Waiting For The Barbarians

My mouth is covered in wet kisses. I spit, shake my head, open my eyes. The dog that has been licking my face backs off wagging its tail. Light seeps through the doorway of the hut. I crawl out into the dawn. Sky and water are tinged with the same rosiness. The lake, where I have grown used to seeing every morning the blunt-prowed fishing-boats, is empty. The camp where I stand is empty too.

I wrap myself tighter in my cloak and walk up the road past the main gate, which is still closed, as far as the north-west watchtower, which does not appear to be ma

A hare starts at my feet and dashes away in a zigzag. I keep track of it until it has circled back and is lost behind the ripe wheat in the far fields.

A little boy stands in the middle of the path fifty yards from me, peeing. He watches the arc of his urine, watching me too out of the corner of his eye, curving his back to make the last spurt go further. Then with his golden trail still hanging in the air he is suddenly gone, snatched away by a dark arm from the reeds.

I stand on the spot where he stood. There is nothing to be seen but tossing reed-crests through which flickers the dazzling half-globe of the sun.

"You can come out," I say, barely raising my voice. "There is nothing to be afraid of." The finches, I notice, are avoiding this patch of reeds. I have no doubt that thirty pairs of ears hear me.

I turn back to the town.

The gates are open. Soldiers, heavily armed, poke around among the huts of the fisherfolk. The dog that awoke me trots with them from hut to hut, tail high, tongue lolling, ears alert.

One of the soldiers heaves at the rack where the gutted and salted fish hang to dry. It comes creaking down.

"Don't do that!" I call, hurrying my steps. Some of these men I recognize from the long days of torment in the barracks yard. "Don't do it, it wasn't their fault!"

With deliberate nonchalance the same soldier now strolls over to the largest of the huts, braces himself against two of the projecting roof-struts, and tries to lift the thatched roof off. Though he strains he ca

I plead with the man. "Let me tell you what happened last night. I was walking past in the dark and the dogs began to bark. The people here were frightened, they lost their heads, you know how they are. They probably thought the barbarians had come. They ran away down to the lake. They are hiding in the reeds-I saw them a short while ago. You can't punish them for such a ridiculous incident."

He ignores me. A comrade helps him to clamber on to the roof. Balancing on two struts, he begins to stamp holes in the roof with the heel of his boot. I hear the thuds inside as the grass and clay plastering falls.

"Stop it!" I shout. The blood pounds in my temples. "What have they done to harm you?" I grab at his ankle but he is too far away. I could tear out his throat in this mood.

Someone thrusts himself before me: the friend who helped him up. "Why don't you fuck off," he murmurs. "Why don't you just fuck off. Why don't you go and die somewhere."

Under the thatch and clay I hear the roof-strut snap cleanly. The man on the roof throws out his hands and plunges through. One moment he is there, his eyes wide with surprise, the next moment there is only a puff of dust hanging in the air.

The mat over the doorway is pushed aside and he staggers out clutching his hands together, covered from head to toe in ochre dust. "Shit!" he says. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" His friends howl with laughter. "It's not fu

Looking past me, looking through me, declining in every way to see me, he swaggers off. As he passes the last hut he rips off the mat over the doorway. The strings of beads with which it is decorated, red and black berries, dried melon-seeds, break and cascade everywhere. I stand in the road waiting for the quivering of rage in me to subside. I think of a young peasant who was once brought before me in the days when I had jurisdiction over the garrison. He had been committed to the army for three years by a magistrate in a far-off town for stealing chickens. After a month here he tried to desert. He was caught and brought before me. He wanted to see his mother and his sisters again, he said. "We ca

The two horsemen are less than a mile away and already begi

The horseman on the left, who has been riding shoulder to shoulder with his companion, turns away and trots off towards the lakeside track.

The other one continues to amble towards us, sitting very erect in the saddle, holding out his arms from his sides as if intending to embrace us or to fly up into the sky.

I begin to run as fast as I can, my sandals dragging in the earth, my heart pounding.

A hundred yards from him there is a thud of hooves behind and three armoured soldiers gallop past, racing towards the reed-brakes into which the other horseman has now disappeared.

I join the circle around the man (I recognize him, despite the change) who, with the standard flapping bravely above his head, gazes blankly towards the town. He is lashed to a stout wooden framework which holds him upright in his saddle. His spine is kept erect by a pole and his arms are tied to a cross-piece. Flies buzz around his face. His jaw is bound shut, his flesh is puffy, a sickly smell comes from him, he has been several days dead.