beginning to lose patience, Well, solomon, in order to be at his best, and so that we can deliver him in good health to the archduke of austria, needs to rest during the hottest part of the day, Agreed, replied the commanding officer, slightly troubled by this reference to the archduke, but the fact is he has done almost nothing but sleep all day, Today doesn't count, sir, it's the first day and, as everyone knows, nothing ever goes well on the first day, So what should we do, We divide the days into three parts, the first, from early morning on, the third, lasting until sunset, so that we advance as quickly as we can, the second part of the day, where we are now, should be set aside for eating and resting, That seems to me a good plan, said the commanding officer, deciding to opt for a more benevolent attitude. The change of tone encouraged the mahout to express the troubling thought that had been bothering him all day, There's something about this journey, sir, that I don't understand, And what is that, We haven't met a soul all the time we've been traveling and that, in my modest opinion, does not seem normal, You're mistaken, we've met quite a lot of people, coming from both directions, How is it I didn't see them then, asked subhro, his eyes wide with surprise, You were bathing the elephant, Do you mean to say that people passed each time solomon was taking a bath, Don't make me repeat myself, That's a strange coincidence, it's almost as if solomon didn't want to be seen, That's possible, yes, But we've been camped here for a good few hours now and no one has passed, That's for a different reason, people see the elephant in the distance, like a ghost, and immediately turn back or take a different route, perhaps thinking that solomon has been sent by the devil, How extraordinary, why, it had even occurred to me that our king had given orders to clear the roads, You're not that important, No, I'm not, but solomon is. The officer preferred not to respond to what seemed to be the beginning of a whole new discussion and said, Before you go, I'd like to ask you something, Please, I'm all ears, Do you remember, just now, having invoked all the saints in heaven's court, Yes, sir, I do, Does that mean you're a christian, now think carefully before you answer, More or less, sir, more or less.
...
A FULL MOON, august moonlight. Everyone is sleeping, with the exception of the two mounted guards patrolling the camp, the only sound the creaking of leather. The sleepers are enjoying a well-deserved rest, for although, during the first part of the day, the men enlisted to push the ox-cart may have given the impression of being a band of lazy good-for-nothings, they had set to work with great brio and shown themselves to be out-and- out professionals. True, the flat terrain had helped a great deal, but you could safely bet that, in the whole venerable history of that ox-cart, there had never been a day like it. During the three and a half hours they had been traveling, and despite a few short breaks, they had covered more than seventeen kilometers. This was the figure finally decided upon by the commanding officer after a lively exchange of words with the mahout subhro, who thought that the distance had been somewhat shorter and that it was best not to deceive themselves. The commanding officer disagreed, believing that it would help to encourage the men, What dif ference does it make if we did only travel fourteen kilometers, we'll cover the missing three tomorrow and it'll all work out in the end, you'll see. The mahout gave up trying to persuade him, I did my best, he thought, and if the commanding officer's false accounting prevailed, that doesn't alter the reality of the kilometers we really did travel, yes, subhro, you really must learn not to argue with the man in charge.
He had woken with the impression that he had experienced a sharp pain in his stomach while sleeping, and although it seemed to him unlikely that this would recur, his insides felt suspiciously restless, with a few silent gurglings in his intestines, and then suddenly there it was again, that same stabbing pain. He got up as quickly as he could, indicated to the nearest guard that he needed to leave the encampment and then strode toward a dense row of trees at the top of the gentle slope on which they had pitched camp, so gentle that it was as if they were lying in a bed with the bedhead slightly raised. He arrived just in time. Let us avert our gaze while he takes down his breeches, which, miraculously, he has not yet soiled, and wait for him to look up and see what we have seen already, a village bathed in the marvelous august moonlight that molded every contour, softened the very shadows it created and, at the same time, illuminated the places where it fell unimpeded. The words we were waiting for finally appeared, A village, a village. Doubtless because they were tired, no one else had yet thought to climb the hill to see what was on the other side. It's always good to see a village, if not this one then another, but it seems improbable that in the very first one we come across we'll find a powerful pair of oxen capable of righting the leaning tower of pisa with a single tug. Having finished his urgent business, the mahout cleaned himself as best he could with a handful of the greenery growing round about, and it was fortunate indeed that no nettles, also known as fireweed, were to be found, because they would have made him leap about like a victim of saint vitus dance, so badly would they have burnt and stung his delicate lower mucous membrane. A thick cloud suddenly covered the moon, and the village was plunged in darkness, as if it had vanished like a dream into the surrounding gloom. It didn't matter, the sun would rise at the appropriate hour and show the way to the stable, where the ruminating oxen already had a sixth sense that their lives were about to change. Subhro walked back through the dense trees and returned to his place alongside the other men in the encampment. On the way, it occurred to him that if the commanding officer was awake, this information would give him the greatest satisfaction in the world, to resort to grandiose planetary terminology. And the glory of having discovered the village would be all mine, he murmured. Because there was no point in fostering vain illusions. During what remained of the night, other men might feel the need to empty their bowels, and the only place where they could do so discreetly was in the middle of those trees, but even supposing that this didn't happen, it would only be a matter of waiting for the dawn when we would witness a whole procession of men obeying the calls of intestines and bladder, hardly surprising given that we're all animals under the skin. Feeling mildly disgruntled, the mahout decided to make a detour to the place where the commanding officer was sleeping, you never know, sometimes people suffer from insomnia or wake up distraught because they had a dream that they were dead, or else were being bitten by a bedbug, one of the many that hide in the hems of blankets, come to drink the sleeper's blood. Let it be set down here, by the way, that the bedbug was the unwitting inventor of blood transfusions. Vain hope. The commanding officer was sleeping, and not just sleeping, but snoring. A guard came over to ask the mahout what he was doing there, and subhro replied that he had a message for the commanding officer, but seeing that he was asleep, he would return to his own bed, This is no time to be giving anyone messages, wait until morning, It's important, answered the mahout, but, as elephant philosophy would have it, what cannot be cannot be, If you'd like to give me the message, I'll pass it on to him as soon as he wakes up. The mahout considered the favorable probabilities and decided that it was worth betting on this one card, that the guard would already have informed the commanding officer of the village's existence when, at first light, the cry went up, Village ahoy. Hard experience of life has shown us that, generally speaking, it is inadvisable to trust too much in human nature. From now on, we will also know that we should not trust the cavalry either, at least when it comes to keeping secrets. Thus, even before the mahout had fallen asleep again, the other guard had already learned the news, and shortly after that, all the soldiers sleeping nearby knew as well. There was intense excitement, with one soldier even suggesting a reconnaissance trip to the village in order to collect firsthand information, which, given the authenticity of the source, would help strengthen the strategy to be drawn up in the morning. Fear that the commanding officer might wake, get out of bed and find none of the soldiers there, or worse still, find some and not others, forced them to abandon this promising adventure. The hours passed, a pale glow in the east began to trace the curved outline of the door through which the sun would enter, while, on the opposite side, the moon was slipping gently into the arms of another night. And we were thus engaged, postponing the moment of revelation, still wondering if there wasn't perhaps another more dramatic solution to be found, or, which would be the icing on the cake, one with more symbolic power, when the fateful cry rang out, There's a village over there. Absorbed in our own lucubrations, we had failed to notice that a man had got up and climbed the slope, but now we see him appear among the trees, we hear him repeat the triumphal news, although the words he uses are not, as we had imagined, Village ahoy, but There's a village over there. It was the commanding officer. Destiny, when it chooses, is as good or even better than god at writing straight on crooked lines. Sitting on his blanket, subhro thought, It could be worse, he could always say that he had got up in the middle of the night and been the first to see the village. He'll risk the commanding officer asking him scornfully, as we know he will, And do you have witnesses, to which he will have to reply, metaphorically putting his tail between his legs, No, sir, I was alone, You must have dreamed it then, Not only did I not dream it, I gave the information to one of your guards so that he would tell you when you woke up, None of my soldiers spoke to me about this, But you could speak to him, I'll tell you which one it was. The commanding officer reacted badly to this proposal, If I didn't need you to ride the
