Jean-Claude Mourlevat - Winter's End

“I know you’re brave. I know you are ready to die,” Bart went on. “But what’s the use of that, just to give them the satisfaction of killing you? What’s the use of it? I ask you.”

“So what do we do, then?” asked one of the men. “We’re not retreating!”

“And we’re not leaving our comrades dead on the bridge!” added another.

They had a good point. Looking beyond their furious faces, Bartolomeo saw the vast crowd waiting farther off, unaware of the drama being played out here on the bridge. The light of dawn, low in the sky, now showed massed throngs all the way to the hills on the horizon. And he looked at the other side of the river. Behind the lines of gray-green trucks where the enemy was concealed, implacable and silent, the city seemed to be holding its breath. He had to admit that he had been wrong, just as Jahn, Lando, Faber, and all the others had been wrong: the soldiers had indeed opened fire. They had obeyed orders, ruthlessly shooting down those poor souls armed only with clubs.

What could he say now to men who had just seen a friend, a father, a brother fall dead before their eyes? And Faber, their much-loved leader! Bart had succeeded in keeping them from rushing to their doom for the moment, and he had managed to save the lives of a few of them, but he wouldn’t be able to contain their despair and fury much longer.

“Come on!” shouted the young man who was so keen to lead an attack. “Let’s charge them!”

“No one move!” shouted Bart. “I order you not to move! Leave this to me!”

And without knowing just what he hoped for, he started over the bridge himself, walking straight down the middle of it. He moved a dozen paces.

“What are you doing, Bart?” someone called behind him. “Come back!”

He recognized Jahn’s voice but did not turn.

There was no sign of life on the other side of the river. They’d wait until he was halfway over the bridge before they fired. He’d be a better target there, closer, easily visible. He went another few feet. What did he want to do? He didn’t know.

Then he remembered what Jahn had said about his father, and the words began dancing around in his head: “I often wonder if he wasn’t actually looking for a chance to die in his prime. . . . There was a great melancholy in him. . . . I don’t know where it came from. . . .”

He shuddered, afraid of detecting the same sinister temptation in himself. Did he, Bartolomeo, have the same melancholy in his heart? The same profound sadness, so that putting an end to his life was almost a seductive idea? He went on walking straight ahead, stumbled on a uneven paving stone, walked around the distorted body of the young horse-man who had thrown himself into the attack beside his friend, and went another five yards. His black scarf was streaming out in the cold morning wind. From where he was now, he could no longer hear the cries of the horse-men or the sound of the great crowd behind them. All that came to his ears was the peaceful murmuring of the river. I’ll walk to the end of it, he told himself. There’s nothing else I can do. I’ll walk it to the end.

And suddenly Milena was by his side.

“Milena!” he exclaimed, stupefied, seizing her by the shoulders. “Get away from here!”

She shook her bare head. Her short blond hair stood out like a halo around it.

“No, I won’t! We’ll cross the bridge together. Come on.”

She took his arm and led him slowly on, looking serene, her back very straight.

“They’ll fire on us, Milena. You know they will.”

“On you perhaps, but not on me.”

“They’re capable of it! Look, they fired on boys of thirteen! We’re walking over their bodies.”

“They won’t fire on me, Bart. They won’t fire on Milena Bach. I’m not hiding anymore. Let them see who I am! Let them take a good look!”

For a moment Bartolomeo wondered whether she had gone out of her mind. He stopped her by force. “Milena, listen to me! What are you hoping for? Do you want to be a martyr? Martyrs don’t sing, you know.”

He stroked her cheek. It was soft and icy.

“No one will dare order them to fire on me, Bart. No one!”

“Milena, they set the dog-men on your mother fifteen years ago! Have you forgotten that?”

She gazed deep into his eyes, her own blue and burning. “They did it because they were up in the mountains with no one to see! My mother died all alone in the darkness of night, understand? She can’t even have seen the teeth that tore her to pieces. We’re in broad daylight here, Bart. Look around you! See all these thousands of people! They’re watching. Their eyes will protect us!”

Bartolomeo turned and saw the troop of horse-men starting over the bridge after them. But their anger had died down, for now at least, and they were advancing slowly and in silence, shoulder to shoulder. Their grave faces and the dark folds of their clothing made them look like stone statues with life breathed into them, marching on like an invincible army. Bart raised the palm of his right hand to them, and they stopped. Their obedience to him expressed a greater and more formidable force than the disorderly attacks just now. Beyond their figures, armed with pikes and clubs, Bart looked at the countless crowd coming down from the hills: men, women, children. Far in the distance you could imagine yet more of them, like tiny mites floating in the air.

On the other side of the bridge, the guns were silent. Milena is right, he thought. If they fire on us at this moment, they’ll set off such fury that it will carry them away, they’ll be lost forever, and they know it.

In spite of this conviction, he still knew he was playing a deadly game. A single bullet would be enough. And another for Milena . . . Yet he felt no fear, only an awareness that he was living through the crucial moments of his life and that he was at peace with himself.

He held Milena’s hand, and they took several more steps together. In the middle of the bridge, they stopped and saw that twenty yards behind them the horse-men had stopped too. They glanced at the dark waters of the great river flowing below. It had brought them here at the beginning of winter. Why would it let them down now? The wind had dropped. The whole world seemed to be waiting.

“We mustn’t stop,” said Milena. “Come on.”

They walked on as if suspended in midair, avoiding the broken bodies still lying where they had fallen. Among them they recognized Faber’s. He was facedown, and his immense arms, open like spread wings, seemed to be trying to seize and lift the entire bridge. A red trickle of blood ran from his head, making its way into the cracks between the gray paving stones.

The trucks on the opposite bank still didn’t move. It was disturbing. They took twenty more paces, still at the same speed. Milena’s hand in Bart’s was soft and sure. He turned his head to look at his companion. Everything about her was youthful and luminous. No, he told himself again, they can’t fire at her without condemning themselves.

And suddenly he knew they had arrived at the precise point where they would not be allowed to go any farther. Something had to happen now. He felt Milena’s hand trembling in his. Had the same idea come to her too? They did not stop. Every step farther they took represented a victory, yet every step going was a terrible threat.

It was then that they heard the engine of the first truck on the bank starting. It maneuvered out of its parking slot and drove slowly away down the avenue. A second followed it, then another, and yet another. Soon the entire convoy was on its way south toward the army barracks. At first there was an incredulous silence. Then shouting broke out among the horse-men.