The Horseman on the Roof

by Jean Giono

  At last he was able to see the faces surrounding him, indeed pressing up to him, and shouting insults. They were not so terrible, except that they bore the stamp of fear. A man of about thirty, well built, with curly hair and a large nose, was in the throes of a sort of hysterical trance. He was prancing round the group that imprisoned Angelo, punching at the empty air and shouting in a voice that suddenly took on a feminine shrillness.

  “It’s him. Hang him! It’s him. Hang him! Put him to death! To death!”

  His eyes were starting from his head. In the end his fury half choked him and he had a fit of coughing. Finally he spat in Angelo’s face.

  After contradictory proposals in which the decision was carried by a deep dark voice speaking very calmly, and after further jostling, begun by the large-nosed man who sought to get at Angelo with his fists, they set off. They went down the boulevard toward the heart of the town and turned into some little streets, where Angelo noticed some wide and very fine doorways, but also shutters hastily opening. There were now more than a hundred people behind Angelo. Luckily the streets were very narrow and kept this crowd away from the victim, for the hysterical man’s falsetto cries could still be heard.

  “You’re certainly no coward, sir,” said the big dark voice in Angelo’s ear, “but let’s be quick if you don’t want to share the other’s fate.”

  Since he had taken the liberty of noticing the beauty of the wide doorways, Angelo had gained a fair control of himself.

  “I’m in no hurry,” he said.

  But he felt himself being dragged along, and it was in vain that he resisted; he was pushed into a guardroom practically at a run. Two gendarmes sprang to their feet, overturning their bench, and barred the door.

  The man who had spoken in his ear had entered with him.

  “Phew! This one’s had a narrow escape,” he said in his dark voice. “If I hadn’t been there, he’d have gone the way of the other.”

  He was thin and dark-haired; he held himself erect and apparently unmoved, in a military posture.

  There was also, on the other side of the table and illuminated by two three-branched candlesticks, a second person. He was quite military, notwithstanding a fine cravat of faille, for above the cravat his face was marked by a long scar extending from one cheek to the other and notching the nose.

  “That’s an old saber-cut,” thought Angelo.

  He had never seen a finer sight than that scar. With the toe of his boot he righted the bench that the gendarmes had overturned.

  “Give those rascals one on the snout for me,” said the faille cravat.

  The tumult was still going on outside. There were shouts of “Death to the poisoner!” The falsetto voice was nearing the door. They must have pushed the hysterical man to the front, or else he was elbowing his way there. He could be heard saying, in haranguing tones: “He’s thrown poison into the Observantins’ fountain. It’s a plot to destroy the people. He’s a foreigner. He’s got aristocrat’s boots.”

  The man with the faille cravat glanced at Angelo’s boots.

  “He’s paid by the government.”

  The man with the faille cravat rose and went to the door. He pushed the gendarmes aside and planted himself on the threshold.

  “How about you?” he said. “Who pays you for making a fool of yourself? You got three hundred gold francs by the last courier, and a letter from Paris. I’ve got a copy on my table. Tell us something about who pays you, Michu.”

  “The cholera’s an excuse to poison the poor,” shouted the hysteric.

  “The man’s mad,” thought Angelo, “but I’ll find him later and kill him.”

  “No need for an excuse,” said the faille cravat; “for a long time now you’ve been acting like boys big enough to piss in wells. Shut the door,” he told the gendarmes, “and shoot this scum in the belly if they dare to open it and come in.”

  “We’ll see you later, Grandpa,” shouted someone.

  “Whenever you like,” said the faille cravat.

  He came back and sat down at the table. Angelo admired him greatly. He would have liked to be in his shoes. He was not used to being protected. If the man had spoken to him there and then, he would have admitted with pleasure who he was and even what he intended to do. He would have adopted a drawing-room manner and told him everything.

  But it was a gendarme who slapped the bench with the flat of his hand and invited him to sit down.

  “Where did they catch him?” said the faille cravat.

  “At the Observantins’ fountain,” said the dark voice. “He had his hands in the water.”

  “The real joke,” said the faille cravat, “is that Police Headquarters seem to want to make people think they believe it, or are they playing the fool to achieve their own ends?”

  “If it’s that kind of game,” said the dark voice, “I should think things would be moving much faster.”

  “They’re moving fast enough for me already,” said the faille cravat. “Gendarmes,” he added, “take your bench and go and sit outside. Put your guns between your legs and sit tight.

  “Come over here,” he said to Angelo, when the gendarmes had gone out. “Have you any papers?”

  “No,” said Angelo.

  “You’re not French?”

  “No.”

  “Piedmontese?”

  “Yes.”

  “Political refugee?”

  Angelo did not reply.

  “He’s not scared,” said the man with the dark voice. “He kicked like hell and didn’t let a peep out of him.”

  “Oh! Then he’s a priest,” said the faille cravat.1

  “Yes,” said the dark voice, “but not, I think, the kind to put rat poison in the ciborium.”

  “You dispute that point?” asked the cravat.

  “Of course.”

  The man with the faille cravat examined Angelo afresh from top to toe.

  “Fact is,” he said, “if you stuck this fellow in the last square at Waterloo, I bet he’d acquit himself with honor.”

  “You take the words out of my mouth,” said the dark voice.

  “Yes, but law and order,” said the cravat, “what becomes of that? Now that everybody has the trots, as at Leipzig!”

  “O Just Augustus! the reign of shit,” said the dark voice.

  “Take a look at yourself!” said the cravat.

  “The telescope trick? If I try that, I see stars,” said the dark voice.

  “Tell us what color,” said the cravat.

  “Bee-color,” said the dark voice.

  “Not bad. You know there’s a circular, signed ‘Gisquet’?”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Stories.”

  “What side are they on?”

  “The fellows outside.”

  “That doesn’t stop me thinking it’s bee-color. Quite the contrary.”

  “I grant you that would explain the ‘Gisquet.’”

  “And Michu’s gold,” said the dark voice. “The louis were new, and new louis come straight from the Treasury. The way I see it.”

  “You’re a deep thinker.”

  “Deep as a well in which Truth takes her hip baths.”

  “Then what’s to be done with him?”

  “Let him take off by the back door,” said the dark voice.

  During this conversation Angelo thought of the blows he had received. He was literally mad with rage at the thought that he had been beaten and dragged along the ground. He kept constantly repeating: “They spat in my face.” He imagined appalling acts of revenge. He was so absorbed in this that he had an absent, wholly detached expression, not lacking in nobility.

  “Follow this man,” the character with the faille cravat told him.

  And, as Angelo did not move, he spoke again:

  “Kindly follow this man, sir.”

  Angelo gave a slight nod of acknowledgment. He had not heard the first injunction.

  “You’ve been splendid,” the dark voice told h
im as they went down a long corridor.

  The man climbed on to a stool and blew out the oil lamp standing in a niche in the wall. He opened the door. It gave onto some gardens. Still he went out cautiously and listened attentively, turning to right and left. They could hear the soothing chant of a great many tree frogs.

  “One never knows with those cowards,” he said. “They’re so cunning!… But the coast’s clear. Come with me. Just don’t trip over the vine props.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” said Angelo. “I don’t understand why I’ve got to hide. I’ve done no harm to anyone.”

  “Hush!” said the man. “Never mention innocence. And if you need assassins, always choose cowards. They like their job because it calms them. While they’re killing they forget their cowardices. Look out, step over the cabbages,”

  They were crossing a kitchen garden.

  “I shall certainly never need assassins,” said Angelo. “I felt the need once and I took care of the matter myself.”

  “Well,” said the man, calmly, “don’t mention that in the victim’s house. And just now keep close to my heels: we’re in my bean rows.”

  They reached a fence. Through it could be seen a deserted street under a red street lamp.

  “I’ll open the gate for you,” said the man. But he touched Angelo’s arm. “You’ve no idea,” he pursued with a soldier’s good nature, “what a weakness I have for the cockade. I’ll bet you, at my age I could still make a revolution in a tasseled kepi. So there you are! If I say: ‘Take it gently!’ I mean take it gently. The cholera’s a mess, but the rest of the story’s worse. Don’t show off.”

  “What’s the rest of the story?” said Angelo.

  “Some chaps have been paid to say that the government is having the fountains poisoned. What d’you make of that?”

  “It’s a coward’s trick,” said Angelo.

  “But it’s addressed to cowards so it works,” said the man.

  He opened the gate.

  “The right goes into town; the left into the country,” he said, pointing toward the street. “Good night, sir.”

  Angelo turned to the right. Beyond the lamppost the street wound between stables smelling richly of horse dung. Angelo took advantage of a shady corner to go through his pockets. He had stuffed everything into the three pockets of his breeches. One contained the pistol he had fired into the air in front of the barricade; another, a handkerchief and three small cigars. In the hip pocket he had the other pistol, loaded, and thirty louis, which he counted out. “If I hadn’t acted so childishly a little while ago in front of those gentlemen hiding behind their casks, I’d still have two rounds left to fire; now I have only one,” he told himself. “That soldier who’s now in the police is quite right. One shouldn’t show off. For the pleasure of spouting off a moment ago, I can now kill only one of those dogs. And if it isn’t the one that spat in my face, I shan’t be clean.” He still had appalling thoughts of revenge.

  The street emerged into a boulevard planted with giant elms in which resounded an incredible conversation of nightingales. They were also chasing each other, and their flapping wings made the foliage patter like hail. Angelo counted seven street lamps in a row under the dense vault of the elms. The boulevard was deserted. Yet it was not late. A belfry struck nine.

  “I must go at once to Giuseppe’s,” thought Angelo. “I think I ought to go along here until I reach a sort of belfry with a wrought-iron bulb on top and a gate underneath.”

  He was hugging the foot of the elm avenue very closely to keep in the shade, when he heard, coming from a side street, the rumbling and creaking of a heavily laden cart. He hid behind a tree trunk and saw two men appear, each holding up a torch. They were escorting a wagon drawn by two strong horses. Four or five other individuals, in white blouses and carrying picks, spades, and more torches, walked beside the wheels. It was a load of coffins, and even corpses simply wrapped in sheets. Arms, legs, heads wagging on long, thin, flabby necks, stuck out through the side racks. The procession passed close to the tree behind which Angelo was hiding, and he could observe the tranquil look of the gravediggers, some of whom were smoking pipes as they walked. A shutter opened in one of the houses along the boulevard, and a woman’s voice, more like a screeching cat, screamed her appeal. One of the white-bloused men replied:

  “Call the other cart; this one’s full.”

  The nightingales went on singing and fluttering the leaves.

  Angelo was going the same way as the cart. He let it get some distance ahead. It had left behind it a musky smell.

  At length he reached the gateway he had remembered, with the wrought-iron bulb on top. It led into a dark, narrow street. All the houses were shut except one about fifty paces ahead, a shop with two glass doors, which emitted a little light. Angelo remembered a small café where Giuseppe had once taken him to drink some wine: it must be hereabouts. “If that’s it,” he thought, “I’ll go in and ask for a bottle of wine.” He had had nothing to eat since the chicken at Peyruis, but it was thirst that tormented him most and robbed him of any desire to smoke. “I’ll also ask for Giuseppe’s house; I don’t think it’s far from here.”

  It was just a small wine shop, with one lamp. Through the glass he could see four or five men standing up and drinking. Angelo pushed through the door. He was given some wine, but it took time. The shopkeeper watched him with eyes like those of a cat doing its business among warm cinders. The men who were drinking were probably bakers, to judge from their caps whitened with flour. They too opened their eyes wide when Angelo began to gulp down his wine straight from the bottle.

  Angelo didn’t realize that these men and the shopkeeper—who had all been drinking together without saying a word—were busy trying to calm their terror by customary behavior, by a little gathering of the kind they used to have before the epidemic, and the taste of wine that was the usual prelude to forgetting their worries. This newcomer all of a sudden brought back the evil air. It must be admitted also that his way of drinking was suspicious.

  They looked him up and down, and one of the bakers was collected enough to notice Angelo’s fine boots. He immediately set down his glass and went out. He could be heard running down the street.

  Angelo had reached that moment when thirst, long endured, has at last been satisfied, and when it is much more important to catch one’s breath and lick one’s lips than to study the surroundings. He had not seen the man leave. He noticed, however, that the others were full of engaging hypocrisy and faint smiles that never went beyond their lips. He frowned, curtly asked how much he owed, and paid with a half écu that he was clever enough to set spinning on the table. In two strides he was outside, while from instinct, the others were looking at the coin.

  He had been put too closely on his guard by those hypocritical glances and smiles not to leap immediately into a shadowy alley. Even so, a hand clutched at him as he passed, sliding down the length of his arm and tearing his shirt, while a voice thick with hate said: “It’s the poisoner.”

  Angelo started to run. “I mustn’t allow myself to be taken for a fool by that fine police officer who obligingly took me through his kitchen garden,” he thought; “and he’d have the right to do so, if I got caught again. If only I had two rounds to fire instead of one, I’d treat myself to the luxury of putting one of these dogs underground, where he’d be some use to the soil.”

  They were on his heels. Wearing light shoes and more at their ease despite the darkness on ground they knew well, they were running faster than he was. Several times, hands gripped Angelo’s shirt and tore it still more. A kick he let fly in the dark landed fair and square in a belly.

  The man whinnied like a horse and fell. Angelo managed to gain some ground, leap into a street to the right, then immediately into another that led down under an arch.

  “Let’s hope it’s not a blind alley,” he said to himself, running as hard as he could. “Now it’s a question of life or death. Very well, I’ll ki
ll some.” This thought soothed him and even gave him a certain gaiety. He stopped. Taking it by the middle he settled the discharged pistol into his right fist. “If I strike downward with the steel barrel as hard as I can, and have the luck to hit a face, I’ve got my man. Look here!” he went on. “Instead of running like a rabbit, I may even become the hunter. It all depends on my resolution. I can get enough cover from some doorway. If I bash in the heads of just one or two of them—and I owe them that—the others’ll think again. And if they don’t, at the last moment I’ll burn my powder. After that, by God’s grace … They’ll have paid dearly.” He was as happy as a king.

  He kept quiet. Soon he heard the sandals coming cautiously step by step down the street. His pursuers passed by him, within an arm’s length. There were about ten of them. One of them said in a low voice: “Does the government pay for his boots?”—“Well, who do you think?” replied another.

  “And that’s the people,” thought Angelo. This arrested his arm. “How ugly that voice was,” he said to himself. “Low as it was, it couldn’t conceal all the man’s envy of my boots. Here are people ready to do anything for boots. Indeed, they think I am too. Does this make them sincere?” he added, after a moment.2

  He was no longer thinking at all about the danger he was in. The men in sandals had reached the end of the street and, hearing no further noise, put their heads together for a moment; then they called out and received answers from the side of the adjoining street. They talked louder and louder, and Angelo realized that they had arranged to guard the issues of every street in the quarter.

  “He certainly stopped somewhere in this street,” said a voice in command. “You’re not going to let yourselves be poisoned like dogs by a government that’s out to kill the workers. Go back and make a closer search. That’s what we must do.”

  “Oh well, that’s how it goes! I shall have to do some killing,” Angelo told himself. “Somewhere there is certainly somebody who is having a good laugh.”

  He took the loaded pistol in his right hand and gripped the empty one in his left fist.

  He braced himself in his recess. He felt his back pressing against boards, which gave way. It was a door loose on its latch.