Out in the Open (5 page)

The smell of baking bread wafted past his face, and he noticed his mouth filling with saliva. He searched for the origin of that smell and saw the old man stamping out the small fire and scattering earth over it to douse the embers. Then the man walked over to him and stood at his feet. In the middle of the night, he seemed uncertain whether the boy would be awake or asleep. He jiggled the boy's leg with the tip of his boot, and before the boy had even moved, said:

‘Food's ready.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Don't call me “sir”.'

When the boy reached the spot where the fire had been, the old man was already eating, dunking bits of unleavened bread in a mug of wine. On a stone on the other side of the ashes stood an olive-wood bowl from which threads of steam were rising. The boy glanced at the man as if asking permission to enter his house, and with a lift of his chin, the old man indicated the bowl of fresh goat's milk. The boy sat down on the stone and raised the bowl to his lips. Some of the milk ran down the waxy folds of the poultice. The boy noticed that the tension around his mouth was easing slightly and that he could now shape his lips to the bowl. For a while, he merely took tiny sips, studying the old man out of the corner of his eye, so that he could easily avert his gaze if the man noticed him watching. The goatherd, however, was too absorbed in his own supper and paid no attention. At one point, the boy noticed that half the loaf the goatherd had baked was still there in the pan. He assumed the old man had left it for him, but didn't dare reach forward and pick it up. He made as if to get to his feet, but immediately fell back, gripped by embarrassment or fear.

‘Go on, eat it.'

The boy softened the bread in his warm milk just as he had seen the goatherd do. He found it hard to chew and swallow but, in the circumstances, hunger overcame pain, as it always would from then on. While he was wiping the bowl clean with his bread, he realised that this was the first time he'd eaten anything hot since leaving home two nights before, and that it was the second time in only a few hours that he had eaten in the company of a stranger. Still holding the bowl, he realised that he had failed to foresee such basic contingencies as a lack of food or just how he would survive alone on that arid plain. He had left no room in his calculations for perhaps having to ask for help, far less at such an early stage in his journey. The truth was, he hadn't really prepared for his departure at all. One day, he had simply reached a point of no return and, from that moment on, the idea of running away became a necessary illusion that helped him withstand the inferno of silence in which he was living. An idea that began to form in his mind as soon as his brain was ready for it and which then never left him. Apart from taking the knapsack with him and planning his escape on a moonless night, he had made no other real preparations or calculations. He had merely trusted in his knowledge and skills to help him on his way. After all, he was as much a child of that place as were the partridges or the olive trees. During the nights preceding his departure, while his brother slept by his side, he imagined himself laying traps for rabbits at the exits to their burrows or hunting quail with his catapult. He knew how to train ferrets; indeed, he had gone ferreting with his father ever since he was of an age to do so. They used to scout around for a bank or a sunken path full of burrows and cover each exit hole with a net held in place with wooden stakes. Then they would slip the ferret under one of the nets and wait. It took only a few seconds for the ferret to reach the spot where the rabbit was hiding, and one bite was enough to send the rabbit shooting out of one of the exits and straight into a net, which would close around it like a bag.

Then, sitting beneath the stars in the gentle night breeze, he would skewer his prey and roast it over a fire like the one the goatherd had lit. It hadn't occurred to him that he would need water or where he would find it. He hadn't planned out an itinerary. His mental map ended at the edge of the olive grove to the north of the village and beyond which he knew nothing. He had imagined that, behind the hills, he would find infinite olive groves and that it would simply be a matter of going from trunk to trunk, from shade to shade, until he found a better place to live. However, beyond the last olive tree lay the plain, in the midst of which he now found himself. He didn't know how far exactly he was from the village, and the only people who could tell him were either still pursuing him or, like the old man, barely spoke.

The goatherd rounded off his meal by gnawing on a wedge of hard cheese, then, when he'd finished, got up, walked over to the boy, cut another wedge of cheese and, without even looking at him, held it out. The boy took it and immediately started gnawing on it too. The old man turned then and, walking round the now extinguished fire, spread the blanket from the donkey on the ground. From the pannier, he took a couple of yellowing strips of dried cod. He scraped off as much salt as he could and placed the fish in a bowl, which he filled with water. Then, as if he were entirely alone in the world, he farted a couple of times and prepared for bed. The boy noticed that the goatherd had difficulty in bending down and in accommodating his bony body among the stones.

The boy remained sitting on the stone for a long time after he had finished his supper. It was as if he had once again entered a house full of rules and was waiting for someone to issue an order or give him permission before he could go to bed. On the other side of the fire, the old man's snores mingled with the whirring of the cicadas and the crickets. High up, the breeze set the fronds of the palm tree dancing, and the boy watched them swaying above the accumulation of dead foliage hanging from the trunk. He lifted one finger in search of a breeze he could not find. Up there, he thought, the air would be purer than the air near the ground and he thought, too, that the palm tree must have done something to deserve that balmy air. He touched the waxy mask on his face, and his skin felt warmer and softer. He must have done something to deserve his burns, his hunger and his family. ‘Something bad,' as his father never tired of telling him.

The dog woke him up at daybreak, prodding his neck with its moist nose. The poultice had come off during the night and now lay in a stinking heap next to his head. He touched his face and noticed a couple of blisters on his cheekbones. His skin felt less tight than it had the day before, but was still quite stiff. The goatherd was sitting in the same spot where he had eaten his supper, chewing now on a piece of dried cod, from which a whitish liquid dripped, and taking long draughts of wine from a wineskin. The boy sat up on the blanket and tried to catch the goatherd's eye, but the old man paid no attention. Beside him, the bowl he had emptied the night before was now full of fresh milk thickened with oats. He picked up the bowl and the wood felt warm in his hands. He again sought the goatherd's eyes, and although he knew his gaze would not be returned, he raised the bowl to him as a sign of gratitude.

During breakfast, he witnessed, for the first time, the harnessing of the donkey, a liturgy that he himself would go on to perform for the rest of his days and which, in time, would become part of a larger ritual, that of his profession and of a life spent constantly on the move.

The old man grabbed the donkey's halter and pulled the animal to its feet. Without unhobbling it, he placed on its back a large canvas saddle pad. On top of this, he added a worn hessian cloth and then a packsaddle stuffed with rye straw and a breeching strap that went around the haunches. Before loading the donkey, he redistributed the straw stuffing, which, during the previous day's journey, had migrated to the lower parts of the saddle, then he secured it all with a thick esparto-grass cinch strap that went under the donkey's belly. He spread a blanket over the packsaddle, an action that reminded the boy of the moment in mass when the priest turned back to the altar after celebrating communion and, with the help of the altar boy, placed on top of the chalice the corporal-cloth, the paten, the purifier and the key to the sacrarium.

Finally, on top of everything else, the old man placed four esparto panniers attached to a frame, with two panniers on either side. The donkey, which had been perfectly placid until then, made as if to set off. The old man soothed it by stroking its muzzle and running his fingers through the tuft of hair between the donkey's ears.

The goatherd then shared out the load among the four panniers, and when all his belongings were safely stowed away, reviewed the situation and gave a sigh. He re-positioned a few smaller objects, secured the trivet and the frying pan more firmly, and only then did he remove the rope hobble tethering the donkey's two front legs.

The dog was scampering about, herding the goats up so close to the donkey's hind legs that the donkey occasionally tried to kick them out of the way. The old man surveyed the campsite and counted the goats, pointing to each of them in turn. He then put on his hat and held out one hand to the boy.

‘The blanket.'

The boy sprang to his feet, picked up the blanket and gave it to him. The old man took it and used it to cover the contents of the panniers. He then whistled to the dog and, as on the first occasion they had met, the dog raced over to the stray goats and herded them together, barking and snapping. The boy wondered if his own day would also be a repetition of the previous one: an early breakfast followed by a long walk in the blazing sun. The old man grabbed the halter and tugged at it twice. The donkey set off after him, panniers swaying, and the rest of his retinue followed behind. The boy stayed where he was, watching the flock pass slowly by, with its usual cacophony of bleating and clanking of bells seemingly tuned to every possible register. The old man and the donkey were at the front, the dog chasing madly after them, and last of all came the goats, leaving behind a slipstream of dung like the tail of a comet. When they had gone about twenty yards, the old man stopped and turned round:

‘Come on, I can't wait for you all day.'

THEY WALKED FOR
a couple of hours over unploughed fields, with the boy keeping close to the donkey, as the old man had told him to. They paused in one field where there were still the remains of the last harvest. The goats immediately scattered and, heads down, began nibbling the stubble. The boy, who had covered his head with his shirt, observed the scene from the shade afforded him by the donkey. The old man remained standing, surveying the vast space surrounding them. Shading his eyes with his hand, he paused for a moment, gazing towards the south. Then he took his tobacco pouch out of his bag and rolled himself a cigarette. When he had finished, he gazed up at the clear sky and scanned it from side to side. He took off his hat to cool his head, whistled to the dog, and off they went.

They crossed the stony ground at such a slow pace that they didn't even kick up any dust. The landscape they passed through, full of abandoned arable fields and threshing floors, spoke to them of desolation. As did the flattened furrows covered in a crust of baked earth so hard that it only gave beneath the hooves of the heavily laden donkey. Fields as corrugated as washboards and sown with waxy, sharp-edged flints thrown up by the threshers. There came a point when the sun was so high that the donkey was no longer protecting the boy with its shade, and he kept trying to arrange his shirt so that it covered both head and shoulders. He occasionally glanced at the old man, trying to communicate his distress, but the old man, impervious to the heat, continued on in the same direction, as if they were strolling along the shore of a mountain lake. Once, the boy hung back to rearrange his turban. The dog stayed by him, wagging its tail and running around him as if his master's companion were a new toy. In order to adjust the shirt to his head, the boy flailed around with his arms, snorting angrily, as if this would somehow help to make the shirt bigger or oblige the old man to find a shady beech wood in the middle of nowhere. At best, all he managed was to get the goatherd to stop, not in order to wait for him, but to pretend to be pouring water out of an empty flask. Seeing the man ahead of him raising the mug to his lips, the boy stopped fiddling with his shirt-cum-turban and hurried on in order to reach the old man before all the water was gone. When he got there, with his shirt draped haphazardly over his head, the old man was already putting the cork back in the flask. He would then whistle to the dog and carry on walking.

Finally, when the sun's heat had become unbearable, they stopped. A few yards away from a reed bed, on the edge of what must once have been a pond, stood two exhausted alder trees, their leaves all shrivelled. Along one side, beyond the main clump of reeds, grew a thin line of pale, parched foliage, like a barb piercing the plain. On the other side, lines like isobars were etched on the dry, cracked bed of the pond, witnesses to its final death throes, grubby traces left by the water and which the process of evaporation had imprinted on the now dry mud. The hot midday breeze made the reeds rustle, filling the air with a sound like delicate wooden bells. Coarse heads of hair waving like Tibetan prayer flags, albeit unadorned by spirited horses, jewels or mantras. Cries addressed to the heavens which, instead of bestowing blessings, seemed to call upon the sun to bring down still more fire with the help of a piece of glass or a lightning bolt.

The goatherd led the donkey over to the alder trees and there began to unload it. The boy watched him absently, driven almost mad by thirst or perhaps by their sudden arrival at a resting-place he had lost all hope of finding. The pustules on his face had grown redder. The old man turned to him, his hands resting lightly on the donkey's rope bridle. The boy, covered in dust, stood there petrified.

‘Boy.'

The goatherd's voice dragged him back out of the abyss into which he had fallen and, almost without realising it, he turned towards that voice. The old man had stopped what he was doing and was, for the first time, looking him in the face. He was squinting in the bright light, his eyes shaded by the two bony arches protecting his milky corneas. The old man's penetrating gaze restored him to normality, like a surgeon setting a fracture with one precise, decisive movement.