The Horseman on the Roof (51 page)

For conscience's sake, Angelo knocked on the big door against which they were sheltering. His blows echoed down empty corridors. The rain had settled in. The thickness of the clouds was bringing twilight before its time.

“We should be able to get inside,” said Angelo, “light a fire in a fireplace, and spend the night under cover. Stay here. I'll scout along the walls. There's sure to be an easier door to force than this one.”

He found one that led into a storeroom, and there they unloaded the mule. It was a harness room; the stable was behind; one could enter it freely. They scraped up from the racks enough oats and dry straw for their beast.

“This looks too good not to explore it further, don't you think?”

“Provided we keep our pistols handy,” said Angelo.

He greatly enjoyed listening to all the suspicious noises of the deserted house and exaggerated their strangeness.

Three steps led them into a corridor. It was long and ended at a glass door full of phantasmagoria. It connected with offices and a great kitchen like a torture chamber with its spits, wheels for dumbwaiters, coppers, and smell of burnt fat. Somewhere the rain was drumming on skylights, making stairwells echo.

The glass door was merely on the latch. Beyond there broadened out a rather pretentious hall. The daylight filtering through the chinks of the shutters was only just enough to reveal on the walls the faint gleams of what must be the colors and gilding of painted panels, doubtless hunting-scenes. Groping his way forward, Angelo touched the edge of a billiard table set in the middle of the hall.

“I've found something very interesting,” said the young woman.

“What?”

“A candlestick with candles.”

It took a little time to get the wick to light—it was old. At each spark of the tinder the hall and its colors opened out in the darkness like a flower. And indeed, when the candles were lit, they saw that they were in a vast room with every square inch gilded in a bourgeois and banal style. Chairs stood in rows along the walls, under Pomonas, Venuses, trophies of fruit and game, all far larger than life.

“Here you are again with a candlestick in your hand,” said Angelo, “like the first time I saw you, at Manosque. But that evening you were in a long dress.”

“Yes, all alone. I used to dress in the evening. I had even put on some rouge and powder. It was a way of giving myself courage. But when I took the plunge, to end by meeting you and arriving here, I only brought my riding-skirt and pistols. One finally knows just what to do about the cholera.”

“You impressed me.”

“That's because I was frightened. I impress even my husband then.”

The hall gave on the entrance hall, out of which there rose a wide, curving staircase, with the rain drumming above it.

Going upstairs, Angelo advised caution.

“For me,” he said, “cholera is a staircase that I go up or down on tiptoe, to find myself before a half-open door that I push open, and I have to step over a woman of whom there's nothing left but hair, a corpse in a nightcap, or linen that's not pretty to see. Stay behind me.”

There were no corpses. In all the rooms the bedding had been carefully rolled, beaten, folded, and camphorated. The floors were clean, the seats and armchairs under dust-covers. The tall pier-glasses reflected the light of the candles and the two anxious faces.

“We shall be able to sleep in beds.”

At the end of the corridor they entered rather more boldly into a large room used as a
salon,
less overloaded with gilding than the hall, but florid enough with its scrolls and cupids.

“All we have to do is light a fire in this fireplace and stay here.”

They even found a tall pressure-lamp half filled with oil, and three more candlesticks complete with new candles.

Angelo remembered having seen a pile of firewood near the kitchen. They returned downstairs to fetch some. The wood had been carefully stacked against a door, and they moved it aside. When tapped, the door sounded hollow. It was locked, but not firmly, and Angelo sprang the bolt with his knife.

“Here's something funny,” said Angelo.

He had just discovered some steps down to a cellar.

“Come along.”

They descended five or six steps and found themselves on a floor of soft sand, under cobwebbed vaults and facing standard racks of empty bottles. But in a corner the earth seemed to have been raised as though by a group of moles, and by scratching the sand, they uncovered a whole nest of full bottles, carefully sealed. There was red wine and white, and even some liqueur, too transparent and fluid to be marc; it must be kirsch. At any rate, there were more than fifty bottles of wine there.

“It's perhaps the only chance we'll have of a cool drink without risk,” said Angelo. “This wine's been sheltered from the flies for over five years, if the date on the labels is to be trusted; and why not? There was no cholera then. What do you say to it?”

“I'm even thirstier than you,” said the young woman. “I was thinking of our daily maize with horror. See if there's a light red wine.”

“There is. But we must eat before we drink. We've been marching with just a little tea inside. Be thankful we've got the maize. Besides, I'm going to make the polenta with white wine. That'll take away fatigue.”

There was a very handsome corkscrew in the drawer of the kitchen table and glasses on the dresser. But Angelo was adamant. He lit a fire in the drawing-room, set the glasses to boil in a saucepan of water, and began to stir his polenta with wine.

“You're old as the streets,” said the young woman. “Much older than my husband.”

He was sure he was acting as one should; he did not see what he could be blamed for. Naïvely he replied: “That surprises me. I'm twenty-six.”

“And he's sixty-eight,” she said, “but he takes more risks than you.”

“I'm not running a risk if I let you drink on an empty stomach. It's you who take the risk. It's easy to take such a responsibility if you are indifferent.”

The
polenta au vin blanc,
very sweet and as liquid as soup, was appetizing to swallow. Afterwards it lay on the stomach like red lead.

“You think you're stronger than one of my old hussars,” thought Angelo. “They eat polenta cooked with wine when they're in a tight spot. It's stupid things like that that give one strength of character.”

He uncorked a bottle of red wine and pushed it towards the young woman. He drank, in quick succession, four or five glasses of a thick, very strong and dark wine, which resembled
nebbia
but had a more delicate taste. She emptied her bottle as quickly. They had been wanting something besides tea for a long time.

“My husband is not indifferent,” she said.

“Then where is he? Dead?”

“No. If he were dead I wouldn't be here.”

“Where would you be?”

“Certainly dead.”

“You don't do things by halves.”

“You don't understand me at all. I'd have nursed him and have died from the plague; if you must have everything explained.”

“Then it's not so certain. I've nursed more than twenty cholera victims; I've washed corpses, any amount of them. I'm still on my feet. So you might be on yours, and here, even if your husband had died with all the honors due to his rank.”

“Don't argue. I should be dead. Or at least I should long to be. Let's talk of something else.”

“Of what?”

“I don't know. We've found plenty of subjects for conversation up to now.”

“Yes, pistols and saber, then saber and pistols.”

“The subject is inexhaustible and full of instruction. As a bodyguard you're certainly first class, I admit. As soon as the situation becomes hair-raising, you come into your own.”

“That's my trade.”

“Before I met you, I little imagined such a trade existed among men.”

“I'm not forced to be like everyone else.”

“Don't worry, you're not. Indeed, I wonder how one should take you.”

“I don't want to be taken. On the contrary.”

“And you like that?”

“Very much.”

“You're not French?”

“I'm Piedmontese. I told you, and it's obvious.”

“What's obvious has four or five names, all very fine ones. Is that Piedmont or your character?”

“I don't see what you call very fine. I do what suits me. I was happy when I was a child. I want to go on being so.”

“You had a lonely childhood?”

“No. My mother's only sixteen years older than I. I also had my foster-brother Giuseppe, and his mother, who was my nurse, Teresa. She'd be astonished if she knew that I stir polenta for ladies.”

“What does she suppose you do to ladies?”

“Something grandiose; to ladies and the whole world.”

“Is she capable of knowing what this is?”

“Very. She does it herself, all the time.”

“Doesn't that get in the way?”

“No. The house demands it, and has done so for a long time.”

“Who are you? You've told me your first name: Angelo, and perhaps your surname—”

“My surname's Pardi.”

“—without my being much further forward, except to call to you more easily for help when I need it…”

“I know that your name is Pauline.”

“Pauline de Théus since my marriage. My maiden name was Colet. My father was a doctor at Rians.”

“I never knew my father.”

“I never knew my mother. She died when I was born.”

“I—I don't know if he's dead. No one knows; no one cares. We've done very well without him.”

“Tell me about your mother.”

“She wouldn't appeal to you.”

“All mothers appeal to me. Mine, it seems, was very pretty, very gentle, very delicate, and she wanted me. I've had plenty of time to love a ghost. Smiling at my father never altogether satisfied me, even in my cradle, if I can judge by the unfulfilled desires that have remained in me. And yet my father was an easy man to love, he could be happy with nothing at all: that's to say, with me all his life. But a poor doctor's house in Rians! A big white village, among rocks, where two worn valleys intersect, bare as a hand, down which rolls the wind, and only the wind, all the time. A big village worn away by the wind; the angle of every wall gnawed like a bone by a winter fox. Much wilder country than any we've crossed, and I know nothing sadder than its sun.

“I was alone most of the time, or with hunchbacked Anaïs; a woman of pure gold. Everyone was of gold. My father was of gold. No one ever hurt me: on the contrary. Everywhere I was caressed, cajoled, worn down, scraped by hands, lips, beards, just as that tense, restless countryside is by the wind. I was restless; I loved my little felt slippers because they let me move without a sound, straight as a die, step by step, and steal up to the creaking window, the groaning door, and listen to them from close to. I had to be sure; it was far more important than fear. Sure of what? Sure of everything.

“When I heard your stealthy steps in the house at Manosque, where I was alone in the middle of the cholera, I took a candlestick and went to see what it was. I always have to go and see. I can't run away. I've no refuge anywhere, except in what threatens me. I get so frightened! Boldness is the lap I turn to.

“I think I'm a bit drunk.”

“Don't let that worry you. Drink. We need wine. But take some of this dark one. It's like a wine from my country and it contains tannin. That's what you want when you're facing a long march.”

“You know too many things.”

“I know nothing. The first time I had to command men (and I had a thousand advantages, especially the plume on my helmet, gold on my sleeves, and the walls of the Pardi palace seated on the horse with me) I asked myself: ‘By what right?' Before me I had fifty mustaches that one could have grasped in handfuls; and Giuseppe, my foster-brother, in the ranks, at attention. He and I had had another fight the day before, like dogs, and with sabers. But there I have the advantage. When we were little, his mother wanted him to call me ‘My Lord.' When Teresa wants something, and particularly if it's to do with me, she sees that she gets it. He used to call me ‘My Lord,' and add what he had to between his teeth. We used to fight. We slept in each other's arms in the same bed. He's my brother. He was stiff as a ramrod on his horse. I said to myself: ‘If one day you order him to charge, he'll charge.' I'd taken a slice out of his forearm the day before and we'd spent part of the night weeping together. It was a good three days before we went for each other again. He was my orderly. I put the captain in charge of the parade, called Giuseppe, and we went off for a walk in the woods.”

“I never believed you were an officer.”

“I'm a colonel; commission bought and paid for.”

“Then what are you doing in France?—in these peasant's clothes?”

“I'm in hiding, or rather I was in hiding. I'm going home now.”

“Drunk with the desire for vengeance?”

“I've nothing to avenge. I'm drunk this evening like you, but that's all. It's the others who want to avenge themselves on me.”

“Followed by the faithful Giuseppe?”

“Followed by the faithful Giuseppe, who must also be roaming about the roads and woods now, after waiting for me at Sainte-Colombe and sending me to the devil.”

“—and by Lavinia.”

“The hatched girl.”

“Why the hatched girl?”

“My mother christened her that. ‘One might say I'd hatched her out like a hen,' she said. Lavinia came to the Pardi palace three apples high and because she was three apples high. The rest is too delicate to tell.”

“Delicate for whom?”

“Delicate for everyone.”

“You daren't tell me what your mother employed Lavinia to do? And why she christened her ‘the hatched girl'? And why she had to be only three apples high?”