Out in the Open (12 page)

He emerged from the wood at the first light of day, taking care not to stumble. His boots still afforded his feet some protection from the ground, but the front part of one of the soles had come loose, allowing the boot to fill up with grit. When he crouched down to empty it out, he noticed that the backs of his hands were still smeared with soot and blood. He touched his cheekbones and felt the scabs that were beginning to form. He still stank to high heaven. The breeze veered slightly, and he could feel the cool dawn air through the tears in his trouser legs. If there were any dogs in the village, they would soon begin to bark.

The thought of dogs made his stomach contract, because the bailiff used to keep a black one as a guard dog. A Dobermann he called it. Pointed ears on a head that seemed carved out of stone, and a tar-black snout that would nose around among his clothes and make him tremble. The bailiff had often deliberately submitted him to the dog's presence whenever he resisted his desires. That thought was like a cold chisel cutting into his tender fontanelle or a sharp instrument gouging into his elbows in search of white bone. He hunched down until he was hugging his knees and, for the second time in a week, he peed his pants. The light was growing brighter around him, picking out new shapes in the landscape.

He covered the distance separating him from the cemetery on all fours. Sand clung to his damp crotch. When he reached the nearest wall, he stood up and circled round until he reached the westernmost corner. From there he could see some of the houses, but not the well, because the church was in the way. Head down, he crossed the area separating cemetery and church and got as far as the portico. As in his own village church, the pillars supporting the roof were connected by a continuous row of stone benches, interrupted at one point to provide access to the church. The area was carpeted with the leaves the wind had blown in from a nearby acacia tree and deposited in untidy piles around the benches. The door, hanging by one hinge, seemed about ready to fall off. He followed the filthy, crumbling wall round to the apse. Broken tiles and bits of plaster littered the ground, and it was clear that the church was no longer in use. This was a discovery that both reassured and worried him in equal measure, because if no one was taking care of the church, that was because no one attended it any more, and he would probably not have to hide from anyone. On the other hand, the lack of inhabitants could also mean a lack of water. He positioned himself by the apse wall and from there, at last, had a panoramic view of the village. He saw sunken roofs and a few gaping windows, as well as a large wood-and-metal harvester like a Trojan horse devoured by scrub.

He entered the village by the same path that had led him into the oak wood, although, for the last stretch, he had chosen to go across the fields instead. On either side of the dirt road, he found either locked and barred houses or broken-down doors through which the same scene could be seen over and over: fallen beams that opened up great holes in the roof and shed light onto the piles of rubble beneath. Ceramic tiles with grubby, faded designs. The occasional photo of the king and queen or out-of-date calendars bearing advertisements for nitrates. Lumps of ceiling plaster mixed with wattle, and struts wound about with twine. From some façades drainpipes hung, their fixings having come loose from the walls, leaving indentations like bullet holes. Cavities left by crumbling plaster laid bare the skeletons of the houses, their thick wooden beams. He had a look at one such house. It smelled of darkness and rotten olives. Somewhere up in the roof he heard the fluttering of pigeons and their monotonous cooing.

Towards the far end of the village, the street opened out to form an irregular square, like the stopping-place for a caravan of pioneers. On one side was the well, from whose wrought-iron arch hung a pulley bereft of rope and bucket. He leaned over the granite rim, expecting the worst, but could make out nothing until his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness below. Only then could he see the brick wall and, about fifteen feet down, a kind of brick buttress that traversed the well from side to side. Below that, nothing. He dropped in a stone that bounced off the arch before continuing its descent. Immediately afterwards, he heard the dull splash of the stone hitting water. He threw in a few more stones to make sure. With his hands resting on the rim, he gave a sigh of relief, although he was all too familiar with abandoned wells and their bad water.

He visited various ruined houses, unwinding twine from the beams. Some was simply wound around, while some had been nailed to the wood with tin tacks. To remove the tacks he used one leaf from an old laminated spring he found lying around, until, finally, he had enough twine for his purposes. In the pantry, he found several suspiciously swollen cans. He placed one on the floor and, holding it with one hand, struck the lid with the sharp corner of a tile. Brown liquid spurted forth. The smell was so overpowering that he had to run out into the street to catch his breath. While he waited, he improvised a bucket by tying a twine handle to an earthenware pitcher. Then, using the same metal leaf, he opened the can fully, emptied out the contents and went back to the well.

The water he brought up was full of small white worms that moved by expanding and contracting like tiny springs. He poured a little water into the can to rinse it out, and when it was more or less clean, took off his shirt and placed it over the top of the can to act as a kind of filter. The worms writhed and leapt about on the cloth like tuna fish in a net. The first sip he took tasted slimy, but he was so thirsty that he threw caution to the wind and drank until he could drink no more.

He washed his smoke-stiffened face and, even though several hours had passed since the fire in the tower, the water still dripped black into the dust. He hauled up another pitcher of water and took off his trousers. While the water didn't wash away all the grime, it did refresh him and, for the first time since he had run away, he felt something akin to the comfort he had known at home with his family. The mixture of soot, dust, blood and urine ran in grubby streams down his legs. He emptied several pitchers of water over his head and, before going back to fetch the donkey, sat down on the rim of the well to rest.

He felt the first pangs when he was halfway between the village and the wood. The cramps in his stomach forced him to squat down on the path. He clutched his belly as he was gripped by continuous waves of contractions, a feeling like being kicked repeatedly in the gut. He lowered his trousers and defecated right there and then. He felt a momentary relief, and his stomach seemed briefly to return to normal. He wiped his bottom on a stone, but, as he was about to pull up his trousers, his legs gave way beneath him as a new wave of cramps took hold. He only just had time to pull down his trousers again before another stream of excrement covered the bottoms of his trousers and his heels. He felt an endless need to open his bowels as if inside his body, a tap had been turned on that he could not turn off.

He found the donkey grazing placidly, seemingly as happy to nibble on last spring's aborted oak leaves as it was to munch on tiny, crunchy wild asparagus shoots. The boy untethered it, climbed onto its back and headed off towards the path. They proceeded at the gentle pace dictated by the old donkey, whose swaying gait again sent tremors through the boy's stomach. Fortunately, he had nothing more inside him. After days spent out in the open, a whole night spent perched on the sill of an arrow slit, followed by another sleepless night on the trail of that half-putrid water, and now, having found the well and having been spared any dealings with the villagers, he felt so relaxed that, by the time they entered the village, he was asleep with his arms around the donkey's neck and with the hard frame of the saddle pad sticking into his stomach. As if endowed with the skills of a water diviner, the donkey headed straight along the street to the square, where the fallen pitcher had left a pool of water. When they arrived, the donkey stopped and reached down to lick the damp mud, almost propelling the boy forward over its head. However, the boy woke just in time to regain his balance. He then sat very erect on the donkey's back and stretched his arms up to the sky, fists clenched, then he unclenched them and felt something click in his solar plexus. He dismounted, and the first thing he did was to lower the pitcher down the well and give the donkey some water to drink. As soon as he placed the pitcher on the ground, the donkey thrust its muzzle into the pitcher's round mouth and lapped up all the water its tongue could reach. While the donkey was drinking, the boy considered removing the flasks, filling them up and then putting them back. He had seen similar wicker-covered flasks at home, usually filled with wine, and he reckoned they must hold at least five gallons of water each. In the end, though, he rejected this option as impracticable and decided instead to fill the flasks gradually, without taking them off the donkey's back. He accordingly spent the next hour drawing up water from the well and pouring a little into each of the flasks in turn, so that the load wouldn't become unbalanced. When he thought the flasks were half full, he decided to sit down and rest. He walked round the well, in search of shade, but the sun was so high there was scarcely any shade to be had. He could have gone into one of the houses, but, given the precarious state of most of the roofs, he dismissed this idea too. Instead, as he had on the long walk to the reed bed, he decided to use the donkey to protect him from the sun. He sat down, leaning his back against the stone wall of the well, holding the halter so that the donkey would not move away, and then promptly fell asleep.

He woke, feeling hot and agitated and with a feeling of dampness around his feet. He opened his eyes and found that his feet were buried in a heap of dung and urine deposited by the donkey, which was now standing a couple of yards from him, flicking away flies with its tail. He didn't know how long he had been sitting in the sun, but into his mind came memories of the goatherd's poultice and the dog licking his teeth. He felt slightly dizzy and, for a moment, his vision grew blurred. He leaned against the wall of the well to steady himself, and was filled with a sudden loathing for that beast of which all he had asked was a little shade, only to be denied even that. He strode over to the donkey and punched it hard on the muzzle. The animal merely shook its head, unmoved, whereas he felt a pain, like a cramp, shoot from his knuckles right up to his skull. He stood among those few ruined houses and gave an agonised cry which he kept up even when the pain in his bones had abated. A long howl that made him fall to his knees, exhausted, in the middle of the dusty square.

‘You don't seem very happy.'

The boy started to his feet and backed away from that male voice, which had emerged from somewhere behind him. He hid behind the well and stayed there utterly still, playing for time while he listened, ears cocked, for any sounds of movement. For a few seconds all he could hear was the cooing of the pigeons in the roofs of the houses. Then came a creak as if from an axle, which he identified as coming from some sort of wagon. He assumed the man was a peasant farmer.

‘Come out, boy. I'm not going to harm you.'

‘I haven't done anything.'

‘I know. I've been watching you since I saw you up at the church.'

The boy whirled around, as if expecting to see watchful eyes at every window.

‘Please, just let me leave.'

‘Come out, will you? Like I said, I'm not going to harm you.'

‘No, I won't come out.'

The boy glanced towards the entrance to the village and considered escaping down the street, but the street was too long, and if the man had a shotgun, he would prove a very easy target. And even if he didn't get shot, walking to the castle in the heat of the day would be impossible. And if he returned with no water, the old man would die and so would he.

‘How do I know you're not going to harm me?'

‘You just have to look at me.'

The man had long, matted hair and a black beard, and wore only a tattered hessian tunic tied at the waist. His hands were not fully formed, and his legs had been amputated just below the knees. Frayed leather straps bound his thighs to a wooden plank fitted with four greasy ball bearings that served as wheels. The tension in the boy's muscles dissolved at once when he saw that the threat he had imagined was no threat at all, and then, as if he were studying a painting, he stood, hypnotised, staring at that peculiar body, from plank to head. He observed him as if through a tunnel of caulked walls, at the end of which the man and his plank seemed to form one being. Both plank and man were equally filthy, and not even the stink of urine and creosote he gave off could distract the boy, his senses numbed both by the sight of that strange creature and by his own now dry effluvia of urine and sweat that had gradually been so absorbed into his pores that they seemed to form part of him.

‘Do you like my chariot?'

The boy emerged reluctantly from his stunned state. After the initial shock, the blood was once more flowing aimlessly through his slack veins. The person talking to him proved so utterly inoffensive that the boy, confusing relief with rudeness, answered rather peevishly, forgetting that the man might easily be the owner of that well or have a pistol concealed beneath his tunic.

‘I only took a little water.'

‘That's all right. You can take as much as you want. Except, of course, the water's bad. It's probably already given you the shits.'

The boy said nothing, but instinctively clenched his buttocks.

‘What are you doing here all alone?'

‘I'm not alone. My father and brother are waiting for me in the oak wood up there.'

‘And they sent you to fetch water, right?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, go and get them. You can all eat at my inn. I won't charge you much.'

The boy looked around for some sign, some advertisement, but saw only houses that were either locked up or derelict. He pulled a sceptical face.