The Schooldays of Jesus (2 page)

The boy stares in astonishment at his assailant, then turns and hurls another stone at the ducks.

Now David plunges into the water, shoes and all, and begins splashing in the direction of the birds.

‘David!' he, Simón, calls. The child ignores him.

Inés, in the vineyard below, drops her basket and begins running. Not since he watched her playing tennis a year ago has he seen her exert herself. She is slow; she has put on weight.

Out of nowhere the great dog appears and races past her, straight as an arrow. In a matter of moments he has leapt into the dam and is at David's side. Gripping his shirt in his teeth, he hauls the thrashing, protesting child to the bank.

Inés arrives. The dog slumps down, his ears cocked, his eyes on her, waiting for a sign, while David, in his sodden clothes, wails and beats him with his fists. ‘I hate you, Bolívar!' he cries. ‘That boy was throwing stones, Inés! He wanted to kill the duck!'

He, Simón, lifts the struggling child into his arms. ‘Calm down, calm down,' he says. ‘The duck isn't dead—see!—he just had a bump. He will soon get better. Now I think all you children should come away and let the ducks calm down and get on with their lives. And you must not say you hate Bolívar. You love Bolívar, we all know that, and Bolívar loves you. He thought you were drowning. He was trying to save you.'

Angrily David wriggles out of his arms. ‘I was going to save the duck,' he says. ‘I didn't ask Bolívar to come. Bolívar is stupid.
He is a stupid dog. Now
you
have got to save him, Simón. Go on, save him!'

He, Simón, takes off his shoes and shirt. ‘Since you insist, I will try. However, let me point out that a duck's idea of being saved may be different from your idea of being saved. It may include being left in peace by human beings.'

Other of the grape-pickers have by now arrived. ‘Stay—I will go,' a younger man offers.

‘No. It's kind of you, but this is my child's business.' He takes off his trousers and in his underpants wades into the brown water. With barely a splash the dog appears at his side. ‘Go away, Bolívar,' he murmurs. ‘I don't need to be saved.'

Clustered on the bank, the grape-pickers watch as the no-longer-young gentleman with the physique not quite as firm as it used to be in his stevedoring days sets about doing his child's bidding.

The water is not deep. Even at its deepest it does not rise to above his chest. But he can barely move his feet in the soft ooze of the floor. There is no chance at all that he can catch the duck with the broken wing, who splashes about on the surface in ragged circles, to say nothing of the mother duck, who has by now reached the farther bank and scuttled away into the undergrowth followed by her brood.

It is Bolívar who does the job for him. Sailing past like a ghost, with only his head showing above the water, he tracks the wounded bird, closes his jaws like a vice on the trailing wing, and hauls him toward the bank. At first there is a flurry of resistance, of beating and splashing; then all at once the bird seems to give up
and accept its fate. By the time he, Simón, has emerged from the water the duck is in the arms of the young man who had offered to go in his place and is being inspected curiously by the children.

Though well above the horizon, the sun barely warms him. Shivering, he puts on his clothes.

Bengi, the one who cast the stone that caused all the trouble, strokes the head of the entirely passive bird.

‘Tell him you are sorry for what you did,' says the young man.

‘I'm sorry,' mutters Bengi. ‘Can we fix his wing? Can we tie a splint on it?'

The young man shakes his head. ‘He is a wild creature,' he says. ‘He will not submit to wearing a splint. It is all right. He is ready to die. He has accepted it. Look. Look at his eyes. He is already dead.'

‘He can stay in my bunk,' says Bengi. ‘I can feed him till he gets better.'

‘Turn your back,' says the young man.

Bengi does not understand.

‘Turn your back,' says the young man.

To Inés, who is meanwhile drying off the boy, he, Simón, whispers: ‘Don't let him look.'

She presses the boy's head into her skirts. He resists, but she is firm.

The young man grips the bird between his knees. A swift motion, and it is done. The head lolls awkwardly; a film comes over the eyes. He hands the feathered carcass to Bengi. ‘Go and bury him,' he orders. ‘Go on.'

Inés releases the boy. ‘Go with your friend,' he, Simón, tells
him. ‘Help him bury the bird. Make sure he does it properly.'

Later the boy seeks him and Inés out where they are working among the vines.

‘So: have you buried the poor duck?' he asks.

The boy shakes his head. ‘We couldn't dig a hole for him. We didn't have a spade. Bengi hid him in the bushes.'

‘That's not nice. When I have finished for the day I will go and bury him. You can show me where.'

‘Why did he do it?'

‘Why did that young man put him out of his misery? I told you. Because he would have been helpless with a broken wing. He would have refused to eat. He would have pined away.'

‘No, I mean why did Bengi do it?'

‘I'm sure he didn't mean any harm. He was just throwing stones, and one thing led to another.'

‘Will the babies die too?'

‘Of course not. They have a mother to take care of them.'

‘But who is going to give them milk?'

‘Birds are not like us. They don't drink milk. Anyhow, it is mothers who give milk, not fathers.'

‘Will they find a
padrino
?'

‘I don't think so. I don't think there are
padrinos
among birds, just as there is no milk.
Padrinos
are a human institution.'

‘He is not sorry. Bengi. He says he is sorry but he isn't really sorry.'

‘Why do you think so?'

‘Because he wanted to kill the duck.'

‘I don't agree, my boy. I don't believe he knew what he was
doing, not fully. He was just throwing stones the way boys throw stones. He didn't in his heart intend to kill anyone. Then afterwards, when he saw what a beautiful creature the bird was, when he saw what a terrible thing he had done, he repented and was sorry.'

‘He wasn't really sorry. He told me.'

‘If he is not sorry now, he will be sorry soon. His conscience will not let him rest. That is how we human beings are. If we do a bad deed, we get no joy out of it. Our conscience sees to that.' ‘But he was shining! I saw it! He was shining and throwing stones as hard as he could! He wanted to kill them all!'

‘I don't know what you mean by shining, but even if he was shining, even if he was throwing stones, that doesn't prove that in his heart he was trying to kill them. We can't always foresee the consequences of our actions—particularly when we are young. Don't forget that he offered to nurse the bird with the broken wing, to shelter him in his bunk. What more could he do? Un-throw the stone he had thrown? You can't do that. You can't unmake the past. What is done is done.'

‘He didn't bury him. He just threw him in the bushes.'

‘I'm sorry about that, but the duck is dead. We can't bring him back. You and I will go and bury him as soon as the day's work is over.'

‘I wanted to kiss him but Bengi wouldn't let me. He said he was dirty. But I kissed him anyway. I went into the bushes and kissed him.'

‘That's good, I'm glad to hear it. It will mean a lot to him to know that someone loved him and kissed him after he died. It will also mean a lot to him to know he had a proper burial.'

‘You can bury him. I don't want to bury him.'

‘Very well, I will do so. And if we come back tomorrow morning and the grave is empty and the whole duck family is swimming in the dam, father and mother and babies, with no one missing, then we will know that kissing works, that kissing can raise one from the dead. But if we don't see him, if we don't see the duck family—'

‘I don't want them to come back. If they come back Bengi will just throw stones at them again. He is not sorry. He is just pretending. I
know
he is pretending but you won't believe me. You never believe me.'

There is no spade or pickaxe to be found, so he borrows a tyre lever from the truck. The boy leads him to where the carcass lies among the bushes. The feathers have already lost their gloss and ants have got to the eyes. With the lever he chops a hole in the flinty soil. It is not deep enough, he cannot pretend this is a decent burial, but he drops the dead bird in nevertheless and covers it. A webbed foot sticks out stiffly. He collects stones and lays them over the grave. ‘There,' he says to the boy. ‘It's the best I can do.'

When they visit the spot the next morning the stones are scattered and the duck is gone. There are feathers everywhere. They search but find nothing save the head with its empty eye sockets and one foot. ‘I'm sorry,' he says, and tramps off to rejoin the work crew.

CHAPTER 2

TWO MORE days, and the grape-picking is over; the truck has borne the last binfuls away.

‘Who is going to eat all those grapes?' demands David.

‘They are not going to be eaten. They are going to be pressed in a winepress and the juice is going to be turned into wine.'

‘I don't like wine,' says David. ‘It's sour.'

‘Wine is an acquired taste. When we are young we don't like it, then when we are older we acquire a taste for it.'

‘I am never going to acquire a taste for it.'

‘That's what you say. Let's wait and see.'

The vineyards having been stripped bare, they move on to the olive groves, where they spread nets and use long hooks to bring down the olives. The work is more taxing than grape-picking. He looks forward to the midday breaks; he finds the heat of the long afternoons hard to support, and pauses often to drink or just recover his strength. He can hardly believe that only months ago he was working on the docks as a stevedore, carrying heavy loads, barely breaking into a sweat. His back and arms have lost
their old strength, his heart beats sluggishly, he is nagged by pain from the rib that was broken.

From Inés, unused as she is to physical labour, he has been expecting complaints and grumbling. But no: she works by his side all day, joylessly but without a murmur. She does not need to be reminded that it was she who decided they should flee Novilla and take up the lives of gypsies. Well, now she has found out how gypsies live: by toiling in other men's fields from sunrise to sunset, all for a day's bread and a few
reales
in their pockets.

But at least the boy is having a good time, the boy for whose sake they fled the city. After a brief, haughty estrangement, he has rejoined Bengi and his tribe—even, it would seem, taken over their leadership. For it is he, not Bengi, who now gives the orders, and Bengi and the others who meekly obey.

Bengi has three younger sisters. They dress in identical calico smocks and wear their hair in identical pigtails tied with identical red ribbons; they join in all the boys' games. At his school in Novilla David had refused to have anything to do with girls. ‘They are always whispering and giggling,' he said to Inés. ‘They are silly.' Now for the first time he is playing with girls, not seeming to find them silly at all. There is a game he has invented that consists in clambering onto the roof of a shed beside the olive grove and leaping down onto a convenient heap of sand. Sometimes he and the youngest of the sisters take the leap hand in hand, rolling over in a tangle of legs and arms, rising to their feet chortling with laughter.

The little girl, whose name is Florita, follows David like a shadow wherever he goes; he does nothing to discourage her.

During the midday break one of the olive-pickers teases her. ‘I see you have a
novio
,' she says. Florita gazes back at her solemnly. Perhaps she does not know the word. ‘What is his name? What is the name of your
novio
?' Florita blushes and runs away.

When the girls leap from the roof their smocks open up like the petals of flowers, revealing identical rose-coloured panties.

There are still grapes aplenty from the harvest, whole baskets of them. The children stuff their mouths; their hands and faces are sticky with the sweet juice. All save David, who eats one grape at a time, spits out the seeds, and rinses his hands fastidiously afterwards.

‘The others could certainly learn manners from him,' remarks Inés.
My boy
, she wants to add—he, Simón, can see it—
my clever, well-mannered boy
.
So unlike these other ragamuffins.

‘He is growing up quickly,' he concedes. ‘Perhaps too quickly. There are times when I find his behaviour a little too'—he hesitates over the word—‘too
magistral
, too masterful. Or so it seems to me.'

‘He is a boy. He has a strong character.'

The gypsy life may not suit Inés, and it does not suit him, but it certainly suits the boy. He has never seen him so active, so full of energy. He wakes up early, eats voraciously, runs around with his friends all day. Inés tries to get him to wear a cap, but the cap is soon lost, never to be found again. Where before he was somewhat pale, he is now as brown as a berry.

It is not little Florita to whom he is closest but Maite, her sister. Maite is seven, a few months older than he. She is the prettiest of the three sisters and the most thoughtful in disposition.

One evening the boy confides in Inés: ‘Maite asked me to show her my penis.'

‘And?' says Inés.

‘She says if I show her my penis she will show me her thing.'

‘You should play more with Bengi,' says Inés. ‘You shouldn't be playing with girls all the time.'

‘We weren't playing, we were talking. She says if I put my penis in her thing she will get a baby. Is it true?'