Waiting for the Barbarians Read online

  As I pass along the road to the fishermen’s camp a dog starts to bark; in a moment it is joined by another, and the night bursts out in a clamour of barking, shouts of alarm, screams. Dismayed, I shout out at the top of my voice, “It is nothing!” but I am not heard. I stand helpless in the middle of the road. Someone runs past me down towards the lake; then another body cannons into me, a woman, I know at once, who gasps in terror in my arms before she breaks free and is gone. There are dogs, too, snarling about me: I whirl and cry out as one snaps at my legs, tears my skin, retreats. The frenzied yapping is all round me. From behind the walls the dogs of the town bay their response. I crouch and circle, tensed for the next attack. The brassy wail of trumpets cuts through the air. The dogs bark louder than ever. Slowly I shuffle towards the camp, till one of the huts suddenly looms against the sky. I push aside the mat that hangs over the doorway and pass into the sweaty warmth where until a few minutes ago people slept.

  The clamour outside dies down, but no one returns. The air is stale, drowsy. I would like to sleep, yet I am disturbed by the resonance of that soft impact on me in the road. Like a bruise my flesh retains the imprint of the body that for a few seconds rested against me. I fear what I am capable of: of coming back tomorrow in daylight still aching with the memory and asking questions until I discover who it was who ran into me in the dark, so as to build upon her, child or woman, an even more ridiculous erotic adventure. There is no limit to the foolishness of men of my age. Our only excuse is that we leave no mark of our own on the girls who pass through our hands: our convoluted desires, our ritualized lovemaking, our elephantine ecstasies are soon forgotten, they shrug off our clumsy dance as they drive straight as arrows into the arms of the men whose children they will bear, the young and vigorous and direct. Our loving leaves no mark. Whom will that other girl with the blind face remember: me with my silk robe and my dim lights and my perfumes and oils and my unhappy pleasures, or that other cold man with the mask over his eyes who gave the orders and pondered the sounds of her intimate pain? Whose was the last face she saw plainly on this earth but the face behind the glowing iron? Though I cringe with shame, even here and now, I must ask myself whether, when I lay head to foot with her, fondling and kissing those broken ankles, I was not in my heart of hearts regretting that I could not engrave myself on her as deeply. However kindly she may be treated by her own people, she will never be courted and married in the normal way: she is marked for life as the property of a stranger, and no one will approach her save in the spirit of lugubrious sensual pity that she detected and rejected in me. No wonder she fell asleep so often, no wonder she was happier peeling vegetables than in my bed! From the moment my steps paused and I stood before her at the barracks gate she must have felt a miasma of deceit closing about her: envy, pity, cruelty all masquerading as desire. And in my lovemaking not impulse but the laborious denial of impulse! I remember her sober smile. From the very first she knew me for a false seducer. She listened to me, then she listened to her heart, and rightly she acted in accord with her heart. If only she had found the words to tell me! “That is not how you do it,” she should have said, stopping me in the act. “If you want to learn how to do it, ask your friend with the black eyes.” Then she should have continued, so as not to leave me without hope: “But if you want to love me you will have to turn your back on him and learn your lesson elsewhere.” If she had told me then, if I had understood her, if I had been in a position to understand her, if I had believed her, if I had been in a position to believe her, I might have saved myself from a year of confused and futile gestures of expiation.

  For I was not, as I liked to think, the indulgent pleasure-loving opposite of the cold rigid Colonel. I was the lie that Empire tells itself when times are easy, he the truth that Empire tells when harsh winds blow. Two sides of imperial rule, no more, no less. But I temporized, I looked around this obscure frontier, this little backwater with its dusty summers and its cartloads of apricots and its long siestas and its shiftless garrison and the waterbirds flying in and flying out year after year to and from the dazzling waveless sheet of the lake, and I said to myself, “Be patient, one of these days he will go away, one of these days quiet will return: then our siestas will grow longer and our swords rustier, the watchman will sneak down from his tower to spend the night with his wife, the mortar will crumble till lizards nest between the bricks and owls fly out of the belfry, and the line that marks the frontier on the maps of Empire will grow hazy and obscure till we are blessedly forgotten.” Thus I seduced myself, taking one of the many wrong turnings I have taken on a road that looks true but has delivered me into the heart of a labyrinth.

  In the dream I am advancing towards her over the snow-covered square. At first I walk. Then as the wind gathers force I begin to be driven forward in a cloud of whirling snow, with arms extended on either side and the wind catching my cloak like a boatsail. Gathering speed, my feet skimming over the ground, I swoop down upon the solitary figure at the centre of the square. “She will not turn and see me in time!” I think. I open my mouth to cry out a warning. A thin wail comes to my ears, whipped away by the wind, borne up into the sky like a scrap of paper. I am almost upon her, I am already tensing myself for the impact, when she turns and sees me. For an instant I have a vision of her face, the face of a child, glowing, healthy, smiling on me without alarm, before we collide. Her head strikes me in the belly; then I am gone, carried by the wind. The bump is as faint as the stroke of a moth. I am flooded with relief. “Then I need not have been anxious after all!” I think. I try to look back, but all is lost from sight in the whiteness of the snow.

  My mouth is covered in wet kisses. I spit, shake my head, open my eyes. The dog that has been licking my face backs off wagging its tail. Light seeps through the doorway of the hut. I crawl out into the dawn. Sky and water are tinged with the same rosiness. The lake, where I have grown used to seeing every morning the blunt-prowed fishing-boats, is empty. The camp where I stand is empty too.

  I wrap myself tighter in my cloak and walk up the road past the main gate, which is still closed, as far as the north-west watchtower, which does not appear to be manned; then back down the road and, cutting across the fields, over the earthwall towards the lakeside.

  A hare starts at my feet and dashes away in a zigzag. I keep track of it until it has circled back and is lost behind the ripe wheat in the far fields.

  A little boy stands in the middle of the path fifty yards from me, peeing. He watches the arc of his urine, watching me too out of the corner of his eye, curving his back to make the last spurt go further. Then with his golden trail still hanging in the air he is suddenly gone, snatched away by a dark arm from the reeds.

  I stand on the spot where he stood. There is nothing to be seen but tossing reed-crests through which flickers the dazzling half-globe of the sun.

  “You can come out,” I say, barely raising my voice. “There is nothing to be afraid of.” The finches, I notice, are avoiding this patch of reeds. I have no doubt that thirty pairs of ears hear me.

  I turn back to the town.

  The gates are open. Soldiers, heavily armed, poke around among the huts of the fisherfolk. The dog that awoke me trots with them from hut to hut, tail high, tongue lolling, ears alert.

  One of the soldiers heaves at the rack where the gutted and salted fish hang to dry. It comes creaking down.

  “Don’t do that!” I call, hurrying my steps. Some of these men I recognize from the long days of torment in the barracks yard. “Don’t do it, it wasn’t their fault!”

  With deliberate nonchalance the same soldier now strolls over to the largest of the huts, braces himself against two of the projecting roof-struts, and tries to lift the thatched roof off. Though he strains he cannot do it. I have watched these fragile-seeming huts being built. They are built to withstand the tugging of winds in which no bird can fly. The roof frame is lashed to the uprights with thongs that pass th
rough wedge-shaped notches. One cannot lift it without cutting the thongs.

  I plead with the man. “Let me tell you what happened last night. I was walking past in the dark and the dogs began to bark. The people here were frightened, they lost their heads, you know how they are. They probably thought the barbarians had come. They ran away down to the lake. They are hiding in the reeds—I saw them a short while ago. You can’t punish them for such a ridiculous incident.”

  He ignores me. A comrade helps him to clamber on to the roof. Balancing on two struts, he begins to stamp holes in the roof with the heel of his boot. I hear the thuds inside as the grass and clay plastering falls.

  “Stop it!” I shout. The blood pounds in my temples. “What have they done to harm you?” I grab at his ankle but he is too far away. I could tear out his throat in this mood.

  Someone thrusts himself before me: the friend who helped him up. “Why don’t you fuck off,” he murmurs. “Why don’t you just fuck off. Why don’t you go and die somewhere.”

  Under the thatch and clay I hear the roof-strut snap cleanly. The man on the roof throws out his hands and plunges through. One moment he is there, his eyes wide with surprise, the next moment there is only a puff of dust hanging in the air.

  The mat over the doorway is pushed aside and he staggers out clutching his hands together, covered from head to toe in ochre dust. “Shit!” he says. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” His friends howl with laughter. “It’s not funny!” he shouts. “I’ve hurt my fucking thumb!” He squeezes his hand between his knees. “It’s fucking sore!” He swings a kick at the wall of the hut and again I hear plaster fall inside. “Fucking savages!” he says. “We should have lined them up against a wall and shot them long ago—with their friends!”

  Looking past me, looking through me, declining in every way to see me, he swaggers off. As he passes the last hut he rips off the mat over the doorway. The strings of beads with which it is decorated, red and black berries, dried melon-seeds, break and cascade everywhere. I stand in the road waiting for the quivering of rage in me to subside. I think of a young peasant who was once brought before me in the days when I had jurisdiction over the garrison. He had been committed to the army for three years by a magistrate in a far-off town for stealing chickens. After a month here he tried to desert. He was caught and brought before me. He wanted to see his mother and his sisters again, he said. “We cannot just do as we wish,” I lectured him. “We are all subject to the law, which is greater than any of us. The magistrate who sent you here, I myself, you—we are all subject to the law.” He looked at me with dull eyes, waiting to hear the punishment, his two stolid escorts behind him, his hands manacled behind his back. “You feel that it is unjust, I know, that you should be punished for having the feelings of a good son. You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know.” I had no doubt, myself, then, that at each moment each one of us, man, woman, child, perhaps even the poor old horse turning the mill-wheel, knew what was just: all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. “But we live in a world of laws,” I said to my poor prisoner, “a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.” After lecturing him I sentenced him. He accepted the sentence without murmur and his escort marched him away. I remember the uneasy shame I felt on days like that. I would leave the courtroom and return to my apartment and sit in the rocking-chair in the dark all evening, without appetite, until it was time to go to bed. “When some men suffer unjustly,” I said to myself, “it is the fate of those who witness their suffering to suffer the shame of it.” But the specious consolation of this thought could not comfort me. I toyed more than once with the idea of resigning my post, retiring from public life, buying a small market garden. But then, I thought, someone else will be appointed to bear the shame of office, and nothing will have changed. So I continued in my duties until one day events overtook me.

  * *

  The two horsemen are less than a mile away and already beginning to cross the bare fields by the time they are spied. I am one of the crowd that, hearing shouts from the walls, pours out in welcome; for we all recognize the green and gold battalion standard they bear. Among scampering excited children I stride across the freshly turned clods.

  The horseman on the left, who has been riding shoulder to shoulder with his companion, turns away and trots off towards the lakeside track.

  The other one continues to amble towards us, sitting very erect in the saddle, holding out his arms from his sides as if intending to embrace us or to fly up into the sky.

  I begin to run as fast as I can, my sandals dragging in the earth, my heart pounding.

  A hundred yards from him there is a thud of hooves behind and three armoured soldiers gallop past, racing towards the reed-brakes into which the other horseman has now disappeared.

  I join the circle around the man (I recognize him, despite the change) who, with the standard flapping bravely above his head, gazes blankly towards the town. He is lashed to a stout wooden framework which holds him upright in his saddle. His spine is kept erect by a pole and his arms are tied to a cross-piece. Flies buzz around his face. His jaw is bound shut, his flesh is puffy, a sickly smell comes from him, he has been several days dead.

  A child tugs at my hand. “Is he a barbarian, uncle?” he whispers. “No,” I whisper back. He turns to the boy next to him. “You see, I told you,” he whispers.

  Since no one else seems prepared to do it, I am the one to whose lot it falls to pick up the trailing reins and lead these tidings from the barbarians back through the great gates, past the silent watchers, to the barracks yard, there to cut their bearer loose and lay him out for burial.

  The soldiers who set out after his lone companion are soon back. They canter across the square to the courthouse from which Mandel conducts his reign and disappear inside. When they reappear they will speak to no one.

  Every premonition of disaster is confirmed, and for the first time true panic overtakes the town. The shops are swamped with customers bidding against each other for stocks of food. Some families barricade themselves in their houses, herding poultry and even pigs indoors with them. The school is closed. The rumour that a horde of barbarians is camped a few miles away on the charred river-banks, that an assault on the town is imminent, flashes from street corner to street corner. The unthinkable has occurred: the army that marched forth so gaily three months ago will never return.

  The great gates are closed and barred. I plead with the sergeant of the watch to allow the fisherfolk inside. “They are in terror of their lives,” I say. He turns his back on me without reply. Above our heads on the ramparts the soldiers, the forty men who stand between us and annihilation, gaze out over lake and desert.

  At nightfall, on my way to the granary shed where I still sleep, I find my way blocked. A file of two-wheeled horse-drawn commissariat carts passes along the alley, the first loaded with what I recognize as sacks of seed grain from the granary, the others empty. They are followed by a file of horses, saddled and blanketed, from the garrison stables: every horse, I would guess, that has been stolen or commandeered in the past weeks. Roused by the noise, people emerge from their houses and stand quietly by watching this evidently long-planned manoeuvre of withdrawal.

  I ask for an interview with Mandel, but the guard at the courthouse is as wooden as all his comrades.

  In fact Mandel is not in the courthouse. I return to the square in time to hear the end of a statement he reads to the public “in the name of the Imperial Command”. The withdrawal, he says, is a “temporary measure”. A “caretaker force” will be left behind. There is expected to be “a general cessation of operations along the front for the duration of the winter”. He himself hopes to be back in the spring, when the army will “initiate a new off
ensive”. He wishes to thank everyone for the “unforgettable hospitality” he has been shown.

  While he speaks, standing in one of the empty carts flanked by soldiers holding torches, his men are returning with the fruits of their foraging. Two struggle to load a handsome cast-iron stove looted from an empty house. Another comes back smiling in triumph bearing a cock and a hen, the cock a magnificent black and gold creature. Their legs are bound, he grips them by the wings, their fierce bird-eyes glare. While someone holds open the door he stuffs them into the oven. The cart is piled high with sacks and kegs from a looted shop, even a small table and two chairs. They unfold a heavy red carpet, spread it over the load, lash it down. There is no protest from the people who stand watching this methodical act of betrayal, but I feel currents of helpless anger all about me.

  The last cart is loaded. The gates are unbarred, the soldiers mount. At the head of the column I can hear someone arguing with Mandel. “Just an hour or so,” he is saying: “they can be ready in an hour.” “No question of that,” replies Mandel, the wind carrying the rest of his words away. A soldier pushes me out of his path and escorts three heavily bundled women to the last cart. They clamber aboard and seat themselves, holding up their veils to their faces. One of them carries a little girl whom she perches on top of the load. Whips crack, the column begins to move, the horses straining, the cartwheels creaking. At the rear of the column come two men with sticks driving a flock of a dozen sheep. As the sheep pass the murmur in the crowd grows. A young man dashes out waving his arms and shouting: the sheep scatter into the dark, and with a roar the crowd closes in. Almost at once the first shots crack out. Running as fast as I can in the midst of scores of other screaming running people, I retain only a single image of this futile attack: a man grappling with one of the women in the last cart, tearing at her clothes, the child watching wide-eyed with her thumb in her mouth. Then the square is empty and dark again, the last cart trundles through the gates, the garrison is gone.