began to descend with caution. Reaching the second floor he even paused prudently before going to listen at the three doors. Nothing. He looked through a keyhole. Nothing: blackness. Another keyhole: something light, but what? A white wall? Yes: he could make out a nail on the wall. What could there be in this room? Was it the storeroom? He went and listened over the stairwell. Below on the first floor, complete silence. Good. He boldly turned the handle. The door opened.

It was a box-room. Old junk, as in the other house. In the third room, more junk: barrel hoops, broom handles, baskets; a touching portrait of an old lady lying on the floor and ripped by shoe nails. Selfish people.

“Better go back to the dark room. That must be the one.” No. Empty.

Selfish, and they must have raked everything in around them and piled it all up in the room they're in. There were some bare shelves, and by the light of his tinder Angelo saw that the wood still bore traces of pots that had been there at one time and were not there now.

There's nothing to do but go down there.

But first he took an esparto basket. If he found anything, he could put it in that.

On the first floor, two large doors. Not at all like those in the other house: less imposing. This was no house for pianos and bull's-horn mustaches; it denoted the well-to-do but unpretentious peasant: everything was shut. “Here they're in no danger of dying in doorways; they'll die in a heap, like dogs over poisoned soup. If they die.”

Standing on the bottom step, one foot in the air, Angelo looked and listened. The people must be behind the farthest door. One could tell from the fingermarks on the door and the worn-down threshold. From their fear of the cat and the shoe nails on the old lady's portrait, it was a sure bet that this was the kitchen. People like that would only feel safe in a kitchen.

Better see. Angelo put his eye to the keyhole: black and a white strip forming a cornice above the black. A white strip of cloth, a white strip above which there are pots. It's the mantelpiece. The black is the fireplace.

Angelo suddenly started back: a face had just passed. No. It was simply the face of someone seated who had leaned forward and was staying in that position, the arms resting on the thighs, the hands clasped together. The person was rubbing them. It was a man. With a beard. He lowered his head.

“What about the cloud?” said a woman's voice.

“Which one?” said the man, not raising his head, but ceasing to rub his hands.

“The one shaped like a horse.”

“I don't know,” said the man.

He began to rub his hands again.

“It came over the rue Chacundier, and yesterday the carts loaded up there all afternoon.”

The man was rubbing his hands.

“I saw it,” said the woman's voice.

“What?” said the man.

He stopped rubbing his hands.

“The comet.”

“When?” said the man. And he raised his head.

“Last night.”

“Where?”

“There.”

The man raised his head a little higher and looked toward the light.

Something fell off a table.

“Do be careful!” said the woman. She had given a sort of low cry.

A smell of leeks, garlic, tisane, came through the keyhole.

“Let's go farther down,” thought Angelo. “If there's a larder, they've surely placed it as low as possible. Perhaps even underground.”

It was down below but still aboveground, in a shed where there were also stacks of faggots and split logs. A little daylight from the street penetrated underneath the door. Bottles. Angelo made straight for them. They were bottles of tomato catchup. He took three of them. More bottles. A yellow liquid. A label he couldn't read. He put one of these bottles into the basket. “I'll see upstairs.” Now for some wine: corks sealed with red wax. He took a pot of lard, two pots of what was probably jam. A ham? No, but two sausages and ten goat-cheeses, dry, hard, no bigger than écu pieces. No bread.