Winter's End

Milena sat down on a rock and took off her boots to massage her sore feet. She did that every time they stopped to rest. Gerlinda, the young horse-girl who had called her as beautiful as a princess and never left her side, was already busy lighting a small fire to boil some water.

“Will you sing me something if I make you a mug of tea?” she asked.

Milena smiled. Any excuse would do to get her to sing. She had only to begin, without even raising her voice much, for people to gather around her. And if they knew the tune, they would sing along.

They had started out on the long march to the capital two days ago, and it reminded her of her travels with Bart when they had run away in the autumn. She remembered their elation as they talked the situation over in the immensity of the bare mountains. But she also remembered their terrible uncertainty, their fear of what the next day might bring. Now, on the contrary, she felt that nothing could prevent them from reaching their journey’s end, surrounded as they were by the friendly horse-men with the persistent odor of their wool and corduroy clothing. The natural strength of these people, their kindness, and their peaceable innocence were infectious. They were reassuring; they made you feel confident for no real reason. Milena had felt the same with her consoler, Martha, during her years at the boarding school, but there was only one Martha. Here she had the impression of a huge, multiple, ever-changing body of people, an irresistible force.

As they went on toward the capital, the numbers marching with them grew. Hundreds and then thousands of men, women, and children had rallied to them in small groups making their way through the countryside. Coming down from the hills and out of the woods and fields, they joined in human streams that swelled into rivers. The doors of houses were opened to them as they passed by. They were offered food, their bags were refilled, they slept overnight in barns.

Gerlinda came over with a mug of steaming tea for Milena.

“Now, what about my song?”

“All right, but only for you. I don’t feel like singing for an audience of fifty. Come closer.”

A smile lit up the young horse-girl’s blunt face, and she leaned her ear close to Milena’s mouth. Milena began quietly:

“Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly . . .”

But as others came over to hear the song, she rose abruptly, mug in hand. “No, I’ve finished now! Another time . . . this evening!”

She put her boots on and went to join Bartolomeo and Dora, who were sitting a little way off wrapped in their winter coats. Their breath was escaping from their mouths in little blue clouds. The two people I love most in the world, she thought as she went over to them. I only need Helen and Martha here as well and the magic circle would be complete.

“I’m sure Jahn and Faber will have reached the bridge by now,” Bart was saying, sounding impatient. “I should have stayed with them.”

“They’ll send for you if they need you — they promised they would,” Dora replied.

“Yes, I just hope we don’t arrive too late. The winter fights in the arena begin tomorrow morning. Milos may not be due to fight on the first day, but we don’t know. We have to get into the city fast.”

Milena nestled against him. “We must trust the others. We’ll be there tomorrow, after all.”

“Yes. The Phalange will never dare fire on us. We’re unarmed, and there are women and children with us — they won’t be able to do it.”

“No, they won’t,” Milena comforted him. “And you’ll soon see Milos again. You’ve always told me he had a real talent for survival.”

“Yes, so I did. And a talent for happiness too. More so than me.”

“Happiness?” said Dora, joking. “Is there such a thing? It must be so boring!”

They kept close together as they went on along narrow paths and over bad roads during the hours that followed. Gerlinda never left Milena “in case she got lost.” Who was leading their advance? It was impossible to say. They were carried along on the tide. As evening fell, they reached the hills above the city and were amazed to see that the hillsides were teeming with people as far as the eye could see.

They knew that the population had rallied to the Resistance, but the sight of that great crowd surpassed their wildest hopes. How could anyone for a second imagine that the Phalange might be able to resist such a force? A rumor was soon circulating that they would enter the capital at dawn, and until then they must wait and keep warm. Cries of joy were heard, as if the battle were already won. Gerlinda jumped up and down and hugged Milena.

“Are you so pleased with the prospect of a cold night in the open?” Milena asked in surprise. “We’ll all be frozen before sunrise!”

Gerlinda looked at her blankly and then said simply, “Oh no! People will help us.”

She was right, and the night that had promised to be so uncomfortable was a miraculous experience. Within a very short time firewood was found, fires were crackling, and red flames were shooting up into the dark sky. Had Milena feared the cold? She often had to insist on leaving her place close to the fire; people took turns there in an orderly fashion. Had she been afraid they would go hungry? If anything, there was too much to eat! Every bag heaved with loaves of bread, ham, pâté, apples, wine, chocolate! As soon as she sat down, someone would come to kneel behind her and hug her to warm her up. The first time it happened, she thought it was Bartolomeo or Dora or Gerlinda. Who else would venture to take such a liberty? But it was a horse-woman she had never seen before. In her own turn, Milena warmed up people she didn’t know and soon realized that it was as sweet to give as to receive.

At dawn they were all numb, stupefied by drowsiness, tramping up and down on the ground in an attempt to warm their feet up, but they had a sense of having survived together, having reached their journey’s end, and they felt that something great lay ahead. Thin plumes of smoke were still rising from fires that hadn’t been entirely extinguished. Yesterday’s clouds had lifted, and in the biting cold they saw the other hills also covered by thousands of shapes, with figures already on the march on the plain below, and in the distance the sparkling ribbon of the river.

The crowd began to move slowly, and it was good to be advancing in company again. Someone began humming:

In my basket,

In my basket, I have no cherries,

My dear prince.

I have no crimson cherries,

I have no almonds, no. . . .

And everyone took up the song, the tall horse-men and all the others, whether they could sing in tune or not.

“I have no pretty kerchiefs,

No embroidered kerchiefs,

I have no beads, no.

No more grief and pain, my love,

No more grief and pain. . . .”

They all repeated it except for Milena. Their voices rose around her — ordinary, clumsy, hesitant, but all vibrating with fervor and certainty.

“Aren’t you singing?” asked Gerlinda.

“No,” she replied, with a lump in her throat. “I’m listening for once. I have a right to listen too.”

A horse-child of about twelve, short and sturdy, red-faced and breathless with running, suddenly plucked Bartolomeo’s sleeve. “Mr. Jahn wants you. With your lady.”

“With my lady?”

“Yes, your lady Milena.”

“Where’s Mr. Jahn?”

“At the bridge. I’ll take you.”

“I’m coming too!” said Dora, and without waiting for any reply, she fell into step with them.

“And me!” cried Gerlinda, starting to follow.

First they had to make way through the crowd, using their elbows and shoulders. Then the child suddenly went off to the left at a tangent, and after a little way they found themselves miraculously alone, going down a sloping path.

“I see you know some shortcuts!” called Bart.

“Yes,” said the child. He was going ahead of them, kicking pebbles out of his way. “I live here!”

“Where?” asked Milena. She couldn’t see a house anywhere near.

The child ignored this question and quickened his pace. They were at the bottom of the hill now, skirting coppices that sparkled with frost. The frozen grass crunched under their feet.

“Wait for me!” called Dora, already lagging behind with Gerlinda. “That lad must be wearing seven-league boots!”

But the small messenger didn’t turn. He forged straight ahead at high speed. From behind, he now looked light and graceful, as if he had grown taller. Soon Milena was out of breath herself.

“I can’t go on at this pace!” she told Bart. “I’ll catch up with you down there. You go ahead!”

The young man made off in pursuit of the child, who ran nimbly on as if airborne. He was almost level with the boy in a few strides. “Not so fast! We can’t keep up with you.”

As the sky turned pink and blue in the east, the sharp sound of their footsteps echoed over a long distance like a crackling fire. The two figures, one tall and one shorter, hurried on their way, leaping down slopes and over ditches. Bartolomeo had never in his life covered so much space in such a short time. The cold morning air whistled around his ears. He was stunned by the noise of his own breathing.

“Is it much farther?” he asked after a while, intoxicated with emotion.

“No,” said the child, suddenly stopping. “We’ re here!”

He stood motionless, hands on his hips, and there was something angelic about his ingenuous face. Bart was astonished to see that the boy was hardly out of breath and, above all, that he looked so changed from when they had first seen him. He might have been a different child.

“Incredible!” said Bart, disconcerted. “You must be some kind of magician!”

“Yes,” replied the child, and he pointed to a tumulus on their left. “Climb up there! I’m not allowed to go any farther.”

Rather perturbed, Bart began clambering up the mound on all fours. He turned when he was halfway up, and saw that there was no one else near him. He looked in vain for his strange little guide and then, sure that the child had disappeared, he went on climbing. When he reached the top of the tall mound, he found himself less than a hundred yards from the entrance to the Royal Bridge. And what he saw there made him freeze with horror.

On his side of the river a staunch troop of horse-men, armed with pikes and clubs, was trying to cross the river. A dense cloud of vapor hovered in the air above the crowd. On the opposite bank, invisible in a hundred covered trucks parked at an angle to the bridge, soldiers armed with guns were firing to prevent them from crossing. The bridge was littered with about a hundred large bodies, lying dead. But the worst of it was that the horse-men in the front line were doing all they could to mount an assault, ignoring the bullets decimating them. Bart saw two young men running forward together, brandishing clubs. They hadn’t reached the middle of the bridge before shots rang out. One of them was hit in the chest, performed a grotesque little dance, flung his arms in the air, and fell headfirst. The other, wounded in the leg, went limping on for ten more yards before he too was shot down. As he fell, he furiously threw his club toward the soldier who had just fired the shot that killed him.

“Stop!” shouted Bart, horrified.

But a compact formation of ten more horse-men was already going into the attack. They held all kinds of objects in front of them as makeshift shields: wooden planks, pieces of rusty sheet metal. In spite of their strength and energy they didn’t get much farther than their comrades. A murderous burst of firing mowed them down. Only two of them, gigantic figures, were left on their feet. They staggered as far as the first truck and seized its undercarriage to tip it over. The soldiers must have let them get as far as that to amuse themselves, because it took only the two shots that now rang out to finish the unfortunate men off.

“Stop!” shouted Bart, and he raced toward the bridge.

He was immediately drowned in a sea of arms, backs, and powerful torsos, but it was far from the soothing sensation he had felt a few days earlier when he and Milena walked through the crowd of horse-men, with Gerlinda as their guide. This time anger distorted the heavy faces that were usually so tranquil. Tears of rage were running down their cheeks.

“Jahn!” Bart shouted. “Anyone know where Mr. Jahn is?”

“Here!” roared a voice, and the huge figure of Jocelin suddenly appeared in front of him, an expression of dismay on his face. “Quick! He wants to see you!”

In spite of the cold, Jahn was bathed in sweat. He took Bartolomeo by the collar of his coat and shook him. “Stop them, Casal, for God’s sake! They won’t listen to me anymore! They won’t listen to anyone!”

“What about Faber?”

“Faber wanted to go and speak with the soldiers. He was shot down. That maddened them! They’re all going to get themselves killed!”

Bart left the stout man and shouldered his way through the crowd toward the bridge. The closer he came, the denser the crowd of bodies. He just managed to get through, and when he was finally on the other side of them, he realized that the horse-men were preparing for a mass attack. A bearded young man in shirtsleeves, with Herculean shoulders that reminded him of Faber, had appointed himself their leader, and he was haranguing his men.

“All together this time!” he urged them. “We’ll show ’em what we’re made of!”

Bartolomeo planted himself in front of the man and spoke sharply. “Shut your mouth! You don’t know what you’re saying!”

Although he was much less broad than the other man, he was almost as tall, and his voice echoed forcefully. “Don’t do it!” he went on, turning back to the horse-men as they prepared to charge. “Don’t cross the bridge! They’ll shoot you down one by one! They’re just waiting to pick you off!”

Anyone else in Bart’s place would have been swept aside by the furious giants, but his name was Casal — and they listened to him.

“They killed Faber!” cried a high voice.

“And they’ll kill you too if you charge them,” replied Bart. “ You’re not cattle going to the slaughter!”

“I don’t care if they kill me!” said the last speaker, a boy of hardly sixteen.

“I forbid you to go any farther!” thundered Bartolomeo. His black eyes were darting flames as he raised his fist in front of the lad’s face.

“If your father was here —” someone else began.

“My father would tell you exactly the same!” Bartolomeo cut him short. “I speak as he would!”

As the fighting horse-men saw his determination, doubt crept into their ranks.

“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.

“They’re leaving! They’re clearing off!”

It was the signal for a great roar of voices that rose to the hills and echoed back from them. Bart and Milena, feeling they were waking from a dream, realized that they had crossed the entire bridge. The last trucks, the ones barring the exit from it, were starting up in their turn and driving away. They saw the frightened faces of the truck drivers quite close. Some of them couldn’t be much older than themselves. They hardly had time to step aside: a human wave was already sweeping toward them, and nothing could contain it. A similar torrent of men and women shouting for joy poured over the two neighboring bridges. The city lay ahead.

In a few minutes, the banks had been invaded, and the great peaceful army led by the horse-men flowed into the icy avenues of the capital. Windows were opened as they passed; people shouted acclamations. Shouts of hatred for the Phalange could be heard too, as if no one had ever wanted anything but to see it fall. Then the liberated citizens came out into the road to join the crowd, and the immense procession made for Phalange headquarters in the New Town.

“The arena!” cried Bart. “We must go to the arena!”

“Yes,” Milena agreed. Gerlinda, in tears, had miraculously found her again in the excited crowd.

There were no trams running, and no cars on the streets. The three of them raced down small side roads, Bartolomeo in the lead, the two young women following him. Making their way through the Old Town, they reached the square outside the arena fifteen minutes later, out of breath. To their surprise, there was turmoil there already. The crowd was a mixture of a number of horse-men, people from the city, and gladiators looking as if they had come from another age, bare to the waist or in their shirtsleeves despite the bitter cold. The two halves of the great gate were closed, but a dozen horse-men were advancing on it in single file, an enormous beam found on a nearby building site under their arms.

“Out of the way!” they shouted. “We’re going to break the gate down!”

A space opened out ahead of them, and they charged the gate at a run. It was made of solid oak and groaned at the impact. They moved thirty feet back and ran at it again.

“They’ll never do it,” said Bart.

A gladiator with a stolid face, head shaved, was standing close to him. He was still holding his sword and looking around him, dazed, as if unable to understand where he was.

“Has there already been fighting in there?” Bart asked him.

“Yeah.”

“A boy called Milos — did you see him?”

“Dunno.”

“How did you get out here?”

“Small gate around the back. Don’t have any tobacco, do you?”

“N-no,” stammered Bart, taken aback by this unexpected question, and then he set off to go around the building, with Milena and Gerlinda behind him.

There was indeed an exit at the back, a narrow gate already under the control of a group of horse-men and insurgents holding weapons. They were letting out the gladiators and ordinary spectators but seizing any members of the Phalange who tried to escape by mingling with the crowd.

As she reached the place, Milena was not expecting another experience as strange as the one she had just shared with Bart on the Royal Bridge. Yet an extraordinary thing happened: a powerful man with a red beard, wearing a heavy overcoat, came up to the gate, his head lowered, in the vain hope of passing unrecognized. Fingers pointed his way at once.

“Van Vlyck! That’s Van Vlyck!”

Two horse-men seized him firmly, and a third handcuffed him. He seemed to be demoralized and put up no resistance. As they were about to lead him off, a woman’s voice rose in the crowd.

“Wait!”

Milena stood before him. They did not say a word, but simply stood there face-to-face.

Van Vlyck, mouth open, wild-eyed, stared at the girl, and one could guess that for him time had been wiped out. He saw before his eyes the one person he had ever loved, the woman for whom he had unhesitatingly sacrificed all that was best in his life, and whom in the end he had delivered up to the murderous Devils. She stood there younger and fairer than ever, fascinating, immortal. In this girl’s blue eyes he saw his devastated past and his dark future.

And Milena found that she could not hate him. In his eyes, as if in a magic mirror, she saw the image of her living mother. I’m looking at the man who killed her, she told herself, but the words did not get through to her mind. I’m looking at the man who . . . who loved her, she thought instead, the man who wept one evening fifteen years ago when he heard her singing in a little church in this city and who never got over it. I’m looking at a man who loved her to distraction, who looked at her as he’s looking at me now. . . .

And when Van Vlyck moved away, led off without ceremony by his horse-men guards and taking no notice of what was happening, it was as if he took away a living memory of the dead woman, a memory in the flesh that no photograph or recording could ever equal.

Milena felt shattered. It took her some time to return to reality, but a tremendous crash accompanied by shouts of triumph brought her out of her daze. Bartolomeo took her arm.

“The bar across the main gate has just given way, Milena — we can get in through it now!”

They ran back, still followed by the faithful and dogged Gerlinda. The battering ram had indeed broken the gate down, but those wanting to go in clashed with those in a hurry to get out, either gladiators or spectators who were ashamed of being there, and there was turmoil. The three young people managed to get through the crowd by dint of sheer determination. Bart shouted more than twenty times, “A boy of seventeen named Milos! Anyone seen him?”

No one replied. Milena even asked a gladiator with a face horribly mutilated by scars, standing proud as if a wild beast had once mauled him.

“Milos Ferenzy! A gladiator, seventeen years old! Was he in your camp? Do you know him?”

The man shook his head, looking dazed, and went on his way. Soon they gave up asking and climbed to the top of the tiers of seats, shouting as loud as they could, “Milos! Milos!”

Gradually, as the arena emptied, they came to the conclusion that their friend wasn’t there.

“He could be somewhere else in the building,” Milena suggested.

But it seemed unlikely. Why would he have hidden? He must have left, and they had missed seeing him; their paths had crossed.

They went along corridors at random, opening the doors of deserted cells to left and right. In the end they had gone all around the building and were back where they had started.

“Milos!” called Bart one last time.

His voice echoed under the vaulted ceiling and died away, leaving the place in total silence. As they were about to leave, Gerlinda pointed to the far end of a corridor.

“There’s stairs over there.”

They made for the staircase. Two worm-eaten steps were missing. Bart went up carefully in case any more collapsed under his weight. Halfway up, he stopped.

“Have you seen something?” asked Milena.

The young man disappeared from view without replying. She waited a few seconds and then, hearing nothing, asked again, “Bart, have you seen something?”

There was still no answer. Fear was churning inside her. She went up in her own turn. A faint light came through a small opening in the mud-brick wall. Bart was kneeling beside a body curled up in a perfect curve like a sleeping cat. She made her way over on all fours and leaned against her lover’s shoulder.

Milos was wearing a dirty white shirt, its front soaked with blood. One of his feet, black with dirt, had been bleeding too. Unable to say a word, they looked at his tranquil face. It was like the face of a child of twelve.

“Milos . . .” murmured Bartolomeo.

“Oh, Helen!” cried Milena.

And with their heads close together, they mingled their silent tears.

Gerlinda’s frightened voice came up to them from below. She had stayed behind alone in the dark corridor. “Is there anything up there? Hey! Is there anything there?”