The Horseman on the Roof (20 page)

“There's the excuse for all revolutions,” he thought, “and even for the way I was manhandled the other evening. You're a fathead,” he added, “these people haven't died here, but who's to say they haven't died somewhere else? There's the whole difference. This is the thought of a leader of men.” He was very proud of it. “If I wanted, I could go and loll in their chairs, but I'll leave that to others! I don't believe the plague's a bearded man, but I'm quite sure it's a little animal, much smaller than a fly and perfectly capable of inhabiting a chair cover or the web of a tapestry. The rooftops haven't done me badly up to now, let's stay there. In any case, this looks poor in victuals to me.”

The houses of this quarter had no galleries, and Angelo searched further in vain in all directions for flat places where he could sleep. No places even where he could get into the shade, as he had under the rotunda's buttresses. The sun was even whiter than usual, the reflection from the polished tiles was as burning as its direct rays.

He nevertheless had the pleasure of seeing the cat appear. He never knew how the animal had managed to rejoin him. Perhaps it had jumped? In any case, from then on it remained at Angelo's heels like a dog, and took advantage of each time he stopped to rub against his legs. It went all around the domain with him, and when Angelo sat down at the foot of a low wall in a bit of shade, the cat jumped on to his knees and made a great show of affection in its fashion.

From the direction of the church square the traffic of the tumbrels continued. From time to time cries, appeals that echoed long in vain, and groans, rose up from the depths of the streets.

In the low wall against which Angelo was leaning his back there opened a rectangular garret window, through which, after a time, the cat jumped. As it did not return Angelo called it, then inserted his head and shoulders into the window. It gave on to a spacious attic full of miscellaneous objects, the sight of which brought his soul a deep feeling of peace. Angelo immediately tried to climb in, but the opening was too narrow. After another look at the raw glare of the rooftops, at the pale hills on which the pyres had just been fed and were beginning to send up enormous, twisting columns of greasy smoke, Angelo felt an irresistible desire for another sight of that yellow, translucent attic, guardian of old bits of stuff, polished wooden clubs, fleur-de-lis fire irons, parasols, skirts on wicker dummies, old hoods of shot taffeta, bookbindings, odd drawers, mother-of-pearl garlands, bouquets of orange blossom, fruits of an elegant and easy life laid to rest in honey. The bodices, dresses, tuckers, bonnets, gloves, jackets, box coats, top hats, stocks, of three generations, hanging from pegs, festooned the walls. Tiny high-heeled shoes of satin, leather, velvet, slippers with silk tassels, hunting-boots, stood upon low pieces of furniture, not in the absurd rows of tidy footwear, but as if the feet had just left them; better still, as though shadowy feet still wore them; almost as though shadowy bodies were still weighing upon them. Lastly, laid flat on the marble top of a chest, a sword in its scabbard. A cavalry sword with its gold sword-knot: all this brought caresses as soothing to the heart as the caresses of the cat. Indeed, the cat was there, lying on an old quilt, and it called to Angelo, cooing like a dove, smooth and melancholy, like the very voice of the vanished world.

Angelo was clinging to the window like a prisoner to the window of his cell.

A scent of long slumbers, of bodies grown old in peace, of tender hearts, of incorruptible youth, of blue passion and of violet-water came from the fair loft.

The bonfires were rolling down upon the town a heavy smoke that tasted of wool fat and cheap candle grease, but made him hungry. Angelo thought of the esparto basket he had left on the other side of the street. With some
victuals
(as they say), if he could squeeze through the narrow window, he could live in there indefinitely.

He wandered over the roofs till noon without being able to take his mind off a need for gentleness.

“Here's a strange and very ill-timed need,” he said to himself. “Things are clear and it's no good beating about the bush. Far from believing the danger comes from a bearded man or from clouds—even clouds shaped like horses—or from the comet even if you too dreamed about it, you know it's simply a question of little creatures smaller than flies, which give people cholera. Not to speak of lunatics who smash in the heads of those who touch the fountains. That's your concern. I can't see why that should have anything to do with the old bodices and satin slippers. Only the saber, if you reason coolly, might be of some use to you, but a few rounds for your pistol would settle things much better. And if you did think of the saber, it was only from a taste for flourishes and panache, because you can handle one marvelously, because your old trade comes back into your wrists—in a word, because you'll never be able to cure yourself of those swashbuckling habits that have already made you look a fool often enough. Not to mention the famous duel, which you could easily have avoided by slipping a louis to a professional assassin. Nothing's sillier than generosity, when generosity goes to the length of lodging in politeness and a feeling for the fitness of things. It's lucky you've no taste for love, as that poor Anna Clèves said; otherwise, heaven help you! But revolutions and cholera can also take you in, like women, if you're not clever! Everything belongs to the clever; they're the masters of the world. Could you be timid, by any chance? I must admit I adore those clothes hanging on the walls, over there. They're all exquisitely made. They've belonged to sensitive beings. Yes, I could live indefinitely in this attic.”

But the smoke from the pyres enfolded him with its taste of tallow, and as he pronounced to himself the word “live” he thought of the esparto basket.

He moved onto the roofs of a long house suggesting a barrack.

The buildings were disposed in squares round an extremely well-kept garden. On the other side of the garden Angelo saw part of a façade pierced by large, regular, barred windows, toward which rose the foliage of laurel and fig trees. The terraces below were alive with what looked like mice. By sliding forward onto the point of a dormer, Angelo could see that they were nuns, bustling slowly about cases, bundles, and trunks, which they were tying up, setting a whole chessboard of black robes and white coifs rustling. The work was supervised by a figure as white as marble and smaller than life-size, who stood motionless beneath a bower of oleanders. For a moment Angelo was afraid he would be seen by this commander, whose immobility and composure were impressive. Then he perceived that it was the statue of a saint.

He had only to climb back to the top of the roofs to hear the ceaseless traffic of the tumbrels, a muffled clamor full of groans, and the sound, like fine rain, made by the smoke from the pyres brushing the tiles.

Angelo went back to sit by the window of the attic. For several hours he breathed it in every now and then, the way one smells a flower. He put his head through the opening, he gazed at the bodices, the dresses, the little shoes, the boots, the saber; he savored the perfume of souls he imagined to be sublime.

“I'm not generally considered frivolous,” he said to himself. “How many times haven't they reproached me for my lack of taste for pleasure? And I certainly made that poor Anna Clèves unhappy with my coldness, although really she asked very little of me, to judge from the way the young officers who went to the same fencing-school as I in Aix-en-Provence carried on with the ladies. She'd never believe me capable of creating a being who puts on these shoes, wears these dresses, carries this parasol in her hand, draws this mauve faille hood over her head and walks in this attic (which is moreover a park, a château, an estate, a country complete with parliament), and who is bringing me at this present moment the greatest pleasure I could have (indeed the only one), merely at seeing her walk.”

He went back to sit by the little wall. Again he saw the black smoke riding in the chalky sky. He heard the tumbrels rolling over the cobbles, stopping, starting again, stopping, starting again, indefatigably going their rounds through the streets. He listened to the great silence relentlessly pressing down around the noise of the tumbrels, around groans and cries for help.

At length he tried to squeeze through the window. He only managed to wedge his shoulders and scrape his arms. But suddenly he thought of the attitude one adopts when giving a thrust according to the rules, the right arm stretched out, head flat against the right shoulder, left arm straight down the thigh, left shoulder drawn back.

“It's a regulation thrust that's needed here,” he told himself. “If I can hold myself that way, I bet I can get through.”

He tried, and would have succeeded but for the pistols bulging his pockets. He stuffed the pistols into his boots and lowered the boots into the attic. The window, inside, stood about four and a half feet from the floor. He reached down as far as possible, but had to let his boots fall all the same, with no hope of being able to recover them if he failed to get through.

“You've burned your bridges,” he thought; “now you must go ahead. If you stay here without boots and pistols, you're just a yokel.”

In spite of his thinness and the perfection of his dueling position, he remained stuck, luckily at the hips. By wriggling like a worm and pushing with his right hand, he managed to wrench himself free and roll down inside, where he made a considerable noise falling on the wooden floor.

“Madonna!” he said, picking himself up, “grant that the people here are dead!”

He remained a long while on the alert, but nothing stirred.

The attic was even more enchanting than it had appeared. The far end, invisible from the window and lit by a few glass tiles scattered about the roof, now struck by the setting sun, was bathed in an almost opaque sirup of light. Objects emerged only in fragmentary shapes that no longer bore any connection with their true meaning. That gracefully curved chest of drawers was now just a belly covered with a plum-colored silk waistcoat; a tiny headless Dresden figure that must have started life as an angelic musician, had become, through the enlargement of the sweeping shadows, through the keen sparkle the light gave to the break at its neck, a sort of South Sea island bird: a Creole girl's or a pirate's cockatoo. The dresses and coats were really at a party. The shoes showed beneath fringes of light as though peeping from under a curtain, and the shadowy people whose presence they thus betrayed were standing not on a floor but on the tiered perches of a vast bird cage. The rays of the sun, darting in glittering linear constellations of dust, brought these strange beings to life in triangular worlds, and the perceptible descent of the setting sun, slowly shifting the circles of light, filled them with movement stretching indefinitely as though in the tepid water of an aquarium. The cat came to greet Angelo, stretched itself too, opened its mouth wide, and gave an inaudible mew.

“A grand camping-ground,” thought Angelo. “Only the victualing's a bit shaky; but when it's dark I'll go and explore the depths. Anyhow, here I'm in clover.”

And he lay down on an old divan.

He woke up. It was night.

“En route!”
he said to himself. “Now I really must have something to get my teeth into.”

The depths, seen from the little landing outside the attic door, were terribly dark. Angelo lit his tinder. He blew on the wick, saw the top of the banister in the pink glow, and began to descend slowly, accustoming his feet gradually to the rhythm of the steps.

He came to another landing. This seemed to be the third floor, judging from the echo down the stairwell, in which the least slither had its shadow. He blew on the wick. As he had supposed, the space around him was extensive. Here, three doors, but all three shut. Too late to force the locks. He would see tomorrow. He must go down further. His feet recognized the feel of marble steps.

Second floor: three doors, also shut; but these were unquestionably bedroom doors: their panels were adorned with round bosses and quiver-and-ribbon motifs. These people had surely gone. The quivers and ribbons were not the attributes of people who allow their corpses to be piled into tumbrels. Indeed, the chances were they had swept the kitchen clean, or rather had it swept clean, to the smallest recesses of its cupboards. He must look lower down. Perhaps even as far as the cellar.

From this point the stairs were carpeted. Something slid between Angelo's legs. It must be the cat. There were twenty-three steps between the attic and the third floor; twenty-three between the third and second. Angelo was on the twenty-first step between the second and the first when, opposite him, a sudden streak of gold framed a door, which opened. It was a very young woman. She was holding a three-branched candlestick, level with a spearhead face framed in heavy dark hair.

“I am a gentleman,” said Angelo stupidly.

There was a brief moment of silence, and she said:

“I think that was just what needed saying.”

She was so far from trembling that the three flames of her candlestick were stiff as the prongs of a fork.

“It's true,” said Angelo.

“The oddest thing is that it rings true,” she said.

“Thieves don't have cats,” said Angelo, who had seen the cat slip in front of him.

“But who does have cats?” said she.

“This one is not mine,” said Angelo, “but it follows me because it has recognized a peaceable man.”

“What is a peaceable man doing at this hour and in the place where you are?”

“I arrived in this town three or four days ago,” said Angelo. “I was nearly hacked to pieces as a fountain-poisoner. Some people with one-track minds chased me through the streets. When I took refuge in a doorway the door opened and I hid in the house. But there were corpses, or, to be exact, one corpse. So I went up on the roof. I've lived up above ever since.”