Three Arched Bridge

32

IN SPITE OF THE SEVERE COLD, work on the bridge continued. It was said that they had now quite completed the second main arch and had begun the third. 1 say “it was said,” because in fact nothing could be discerned from the bridge’s external appearance behind its confusion of timbers!

Nothing worth recording occurred in the following weeks. The old blackened raft continued to pass from one bank to the other. The ferryman looked more hunchbacked than ever. The words “Boats and Rafts” on the rusty sign were barely legible. Two planks of the raft had broken loose, and no one bothered to repair them. Everything now quickly decayed, and the black water visible through the gaping planks of the raft seemed to make the expressions of its passengers even gloomier.

At dusk one Sunday (this is the only event that I can even partially remember), some people wearing black sheepskins crossed the river by raft, in somber haste. The fog seemed to swallow them as soon as they disembarked on the opposite bank, It was not long before some more people, also in black sheepskins, asked for the raft. They were just as gloomy and in as great a hurry as the first group. They asked about the men who had crossed be-fore, and these were the only words to escape their lips as they crossed the river. One of them vomited continuously.