The Horseman on the Roof (25 page)

“You've surely noticed that there's no one left in the town. Except me. All the rest have gone to camp in the fields, in the open air, on the hills round about. There's only me. There had to be someone to keep an eye on the provisions. I have, under my roof,” (and this expression assumed, in his mouth, an impressive air) “storerooms for my cloth. They'd been stuffed full of camphor for a long time. Against moths. It's perfect against the fly that brings the contagion. It's a little fly, not even green.”

“Touch my hand,” said Angelo.

“Gladly,” said the litle man, smiling, “but kindly dip it first in this jar of vinegar.”

In the end Angelo felt ridiculous.

It was without haste, and swinging his arms as though going for a walk, that Angelo left the town. The nun was forgotten. He was even chewing a sprig of mint.

The hills formed an amphitheater. On their tiers, the whole population of the town was assembled, as though to watch some great game. The people were encamped under the olive groves, the clumps of oaks, and in the undergrowth of the terebinths. Fires were smoking on all sides.

Angelo was naturally used to soldiers' encampments. They would stack arms, get out their canteens, and after that life was fine. They sang, stirred their soup; they had no need of a drawing-room. They were poor bastards, but they knew that a splendid refuge can be made by thinking about nothing.

The first thing Angelo saw by the roadside was a screen planted under the olive trees of an orchard. It was painted in bright colors, perhaps on silk. It had been designed, no doubt, to cheer up some dim corner by a fireside. Here it stood full in the sun (the threadbare foliage of the olive trees gave hardly any shade), full in the furious sun. The screen spluttered with gold, bright purples, and hard blues. It bore a design of the plumed warriors and swelling breastplates of a canto of Ariosto that Angelo at once remembered. It was set out in the open beside an easy chair covered in tapestry, likewise telling a tale, on which were piled a box encrusted with shells, a parasol, a silver-knobbed cane, and some shawls that the wind had disarrayed so that they trailed on the grass. Right at the foot of the nearest olive tree had been placed (dead level, with the aid of sticks wedged under the legs) a small escritoire, nicely polished and coquettishly bearing its glass-domed clock, its candlesticks, its best coffeepot under a faille cosy braided with ribbons. All around, over a space of seven or eight square yards, were disposed with the utmost harmony an umbrella stand, a tall lamp stand, a pouf, a foot-muff and a green plant in a pot—a rubber-plant, supported by a bamboo cane. Not far off, upturned and pointing at the sky its two shafts, from which dangled chains, was the small cart that had transported the whole paraphernalia; and the mule, its straw and its droppings.

The sight was so incongruous that Angelo stopped. Someone beat on the footwarmer with the cane. A large girl who must have been sitting in the grass got up and approached the screen.

“Who is it?” asked an old woman's voice.

“A man, madame.”

“What's he doing?”

“Looking.”

“What at?”

“Us.”

“Good day, madame,” said Angelo, “is everything all right?”

“Perfectly all right, monsieur,” said the voice. “What concern is that of yours?” And to the girl: “Go and sit down.”

Then the cane began to thump on the ground like the tail of an exasperated lion.

There were also, at every turn, families of work people sitting in the shade of a wall or bank or bush, or under a small oak, with children, bundles of linen, boxes of tools. The women were rather at a loss, but they had already set up a few utensils, lines stretched between two branches, a tripod supporting a stew pot, and even, here and there, a row of boxes arranged in descending order of size: flour, salt, pepper, spices. The men had been much more disoriented. Their hands would not as yet unclasp from around their knees. They were glad to call good-day to passers-by.

The children weren't playing. There was very little noise, except that of a light wind rattling the sun-roasted leaves, and, from time to time, the noise of the sun itself like a rapid crackle of flame. Only the horses and mules shook their bridles, kicked at the flies, and sometimes neighed, not to each other but in complaint and furtively. Some donkeys tried to start a concert, but there was a sound of sticks thwacking on bellies, and they choked back their braying. Vast flocks of crows kept wheeling, also in silence, above the trees. The sun was so violent that it turned their feathers white.

The peasants had installed themselves more comfortably. They seemed to unstiffen more quickly. They had all, moreover, chosen extremely favorable sites: oak trees, hollows in which the grass was dry but long, pine clumps. Most of them had already cleared their sites of stones. They were even busy all at the same time, but each for himself, cutting branches of broom that they then transported in bundles into their bit of shade. The women stripped the larger sticks and plaited them into hurdles. Children, looking grave and frowning, sharpened stakes.

Several old women, who were not plaiting the broom and seemed to be invested with diplomatic powers, went off with a smile on their lips to prowl round the other encampments, under cover of gathering plants for a rustic salad. They were getting organized. They had even begun very carefully to make little piles of manure with the litter of their beasts.

The only slight dislocation was in their coops full of chickens, not yet let loose; and the pigs tied by the feet to stumps, torturing themselves by straining at the thongs knotted round their hocks but not squealing, scarcely even grunting, and mostly sniffing with extremely mobile snouts toward the smells stirred up by all these strange movements. They had already learned to crouch down under the bushes whenever there passed overhead the rustle of the great flocks of crows.

Locksmith tits, whose song is like grating iron, called ceaselessly, establishing a void where their cries rang, and a distance by the answers they received from remote trees. One could also hear some rather triumphant children's voices, women calling out names, men speaking to their beasts and the bells of hunting-dogs setting out on some scent.

They had transported sideboards, sofas, stoves complete with pipes—which they were struggling to fit together and then attach to branches—cases filled with pots and pans, baskets of crockery and linen, mantelpiece ornaments, firedogs, tripods, trolleys. The furniture was set in the orchards, under isolated trees, even out in the wind. It had quite clearly been arranged here just as it used to be in the rooms from which it was taken. Sometimes it even stood around a table, covered with its oilcloth or carpet, with five or six chairs set around it, or armchairs, in their covers. There would then be an idle woman sitting on one of these chairs instead of on the grass, with her hands on her knees, and always by her side or in the immediate vicinity her man, standing and vacant, like a hero caught unawares. They never stirred. They were like characters in a
tableau vivant,
their eyes fixed on some private horizon, looking at once very knowing and very vulnerable.

Others had heaped merchandise, piles of pieces of cloth, full sacks, cases; and, with their backs against the heap, or even lying on top of it, men, women, and children kept watch.

“Shall I ever find my Giuseppe among all this, or is he dead?” Angelo wondered.

He admitted that, if Giuseppe were dead, well! the situation was grave.

Instead of staying with the nun, he should have looked for Giuseppe. But where in town should he have looked? Whom should he have asked? (Once more he saw the square piled with dead bodies, people dying in heaps on the ground, and the panic of those whom he had seen racing like dogs through the streets; he heard the carters pounding their drums to the echo in every quarter.) One saw things differently here in the groves, in the open air, in spite of the flocks of crows and the rabid sun. Anyhow it was true, he'd wasted his time with the nun. He thought so. One doesn't always do the sensible thing.

He found, by the roadside, one of those small pairs of scales with horn pans in which tobacco is weighed. It lay overturned in the grass. He looked up onto the bank. An old woman was arranging some boxes against an olive stump.

“Madame,” asked Angelo, “do you sell tobacco?”

“I did,” she said.

“You haven't got a little scrap left?”

“Why mess around with scraps?” she said. “I've got fresh tobacco.”

Angelo jumped over the bank.

She was a shrewd old crone. She had little magpie eyes and she chewed her gums like a powerful quid.

“Do you have any cigars?” said Angelo.

“Ah, you're a cigar smoker! I've cigars for all ages, sweetheart. If they pay!”

“We'll manage to pay you for them.”

“Well, what do you smoke?” She looked him over. “Marsh-mallow?”

“Give me some
crapulos,
” said Angelo drily.

“I'm low on them,” she said; “can you make out with half of one, sweetheart?”

“Don't talk so much, Grandma,” said Angelo. “Give me a boxful.”

Actually, a box was a pretty tall order. He had exactly four louis left. It was truly essential for Giuseppe to be alive, otherwise times were going to get hard. But it was truly essential to put that woman and her quid in their place.

She rummaged in the sacks she had been unpacking and found a box of cigars, for which Angelo paid with a markedly casual air.

“I suppose
you
know everybody around here?” he said.

“Well, I know quite a few.”

“Do you know somebody named Giuseppe?”

“Sweetheart, that's not the way I know people. What does your Giuseppe look like? What do his friends call him? Does he have a nickname?”

“I don't know; what nickname would he go by? The Piedmontese, perhaps? He's a tall fellow, thin and dark, with curly hair.”

“Piedmontese? No, I don't know any Piedmontese. Dark, did you say? No. You're sure he's not dead?”

“I'd very much like him to be alive.”

“You're not the only one who'd like somebody to be alive. The chances are, your Giuseppe's pushing up daisies. Everybody's dying these days, haven't you noticed?”

“Not quite everybody,” said Angelo; “there's still some of us left.”

“Oh! yes, a fine lot we are!” she said.

While they were busy talking a woman came to buy snuff. She was a housewife. She looked completely out of place in this orchard.

“Hold on,” said the old woman, “here's someone who may give you some news about your Giuseppe.”

“Madame Marie,” said the woman, “give me a little of the best, please. Not too dry, if you can manage.”

“I can always manage, beautiful; pass me the sack there on the left by your feet. And what are you doing with yourself these days?”

“I try to keep going. It isn't easy.”

“Where are you bunking nowadays?”

“I'm with the Magnans, down there, under the oaks.”

“You share grub?”

“It isn't just grub,” said the woman, gazing at Angelo with bold eyes. “Living outdoors scares me. I need company. Theirs is as good as the next, isn't it?”

“Well, perhaps you may hit it off with this fellow. He's looking for something. He'd like to find somebody named Giuseppe.”

Hands on hips, the woman settled her body in her corset.

“Who's Giuseppe?” she said.

“A man, beautiful,” said the old woman.

“He's a friend I'm looking for,” said Angelo.

“Everyone's looking for a friend,” said the woman.

She hesitated between pushing back the hair that was falling down upon her forehead and taking a pinch of snuff. She looked Angelo up and down and decided on the snuff.

The next visitor was a man; he lifted the low branches of the olive tree.

“What do you want?” said the woman.

“Well, can't you see? Madame Marie,” he said, “it's time you found me my tobacco. You're getting things straightened out, aren't you?”

“Cléristin,” said the old woman. “You've found a corner for your mule, haven't you? I still can't lay my hands on your tobacco. You got everything mixed up, tossing it around like that. Your tobacco is down at the bottom, under those boxes. Do you want to move them for me, or will you try another brand? Why not take a chance, my boy?”

There was nothing boyish about him. He was a thick, heavy fellow with bow legs and the arms of an ape. But he had sharp eyes.…

“This young fellow is looking for somebody named Giuseppe,” said the woman.

“Giuseppe who?” he asked.

“Just Giuseppe,” said Angelo.

“What's he do?”

“Shoemaker.”

“Don't know him,” said the man. “You'd better go see Féraud.”

“That's right,” said the woman.

“Féraud's a shoemaker too; they all know one another.”

“Where is Féraud?”

“Go up there through the pines. He's a bit higher up, among the junipers.”

There was a track that climbed from terrace to terrace. On these levelings supported by small stone walls stood the olive groves with their black twisted trunks. They wore a fleece lighter than foam and retained, on the undersides of their leaves, a residue of opalescent color that the sun had almost completely effaced. Under this shelter, as transparent as a silk veil, the people were camping in small groups. At the moment they were eating. It was nearly noon.

The pines pointed out to him were a long way up the hill, well above the orchards. Angelo asked where he could buy bread. He was told to go a bit to the left, toward some cypresses. It seemed there was a baker there who had tried setting up a field oven.

Long before reaching the cypresses one could smell a fine scent of baking. A slowly mounting blue smoke, to which the sun's dazzling whiteness gave a shimmer, also indicated the spot.