A new sensation struck him as he reached his home—that of his own body, as if he were touching it with hands that were weak from the heat—and he gave out a wanton, spasmodic yawn. He shut the door and dug a pit in the earthen floor, carefully burying there the tightly packed, weighty nuggets. There were a great many of them, each one a decent size.
He slumped down onto his bed of dry grass, sat there for a long while, dejected and unable to explain to himself his sudden melancholy indifference to the newly trampled-down patch of earth in his cabin. Clasping his left wrist, he listened to the mute rush of blood, while his teeth chattered, these little drums beating a tattoo, and his body shivered, as though snowflakes were falling from the ceiling and melting on his perspiring skin.
Without undressing, Horn lay down with his eyes wide open, in a state of sensual languor that was interrupted by periodic convulsions of his body, after which profuse perspiration would run down his face. Convinced that he was ill, Horn began to reckon the number of days for which he would have to stop work and how much he would stand to lose because of this. Swamp fever could cost him a good few acres of land, for, as he had been told and knew well, this illness ordinarily lasted at least ten days.
Clenching his jaws and writhing, Horn gradually succumbed to euphoria—a sign that the fever was intensifying. The shivering left him, and he smiled mockingly at the bare walls of the house, which were hiding something that would have given Lanphier cause to deal him a direct blow, without the military tactics of a commander plotting an ambush.
Horn lay there until sunset, when the heat temporarily forsakes man only to return the next day at a strictly appointed hour—with the accuracy of a German who lunches at 12:56 precisely. Weak, his head spinning and with a revolver in his pocket, Horn put on a new smock and went out into the open air. His thoughts had taken a calm direction; he carefully weighed his chances of success and decided that there was no mistake—excepting for some unforeseen eventuality, the chances of which were marginally greater than he deemed strictly necessary. Refreshed by the cold air, he lingered there, examining the starry atlas of the sky and the Southern Cross, which shone with great contempt for the affairs of the earth’s inhabitants. Yet this did not depress Horn, for his eyes, in turn, recalled a fine pair of stars—such did they shine out into the darkness—and he felt neither pitiful nor lonely, for he was not dead planetary matter.
There was a gust of wind, which abated after having drowned out the faint clatter of hooves carried from a distance. Horn unconsciously pricked up his ears; after a minute he could already tell that the horseshoe was hitting against stone, and the next moment against friable soil. He then went back inside and lit the little lamp that he had bought in the colony. Its wavering light shone through the window onto the nearby stalks of bamboo. Horn opened the door and stood there at the threshold, lit dimly from one side.
The unknown figure was continuing on his way. He was riding a little more gently now, from which Horn concluded that the stranger must have been coming to pay him a visit, since there was no sense in galloping to the lake only to slow the pace for the pleasure of the return journey. He waited until he could hear the horse’s snorting nearby.
“Who is it?” asked Horn, handling his revolver. “Esther!” he said after a pause, stepping back in surprise. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
“Why aren’t you?” she asked with a merry laugh, breathless from the brisk ride. “What matters is that you’re still alive.”
“I am,” said Horn, buoyed by the sound of her voice, which was loud, like the peal of a modest bell. “Your father may sleep quite easily now.”
She made no reply and, silently walking over to the table, sat down on a stool. The expression on her face changed continually, as though taking place within her were a mental conversation with someone known only to her. Horn said:
“You can see that I’m alive. I have nothing to offer you by way of refreshment. I usually dispose of any scraps; they spoil so quickly.”
“You say that because you don’t know why I’ve come,” said Esther, her voice sounding a semitone lower. “You see, it’s a holiday today. The men have been on the go since the early morning, but now they can barely hold themselves up. Everywhere has run out of alcohol. You can see torches burning all over the place; our home has been decorated with lanterns. It’s very pretty. Those who don’t begrudge the gunpowder are going about in packs, shooting blank cartridges. They’ve cleared away all the tables and benches at The Green Conch and people won’t stop dancing.”
She looked at Horn’s face expectantly. He noticed that Esther had on a yellow silk dress and a blue kerchief; her swarthy neck was adorned with pearl beads.
“I fell behind as they were passing the little bay, when I remembered you. Then I spotted young Dribb turn around, looking for me. King set off at a gallop, and I treated him mercilessly to my heels. You’ll enjoy yourself, I’m sure. You can’t go sitting around alone with your own thoughts for so long. We can be there in half an hour if you like.”
“Esther,” said Horn. “Why is it a holiday?”
“It’s the colony’s founding day.” Esther blushed; a silent smile opened her mouth, dewy with excitement. “Oh, just think how lovely it will be, Horn! We’ll be together and you can tell me whether people celebrate things like this where you’re from.”
“Thank you, Esther,” said Horn, who was very touched by this. “I don’t think I’ll go, but still, I feel as though I was as good as there.”
“Hang on a minute.” The girl cast a sly look at the hunter, and her voice began to drawl, like a shepherd’s horn in the morning. “Bekeko keeps asking for sugar.”
“Bekeko!” repeated Horn, deeply perplexed. “Asking for sugar?”
The memory put him on his guard. It occurred to him that everyone would know about the little blue river. An unpleasant sensation made his chest tighten; he got up and stretched his legs before taking up the conversation.
“He came creeping up to me and said ever so many incomprehensible things,” the girl continued, looking out the window. “I didn’t understand any of it, except for one thing: ‘Your man (he calls you my man) said that he and Esther need a lot of yellow stones.’ After which he made out that you promised him sugar from me. Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t have understood a word of what you said to him. In any case, I gave him a handful.”
Horn listened, trying not to miss a single word. His face now blanched, now blushed, and finally reacquired its natural hue. The girl was still wide of the mark.
“Yes,” he said, “I met the simpleton in a fit of panicked, inexplicable terror. He would doubtless have been more forthcoming with you. I managed to calm him down, without getting a single word out of him. Yellow stones! Only the mind of a madman could splice ravings with reality. And the sugar, too … But weren’t you at all angry?”
“Not in the slightest.” Esther looked down pensively. “‘Esther and I need it,’ he said.” She laughed. “Do you need what I do? It’s time to go, Horn. I’ve given a lot of thought to these words, though I doubt you gave them much. But then you didn’t know that they’d reach me.”
Her quickened breathing touched Horn’s soul, and he, as though awake but not daring to understand the truth, stopped with a cry of puzzled astonishment frozen on his lips.
“Esther,” he said longingly, “look at me, otherwise I fear I’ll misunderstand you.”
Esther looked him straight in the eye, and not a hint of shyness or embarrassment could be discerned in her subtle features, which were, unexpectedly even for her, in thrall to her female emotions. She stood up; a distance of less than a yard separated her and Horn, but already he felt an invisible wall being planted at his feet. He was alone; the girl’s presence unnerved him and filled him with an alarm similar to pity.
“I could be your wife, Horn,” Esther said slowly, smiling with her mouth, while her eyes grew tensely serious, as if a shadow had been cast over the upper part of her face. “Maybe
you wouldn’t have spoken the straightforward words of a man for some time yet. But you already mean a great deal to me, Horn. And I won’t dishonor you like she did.”
Horn walked up to her and firmly clutched her limp hand. A great weight was crushing him, and he dreadfully wanted his voice to utter more pitiful human words. Sensing that there could be nothing more offensive at this moment than silence, he said loudly and tenderly:
“Esther! If I could die right now, it would be easier for me. I don’t love you as you might expect. Cast me out of your proud head; to be your husband, to turn life into sheer toil—this isn’t what I want. I want another life, one that is perhaps unattainable, but the thought of it alone makes my head spin. Are you listening to me? I’m speaking honestly, as you are.”
The girl tossed her head and grew paler than snow. Horn let go of her hand. Esther wiggled her fingers, as if shaking off a lingering touch.
“Well, yes,” she said caustically, in full possession of herself. “If you cannot understand a joke, so much the worse for you. You’re probably looking for a wealthy bride in any case. I always thought it was the man who earned the money.”
Each of her words struck Horn painfully. It was as if she held a whip in her hand and was lashing him with it.
“Esther,” said Horn. “Have pity on me. It isn’t me who’s to blame, but life, which twists and turns us both. Would you have me pretend that I love you? Would you have me take your body because it’s beautiful and—truly, I mean it—attracts me? Only then to part from you?”
“Farewell,” the girl said.
Her entire body seemed to exude the affront she had just borne and shuddered with hatred. Horn threw himself at her, full of keen, tender pity.
“Esther!” softly, almost imploringly, he said. “Dear girl, forgive me!”
“I forgive you!” Esther cried, choking with tears of rage, and truly she forgave him with her gaze, which was filled with indescribable pride. “But never, do you hear, Horn, never will Esther rue her mistakes! I’m not like that!”
Horn went over to the window, reeling from weakness. By the window a horse was neighing quietly. “King!” the girl called out calmly. She mounted the horse, her silk skirt rustling. Horn listened. “King!” Esther said again, “will you forgive me my heels in your side? I’ll never do it again.”
King’s easy gallop filled the darkness with an even, fading clatter of hooves.
VIII.
There was no reason to be thinking of dogs. The little blue river had never seen their ilk, and, if it had, then it was a long time ago, long before the first locomotive crossed the plain two hundred miles from the spot where Horn, on his knees, had imbibed the water and the golden brilliance.
And yet, as he shook out a handful of the metal onto a kerchief, the fruit of a three-hour labor, he unexpectedly caught himself thinking of all the different sorts of dogs he had seen before. As it turned out, he was thinking of mastiffs more often than of greyhounds, and of beagles more often than of pugs. He put an end to all this with a brief sigh. Horn’s face took on a concentrated expression, and he straightened up, fixing his gaze on the green vistas of the forest, which was shrouded in radiance.
The sounds were so faint that only unconsciously were they able to turn his thoughts from gold to domestic quadrupeds. They sooner resembled an echo of wood-chopping than of barking muffled by the thickets and the distance separating them. And there were so few of them, far fewer than the exclamation marks that cover two pages of a dramatic script.
The time it took for them to grow, to acquire the characteristic inflections of a dog’s voice and the angry assurance of a hound panting after a long search, was for Horn a time of abstracted reverie and cold alarm. He waited for the men to draw nearer, comforting himself with the hope that the dog’s path lay out of his way. The valley of the river delivered him from this fallacy. It stretched out in a curve toward the forest, and from every point along the edge of the forest Horn could be seen. There was no reason to think that the stranger would turn back.
Horn hurriedly hid the groaning kerchief in his pocket, threw the patch of turf that had served as a cradle into the water, and, holding his rifle horizontally, retreated about a hundred paces from the spot where he had been washing the sand. A restrained, gruff barking emanated from the nearby bushes.
Horn took up his position behind a tree, listening intently. Invisible, he saw in the distance a little figure on horseback crossing the meadow at a round trot, while a diminutive bloodhound weaved in and out under the horse’s hooves, zigzagging among the grass. Enraged somewhat, Horn went out to meet them. He felt it to be beneath his dignity to hide from a single man, whatever his purpose in approaching Horn. He resented the interference and the fact that he, Horn, was being sought out.
There could be no doubt about it. The dog performed two loops on the spot that Horn had just left and, with a whine, rushed over to the hunter, jumping almost as high as his head with a bewildered yelp. The dog could have started barking or biting; it all depended on the behavior of its master. But its master betrayed no excitement; only to Horn, at a distance of seven feet, did his eyes seem fixed and sharp.
Horn stood there, holding his rifle, both barrels loaded, under his arm—like an umbrella one wants to forget when the weather is fine. Young Dribb stayed the horse. His own rifle lay across the saddle, vibrating from the impatient movements of the horse as it beat it hooves. The farmer’s absurd silence drove the blood from Horn’s face, who was first to raise his hat and bow.
“Hello, Mr Horn,” said the giant with a heavy sigh. “It’s very hot. My horse is lathering. I had to travel at a fair pace, you see.”
“I pity the horse,” ventured Horn softly. “You must be on an important journey.”
“More important than were I bearing news of my own mother’s death,” said Dribb quietly. “You’ll forgive me for the intrusion,” he added without smiling, staring at the horse’s trimmed withers. “I would rather have spoken with you at your home than disturb you out on one of your walks. But you haven’t been there for three days, that’s just the thing.”
“Three days,” Horn repeated.
Dribb cleared his throat and wiped his mouth, even though it was as dry and dusty as the manager of a boarding house. His little eyes looked anxious and inflamed. Horn waited.
“You see,” Dribb began, pronouncing each word with difficulty, “I can’t explain it to you all at once. I’ll have to start from the beginning, telling you how it all began and leading up to the present day.”
There was a point when Horn had wanted to stop him. “I know, so there,” he had wanted to say. “What’s the use?” the other half of his soul replied. “If he’s wrong, there’s no need to alarm him.”
The dog darted off and, with its tongue hanging out, lay down in the shade of an oak tree. Dribb chewed his lips indecisively; it seemed to be unspeakably difficult for him. At last he began, looking off into the distance.
“You aren’t saying anything, but of course I haven’t asked you anything yet.” He sniffed loudly, agitated. “About five days ago, sir—that is, roughly seven or eight days after our festival—I was at Astis’s house. ‘Esther!’ I said, and, even then, I was only joking, since she refused to say anything. ‘Esther,’ I say, ‘you’re like Winter’s child these days.’ And since she didn’t answer me, I filled my pipe, for if a woman is out of sorts, you mustn’t anger her. That evening I met her in the square. ‘You won’t cut through me,’ I said. ‘Or do you think I’m like the air?’ Then she was the one who stopped, otherwise our foreheads would have banged together. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I was lost in thought.’ Seeing as I was in a rush, I kissed her and went on my way. She caught up with me. ‘Dribb,’ she says, ‘it’s painful for both of us, but it’s best to come out with it. There will be no wedding.’”
He took a deep breath, and a big apple seemed to leap up in his throat. Horn observed his drawn face in silence; Dribb’s eyes were fixed on
the cliffs, as though he were protesting to them and to heaven.
“At that point,” he continued, “I began to laugh, thinking that it was a joke. ‘Dribb,’ she says, ‘nothing’s going to come of laughing. Do you think you can forget me? If you can, then use all your strength to forget.’ ‘Esther,’ I said with sorrow in my heart, because she was as pale as flour, ‘don’t you love me anymore?’ For a long time she said nothing, sir. She felt sorry for me. ‘No,’ she says. It was as if I’d been cut asunder. She walked off without looking back. I began to weep like a child. I won’t find another girl like her upon this earth.”
The giant was breathing like a steam engine and perspiring all over. Upset by his own story, he stood stock-still, watching Horn.
“Go on,” said Horn.
Dribb’s hand rested convulsively on the barrel of his rifle.
“Well,” he continued. “You know that vodka’s the stuff in such circumstances. I drank four bottles, but that wasn’t enough. He was drunk, too, the old man.”
“Lanphier,” Horn hazarded.
“Yes, although we call him the Red Father, because he’s spilled blood, sir. He kept looking at me and smirking. It was a nasty sight, so I raised my hand, but he said: ‘Dribb, where do girls go at night?’ ‘If you know, tell me,’ I replied. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘don’t wrack your brains over it. The valley was covered in darkness; on the night of the festival, I’d gone to keep an eye out for that fellow who’s settled by the lake. If he’s a curious sort, I tell myself, he’ll come to the colony. I tied the muzzle of the rifle with a white rag so as not to miss and sat down on my hunkers. Half an hour later a girl leaves the colony; I couldn’t make out who she was, but there was something familiar about the clatter of hooves.’ My heart clenched, sir, as I listened to him. ‘I very nearly fell asleep,’ he says, ‘waiting for her to come back. She rode back at a walk. It was different from an hour ago.’ ‘Esther!’ I shouted. ‘She sat up in the saddle and galloped off. Was it not her, my dear fellow?’ he said.”
Fandango and Other Stories Page 13