Obabakoak (13 page)

I soon came to realize that the peculiarity of its occupants was not restricted to their love of music or to the low esteem in which they held schooling. What was also noticeable—in a half-deserted village like Villamediana, how could you not notice?—was their sheer abundance, their quantity, and the fact that their house was always crammed with people, not empty or half-empty like the majority of the houses in the village. Every time I passed the front door, I’d see five or six children playing there and there’d always be one I hadn’t spotted before. Some were fair, some dark, and there was even the occasional redhead, and they were always well turned out. And it was rather the same with the adults, with them too it was difficult to keep track. One day I’d look up at the balcony and see two young women, the next day a third woman with an older man, rather short in stature, the day after that a dark, well-built man leaning on the balustrade smoking.

One evening, when I was with my neighbor, Onofre, I saw a white-haired old man going into the house.

“Does he live there too?” I asked, feigning amazement. The fact was the house seemed to be of limitless capacity.

“It’s one of the shepherdess’s husbands,” Onofre said. There was a malicious undertone to his words.

“One of her husbands? How many has she got?” This time my amazement was genuine.

“She’s got two. The man we saw just now and another shorter man. But the short one’s the boss; in fact, he’s master of the whole house.”

I knew who he meant when he spoke of the master of the house, not only because I’d seen him standing on the balcony but also because I recognized him from the bar. He was always trying to get me to make up a pair for cards. And suddenly it struck me as odd that the shepherd should lack a partner to play cards with, especially in Villamediana, a village where there was no other entertainment. The word
exclusion
floated into my mind.

My neighbor was smiling ever more maliciously.

“As I say, he’s the boss. Everyone obeys him.”

“And how many people live in the house all together?” I asked.

“There’s no way of knowing. It depends.”

“What do you mean, it depends?”

“I mean it depends how many are passing through.” Onofre was laughing quite openly now. Fancy a man like myself being unable to solve the enigma he set before me.

But it was not in the least difficult to understand what he was trying to tell me. Partly because his jokes tended to be full of sexual innuendo anyway, but also because of something he’d said earlier, which I remembered very clearly, something about the women of easy virtue who lived in Villamediana.

According to his fellow villagers, my neighbor was a “stirrer,” a “mischief-maker,” and a “tattletale,” and nothing he said was to be taken seriously. However, as I subsequently found out, almost everyone in the village was in agreement with him as far as the family of shepherds was concerned. The mere mention of them provoked gales of laughter.

On the one hand, what they suggested to me fitted well with what I myself had observed. The music and the lights always lit, for example, or the studiedly “petite cocotte” look adopted by the adolescent girls of the house, as well as the elusive behavior of the women I’d seen on the balcony who—when it came to walking down to the bus stop on the main road—chose to take a long detour rather than go through the center of the village. But, on the other hand, when I looked in at their front door, it was always the same people I saw. There were a lot of people, it was true, but they were always the same ones. There was certainly not the coming and going of men one might expect in a brothel. It was clear that this was a very special family. What was less clear was whether their specialness was of the kind so firmly endorsed by my neighbor and by others like him.

I asked Daniel, the village gamekeeper, about it. He was a serious man and not in the least narrow-minded. Live and let live was his motto. I trusted his judgment and always accepted his invitations to join him for walks in the forest.

“Well, that’s certainly the reputation they’ve been given and they’re stuck with it. But this village is like that, always gossiping. If you listen carefully you can hear the constant buzz of people talking, usually talking ill of others. We’re very backward here. It’s not like in the city. In the city those girls would be no different from a lot of others. The fact that one got married when she was already pregnant and another after she’d had a baby, that’s all it amounts to, nothing more. But, of course, because they’re shepherds…”

That was the central issue, the fact that they were shepherds, and, as I was soon to realize, in that fact lay the origin of the calumny. Not in their behavior or their character, but in their condition as shepherds. What was said about them in Villamediana, was said about others in the region as a whole.

The clerk at the agency I rented the house from said to me once: “Well, I must say I think you’re wrong. You can’t go leaving your front door open in this day and age, especially when there are shepherds about.” I’d happened to mention that I tended not to lock my door. “They wait until there are gypsies around before they do any stealing. That’s why gypsies have got such a bad name. Because they get blamed for all the burglaries the shepherds commit.” Then, to moderate what he’d said, he added that he was, of course, speaking in general terms, they weren’t all thieves, it took all sorts, after all.

It certainly did, but—if one were to believe him or many of the others—the majority did have those bad tendencies, especially the ones who didn’t own the sheep they tended and worked as hired hands. They were the unsociable ones who would have their knives out at the least provocation. Well, what could you expect when dealing, as one was, with alcoholics.

In the end I came to understand the role the inhabitants of the happy house played in Villamediana. They’d become marginalized, their role was that played in other parts of the world by the sick, by blacks, or by people of a different sexual orientation. The fact is that every society, however small, always surrounds itself with a wall, an invisible one, but no less real for that and then tosses anything negative and foul-smelling into the area outside, like that wicked market gardener in the story who, when it came to getting rid of his weeds, always waited for cover of night and then made straight for his brother’s farm.

The shepherds were beyond the pale, on the other side of the wall, in the circle of the guilty. And, it should be said, they’ve probably always been there, in all times and in all places. When Calliope and her sisters spoke to Hesiod, they dismissed him with the words: “You rustic shepherd, shame on you.” And when Christianity, which began as the religion of a humble and marginalized people, described the birth of the baby Jesus, it placed at his side the shepherds from Bethlehem for exactly the same reasons it later placed Mary Magdalene at the foot of the cross.

I shared my thoughts with Daniel and took advantage of one of our walks through the forest to ask him how the shepherds felt about their position; if it was true, as people said, that the majority were ashamed of their profession.

“The blacks aren’t. The blacks tend to be very proud and if they can blacken their own name still further, they will,” he replied.

“Who are the blacks?” I asked, thinking perhaps it was the nickname given to one particular family.

“You mean you haven’t noticed there are white shepherds and black shepherds?” And he began listing all the shepherds I knew in the village, explaining which belonged to which category.

“Why, you’re right!” His classification seemed to me absolutely accurate.

Not content with simply listing the two groups, Daniel wanted to describe them too. He explained how the hair of some of the shepherds, usually the blue-eyed ones, would gradually become whiter and whiter and how their whole behavior would undergo a similar transformation: They would become prudent, considerate, as gentle as their looks. Others, though, became black as coal and could often be seen in the bar, drinking, carousing, ready to gamble away their money with anyone. In conclusion he said: “In fact we’re on our way to see two shepherds right now, one of whom, as you’ll see for yourself, is black and the other white.” And leaving the village behind us, we set off in the direction of one of the plateaus.

The two shepherds hadn’t been down to any village for a month. The black shepherd shouted a greeting to us when we were still some way off from the sheep pen and when we reached his side, he was there ready with a bottle of wine in his hand. He spoke in a sing-song voice and immediately started in on the tangled tale of some affair he’d had with a married woman, pausing only to let fly a curse or to throw a stone at the dog.

The white shepherd didn’t even come over to us. Seated on a stone wall, he was busy cleaning a sheepskin. When I went over to offer him some of his companion’s wine, he shook his head.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“From around Segovia,” he replied in a very quiet voice. His eyes were pale blue, his eyebrows white as cotton wool.

“And what’s your name?” I asked, in the same friendly fashion, having told him mine.

“Gabriel,” he whispered. Then, with only a muttered good-bye, he got down from the wall and walked away.

A little later I noticed that wings—white wings—had sprouted from his back and that, borne up on them, he’d taken flight and lifted off into the air. But that may just have been an illusion brought on by the wine given me by his companion, the black shepherd.

3. To a village full of old people and with barely two hundred inhabitants, a stranger coming to stay is an instant novelty. They’re not accustomed to receiving people; on the contrary, the scene they’re most familiar with, the scene repeated year in, year out, is that of departure. Whole families have abandoned the village declaring that “it’s impossible to live in Villamediana.” And of course those who remain agree. They’ve stayed not because they wanted to, not because they value what they have, but because they’ve no other option. But then the normal course of events is reversed and a stranger, someone who obviously feels otherwise, arrives in their midst. He doesn’t appear to be ill or to have come there in search of a dryer climate. Neither does he seem to be from some museum in Madrid as happens now and again when people are sent to restore the statues in the church. No, this stranger has chosen the place because he likes it.

Such a conclusion is not only surprising, it’s also flattering to those still living in the village. Everyone cheers up, they all want to talk about it. When they’d least expected it, life has given them a pleasant surprise and in bar and shop conversations are no longer limited to the usual subjects, to the family, to hunting, and to work. Just by his presence, the stranger gives rise to the most diverse conjectures and suppositions. And later, whenever the opportunity arises, everyone will attempt to get into conversation with him, eager to find out just how much truth there is in their imaginings. Is it true that he likes Villamediana? Why? Because of the landscape? He wouldn’t by any chance be trying to forget some unhappy love affair, would he?

Given this situation, the stranger has no option but to spread himself around. He’ll be obliged to talk to everyone and to accept every invitation to go down to the bar for a glass of wine. And though spending all day walking from one part of the village to another will wear him out, he’ll willingly carry out the task he’s been set, because he too is astonished by the warmth of their reception, because he too is curious to find out what they are like, these country folk and shepherds who suddenly, from one day to the next, have become part of his life. He also knows that the situation will change after the first few days, and that, once he ceases to be a novelty, he’ll soon come to be seen as just another village resident. And the prospect of a life without complications cheers him: just two or three friends, the odd meal out, long walks, and lots of reading, that’s all he needs in order to live well.

However, starting up new relationships nearly always gives rise to some misunderstanding. You start chatting to someone with no other intention than that of passing the time pleasantly and exchanging a few anecdotes. But what if that person wants something more and tries to obtain or even demand that something more? Given that the newcomer speaks to everyone and opens the door of his house to all and sundry, extricating himself from this predicament may prove difficult.

The stranger soon comes to regret the attitude he adopted when he first arrived, because he genuinely dislikes the one person to interpret his behavior as a sure sign of real friendship. A week goes by and he can find no way back; he doesn’t know how to close the door he opened. And it seems to him he’s made the same mistake he always makes, it seems that if the fault is in oneself, a change of address can resolve nothing; he fears that perhaps he’s ruined the peace he’d hoped to find in Villamediana.

One person in the village did misinterpret my kindness: my neighbor, Onofre. When I arrived there he was getting on for sixty, and, having been widowed very early on, he lived alone with his youngest son, a surly, grim-faced youth with an evil reputation among the other village youngsters. Since we lived right opposite each other and given the climate of affection that reigned at the beginning of my stay there, it was inevitable that I would have more to do with him than with anyone else. For example, it was from him that I gleaned my first facts about the village, concrete facts as well as tattletales: how many acres the forest bordering the plateau covered; when the feast day of the place known as Valdesalce was held; how many soldiers there were in the signals barracks perched on the hill you could see from the main road.

Onofre was not the kind of man who, on becoming a widower, undergoes a radical change in ideas and adapts to doing all the housework for himself. He still considered preparing meals or sweeping the rooms to be tasks unworthy of a man, a view, it should be said, that was fairly widespread in Villamediana society. I can still see the look of astonishment on the face of one little boy of five or six when he saw me bustling about in the kitchen surrounded by cooking pots: “That’s girl’s work you’re doing!” he said quite spontaneously, a comment that made me laugh but at the same time somewhat unnerved me. I immediately imagined myself being pursued around the village by children, amid accusing cries of: Sissy! Sissy!