The Nonexistent Knight Read Free Page B

Raimbaut’s eyes searched for something: the white armor of Agilulf, whom he was hoping to meet again, maybe because his appearance could make the rest of the army seem more concrete, or because the most solid presence he had yet met was the nonexistent knight’s.
    He found him under a pine tree, sitting on the ground, arranging fallen pine cones in a regular design: an isosceles triangle. At that hour of dawn Agilulf always needed to apply himself to some precise exercise: counting objects, arranging them in geometric patterns, resolving problems of arithmetic. It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the night and gradually reacquire colors, but seem to cross meanwhile an uncertain limbo, faintly touched, just breathed on by light; the hour in which one is least certain of the world’s existence. He, Agilulf, always needed to feel himself facing things as if they were a massive wall against which he could pit the tension of his will, for only in this way did he manage to keep a sure consciousness of himself. But if the world around was instead melting into the vague and ambiguous, he would feel himself drowning in that morbid half light, incapable of allowing any clear thought or decision to flower in that void. In such moments he felt sick, faint; sometimes only at the cost of extreme effort did he feel himself able to avoid melting away completely. It was then he began to count: trees, leaves, stones, lances, pine cones, anything in front of him. Or he put them in rows and arranged them in squares and pyramids. Applying himself to this exact occupation helped him to overcome his malaise, absorb his discontent and disquiet, reacquire his usual lucidity and composure.
    This is how Raimbaut saw him, as with quick assured movements he arranged the pine cones in a triangle, then in squares on the sides of the triangle, and obstinately compared the pine cones on the shorter sides of the triangle with those of the square of the hypotenuse. Raimbaut realised that all this moved by ritual, convention, formulas, and beneath it there was ... what? He felt a vague sense of discomfort come over him at knowing himself to be outside all these rules of a game. But then his wanting to avenge his father’s death, his ardor to fight, to enroll himself among Charlemagne’s warriors—wasn’t that also a ritual to prevent plunging into the void, like this raising and setting of pine cones by Sir Agilulf? Oppressed by the turmoil of such unexpected questions, young Raimbaut flung himself on the ground and burst into tears.
    He felt something on his head, a hand, an iron hand, but it felt very light. Agilulf was kneeling beside him. “What’s the matter, boy? Why are you crying?”
    States of confusion or despair or fury in other human beings immediately gave perfect calm and security to Agilulf. His immunity from the shocks and agonies to which people who exist are subject made him take on a superior and protective attitude.
    “I’m sorry,” exclaimed Raimbaut. “It’s weariness maybe. I haven’t managed to shut an eye all night, and now I’m bewildered. If I could only doze off a minute ... But now it’s day. And you, who have been awake too, how d’you do it?”
    “I would feel bewildered if I dozed off for even a second,” said Agilulf slowly. “In fact I’d never come round at all but would be lost forever. So I keep wide awake every second of the day and night.”
    “It must be awful...”
    “No!” The voice was sharp and firm again.
    “And don’t you ever take off your armor?”
    The murmuring began again. “For me there’s no problem. Take off or put on has no meaning for me.”
    Raimbaut had raised his head and was looking into the cracks of the visor, as if searching in that darkness for the glimmer of a glance.
    “How come?”
    “How otherwise?”
    The iron gauntlet of white armor had settled on the young man’s hair again. Raimbaut hardly felt it