Winter's End (38 page)

“Is it much farther?” he asked after a while, intoxicated with emotion.

“No,” said the child, suddenly stopping. “We’ re here!”

He stood motionless, hands on his hips, and there was something angelic about his ingenuous face. Bart was astonished to see that the boy was hardly out of breath and, above all, that he looked so changed from when they had first seen him. He might have been a different child.

“Incredible!” said Bart, disconcerted. “You must be some kind of magician!”

“Yes,” replied the child, and he pointed to a tumulus on their left. “Climb up there! I’m not allowed to go any farther.”

Rather perturbed, Bart began clambering up the mound on all fours. He turned when he was halfway up, and saw that there was no one else near him. He looked in vain for his strange little guide and then, sure that the child had disappeared, he
went on climbing. When he reached the top of the tall mound, he found himself less than a hundred yards from the entrance to the Royal Bridge. And what he saw there made him freeze with horror.

On his side of the river a staunch troop of horse-men, armed with pikes and clubs, was trying to cross the river. A dense cloud of vapor hovered in the air above the crowd. On the opposite bank, invisible in a hundred covered trucks parked at an angle to the bridge, soldiers armed with guns were firing to prevent them from crossing. The bridge was littered with about a hundred large bodies, lying dead. But the worst of it was that the horse-men in the front line were doing all they could to mount an assault, ignoring the bullets decimating them. Bart saw two young men running forward together, brandishing clubs. They hadn’t reached the middle of the bridge before shots rang out. One of them was hit in the chest, performed a grotesque little dance, flung his arms in the air, and fell headfirst. The other, wounded in the leg, went limping on for ten more yards before he too was shot down. As he fell, he furiously threw his club toward the soldier who had just fired the shot that killed him.

“Stop!” shouted Bart, horrified.

But a compact formation of ten more horse-men was already going into the attack. They held all kinds of objects in front of them as makeshift shields: wooden planks, pieces of rusty sheet metal. In spite of their strength and energy they didn’t get much
farther than their comrades. A murderous burst of firing mowed them down. Only two of them, gigantic figures, were left on their feet. They staggered as far as the first truck and seized its undercarriage to tip it over. The soldiers must have let them get as far as that to amuse themselves, because it took only the two shots that now rang out to finish the unfortunate men off.

“Stop!” shouted Bart, and he raced toward the bridge.

He was immediately drowned in a sea of arms, backs, and powerful torsos, but it was far from the soothing sensation he had felt a few days earlier when he and Milena walked through the crowd of horse-men, with Gerlinda as their guide. This time anger distorted the heavy faces that were usually so tranquil. Tears of rage were running down their cheeks.

“Jahn!” Bart shouted. “Anyone know where Mr. Jahn is?”

“Here!” roared a voice, and the huge figure of Jocelin suddenly appeared in front of him, an expression of dismay on his face. “Quick! He wants to see you!”

In spite of the cold, Jahn was bathed in sweat. He took Bartolomeo by the collar of his coat and shook him. “Stop them, Casal, for God’s sake! They won’t listen to me anymore! They won’t listen to anyone!”

“What about Faber?”

“Faber wanted to go and speak with the soldiers. He was shot down. That maddened them! They’re all going to get themselves killed!”

Bart left the stout man and shouldered his way through the crowd toward the bridge. The closer he came, the denser the crowd of bodies. He just managed to get through, and when he was finally on the other side of them, he realized that the horse-men were preparing for a mass attack. A bearded young man in shirtsleeves, with Herculean shoulders that reminded him of Faber, had appointed himself their leader, and he was haranguing his men.

“All together this time!” he urged them. “We’ll show ’em what we’re made of!”

Bartolomeo planted himself in front of the man and spoke sharply. “Shut your mouth! You don’t know what you’re saying!”

Although he was much less broad than the other man, he was almost as tall, and his voice echoed forcefully. “Don’t do it!” he went on, turning back to the horse-men as they prepared to charge. “Don’t cross the bridge! They’ll shoot you down one by one! They’re just waiting to pick you off!”

Anyone else in Bart’s place would have been swept aside by the furious giants, but his name was Casal — and they listened to him.

“They killed Faber!” cried a high voice.

“And they’ll kill you too if you charge them,” replied Bart. “ You’re not cattle going to the slaughter!”

“I don’t care if they kill me!” said the last speaker, a boy of hardly sixteen.

“I forbid you to go any farther!” thundered Bartolomeo. His black eyes were darting flames as he raised his fist in front of the lad’s face.

“If your father was here —” someone else began.

“My father would tell you exactly the same!” Bartolomeo cut him short. “I speak as he would!”

As the fighting horse-men saw his determination, doubt crept into their ranks.

“I know you’re brave. I know you are ready to die,” Bart went on. “But what’s the use of that, just to give them the satisfaction of killing you? What’s the use of it? I ask you.”

“So what do we do, then?” asked one of the men. “We’re not retreating!”

“And we’re not leaving our comrades dead on the bridge!” added another.

They had a good point. Looking beyond their furious faces, Bartolomeo saw the vast crowd waiting farther off, unaware of the drama being played out here on the bridge. The light of dawn, low in the sky, now showed massed throngs all the way to the hills on the horizon. And he looked at the other side of the river. Behind the lines of gray-green trucks where the enemy was concealed, implacable and silent, the city seemed to be holding its breath. He had to admit that he had been wrong, just as Jahn, Lando, Faber, and all the others had been wrong: the soldiers had indeed opened fire. They
had obeyed orders, ruthlessly shooting down those poor souls armed only with clubs.

What could he say now to men who had just seen a friend, a father, a brother fall dead before their eyes? And Faber, their much-loved leader! Bart had succeeded in keeping them from rushing to their doom for the moment, and he had managed to save the lives of a few of them, but he wouldn’t be able to contain their despair and fury much longer.

“Come on!” shouted the young man who was so keen to lead an attack. “Let’s charge them!”

“No one move!” shouted Bart. “I order you not to move! Leave this to me!”

And without knowing just what he hoped for, he started over the bridge himself, walking straight down the middle of it. He moved a dozen paces.

“What are you doing, Bart?” someone called behind him. “Come back!”

He recognized Jahn’s voice but did not turn.

There was no sign of life on the other side of the river. They’d wait until he was halfway over the bridge before they fired. He’d be a better target there, closer, easily visible. He went another few feet. What did he want to do? He didn’t know.

Then he remembered what Jahn had said about his father, and the words began dancing around in his head:
“I often wonder if he wasn’t actually looking for a chance to die in his prime. . . . There was a great melancholy in him. . . . I don’t know where it came from. . . .”

He shuddered, afraid of detecting the same
sinister temptation in himself. Did he, Bartolomeo, have the same melancholy in his heart? The same profound sadness, so that putting an end to his life was almost a seductive idea? He went on walking straight ahead, stumbled on a uneven paving stone, walked around the distorted body of the young horse-man who had thrown himself into the attack beside his friend, and went another five yards. His black scarf was streaming out in the cold morning wind. From where he was now, he could no longer hear the cries of the horse-men or the sound of the great crowd behind them. All that came to his ears was the peaceful murmuring of the river.
I’ll walk to the end of it,
he told himself.
There’s nothing else I can do. I’ll walk it to the end.

And suddenly Milena was by his side.

“Milena!” he exclaimed, stupefied, seizing her by the shoulders. “Get away from here!”

She shook her bare head. Her short blond hair stood out like a halo around it.

“No, I won’t! We’ll cross the bridge together. Come on.”

She took his arm and led him slowly on, looking serene, her back very straight.

“They’ll fire on us, Milena. You know they will.”

“On you perhaps, but not on me.”

“They’re capable of it! Look, they fired on boys of thirteen! We’re walking over their bodies.”

“They won’t fire on me, Bart. They won’t fire on Milena Bach. I’m not hiding anymore. Let them see who I am! Let them take a good look!”

For a moment Bartolomeo wondered whether she had gone out of her mind. He stopped her by force. “Milena, listen to me! What are you hoping for? Do you want to be a martyr? Martyrs don’t sing, you know.”

He stroked her cheek. It was soft and icy.

“No one will dare order them to fire on me, Bart. No one!”

“Milena, they set the dog-men on your mother fifteen years ago! Have you forgotten that?”

She gazed deep into his eyes, her own blue and burning. “They did it because they were up in the mountains with no one to see! My mother died all alone in the darkness of night, understand? She can’t even have seen the teeth that tore her to pieces. We’re in broad daylight here, Bart. Look around you! See all these thousands of people! They’re watching. Their eyes will protect us!”

Bartolomeo turned and saw the troop of horse-men starting over the bridge after them. But their anger had died down, for now at least, and they were advancing slowly and in silence, shoulder to shoulder. Their grave faces and the dark folds of their clothing made them look like stone statues with life breathed into them, marching on like an invincible army. Bart raised the palm of his right hand to them, and they stopped. Their obedience to him expressed a greater and more formidable force than the disorderly attacks just now. Beyond their figures, armed with pikes and clubs, Bart looked at the countless crowd coming down from
the hills: men, women, children. Far in the distance you could imagine yet more of them, like tiny mites floating in the air.

On the other side of the bridge, the guns were silent.
Milena is right,
he thought.
If they fire on us at this moment, they’ll set off such fury that it will carry them away, they’ll be lost forever, and they know it.

In spite of this conviction, he still knew he was playing a deadly game. A single bullet would be enough. And another for Milena . . . Yet he felt no fear, only an awareness that he was living through the crucial moments of his life and that he was at peace with himself.

He held Milena’s hand, and they took several more steps together. In the middle of the bridge, they stopped and saw that twenty yards behind them the horse-men had stopped too. They glanced at the dark waters of the great river flowing below. It had brought them here at the beginning of winter. Why would it let them down now? The wind had dropped. The whole world seemed to be waiting.

“We mustn’t stop,” said Milena. “Come on.”

They walked on as if suspended in midair, avoiding the broken bodies still lying where they had fallen. Among them they recognized Faber’s. He was facedown, and his immense arms, open like spread wings, seemed to be trying to seize and lift the entire bridge. A red trickle of blood ran from his head, making its way into the cracks between the gray paving stones.

The trucks on the opposite bank still didn’t move.
It was disturbing. They took twenty more paces, still at the same speed. Milena’s hand in Bart’s was soft and sure. He turned his head to look at his companion. Everything about her was youthful and luminous.
No,
he told himself again,
they can’t fire at her without condemning themselves.

And suddenly he knew they had arrived at the precise point where they would not be allowed to go any farther. Something had to happen now. He felt Milena’s hand trembling in his. Had the same idea come to her too? They did not stop. Every step farther they took represented a victory, yet every step going was a terrible threat.

It was then that they heard the engine of the first truck on the bank starting. It maneuvered out of its parking slot and drove slowly away down the avenue. A second followed it, then another, and yet another. Soon the entire convoy was on its way south toward the army barracks. At first there was an incredulous silence. Then shouting broke out among the horse-men.

“They’re leaving! They’re clearing off!”

It was the signal for a great roar of voices that rose to the hills and echoed back from them. Bart and Milena, feeling they were waking from a dream, realized that they had crossed the entire bridge. The last trucks, the ones barring the exit from it, were starting up in their turn and driving away. They saw the frightened faces of the truck drivers quite close. Some of them couldn’t be much older than themselves. They hardly had time to step aside: a
human wave was already sweeping toward them, and nothing could contain it. A similar torrent of men and women shouting for joy poured over the two neighboring bridges. The city lay ahead.

In a few minutes, the banks had been invaded, and the great peaceful army led by the horse-men flowed into the icy avenues of the capital. Windows were opened as they passed; people shouted acclamations. Shouts of hatred for the Phalange could be heard too, as if no one had ever wanted anything but to see it fall. Then the liberated citizens came out into the road to join the crowd, and the immense procession made for Phalange headquarters in the New Town.

“The arena!” cried Bart. “We must go to the arena!”