Читать книгу A Walk with Love and Death - Hans Koning - Страница 6

In the spring of that year, 1358, the peasants of northern France did not sow their fields any more.

I had succeeded in getting out of Paris just before sunset and walked to Saint-Denis in the twilight; I had found a room there to sleep and now was on the road again.

The sun was rising almost opposite me; a harsh light skimmed the empty fields. The war was in its twentieth year, but I was happy.

Not a soul was to be seen. Birds had been singing at dawn; now there was silence, and not the silence of nature but of a walled-in room in a castle.

After an hour I came to a well near the roadside. It was surrounded by ruins, but they were old and friendly with grass growing over them. The water stood high in the well and was easy to reach. I installed myself in the sun on the corner of a crumbling wall and pulled out my bread.

Then suddenly a shabby man on a horse was standing beside me. Around me the plain lay black and bare and yet I had not seen him approach. I went on eating my bread.

“Are you going to Paris?” he asked.

“No, north.”

“On foot?”

I didn’t answer.

“You will need a horse,” he said, “for there aren’t many places left in Ile de France where you can find a room or a meal.”

I shrugged and he gave me a smile and went on, “I have no use for this horse in Paris. I’ll sell it to you, you can have it for two francs.”

Two francs was unbelievably cheap even for his skinny horse, and I had twenty francs in the lining of my jacket.

“If you wonder why I would do such a thing,” he added, “it’s that I can see you’re a student. I admire learning; I would want to be a scholar myself.”

It was the bread that saved me. Before reaching for my jacket to bring out the two francs I put the last piece in my mouth, and while I did so I saw that he brought his right hand across his body to the handle of an old sword hanging on his left side, away from me. And without looking up at his face I realized that he would kill me the moment I showed my money.

I went on chewing slowly and then I turned toward him again and said, “You are very generous, but the sad truth is that I haven’t got a sou, let alone two francs. For the love of learning, why don’t you make a gift of your horse to me?”

His hand came back. “Perhaps walking is good for young men,” he said and rode off so sharply that lumps of earth flew into my lap.

After that I went on my way again. It was getting warmer and a light haze was rising from the puddles in the road and in the fields. The landscape was empty once more.