The Horseman on the Roof by Jean Giono Read Free Book Online Page A

that throng of birds, which, viewed now from a man’s height, was rather frightening, especially since they did not fly away; most of the fat crows darkening the threshold of the house Angelo was approaching simply turned their heads toward him and watched him come with expressions of astonishment. The sugary smell grew stronger and stronger.
    Angelo had never, as it happened, been on a battlefield. Those “killed” in the divisional maneuvers were simply fallen out and marked with a chalk cross on their coats. He had often asked himself: “What sort of figure would I cut in a war? I have courage enough to charge, but would I have courage enough to dig graves? You must be able not only to kill but to look coldly on the dead. Otherwise, you’re ridiculous. And if you’re ridiculous at your job, where else can you be elegant?”
    Naturally he kept his seat when his horse suddenly shied as a huge clump of crows flew up to reveal a body lying across the track. But his eyes opened unnaturally wide, and his head was suddenly filled with the desolate landscape in the terrifying light; with this handful of empty houses gaping at the sun, through whose doors the birds went freely in and out. The horse was shivering between his knees. It was a woman’s corpse, as could be seen from the long hair lying loose on the neck.
    â€œJump down!” Angelo told himself icily, but he gripped the horse between his legs with all his strength. At length the birds settled again on the back and in the hair of the woman. Angelo leaped down and ran at them, waving his arms. The crows watched him with an air of utter astonishment. They flew off heavily, and not until he was so close to them that they beat his legs, chest, and face with their wings. They stank like stale sirup. The horse, terrified by the beating wings, and even flailed by a drunken crow that blundered into its flank, turned and fled at a gallop across the fields, with stirrups flying. “That was clever of me,” thought Angelo; at the same time he looked down at the horrible face of the woman flat in the dust beside the toes of his boots.
    Naturally, they had pecked out the eyes. “The old sergeants were right,” thought Angelo, “it’s their favorite tidbit.” He clenched his teeth over a cold need to vomit. “So, trooper,” he went on, “that’s washed you up.” He could hear his horse, which had reached the road and was galloping full tilt along it, but he would have despised himself had he run after his saddlebag. He remembered the sly winks of the old sergeants who had seen a fortnight’s campaigning against Augereau. He leaned over the corpse. It was that of a young woman, to judge from the long black tresses of her bun, pulled loose by the crows. The rest of the face was horrible to see, with its pecked eye-sockets, its sunken flesh, its grimace of someone who has drunk vinegar. She smelled appallingly. Her skirts were soaked with a dark liquid that Angelo took for blood.
    He ran toward the house; but on the threshold he was repulsed by a veritable torrent of birds that flew out and enveloped him in a rush of wings; their feathers struck him in the face. He was in a mad rage from understanding nothing and feeling afraid. He seized the handle of a spade leaning against the door and went in. He was immediately all but bowled over by a dog, which leaped at his stomach and would have bitten him badly had he not instinctively hurled it back with a blow from his knee. The animal was about to spring again when he hit it as hard as he could with the spade, seeing, as he did so, strange eyes coming toward him, at once tender and hypocritical, and a muzzle smeared with nameless gobbets. The dog fell, its head split open. Anger snarled in Angelo’s ears, but at the same time it had lowered a troubled veil over his eyes, so that all he could see was the dog stretching out peacefully in its blood. Finally,