Winter's End (34 page)

As she emptied her plate, he turned away from her to talk to other people, perhaps to keep her from feeling awkward.

“Where are you going?” he asked when she had finished her omelette.

She told him her destination, and he looked surprised. “Do you think you’ll get that far?”

“Why not?”

“They say there’s trouble there. Barricades. No one’s being let into the town. Now, how about a coffee?”

Night had fallen by the time they set off again. The shared meal had loosened the passengers’ tongues, and for several miles the cheerful sound of conversation mingled with the purring of the engine. Then the conversation gradually died down and most of the passengers dozed off. Helen, who had no one sitting beside her now, took off her shoes, put her feet up on the seat, and used her coat as a blanket to keep her knees and elbows warm.

As she dropped off to sleep, she thought of Octavo wanting to go to “Random” with her. Then she wondered again how Paula came to have her little boy and who his father was. Her consoler had told her many of her secrets, but never that one! She just used to laugh and call Helen nosy if she persisted in asking.

She was woken by the cold. The bus had stopped, and the folding doors had opened, letting in a blast of icy air. The driver was standing in the aisle, looking at her impatiently.

“Here you are, miss. This is where you get out.”

She got to her feet, looked around her, and saw that she was the last remaining passenger. The bus was empty. Night surrounded them.

“But we haven’t reached the bus station!”

“I’m not going there. There’s fighting. I can do without any trouble.”

Helen stood on the step, frightened. “Surely you’re not just going to leave me here!”

He didn’t even bother to reply.

“At least tell me where the town is.”

“That way. Follow the road and you’ll get there. Or you can take the shortcut over the hill there. Got a flashlight with you?”

Helen was surprised. “The hill? You mean where the consolers live?”

“That’s the one. Good night, then.” He touched her shoulder with his fingertips, not even trying to hide his impatience. “Make up your mind, won’t you? Want me to push you out?”

She wasn’t going to spend any longer arguing with the driver. She got out. Did the man have a daughter of her age, she wondered, and if so would he have liked the idea of her being left alone in this deserted spot in the middle of the night?

She didn’t have a flashlight. She decided that the best thing would be to go on along the road, reach the town, and then take the route she knew so well over the bridge and on into the village. She stood there motionless until the sound of the engine had died away entirely and then started walking. After going only a little way she stopped short: she caught the sound of dogs barking over in the direction of the town. Their excited yapping could be distinctly heard in the silence and seemed to be coming closer. She shivered, turned on her heel, and made for the hill.

The moon shed faint light on the rising path. She stumbled on rocks several times but reached the top of the hill without hurting herself. The wind was blowing in gusts, and her teeth were chattering.
The rooftops of the first of the consolers’ houses came into sight below her. She tried to see the town or the river in the distance, but they were hidden in the night.

Following the road through the village, she felt nervous. There was something wrong here. The place was sleeping, certainly, but it was an uneasy sleep. She saw one front door standing wide open. A shutter swung in the wind. She quickened her pace. When she came to the fountain, she took the familiar little road to her right. Marguerite’s words came back to her:
“I haven’t heard anything from my sister for over a month.”
What would she do if Paula wasn’t at home? Where would she sleep?

The farther she went, the more certain she was that the houses to the right and left of the road had been abandoned. She could sense their emptiness, as if the large forms of the consolers no longer warmed them with their sheer size. She stopped at Number 47, her heart thudding. The light of a candle trembled on the other side of the window. She looked through the window and saw Paula.

She was sitting in her armchair, head tilting slightly toward one shoulder, fast asleep. Helen opened the door, closed it quietly, knelt down at her consoler’s feet, took her hands in her own, and looked at her for a long time. She had never seen Paula asleep before, and it was strange to feel that her mind was so far away. In the end she began to feel almost embarrassed. She shook her, gently.

“Paula . . . Paula!”

The large woman opened her eyes and showed no surprise. It was as if she had fallen asleep like this with Helen already kneeling there, and now that she woke up, they were still in the same position.

“Oh, my beauty,” she murmured. “Look . . . just see what they’ve done.”

Only then did Helen notice the state the room was in. The chairs were broken, the table turned upside down, shelves pulled away from the wall. The dresser lay on the floor, gutted. It was easy to imagine the furious hatchet blows falling, bent on destruction.

“I didn’t get back until this afternoon. After a month. I’ve tidied the kitchen up a bit, but I haven’t touched anything in here. I’m so tired. I ought to have gone up to the bedroom.”

Her voice was shaking, near tears.

“Where were you for that whole month, Paula?”

“Why, in their prison, my beauty.”

“In prison? You?”

“Yes, four of them came and took me away. They were very rough. They hurt my arm and my head. It was because of the young people running away.”

Helen felt her own mounting fury.

“More than twenty of them escaped,” Paula went on. “You were one of the first, my beauty, and the others followed your example. We gave them clothes and food, poor children, and we hid them when necessary. So they arrested us — Martha,
Emily, and me. The others were turned out of the village. And then the men came back and smashed everything. Did you see it? Not a house was spared. And Octavo isn’t here. . . .”

She uttered a long, sorrowful sigh, and closed her eyes.

“Oh Paula,” Helen whispered.

“What will become of me now?” moaned the consoler. “The revolt has started, you know. There are barricades up in the town, and the Phalangists will be swept away within a few days, that’s for sure. Everyone hates them so much. I ought to be glad of that, but I can’t really manage it. I liked comforting young people, you see. I liked it better than anything! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do anything else except cooking. The doors of the boarding schools will be opened now, and all the children I loved will go away. Oh, my beauty, what will become of me? I’ll be nothing but a fat, useless old woman. And Octavo isn’t here. . . .”

This time her tears flowed down her plump cheeks in torrents.

“Dear Paula,” Helen repeated, overwhelmed. She got up, went around the chair, and took Paula’s hot, heavy head in her hands. She kissed her and stroked her hair and her wet face. “Don’t be upset, Paula. Octavo is fine. I saw him at Marguerite’s, and she’s sending him to school. He’s working hard. Did you get his letter?”

Paula nodded.

“You know what we’ll do now, Paula? We’ll go upstairs to the bedroom. You’ll sleep in your own bed and I’ll sleep in Octavo’s. And tomorrow we’ll both catch the bus and go to join them in the capital. I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry about anything. I love you as if you were my mother, you know I do. You’re the only mother I ever knew.”

The consoler nodded again, and buried her face against the breast of the girl who had knocked on her door for the first time four years earlier — the girl she had described as a little, lost kitten at the time.

M
ilos kept looking for the jay through the week before he left the training camp. It was all very well trying not to be superstitious, but he couldn’t help hoping that the big, brightly colored bird would reappear and bring him luck. Every morning and late every afternoon he went around behind the infirmary to where he had seen the jay in autumn, but it never turned up on the windowsill, on the other side of the bars, or anywhere else. Milos felt it was a bad omen.

He wasn’t the only one watching out for signs. One of the premiers fell into a furious rage because someone else went to sit in his usual place in the refectory. He picked up the bench, tipping the other man off it, and laid into him with his fists shouting, “Want to get me killed, do you? That’s it — you want to get me killed, you bastard!” It took two other men to separate them.

Their training had taken a more violent turn for some time past. As the fights came closer, the gladiators seemed to be trying to toughen themselves up even more, to shake off any weakness. On their last night in the camp, Myricus summoned them all to the arena after their evening meal. There were no floodlights on, but torches fixed to logs of wood cast red light on their somber faces. The men moved away from each other and stood motionless, swords in their hands. Myricus walked slowly among them, then went up to the gallery and addressed them in his deep voice.

“Gentlemen, look around you. Look at one another, all of you: Caius, Ferox, Delicatus, Messor . . .”

He listed all thirty names without omitting a single one, taking his time about it. That grave recitation instantly conveyed a disturbing solemnity.

“Take a good look at each other, because in a few days’ time, when I call you together again in this place, many of you will be dead. So look at one another now.”

There was an oppressive silence. All the gladiators kept their eyes focused on the sand. None of them lifted their heads when Myricus told them to look up.

“At this moment, as I speak to you,” the trainer went on, “the gladiators in the other five camps are listening to a similar address. Like you, they are surrounded by torches, and every one of them is wondering:
Will I be among the dead or will I survive?
I tell the novices among you, and I repeat it for the benefit of the others: hatred is your only weapon. Hate your opponent as soon as you see him appear on the other side of the arena. Hate him in advance for wanting to take your life. And make sure you’re convinced that his life is not worth yours.”

He paused. The gladiators remained silent, deep in the turmoil of their own thoughts. A little way ahead of him, Milos saw the shaved nape of Basil’s neck and his massive shoulders rising and falling to the regular rhythm of his breathing. He took comfort from the sight, and then he wondered which of the two of them would fight first. He prayed that it would be him, not Basil.

Myricus went on speaking for some time. He conjured up the names of the great gladiators of classical antiquity: Flamma, who had won thirty fights; Urbicus, a winner thirteen times, and then defeated because he held back from striking the mortal blow and gave his unfortunate opponent a chance.

“We set out tomorrow,” he concluded. “Leave your swords here on the ground. You won’t be needing them during the journey. We’ll collect them and give them back to you when the time comes for you to fight.”

That night was not disturbed by any nightmares. An unreal calm reigned in the dormitories. Probably none of them really slept. Every time Milos thought he was dropping off, he gave a start and was wide awake again, as if he were determined not to sleep
away any of the hours that might be his last. Basil couldn’t sleep either.

“What’s your girlfriend’s name?” he asked in the middle of the night.

“Helen,” Milos whispered.

“What?”

“Helen.” He had to repeat it in a louder voice, and it felt like speaking to her in the silence.

“What’s she like?”

“Well . . . normal.”

“Come on,” Basil insisted. “You can tell me. I won’t repeat it.”

“Right,” said Milos, slightly embarrassed. “She isn’t very tall, she has short hair, her face is rather round . . .”

These general remarks weren’t enough for Basil. “Tell me something special — oh, I don’t know, something she does well.”

“She . . . well, she’s good at climbing a rope.”

“There we are, then!” said the young horse-man, satisfied, and he turned over.

Next morning, the camp gates opened, and three military vans drove in and stopped outside the canteen, followed by two tarpaulin-covered trucks full of armed soldiers. The gladiators were assembled in the wind and drizzling rain. It was Fulgur’s job to divide them into groups and handcuff them to chains linking them together. He did it with perverse pleasure, scanning their faces for signs of fear. Milos did his best to hide his emotions, but his
sickly, pale face gave him away, and when Fulgur gave him a meaningful wink, as if to say,
Got the jitters, have you?
it was all he could do not to rush the man and headbutt him.

He looked desperately for the jay until the last moment. Please come back! Let me see you! Just for a second. Let me see you one last time, and I’ll take your bright image away with me, the image of life!

He had to be pushed to make him climb into the van.

Fulgur had taken care to separate him from Basil. He was put in the second van with a number of others, and sat on one of the wooden benches running around the sides. The convoy set off and drove out of the camp, with one of the trucks full of soldiers going ahead and the other bringing up the rear. Any attempt to escape would have been sheer suicide. A small barred window had been cut in the side of the van, and for a long time they saw the complex pattern of the bare branches of oak trees moving up and down past them. Around midday they finally left the forest, joined the main road, and drove south toward the capital.