If I left her and pushed myself hard, I might make it to Bellona in five or six hours, always supposing I didn’t collapse on the way. Even for a man as efficient as Cerda, it would take an hour or so to get together a rescue party and the return trip back up into the high country would take even longer.
It came down to this then. If I left her, she would lie here alone for fifteen to sixteen hours at the very least and probably longer. By then she could be dead, which was something I had no intention of allowing to happen. She was going to live and I wanted to be there to see Hoffer’s face when he found out.
The animals, which earlier had grazed so peacefully, had disappeared, obviously stampeded by the noise of the shooting. There were some bridles hanging by the door. I took one a little way into the woods and finally found a couple of goats and one of the donkeys nib-bling a bush together. The donkey allowed me to get the bridle on him with no fuss and I led him back to the clearing and tethered him by the hut.
The animal had obviously been kept to carry in sup-plies for Serafino and his men which meant there must be a pack saddle somewhere. I found two inside the hut, both of the same distinctive local pattern, made of wood and leather with a great V-shaped wooden trough in which sacks could be carried.
The brandy had gone to my head, and for the moment the pain in my shoulder seemed to have receded a little. I dragged one of the saddles out and managed to heave it on to the donkey’s back at the third attempt. God knows what would have happened if the animal had had a temper or turned awkward at all, but it stood there placidly nibbling at the ground as I tightened the girth.
Getting Joanna Truscott up was much more difficult, but after a struggle, I managed to get her on to her knees and knelt in front of her myself, allowing her to fall across my left shoulder. I deposited her on her back in the wooden trough, and none too gently, but she made no sound and lay there, face turned to heaven, her legs dangling on either side of the donkey’s rump. I got a blanket from the hut and covered her as well as I could and then tied her into position with a length of old rope.
When I was finished, I was sweating. I sat down and felt for my cigarettes automatically. A wad of sodden paper stained with yellow was all that remained and I crossed to the bodies and found a packet in Ricco’s breast pocket, a popular local brand, cheap and nasty, but better than nothing. I smoked one through, had another swallow of Rosa’s brandy, then I wrapped the end of the donkey’s bridle firmly around my left hand and moved out.
Buddhists believe that if the individual practises meditation long enough, he may eventually discover his true self and enter into that state of bliss that even-tually leads to Nirvana. At the very least, a kind of withdrawal into the inner self is possible so that the external world fades and time, in its accepted sense, ceases to exist.
The old Jew I had shared a cell with in Cairo had instructed me in the necessary techniques, had saved my life in effect, for I had only survived the Hole because of it. On many occasions I had withdrawn from the world, floated in warm darkness, had surfaced to find a day, two days-even three-had passed and I was still alive.
Stumbling through the wilderness that was Monte Cammarata that morning, something very similar hap-pened. Time ceased to exist, the stones, the sterile valleys and barren hillsides merged with the sky like a picture out of focus and I moved blindly on.
I was conscious of nothing. One moment I was stumbling along in front of the donkey, the next a voice said quite plainly: ‘There are two kinds of people in the world. Pianos and piano players.’