Out in the Open (20 page)
Authors: Jesús Carrasco
Initially, he made rapid progress. He cleared the pine needles from an area of ground next to the body and, with the help of the frying pan, removed the first layers of sandy soil. A few inches down, however, he encountered roots going in all directions, forming a subterranean fabric in which the frying pan kept getting stuck.
By dawn, the hole he had dug was not even deep enough to cover the old man's nose. Halfway through the morning, he stopped to rest and, from inside the hole, saw that the surrounding earth now came up to his knees. He could have buried him there and then, but any marauding dogs would soon have dug him up. He decided to continue and, by the afternoon, the hole he was standing in came up to his waist.
As on all the previous days, his time was spent either awake or working. Tiredness had become like a second skin. Only one thing occurred to distract him. At midday, the dog got up from its resting place to sniff the air coming from the direction of the road. The boy calmed the dog and led it over to the edge of the wood. A few muleteers were heading north. Three men and ten or twelve pack mules. The boy assumed that they must have passed through the village and would, therefore, know that the inn had been burned down. They would also have seen the bailiff's motorbike at the entrance to the village and would doubtless have found the charred bodies in what remained of the inn.
He pushed the old man's body into the hole, but, as it fell, it turned over and lay face down. The boy gave an angry shake of his head. The hole was so narrow that it took him more than half an hour to turn the body over. Then he gave the old man one last glance before covering his face with a scrap of blanket. He filled the hole with earth until it was level with the ground, scattering any excess soil round about and covering the grave with pine needles. Any dampness left after his excavations would evaporate in a few hours and the grave would be invisible. He remained standing for a while, contemplating the spot where the goatherd lay buried, then he went off in search of something. He returned with a couple of twigs no more than a few inches long and placed them on the ground, one on top of the other, to form a cross. He studied that cross, unable to understand what possible significance those two pieces of wood could have in that grim, remote place. He began to say the Lord's Prayer, but halfway through, the words died on his lips and he stopped. He would have liked to know the old man's name.
He spent what remained of the afternoon resting. He ate whatever he fancied from the panniers and drank as much milk as he could extract from the goats. Then he lay dozing, his head on the panniers and, before it was completely dark, loaded up the donkey, dismantled the corral and set off again. With the Pole Star as guide, they travelled in the moonlight along the flat, empty roads leading north. Sometimes they lost their way, but sooner or later, they always found a path that brought them back so that they were once again heading in the right direction.
One morning, while taking shelter in a run-down old house intended for itinerant road menders, he heard rain drumming on a fallen sheet of corrugated iron. Standing in the dilapidated doorway, he watched the extraordinary spectacle taking place before him. The sky full of grey clouds in the middle of the morning and a transparent light that lent an unfamiliar clarity to the surrounding objects. The fat drops burst on impact with the dusty ground but did not penetrate. He went back into the house and emerged carrying the water pitcher under his arm. He left the pitcher on the ground a few feet away from the house. Then he went back and stood in the doorway for as long as the rain lasted, watching as God temporarily slackened the screws on his torment.
The author would like to thank Raquel Torres, Arantxa MartÃnez, Elena RamÃrez, Juan MarÃa Jiménez, Javier Espada, Espartaco MartÃnez, Verónica Manrique, Francisco Rabasco, Gustavo González, Fátima Carrasco, MarÃa Camón, Diego Ãlvarez, Germán DÃaz, David Picazo and Manuel Pavón.
Carmen Jaramillo deserves a special mention. She improved the book with her enthusiastic support and, by her example, improved the author too.
I would like to thank the author for his generosity and patience in answering my many queries and, I am grateful too, as always, to Anella McDermott and Ben Sherriff for all their help and advice.
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Epub ISBN: 9781448161188
Version 1.0
Published by Harvill Secker 2015
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Copyright © Jesús Carrasco 2013
English translation copyright © Margaret Jull Costa 2015
Jesús Carrasco has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published with the title
Intemperie
in 2013 by Seix Barral, Grupo Planeta, Spain
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
HARVILL SECKER
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
A Penguin Random House Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781846557446
Published with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein