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By Root 1075 0

between people these days: a dovetailing of skills and incompetence. But the Flood? If the Flood came and one needed a Noah? Not so much a just man as a man able to bring along the few things it would take to start again. You see, you don't know to tie your shoes, somebody else doesn't know how to plane wood, someone else again has never read Tolstoy, someone else doesn't know how to sow grain and so on. I've been looking for him for years, and, believe me, it's hard, really hard; it seems people have to hold each other by the hand like the blind man and the lame who can't go anywhere without each other, but argue just the same. It means if the Flood comes we'll all die together.’

So saying he turned and disappeared in the street. I never saw him again and I still wonder whether he wasn't some strange maniac or an angel, for years roving the earth in vain in search of a second Noah.

Like a Flight of Ducks

He woke to the sound of gunfire and jumped down from the plank-bed; in the stampede someone opened the cell doors, his own included. A blond, bearded man appeared, waving a gun; he said: ‘Come on, hurry up and get out, you're free.’ Natale was glad, though without understanding; he remembered he was naked, in just his T-shirt; he pushed his legs into a pair of military trousers, his only other clothing, cursing because they wouldn't go in.

That was when the man with the stick came in, a good six feet tall; he had one cross eye and with nostrils flared he muttered, ‘Where are they? Where are they?’ Natale saw the stick when it was already high above his head, coming down on him. It was like a flock of ducks exploding in his brain; a flash of red burned deep in his skull. He fell in a pool of cottonwool, numb to the world.

One of the militiamen who had been in league with them from the beginning, shouted: What have you done? He was a prisoner!’ Immediately people were fussing round the man on the ground whose head was bleeding. The man with the stick was at a loss: ‘How was I to know? With those Fascist trousers he was wearing!’

Now they had to hurry, the Fascist reinforcements might arrive any moment. The thing was to get the machine-guns, the magazines, the bombs, burn the rest, especially the documents; every couple of minutes someone went to say a word to the hostages: “We're going, are you coming?’ But they were in a frenzy: the general was wandering round the cell in his nightshirt. Til get dressed now,’ he said. The pharmacist with the anarchist's neckscarf was asking the priest for advice. But the lawyer, a woman, was up and ready.

Then they had to keep an eye on the militiamen they'd taken prisoner, two old men in plus-fours who kept getting in the way talking about their families and children, and the sergeant silent in the corner, his face thick with yellow veins.

In the end the general began to say that they were there as hostages, that they were sure to be freed soon, whereas it was hard to say how things would turn out if they went with the partisan. The lawyer, around thirty and well-endowed, would have liked to join the partisans, but the priest and the pharmacist agreed with the general and they all stayed.

The clock was striking two in the morning when the partisans headed off for the mountains, some one way, some the other, taking the two guards who'd helped them get in, a few boys freed from the cells and the three Fascist prisoners shoved along with machine-guns in their backs. The tall man with the stick wrapped the wounded man's head in a towel and carried him on his back.

They had just slipped out when they heard shooting from the other side of town. It was that idiot Gek, in the middle of the piazza, firing bursts into the air so that the Fascists would run there first and waste time.

At the camp the only disinfectant was sulphonamide cream for leg rashes: to fill the hole Natale had in his head would have taken the whole tube. In the morning two men were sent down for medicine to a doctor evacuated from the town.

Word got around, people were pleased at the night attack on the militiamen's