Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories (2 page)

It was this: and perhaps too the feel of the stones beneath my feet—the time-worn stones of the valley bottom, their backs encrusted with a veil of congealed waterweed—or the being forced to move in jumps, from one rock to another, or perhaps it was just a noise the pebbles made, slithering down the slope.

The fact is that the gap between myself and this land narrowed and composed itself: a sort of brotherhood, a metaphysical kinship bound me to those broken stones, fecund only of shy but tremendously stubborn lichens. And in the old dry river I recognized one of my fathers, ancient, naked.

So, we went along the dry river. He who walked beside me was a companion in fortune, a native of these places, the darkness of whose skin and shaggy hair falling thickly down his back together with the plumpness of the lips and the flat nose, conferred upon him a grotesque appearance as of a tribal leader, Congolese perhaps, or perhaps from the South Seas. This fellow had a proud strapping look about him which showed both in his face, albeit bespectacled, and likewise in his gait, impeded though it was by the clumsy slovenly state of the impromptu bathers we were. Despite being chaste as a quaker in his life, his conversation upon meeting him was like a satyr’s. His accent was as breathy and steamy as any I had ever been given to understand: he spoke with his mouth eternally open or full of air, emitting, in a constant and sulphurous outburst, hurricanes of extraordinary insults.

Thus we two climbed up the dry river looking for somewhere where the trickle broadened and we might wash our bodies, filthy and tired as they were.

Now, as we walked along the great womb, it turned in a loop and the background took on a new richness of detail. On high white rocks, an adventure for the eye, sat two, three, perhaps four young ladies in their bathing costumes. Red and yellow costumes—blue too most likely, but this I don’t remember: my eyes were in need only of red and yellow—and bathing caps, as though on a fashionable beach.

It was like a cock’s crow.

A green thread of water ran nearby and came up to their heels; they crouched down in it to bathe.

We stopped, torn between the pleasure of the sight, the pangs of regret it aroused, and the shame at our now ugly and oafish selves. Then we went on towards them while they considered us without interest and we hazarded a remark or two, trying them out the way you do, the wittiest and the most banal we could manage. My sulphurous companion joined in the game without enthusiasm but with a sort of timid reserve.

In any event, a short while later, tired of the meal we were making of it and the lack of response, we set off walking again, giving free rein to more pleasant exchanges. And the memory, still present to the mind’s eye, not so much of their bodies as of their red and yellow costumes was sufficient consolation.

Sometimes a branch of the stream, never deep, would widen to cover the whole river bed; and we, the banks being high and impossible to climb, would cross with our feet in the water. We were wearing light shoes, of canvas and rubber, and the water streamed through them: and when we were back on the dry ground our feet squelched inside at every step, wheezing and splashing.

It grew dark. The white shingle came alive with black spots that leapt: tadpoles.

They must have only just sprouted legs, tiny and tailed as they were, and it was as if they hadn’t yet come to terms with this new facility which kept sending them flying up in the air. There was one on every stone, but not for long, since the one would jump and another would take his place. And because their jumps were simultaneous and because while pressing on along the great river one saw nothing but the swarming of that amphibious multitude, advancing like a boundless army, I was struck by a sense of awe, almost as if this black and white symphony, this cartoon sad as a Chinese drawing, were fearfully conjuring the idea of the infinite.

We stopped by a pool of water that seemed to offer sufficient space for us to immerse our entire bodies; even to swim a stroke or two. I went in barefoot, bareskinned: the water was weedy and putrid from the slow decay of river plants. The bottom was slimy and swampy: when you touched it, it sent turbid clouds up to the surface.

But it was water; and it was good.

My companion went down into the water with his shoes and stockings, leaving his spectacles on the bank. Then, not fully aware of the religious aspect of the ceremony, he started soaping himself.

Thus we embarked on that joyful treat washing is when it is rare and hard to come by. The pool, which we could scarcely both fit in, bubbled over with foam and roaring, as though we were elephants bathing.

On the riverbanks there were willows and shrubs and houses with waterwheels; and so unreal were they, in contrast to the concreteness of this water and these stones, that with the grey of evening filtering through they took on the air of a faded arras.

My companion was washing his feet, now, in strange manner: without taking off his shoes but soaping the stockings and shoes on his feet.

Then we dried ourselves and dressed. When I picked up a sock a tadpole jumped out.

Laid on the bank, my companion’s glasses must have been thoroughly splashed. And—as he put them on—so gay must the muddle of that world have seemed to him, coloured as it was by the last gleams of the sunset, seen through a pair of wet lenses, that he started to laugh, and to laugh, without letting up and when I asked him why he said: ‘It’s such a hell of a mess!’

And, neat and tidy now, a warm weariness in our bones to replace the dull tiredness of earlier on, we said farewell to our new river friend and set off along a little track that followed the bank, reasoning upon our own affairs and upon when we would return, and keeping our ears open, alert to the distant sounding of a bugle.

Came a war and a guy called Luigi asked if he could go, as a volunteer.

Everyone was full of praise. Luigi went to the place where they were handing out the rifles, took one and said: ‘Now I’m going to go and kill a guy called Alberto.’

They asked him who Alberto was.

‘An enemy,’ he answered, ‘an enemy of mine.’

They explained to him that he was supposed to be killing enemies of a certain type, not whoever he felt like.

‘So?’ said Luigi. ‘You think I’m dumb? This Alberto is precisely that type, one of them. When I heard you were going to war against that lot, I thought: I’ll go too, that way I can kill Alberto. That’s why I came. I know that Alberto: he’s a crook. He betrayed me, for next to nothing he made me make a fool of myself with a woman. It’s an old story. If you don’t believe me, I’ll tell you the whole thing.’

They said fine, it was okay.

‘Right then,’ said Luigi, ‘tell me where Alberto is and I’ll go there and I’ll fight.’

They said they didn’t know.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Luigi said. ‘I’ll find someone to tell me. Sooner or later I’ll catch up with him.’

They said he couldn’t do that, he had to go and fight where they sent him, and kill whoever happened to be there. They didn’t know anything about this Alberto.

‘You see,’ Luigi insisted, ‘I really will have to tell you the story. Because that guy is a real crook and you’re doing the right thing going to fight against him.’

But the others didn’t want to know.

Luigi couldn’t see reason: ‘Sorry, it may be all the same to you if I kill one enemy or another, but I’d be upset if I killed someone who had nothing to do with Alberto.’

The others lost their patience. One of them gave him a good talking to and explained what war was all about and how you couldn’t go and kill the particular enemy you wanted to.

Luigi shrugged. ‘If that’s how it is,’ he said, ‘you can count me out.’

‘You’re in and you’re staying in,’ they shouted.

‘Forward march, one-two, one-two!’ And they sent him off to war.

Luigi wasn’t happy. He’d kill people, offhand, just to see if he might get Alberto, or one of his family. They gave him a medal for every enemy he killed, but he wasn’t happy. ‘If I don’t kill Alberto,’ he thought, ‘I’ll have killed a load of people for nothing.’ And he felt bad.

Meantime they were giving him one medal after another, silver, gold, everything.

Luigi thought: ‘Kill some today, kill some tomorrow, there’ll be less of them, that crook’s turn is bound to come.’

But the enemy surrendered before Luigi could find Alberto. He felt bad he’d killed so many people for nothing, and since they were at peace now he put all his medals in a bag and went around enemy country giving them away to the wives and children of the dead.

Going around like this, he ran into Alberto.

‘Good,’ he said, ‘better late than never,’ and he killed him.

That was when they arrested him, tried him for murder and hanged him. At the trial he said over and over that he had done it to settle his conscience, but nobody listened to him.

I stopped to watch them.

They were working, at night, in a secluded street, doing something with the shutter of a shop.

It was a heavy shutter: they were using an iron bar for a lever, but the shutter wouldn’t budge.

I was walking around, going nowhere in particular, on my own. I got hold of the bar to give them a hand. They made room for me.

We weren’t pulling together. I said, ‘Hey up!’ The one on my right dug his elbow into me and said low: ‘Shut up! Are you crazy! Do you want them to hear us?’

I shook my head as if to say it had just slipped out.

It took us a while and we were sweating but in the end we levered the shutter up high enough for someone to get under. We looked at each other, pleased. Then we went in. I was given a sack to hold. The others brought stuff over and put it in.

‘As long as those skunky police don’t turn up!’ they were saying.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘They really are skunks!’

‘Shut up. Can’t you hear footsteps?’ they said every few minutes. I listened hard, a bit frightened. ‘No, no, it’s not them!’ I said.

‘Those guys always turn up when you least expect it!’ one of them said.

I shook my head. ‘Kill ’em all, that’s what,’ I answered.

Then they told me to go out for a bit, as far as the corner, to see if anyone was coming. I went.

Outside, at the corner, there were others hugging the wall, hidden in the doorways, coming towards me.

I joined in.

‘Noises from down there, near those shops,’ said the one next to me.

I took a look.

‘Get your head down, idiot, they’ll see us and get away again,’ he hissed.

‘I was looking,’ I explained, and crouched down by the wall.

‘If we can circle round without them realizing,’ another said, ‘we’ll have them trapped. There aren’t that many.’

We moved in bursts, on tiptoe, holding our breaths: every few seconds we exchanged glances with bright eyes.

‘They won’t get away now,’ I said.

‘At last we’re going to catch them red-handed,’ someone said.

‘About time,’ I said.

‘Filthy bastards, breaking into shops like that!’ the other said.

‘Bastards, bastards!’ I repeated, angrily.

They sent me a little way ahead, to take a look. I was back inside the shop.

‘They won’t get us now,’ one was saying as he slung a sack over his shoulder.

‘Quick,’ someone else said. ‘Let’s go out through the back! That way we’ll escape from right under their noses.’

We all had triumphant smiles on our lips.

‘They’re going to feel really sore,’ I said. And we sneaked into the back of the shop.

‘We’ve fooled the idiots again!’ they said. But then a voice said: ‘Stop, who’s there,’ and the lights went on. We crouched down behind something, pale, grasping each other’s hands. The others came into the backroom, didn’t see us, turned round. We shot out and ran like crazy. ‘We’ve done it!’ we shouted. I tripped a couple of times and got left behind. I found myself with the others running after them.

‘Come on,’ they said, ‘we’re catching up.’

And everybody raced through the narrow streets, chasing them. ‘Run this way, cut through there,’ we said and the others weren’t far ahead now, so that we were shouting: ‘Come on, they won’t get away.’

I managed to catch up with one of them. He said: ‘Well done, you got away. Come on, this way, we’ll lose them.’ And I went along with him. After a while I found myself alone, in an alley. Someone came running round a corner and said: ‘Come on, this way, I saw them. They can’t have got far.’ I ran after him a while.

Then I stopped, in a sweat. There was no one left, I couldn’t hear any more shouting. I stood with my hands in my pockets and started to walk, on my own, going nowhere in particular.

There was a country where they were all thieves.

At night everybody would leave home with skeleton keys and shaded lanterns and go and burgle a neighbour’s house. They’d get back at dawn, loaded, to find their own house had been robbed.

So everybody lived happily together, nobody lost out, since each stole from the other, and that other from another again, and so on and on until you got to a last person who stole from the first. Trade in the country inevitably involved cheating on the parts both of buyer and seller. The government was a criminal organization that stole from its subjects, and the subjects for their part were only interested in defrauding the government. Thus life went on smoothly, nobody was rich and nobody was poor.

One day, how we don’t know, it so happened that an honest man came to live in the place. At night, instead of going out with his sack and his lantern, he stayed home to smoke and read novels.

The thieves came, saw the light on and didn’t go in.

This went on for a while: then they were obliged to explain to him that even if he wanted to live without doing anything, it was no reason to stop others from doing things. Every night he spent at home meant a family would have nothing to eat the following day.

The honest man could hardly object to such reasoning. He took to going out in the evening and coming back the following morning like they did, but he didn’t steal. He was honest, there was nothing you could do about it. He went as far as the bridge and watched the water flow by beneath. When he got home he found he had been robbed.