Out in the Open (9 page)

‘Good afternoon, old man.'

‘Good afternoon, sir.'

‘Oh, so it's “sir” now, is it?'

The bailiff's voice rang out among the stones. Hidden behind the wall, the boy felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle and noticed a liquid warmth running down his tense legs, soaking his boots. The urine flowed over the leather and left a small damp patch on the ground. If he stayed where he was, they would be sure to find him the moment they came round to his side of the wall.

‘It's a hot day.'

‘Certainly is.'

The goatherd bent down, reached for the wicker handle of the flask, but lacked the strength to pick it up.

‘Something to drink?'

‘Don't mind if I do.'

The bailiff gestured to one of the men, who rode over to the goatherd. He was so big he made his horse seem small. He and the horse stood motionless next to the goatherd, who again bent down and tried to pick up the flask. The horse's belly was almost immediately above him. He took the flask in both hands and, closing his eyes, managed to lift it up to waist height. The rider reached down to receive the flask and rode back over to his boss, who uncorked it and took a long drink. The water ran down his chin and onto the dusty scarf round his neck. When he'd finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and returned the flask to the man who had brought it to him. That man then backed his horse up slightly and offered the flask to the other rider, who, instead, poured water over his face, neck and shirt.

‘Go on, Colorao, have a drink!'

The red-haired man waved him away.

‘Maybe the old man's got some wine.'

‘He probably has.'

‘I once met a man who hadn't drunk water in twelve years.'

‘Oh, piss off.'

The bailiff turned and shot them a look that was enough to silence the two men immediately.

‘We're after a boy who's disappeared.'

The goatherd stared at the horizon and frowned, as if trying hard to remember. He weighed up the situation presented to him by that arrogant bailiff.

‘I haven't seen a living soul in weeks.'

‘You must get lonely.'

‘The goats keep me company.'

The red-haired man stood up in his stirrups as if to air his crotch or to peer over the wall. He scanned the wall from end to end for any clues. He was like an engineer come from the big city to certify officially that the castle was indeed a ruin.

‘I'm sure they must give you no end of amusement.'

The rider who had picked up the flask gave a loud guffaw, and the bailiff allowed himself a faint smile. The old man remained utterly impassive, as did the man they called Colorao, whose mind was clearly on other things. A few seconds passed in silence. The old man was just about managing to remain on his feet. The bailiff stroked his chin while he considered his next question.

‘You've come a very long way with your goats.'

‘I'm a goatherd, I have to keep moving on in search of fresh pastures.'

The red-haired man pulled on his reins and his horse reared up. He then rode towards the far end of the wall around which the boy had escaped, while the bailiff stayed behind with the old man. The latter forced himself not to follow the other man with his eyes because, if he did, that would only confirm what the bailiff already seemed to know. The red-haired man rode slowly round the wall, but by the time he had crossed to the other side, the boy was no longer there. He dismounted and walked the entire length of the wall, failing to notice the stones the boy had stained with blood from his grazed knees. When he reached the middle of the wall, however, he poked with his boot at the damp patch the boy had left on the ground. Resting the butt of his shotgun on the ground, he squatted down, picked up a pinch of sand with his fingers and sniffed it.

On the other side of the wall, the bailiff was saying that this was hardly the leafiest of spots and that the same dry grass grew near the village. No one, he added, was going to travel that far just to buy his miserable milk; he should have listened when he took him to see the places where he should be pasturing his goats. He reminded him of his words at the time: ‘Keep close to the village, but stay outside.'

The red-haired man was now heading for the door of the tower. Before entering, he stopped and inspected the curved walls rising up into the clear sky. Some of the pigeons had returned. He looked inside. There were bird droppings everywhere. The dried carcasses of pigeons, broken eggshells and the remains of a rodent devoured by some bird of prey. The parchment-like smell of the excrement masked the faint whiff of urine. He leaned further into the tower. Only the first step of the spiral staircase was intact. Beyond that, the steps still loosely attached to the wall rose up like the thread of a screw. The opening that gave access to the upper balcony was blocked by a mixture of pigeon faeces, feathers and twigs. Without that one source of light, anything in the tower more than nine feet above the ground was plunged in indecipherable darkness.

‘Come out of there, you little bastard.'

The man's voice rose up through the tower and pierced the boy's skull, making his brain tremble. The boy had managed to climb onto one of the corbels and he shuddered so hard that he very nearly lost his footing and fell.

‘Come out, you brat!'

When the bailiff and his other colleague joined him, he emerged from the tower and said:

‘There's nowhere else he could hide for five miles around. He's either dead or he's hiding up there.'

‘Now don't get in a state, Colorao. If he is hiding up there, he'll come out eventually.'

‘It's pitch black, you can't see a thing.'

The bailiff pursed his lips and smoothed his hair, which was nearly dry now. He stepped back a little and studied the outside wall of the tower. He went over to the entrance. He poked at the sandy soil with his boot and uncovered the remains of the fire over which the old man and the boy had roasted the rabbit on the previous night. Turning to his men and pensively tapping his mouth with one hand, he looked at the red-headed man, but said nothing. Then he made another broader gesture, sending his two deputies off in different directions, while he remained standing at the entrance to the tower. From his inside pocket he removed a leather tobacco pouch and took out a packet of brown rolling papers, which he used to roll himself an almost perfect cigarette. When the men came back, they found their boss sitting on a stone, surrounded by threads of whitish smoke and amusing himself by flicking a silver lighter on and off.

‘Not a sign of him, sir.'

The bailiff then gestured with his thumb at the wall behind him, and the two men again did as they were told, leaving their boss deep in thought. They found the goatherd sitting on the panniers, pretending to read the Bible.

‘Come on, old man, up you get.'

The goatherd struggled to his feet and stood to one side. The men picked up the panniers and emptied them out, scattering their contents on the ground. The frying pan struck a stone and rang out like a bell. The tin container for the oil spilled its last drops onto the dust, but the goatherd did nothing. The men grabbed the panniers and the packsaddle and dragged them over to the tower, where the red-headed man tore open the packsaddle and made a small pyramid out of the straw stuffing. On top he placed the rest of the saddle along with the panniers, forming a kind of pyre. The straw flared up as soon as the bailiff applied the lighter. The sheltering walls and the heat of the day did the rest. In a few seconds, the flames had leapt higher than the top of the entrance and were disappearing up into the tower. The men drew back so as not to be choked by the smoke and stood watching the flames devouring panniers and saddle, transforming them into thin black filaments. High up in the tower, a few pigeons could be heard cooing.

The boy didn't have time to feel afraid. His survival instincts took over, and initially he simply pressed his back against the wall as if that would somehow give him more space on the corbel on which he was perched. Enough space to be able to jump to the other side of the tower, above the smoke and the flames. The cells in his body were doing all his thinking for him and, among the various possibilities, they did not once consider that of dropping down onto the burning panniers and running out into the dry air of the plain. If it came to that, he would rather let the fire, like a blind, greedy ferret, bite him to death.

He was high enough up for the flames not to burn his feet, and the smoke had plenty of room to disperse above his head, enough to allow him a few more seconds before he suffocated and fell down onto the pyre below.

He felt along the wall behind him, although quite what he was hoping to find he didn't know. A door that did not exist or a mother who could lick his wounds. The flames were lighting up the inside of the tower now and when he saw a narrow vertical shape almost immediately opposite him, hope coursed through his body. It might be a window or the niche of a saint, like the ones he'd seen in his village on the stairs leading up to the shrine to Christ. He turned on his tiny perch and again felt along the wall, this time in search of handholds. There were cracks and indentations everywhere. Placing his hands inside one of those indentations or placing his feet in the gaps left in the wall where the staircase had crumbled away, he managed to advance up the remaining steps. He had, by now, lost all sense of time and had no idea how long it took him to reach that shadowy shape. It was an arrow slit blocked with stones. Perched on the triangular sill, he scrabbled desperately at the stones. The accumulated smoke had almost reached him. Two of the stones dropped down onto the fire below. Fortunately for him, the bailiff was sitting a little way away from the door, calmly smoking, and his men were further off still, chatting and expecting a body to fall, not a stone.

With the smoke already warming his back and hampering his every movement and intention, he managed to press his face to that opening in the wall and, at last, take a deep breath. The smoke also began to escape through that same opening and, for a few endless seconds, his mouth had to compete for air with those grey billows that were making his eyes sting and his skin smart. He pressed his face so hard against the stone that the blisters left by the sun on his cheekbones burst. At one point, he swallowed some smoke and, so as not to betray his presence to those waiting outside, he had to turn his head in order to cough inside the tower. Gradually, the smoke dissipated and he could move away from the arrow slit. He touched his skin with his black fingers and it stung.

Once the panniers were nothing but a heap of incandescent threads, the bailiff went back to the entrance to the tower and again gazed upwards. He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the ground, then told his men it was time to leave. However, the red-headed man joined him at the entrance to the tower and listened hard. He came out and whispered in the bailiff's ear that perhaps they should wait a little longer. His boss looked annoyed, but with a resigned wave of his hand, once more sat down on the stone and rolled himself another cigarette. The red-headed man went back to his companion and continued talking to him in a low voice, one of them keeping watch on the tower and the other on the plain towards the south. They were like relatives waiting impatiently for a funeral service to be over so that they could get back to the bar for a drink.

When the bailiff had finished his cigarette, he threw it down next to the first one and stubbed it out with his boot. He adjusted his hat and walked round the wall, without saying a word. The man watching the tower nudged his colleague and together they followed their boss. At that moment, their horses were grazing alongside the goats, and the old man was praying, his eyes shut.

THE BOY STAYED
in his hiding-place long after the wild bleating of the goats, the men's voices and the roar of the departing motorbike had ceased. The toxic cloud of smoke had finally gone, and the boy imagined the pigeons' eggs ruined by the fire: their blackened shells and, inside, the half-hatched chicks. His legs ached after hours spent crouched on the sill, but he decided to put up with it for a while longer, wanting to be absolutely sure that when he did come down the bailiff would not be waiting for him outside. Smoke-blackened but alive, he allowed the hours to pass, unable to interpret the meaning of the torture to which he had been submitted. Had they set fire to the tower because the goatherd had directed them there or had they simply considered the tower to be the only possible hiding-place?

Through the arrow slit, he watched the evening coming on and was conscious of his horribly taut skin and his gurgling stomach, but now, after so long in one position, he could no longer feel his bent legs or his cramped muscles. There was no sound from the goatherd. He fell asleep.

A noise woke him in the middle of the night. A muffled cry that rose up from the foot of the tower. The walls smelled of stale smoke, his skin still felt uncomfortably tight and his mouth dry. He squinted out through the arrow slit. In the pale light of the crescent moon, the plain was almost blue. The voice calling to him grew louder, but no clearer.

‘Are you there, boy?'

It was the old man. The boy heard a cough and, shortly afterwards, the dull thud of a body falling to the ground. In the darkness of the tower, the stones felt greasy to the touch and he had to use the hard tips of his boots to feel for places stable enough to bear his weight. He took longer to descend than he would have liked and, when he finally reached ground level, he found the old man lying inside the base of the tower. He tried to wake him by tugging at his sleeve and moving his head from side to side, but received no response. He pressed his ear to the old man's chest to see if his heart was still beating, but could hear nothing. When he touched the old man's chest, it felt wet and sticky. He decided to drag him out of the tower by the legs so that he could see what was wrong with him by the scarce light of the moon. After great effort, though, all he could manage was to drag him as far as the entrance to the tower. Once outside, he put his face close to the goatherd's mouth and was able to confirm that he was at least still breathing albeit very feebly and irregularly. He could still not establish the exact cause of his collapse.