The Classic Morpurgo Collection. Michael Morpurgo
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу The Classic Morpurgo Collection - Michael Morpurgo страница 10
Название: The Classic Morpurgo Collection
Автор: Michael Morpurgo
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Книги для детей: прочее
isbn: 9780007536696
isbn:
“It’s him!” he breathed. “It has to be him!” With no help from me, he was out of his wheelchair, stick in hand, limping across the street towards the cafe.
The café owner was wiping down the tables outside on the pavement. “The circus,” Bertie began, pointing back at the poster. He didn’t speak much French, so he shouted in English instead. “You know, lions, elephants, clowns!”
The man looked at him blankly and shrugged. So Bertie started roaring like a lion and clawing the air. I could see alarmed faces at the window of the cafe, and the man was backing away shaking his head. I ripped the poster off the wall and brought it over. My French was a little better than Bertie’s. The cafe owner understood at once.
“Ah,” he said, smiling with relief. “Monsieur Merlot. Le cirque. C’est triste, très triste.” And he went on in broken English: “The circus. He is finished. Sad, very sad. The soldiers, you understand, they want beer and wine, and girls maybe. They do not want the circus. No one comes, and so Monsieur Merlot, he have to close the circus. But what can he do with all the animals? He keep them. He feed them. But the shells come, more and more they come, and his house – how you say it? – it is bombarded. Many animals are dead. But Monsieur Merlot, he stay. He keep only the elephants, the monkeys, and the lion, ‘The White Prince’. Everyone love The White Prince. The army, they take all the hay for the horses. There is no food for the animals. So Monsieur Merlot, he take his gun and he have to shoot them. No more circus. Finish. Triste, très triste.”
“All of them?” cried Bertie. “He shot all of them?”
“No,” said the man. “Not all. He keep The White Prince. He could not shoot The White Prince, never. Monsieur Merlot, he bring him from Africa many years ago. Most famous lion in all of France. He love the lion like a son. That lion, he make Monsieur Merlot a rich man. But he is not rich no more. He lose everything. Now he have nothing, just The White Prince. It is true. I think they die together. Maybe they die already. Who knows?”
“This Monsieur Merlot,” Bertie said, “where does he live? Where can I find him?”
The man pointed out of the village. “Seven, maybe eight kilometres,” he said. “It is an old house by the river. Over the bridge and on the left. Not too far. But maybe Monsieur Merlot he is not there no more. Maybe the house is not there no more. Who knows?” And with a last shrug he turned and went indoors.
There were always army lorries rumbling through the village, so it was not at all difficult to hitch a ride. We left the wheelchair behind in the cafe. Bertie said it would only get in the way, that he could manage well enough with his stick. We found the house, a mill house, just over the bridge where the cafe owner had said it would be. There wasn’t much left of it. The barns all around were shell-blasted, the ruins blackened by fire. Only the main house still had a roof, but it too had not gone unscathed. One corner of the building had been holed and was partially covered by canvas that flapped in the wind. There was no sign of life.
Bertie knocked on the door several times, but there was no answer. The place frightened me. I wanted to leave at once, but Bertie would not hear of it. When he pushed gently at the door, it opened. Everything was dark inside. I did not want to go in, but Bertie took me firmly by the hand.
“He’s in here,” he whispered. “I can smell him.”
And it was true. There was a smell in the air, pungent and rank, and to me quite unfamiliar.
“Qui est là?” said a voice from the darkness of the room. “Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?” He spoke so quietly you could hardly hear him over the rush of the river outside. I could just make out a large bed under the window at the far end of the room. A man was lying there, propped up on a pile of cushions.
“Monsieur Merlot?” Bertie asked.
“Out?”
As we walked forward together, Bertie went on: “I am Bertie Andrews. Many years ago you came to my farm in Africa, and you bought a white lion cub. Do you still have him?”
As if in answer the white blanket at the end of the bed became a lion, rose from the bed, sprang down and was padding towards us, a terrible rumble in his throat. I froze where I was as the lion came right up to us.
“It’s all right, Millie. He won’t hurt us,” said Bertie, putting an arm round me. “We’re old friends.” Moaning and yowling, the lion rubbed himself up against Bertie so hard that we had to hold on to each other to stop ourselves from falling over.
The lion eyed Bertie for a few moments. The yowling stopped, and he began to grunt and groan with pleasure as Bertie smoothed his mane and scratched him between the eyes. “Remember me?” he said to the lion. “Remember Africa?”
“You are the one? I am not dreaming this?” said Monsieur Merlot. “You are the boy in Africa, the one who tried to set him free?”
“I’ve grown a bit,” said Bertie, “but it’s me.” Bertie and Monsieur Merlot shook hands warmly, while the lion turned his attention on me, licking my hand with his rough warm tongue. I just gritted my teeth and hoped he wouldn’t eat it.
“I did all I could,” Monsieur Merlot said, shaking his head. “But look at him now. Just skins and bones like me. All my animals they are gone, except Le Prince Blanc. He is all I have left. I had to shoot my elephants, you know that? I had to. What else could I do? There was no food to feed them. I could not let them starve, could I?”
Bertie sat down on the bed, put his arms around the lion’s neck and buried his head in his mane. The lion rubbed up against him, but he kept looking at me. I kept my distance, I can tell you. I just could not get it out of my head that lions do eat people, particularly if they are hungry lions. And this lion was very hungry indeed. You could see his ribs, and his hip bones too.
“Don’t worry, monsieur’ said Bertie. “I will find you food. I will find food enough for both of you. I promise.”
The driver of the ambulance I waved down thought at first that he was just giving a nurse a lift back to the village. He was, as you can imagine, a little more reluctant when he saw the old man, and then Bertie, and still more when he saw a huge white lion.
The driver swallowed a lot, said nothing all the way, and just nodded when Bertie asked him to let us out in the village square. And so there we were half an hour or so later, the four of us sitting outside the cafe in the sun, the lion at our feet gnawing a huge bone the butcher was only too pleased to sell us. Monsieur Merlot ate a plate of fried potatoes in complete silence and washed it down with a bottle of red wine. Around us gathered an astonished crowd of villagers, of French soldiers, of British soldiers – at a safe distance. СКАЧАТЬ