Roman Nights Read Online Free

cripple,’ I said angrily. ‘I’ve been attacked by a shark.’
    Charles grabbed the torch and turned it on, regardless. I had tripped over a water point. From the tap, a long green hose snaked wetly away in the mud. ‘Ha!’ said Charles, and turned the tap on with a flourish. The hose got up and bounded; we ran alongside till we both reached its nozzle, and had a brief difference of opinion over where we should point it.
    Charles won. There was a strangled gasp from Gli Elefanti Marini and the torchlight wavered on a streaming figure with a blue balloon which rose behind a wall and lit out across the grass, going as if the pumas were coming.
    He led us full pelt across the whole width of the zoo, with the leopards roaring and the volpi barking and the gorilla knocking hell out of his ropeful of Michelins. We chased him out past the llama stand, over the entrance piazza and through the trees to the sloping walls of a disused Egyptian temple. Shadows veiled the crumbling hieroglyphics and carved rhinoceroses over its entrance. Darkness hid the doorway, and the forty-foot hole of mud, grass and rubble excavated in front of it.
    We didn’t know about the hole. Charles fell in first, and I fell on top of him. The torch broke and went out. The night contained only the sound of running footsteps, lightly retreating, and the solemn music, many decibels strong, of the entire strength of the Ark complaining about the living conditions. I sludged off a faceful of mud and remarked, shouting, ‘I have news for you. You are going to buy me a new chamois shirt in the morning.’
    He got to his feet, to my private relief, and swore, in a decidedly undamaged way.
    ‘And a new torch,’ I added. Very soon the uproar was going to rouse somebody.
    ‘Come on,’ he said abruptly. ‘The wall by the restaurant is the lowest.’
    I didn’t argue. I had other plans for the evening, besides explaining to a group of large shirty keepers why we were running about in the darkness plastered with mud and Accostarsing Agli Animals. And since Charles doesn’t enjoy giving up any more than anyone does, I walked beside him back up the dark slope to the restaurant with my mouth firmly shut.
    It was, I suppose, pure coincidence that the man with the blue balloon thought of the same low wall out of the Gardens. And that he believed us sufficiently out of commission to risk doing something before he went over it. We had just caught the first spicy wind of the condors when Charles stopped me dead with his arm and said, ‘See it?’
    I saw it. Down the path, flickering dimly, was a small wistful light in the Gents. ‘I pass,’ I said, whispering.
    ‘Right,’ said Charles, and picking himself off the next pile of rubble he felt about and lifted a billet. ‘If I come out of this I shall buy you a new shirt and a torch and a wall-to-wall bed, and by that I am defining your future environment.’
    ‘Well, watch it,’ I said, without much ingenuity. What I think about Charles doesn’t fit into words very readily. And then he walked away into the darkness.
    He had gone three paces when the loo windows went white and then red and there was the crash of a violent explosion. I saw Charles, silhouetted, stop moving. Then, as the echoes rolled cracking away, he began to sprint fast to the building.
    There was a moment’s stunned quiet in the Gardens, followed by a howl of protest from the denizens. I began to run after Charles.
    Before I got there, he backed out of the toilet. He had switched on the lamp by its doorway. In the light his face was green with shock. He said, ‘Don’t go in. I’m going to be sick,’ and was. I dragged out two paper handkerchiefs and gave them to him. My hand, I found, was shaking. There was a sack of dead leaves on to which Charles, recovering, had subsided. He said, around the handkerchief, ‘He had blown his head off.’
    I said,‘ Shot himself?’ It was unbelievable because it was so unlikely. He had stolen a