The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana   ::   Эко Умберто

Gragnola handed me the end of a rope, and we beganclimbing up the Gorge.

I had the map in my head, but Gragnola kept saying oh God I’m falling, and I would reassure him. I was the leader. I knew how to make my way through the jungle among Suyodhana’s thugs. I moved my feet as if following the score of a piece of music, that must be how pianists do it-with their hands, I mean, not their feet-and I did not miss a step. But he, even though he was following me, kept stumbling. And coughing. I often had to turn around and pull him by the hand. The fog was thick, but from half a meter away we could see each other. If I pulled the rope, Gragnola would emerge from dense vapors, which seemed to dissipate all at once, and appear suddenly before me, like Lazarus throwing off his shroud.

The climb lasted a good hour, but that was about average. The only time I warned Gragnola to be careful was when we reached the boulder. If instead of going around it and rejoining the path, you mistakenly went to the left, feeling pebbles beneath your feet, you would end up in the ravine.

We reached the top, at the gap in the wall, and San Martino was a single invisible mass. We go straight, I told him, down the lane. Count at least twenty steps and we will be at the rectory door.

We knocked at the door as we had agreed: three knocks, a pause, then three more. The priest came to let us in. He was a dusty pale color, like the clematis along the roads in the summer. The eight Cossacks were there, armed like bandits and scared as children. Gragnola talked with the one who spoke Italian. He spoke it quite well, though with a bizarre accent, but Gragnola, as people do with foreigners, spoke to him in infinitives.

"You to go ahead of friends and to follow me and child. You to say to your men what I say, and they to do what I say. Understand?"

"I understand, I understand. We are ready."

The priest, who was about to piss himself, opened the door and let us out into the lane. And in that very moment we heard, from the end of the village where the road came in, several Teutonic voices and the yelp of a dog.

"God damn it all to hell," Gragnola said, and the priest did not even blink. "The toadies made it up here, they’ve got dogs, and dogs don’t give a rat’s ass about fog, they go by their noses. What the hell do we do now?"

The leader of the Cossacks said, "I know how they do. One dog every five men. We go just the same, maybe we meet ones without dog."

" Rien ne va plus ," said Gragnola the learned. "To go slow. And to shoot only if I say. To prepare handkerchiefs or rags, and other ropes.