The Horseman on the Roof (26 page)

The baker, naked to the waist, was sitting at the foot of the cypresses, in the axis of the shade. He let two powdery hands hang down over his knees. He was a man of about fifty, very thin. On his chest the ribs stuck out, furrowed with gray hairs.

“You're just in time,” he said; “we're about to open the oven. What it'll be like, I don't know; maybe bread, maybe a flat pancake; perhaps just a dirty mess. It's the first time in my life I've worked under these conditions.”

He had built a sort of kiln, like those in which they make charcoal. Covered with lumps of turf, it allowed the smoke to seep out, pure blue and so thick that it slowly rose straight up, joined and intertwined a dozen feet or so above the leaves of the olives, and went on ascending slowly, a pillar reflecting the sunlight, to a great height in the sky, where, before dissolving in the shimmering white heat, it spread out a whole chain of mirrors for the larks.

“It will be what it will be,” said Angelo.

“You've said it,” the man replied.

Angelo watched a squadron of crows, high above the hilltop, playing with light puffs of wind. On motionless wings, the birds danced and dipped, approached, joined, and separated from each other like grains of oats in the currents of a stream.

“They're the lucky ones,” said the baker.

“True enough,” said Angelo. “But pretty soon we'll get things straightened out.”

“That's not the way it looks.”

“How does it look?”

“As bad as ever.”

“There are still cases?”

“If you can believe your own eyes. And there's no reason not to.”

“People look worn out, but they're still living.”

“They were just as worn out in town and they were still living, but you didn't see them. All you saw was the dead. Out here it seems the other way round, I know, and that's all to the good. But take a good look down there, in that direction. The little valley running off into the hills, the plane trees and the little field. See those yellow tents? That's an infirmary. And down there towards the Saint-Pierre quarter, in the cherry orchards, more tents. Another infirmary. And down there, on the north slope, more tents; another. If you'd been resting like me at the foot of a cypress ever since the oven was lit, you'd have seen them carting off more than enough. I've counted at least fifty since this morning! Don't you think fifty's quite a number?”

“The thing can't stop all at once.”

“I don't know what it can't do, but I know what it does. How about that up there?” (He pointed to the thick clouds of hawks and crows, which had begun to circle in the wind above the hill. There came from them a resonance like the beating of a fan.) “Those fellows are more intelligent than people think. They know what they're doing. Don't worry, they aren't there for nothing. You can blaze away into the thick of them with a blunderbuss. They stay where there's something to eat.”

“There's certainly something in what he says,” Angelo reflected, but he was hungry, and the smell from the oven was exquisite.

“I did the kneading in a pig trough,” said the baker. “Clean, of course. I found it in the small hut down there. I said to my wife: ‘That's Antonin's hut. I bet you anything you like he's got a pig trough.' My God, I was getting bored. I said to myself: ‘I'm going to make some bread.' Anyhow, it turned out well; people come after it. ‘And to start with, they're going to give it a thorough washing out for me,' I said. That's right, water! You been yet to the water?”

“No.”

“I suppose it
is
a problem,” thought Angelo. “Where can there be any water in these hills?”

“If you haven't been there, I'll show you. You'll see what a job it is. See that oak down there? Good. Well, in a straight line above it, aim at that willow copse. It's there. It's a clay-pit. The water's all right, though you couldn't call it clear or very cool. There's quite a lot. But it's all the way down. Going and returning with buckets takes more than half an hour. The wife, the daughter, and I have made at least twenty trips. And we're not the only ones. Look.”

It was true. In the shade of the willows could be seen the red, blue, green, and white of jackets, petticoats, aprons. Their colors disappeared as soon as they emerged from the shade into the full sunshine, and all that remained was the sparkle of buckets of water by the sides of small dazzling silhouettes.

The loaves that the baker finally drew out of the kiln were flat as pancakes, and very unevenly cooked.

“You're never sure of your bakings with this system,” he said. “The one before was passable; this one's not worth a rabbit's fart. Give me a good brick oven. The scurvy had to get into our houses. A fine mess we're in! What shall I charge you for this? Give me what you like. Let's say two sous, and take three or four of them.” His indifference did not stop him from carefully placing the burning-hot loaves on a bed of thyme, from which their heat drew an exquisite fragrance; and he looked round to see if it was reaching the other campers.

Angelo took a flat cake and walked on for a while, letting it cool.

A little higher up, on the edge of the pine woods, he found a fine little family silently lunching, gazing at the wide landscape and chewing each mouthful very slowly. There were a red-haired fleshy man and a woman, sturdily built but maternal from top to toe, as women of such breadth of shoulder generally are. The woman was holding on her lap a delicate, pale little girl with dreamy eyes. The freckles sprinkled around her nose widened her cheeks like a Venetian mask and gave them the
morbidezza
of the Primavera.

“Careful!” said Angelo to himself. “She's the apple of their eyes. If they knew that I'm going to sit down in their neighborhood just to be able to look at that exquisite face while I eat my dry bread, they'd think I was sucking the marrow from their bones.”

And he went and sat down casually under a pine tree. He leaned his back against the trunk. He began, like them, to chew his mouthfuls slowly in front of the vast landscape. He only glanced sidewise at the little girl's face, and at careful intervals. Despite these precautions, he several times met the eyes of the mother, and even of the father. They had instinctively seen through his maneuver and, without knowing exactly why, far from finding it inoffensive they were suspicious. The woman was holding the little girl like a church candle and kept shifting her from knee to knee.

At the bottom of the hill lay the town: a tortoise shell in the grass; the sunlight, now slightly slanting, checkered the scaly roofs with lines of shadow; the wind went in by one street and out by another, trailing columns of straw dust. Shutters were grinding on their hinges and banging, doubling the sadness of the houses.

Beyond the town rose a plain of yellow grass, stained with great patches of rust. These were grain fields from which the harvest had not been gathered in, and would not be, because the owners were dead. Further on, winding and flat, a rocky, whitened Durance, without one drop of water. The horizon was cluttered with mountains. The roads were empty.

Empty also the roads of hope. The sky was plaster, the heat like glue. The dry wind bestowed no breath but only blows; it smelt of goats and other, terrible, things.

Angelo crossed the pine woods. A few families had established themselves in the shelter of the trees. Each group kept to itself, withdrawn and quiet. Among them also he noticed one or two fine pairs of eyes, one or two fine-looking people whose presence was mysteriously reassuring. Their families were jealous of these and huddled around them like hungry dogs. Neighbors and passers-by were lucky to get half-smiles, mainly showing the teeth.

People were huddled like this without speaking, sometimes around a man, who was not even handsome but gave them, by his sturdy demeanor, an impression of solidity, almost a pledge of permanence. Sometimes it was a woman. Some of these were old, with peace in their faces. One could never tire of looking at these mouths and eyes that nothing disturbed, over which flickered the gray-green shadows of the pine branches. Others were young women whose hair, eyes, complexion, gestures were of precious material, therefore incorruptible; or children who, because they no longer laughed, seemed suddenly profound, bowed down with knowing.

Higher above the pine woods, Angelo heard groans and sobbing. There was such silence round about that the wails sounded like a lonely fountain. It was two men tending a third laid out under an ilex. All were weeping.

Angelo offered help but was not welcomed. It was beyond question an attack of cholera in its first stages, and the two men were managing very efficiently. Angelo realized that they were mainly afraid of being reported and of having the sick man taken off to the infirmaries.

“Learn a little selfishness,” he told himself; “it's very useful, and keeps you from looking like a fool. Those two have sent you packing, and they're right. They're intent on their own business and doing it the way they want to. They haven't the slightest wish for you to come and meddle in it. Whether this sick man gets better or worse, in a quarter of an hour they won't be weeping any more: they'll only be thinking of what to do next. Do you imagine generosity is always good? Nine times out of ten it's offensive. And it's never manly.”

These reflections brought him considerable peace, and he continued to climb the hill, toward the clump of pines where the man should be who perhaps knew where Giuseppe was to be found.

Cries broke out. This time they were not lamentation but shouts of pursuit. Two or three men had risen and were peering into a ravine. Angelo approached. Through the bushes he could see people running.

“I bet it's a hare,” said Angelo.

“You'd lose,” came the answer. “Besides, in this heat the hares aren't such fools. They don't budge.”

The men looked at Angelo with slight contempt. Though the contempt was faint and only on the surface Angelo was deeply mortified. He maintained that in his country the hares ran in spite of the heat.

“Then you're lucky and have special hares,” he was told ironically. “Here we only have ordinary ones. Down there it's just an old bastard who's escaped from his daughter. The joke is that he was paralyzed and was carted out here in his armchair; and now he's leading them the devil of a dance.”

In fact, one could see, down below, an old man hobbling through the grass. The pursuers caught him. There was a confused melee from which spurted up the yelping of a woman. An argument began, with much gesticulating. At length, two men linked their arms to make a chair, the old man was installed in it, and they started back up the hill.

He passed close to Angelo. He was an old eagle-headed peasant. He kept turning his alert eyes in the direction of the town. Someone had rolled him a cigarette to calm him. He was smoking it.

His daughter ran to meet him. She thanked everyone. She went on and on thanking them and saying: “But why, Father? What's the matter with you?” She noticed the cigarette:

“Did you say thank-you, Father?” she asked him.

“I said f— you,” said he.

He choked over his dribbling and his cigarette, which he began to chew furiously like a stalk of hay.

The clump of trees where the man called Féraud had set up camp was, to begin with, well placed near the summit of the hill and just in the path of the wind that curled over the crest. Furthermore, it contained the only real encampment in all that area. The space between the trees had been carefully cleared of undergrowth, and wattles of interwoven branches a span high had been stretched from trunk to trunk. In the shelter thus formed, pine needles had been heaped, and when Angelo arrived three women were busy spreading a fine white sheet over this mattress. Two other trimly folded sheets showed that they were determined to make a proper bed here. Of the three women, two were hardly more than twenty and were doubtless the daughters, the other being their mother; and all three were working energetically.

As for Féraud, he had set up his bench at the edge of the trees, half in the shade, half in the sun, and was simply busy fashioning a sole with his paring-knife. He was humming.

The man looked quite young in spite of his white beard.

He knew where Giuseppe was.

“See that hill planted with almond trees?”

“You mean the other hill, over there?”

“Yes. He's there. Probably a little higher up, toward the ilexes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely sure. Go there and you'll find him. As soon as you're on the hill with the almonds, ask anyone. They'll take you straight to him.”

“D'you know him well?”

“I know him very well.”

“And how can I get over there?”

“That's easy. Go straight down as far as the cypresses.”

“Where the baker is?”

“That's it. Go sharp right for a hundred yards and you'll strike a road. Take it and keep straight on. You're not afraid of the infirmaries?”

“No.”

“You'll pass close by. And your road leads on. Look, you can see it down there. It rises. You come out right among the almond trees. Ask the first person you meet for Giuseppe and you'll find him.”

Finally he laid the shoe down in the grass and asked: “What do you want with Giuseppe?”

“I'm a relative,” said Angelo.

“What relation? It's not to do with Italy?”

“Yes,” said Angelo. “It's just a little to do with Italy.”

Féraud called his wife.

“It's the gentleman Giuseppe's been expecting so impatiently,” he said.

“Have you had anything to drink?” the woman immediately asked Angelo, resting her hands on her hips with relief.

“Not a drop for two days,” replied Angelo. “My mouth's like tin.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” said the woman. “These days a tin mouth means a tin belly. That's what worried Giuseppe. All day long he kept repeating: ‘You'll see, he'll drink. He won't be able to stop himself. He'll die on me from drinking!”