The ticket collector gazed down at Alexi as if he were an injured wild animal unexpectedly encountered on an afternoon’s stroll. He was joined by the river pilot and the occupants of the van and two of the cars. The other two cars had driven off the ferry, obviously preferring to avoid a scene. The river pilot was preparing to use his cellphone.
Alexi struggled out of the life ring and threw it on to the deck. He bent forwards at the waist and cradled his ribs in his arms. ‘Please don’t call the police.’
The pilot hesitated, the phone halfway to his ear. ‘It’s not the police you need, my boy. It’s an ambulance, a hospital bed and some morphine. And maybe a set of dry clothes.’
‘Not them either.’
‘Explain yourself.’
‘Can you take me back across?’
‘Take you back across?’
‘I’ve dropped something.’
‘What? You mean your horse?’ Both men laughed.
Alexi sensed that if he stuck to concrete facts and flippancy, he might just be able to gather himself on firmer ground – dilute the men’s memory of the event and turn it into a prank that had gone wrong, rather than into the near-tragedy it so obviously was. ‘Don’t worry. I can arrange for the horse carcase to be taken away. There’s a lot of fresh meat there. I know people in Les Saintes-Marie who will come to pick it up.’
‘What about our barrier?’
‘I will pay you whatever I get for the meat. Cash. You can tell your employers that someone drove into the barrier and then skedaddled.’
The pilot squinted at the ticket collector. Already, three cars were waiting to board the ferry for the return journey across. Both men knew that the barrier got belted three or four times a year at least – usually by drunks. Or foreigners in rented cars. The repairman was on a rolling contract.
The van driver and the occupants of the two incoming cars had detected the wind-down in tension. They drifted away to get on with their journeys. The injured man was only a stupid gypsy, after all. And gypsies were all crazy, weren’t they? Lived by different rules.
‘You can keep your cash. We’ll take you back across. But get rid of that horse carcase, do you understand? I don’t want it stinking up the terminus for the next two weeks.’
‘I’ll call now. Can I use your phone?’
‘All right. But no international calls, mind? Do you hear me?’ The pilot handed Alexi his cellphone. ‘I still think you’re crazy not to go in for a check-up. You’ve probably got a rack of cracked ribs after that fall. And concussion, maybe.’
‘We’ve got our own doctors. We don’t like going to hospitals.’
The pilot shrugged. The ticket collector was already waving his new customers aboard.
Alexi punched in a number at random and pretended to make arrangements about the horse.
Alexi had never known such pain as he was feeling now. Cracked ribs? Concussion? He felt as if both his lungs had been punctured with an awl and then stretched out on an anvil and pounded with a mallet for good measure. Each breath he took was agony. Each step he took echoed through his right hip and shoulder like an electric shock.
He squatted down on the concrete slope of the ferry slipway and began searching for the bamboo tube. People gave him curious glances as they drove past him in their cars. If the eye-man comes back now, Alexi thought, I will simply lie down and surrender. He can do whatever he wants with me. O Del, please take this pain away. Please give me a break.
The bamboo tube was nowhere to be seen. Alexi struggled to his feet. The ferry was full. It was leaving once again on its outward journey. He limped off the slipway and began following the course of the river, his eyes fixed on the waterline nearest to the bank. The bamboo tube might have floated downstream. With luck, it might even be caught up in the vegetation at the edge of the flow.
Or it might have sunk. If it had sunk, the verses would be spoiled – Alexi knew that much. He would break open the tube and out would come a wadge of damp paper blotted with ink. He wouldn’t simply have the eye-man to fear under those circumstances – Sabir and Yola would slaughter him personally.
For some time now Alexi had been feeling some discomfort in his right leg, just above the ankle. He had chosen to ignore it, assuming that it was merely part and parcel of his larger injuries. Now he stopped abruptly and reached down to pull up his trousers. Please God he hadn’t broken something. His ankle bone, perhaps – or his shin.
There was a solid object jutting out of the gaping top of his cowboy boots. Alexi felt inside and brought out the bamboo tube. He had stuck the tube into his belt and it had been funnelled down inside his trousers by the force of the water and from there into his boots. The wax seal holding both halves of the tube together was still intact, thank God.
He looked up at the sky and laughed. Then he moaned in pain as the laughter tore at his damaged ribs.
Clutching his stomach, Alexi began to trudge slowly back in the direction of the Maset de la Marais.
45
Thirty minutes into his walk he saw the saddled horse. It was standing near one of the gardien’s cabins, grazing.
Alexi fell back behind a nearby tree. Sweat dripped down his forehead and across his eyes. He had walked right into the trap. It had never occurred to him that the eye-man might be lying in wait for him again on this side of the bank. What had been the chances that he would return across the river after escaping on the Bac? One in a million? The man was crazy.
Alexi peered out from behind the tree. There was something strange about the horse. Something not quite right.
He squinted into the sunset. What was that darker mass lying near the horse’s feet? Was it a figure? Had the eye-man fallen off and knocked himself unconscious? Or was it a trap and the eye-man was simply waiting for Alexi to blunder over before finishing him off?
Alexi hesitated, thinking things through. Then he crouched down and buried the bamboo tube behind the tree. He took a few tentative paces and checked back to see if he could still mark its location. No problem. The tree was a cypress. Visible for miles.
He stumbled on for a few yards and then paused, rustling his pockets as if he were feeling for a titbit. The horse nickered at him. The figure at its feet didn’t move. Maybe the eye-man had broken his neck? Maybe O Del had listened to his prayer and settled the bastard for good?
Alexi shuffled forwards again, talking quietly to the horse – gentling it. He could see that the figure’s foot was twisted through one stirrup. If the horse walked towards him and all of a sudden felt the dead weight of the body holding it back, it would panic. And Alexi needed that horse. He wouldn’t make it back to the Maset otherwise – that much had become obvious in the last twenty minutes.
With each step he was becoming weaker and more desperate. His clothes had dried on him, stiffening his wounds. His right shoulder had seized up and he could no longer raise it further than his navel. In his present condition, he wouldn’t be able to outrun a tortoise.
Alexi reached the gelding and allowed it to nuzzle him – it was obvious that it was disturbed by the presence of the body, but that the grazing and Alexi’s whistling, had temporarily calmed it. Alexi took the reins and knelt down beside the horse. He already knew by the clothes who he was dealing with. Nobody else wore belts that big or buckles that showy. Gavril. Jesus. He must have tried to follow them and then somehow fallen off his horse and struck his head. Or else he had run into the eye-man coming back from the ferry and the eye-man had assumed he knew more than he did. Alexi retched and spat out the excess saliva. Flies were already congregating around
