The Horseman on the Roof Read Free Page A

neckerchief of hair. “Inns like the one you have,” said Angelo, “are generally running with blood. In such places there’s always an oven for roasting corpses and a well down which to throw the bones.”
    â€œI’ve an oven but no well,” said the man. “Mind you,” he added, “the bones could be buried in the woods, where it would take the devil to spot anything.”
    â€œIn my present state of mind,” said Angelo, “I’d like nothing better than an adventure of that kind. Men are queer fish: it’s superfluous to tell that to a noncom who has had the honor to belong to the 27th Light Infantry. But I’m up to my neck debating with myself problems of such difficulty that it would be a great relief to be attacked by some really determined cutthroats, out for my purse and with no chance of avoiding the galleys or even the guillotine except by desperately threatening my life. I think I’d take them on with real joy, even on that little narrow staircase I see over there—though it would make swordplay difficult. I’d even like being in a garret with a door that wouldn’t shut and hearing the murderers coming upstairs in their stocking-feet, telling myself that I could only fire my pistol twice and would then have to settle things with the well-sharpened dagger that is always at my side.…” Then he made a very melancholy declaration. He was wholly serious. “This,” he said to himself, “is the only way to talk of love without having people make fun of you.”
    â€œThat’s easy to say,” said the man, “but I don’t think such moments are very amusing.”
    But when Angelo persisted with a sort of sad ardor, he poured him out a glass of wine and spoke philosophically and with good sense about youth, which everybody goes through, thus proving that its dangers are not mortal.
    â€œI’ll settle down as a hermit,” thought Angelo. “Well, why not? A little orchard, some vines, maybe a robe—after all, it’s a sensible costume. And very thin cords to fasten the robe to my head. That does at least look extremely impressive, and makes a perfect protection for a man who fears ridicule above all things. Perhaps that is a way of being free!”
    When it came time to settle the bill, the man lost all philosophy and literally begged for a few pennies. He said no more about the 27th Light Infantry but made great use of the word “alone.” He was aware that at this word, every time, Angelo’s eyes lost their sternness. He very easily got what he wanted, and put on his helmet for the pleasure of taking it off and holding it in his hand while he walked with Angelo to the mounting-block.
    *   *   *
    It was about one in the afternoon, and the heat was sharp, like phosphorus. “Keep out of the sun,” said the man (with what he thought was profound irony, since there was no shade anywhere).
    It seemed to Angelo that each step of his horse was taking him into the oven of which he had just been speaking. The valley he followed was very narrow, and choked up with clumps of dwarf oaks; the rocky walls sloping down to it were at white heat. The light, crushed to a fine irritant dust, rubbed its sandpaper over the drowsy horse and rider, and over the little trees, which it gradually spirited away into worn air, whose coarse texture quivered, mingling smears of greasy yellow with dull ochers, with great slabs of chalk wherein it was impossible to recognize anything familiar. Down high anfractuous rocks flowed the odor of rotten eggs from nests deserted by the hawks. The slopes poured down into the valley the stale reek of everything that had died within the vast radius of these pale hills. Tree stumps and skins; ants’ nests; little cages of ribs the size of a fist; skeletons of snakes like broken chains of silver; patches of slaughtered flies like handfuls of dried