Out in the Open (17 page)

He had nearly succeeded when the boot of another man thrust itself in between door and door frame. The boy kept trying to push the door shut, but the boot stopped him. When he realised that he couldn't close the door, he ran towards the back of the house to make his escape through the window he had entered by. He saw the rectangle of light, the fading afternoon sun outside and, in the distance, the church. He tried to jump from the window and would have made it if the bailiff's man had not been waiting for him, having run round the house from the front. He was holding a double-barrelled Beretta shotgun with ivory inlay. The boy managed to draw back in time, only narrowly avoiding falling into the man's arms, but coming close enough to penetrate the alcoholic aura surrounding him. The same sickly smell he had so often smelled on his father when he came back from the bar at night. He barely had time to look at the man's face, and yet his image remained engraved on his memory: the gingerish hair, the sweaty, greying beard, the empty blue eyes and, above all, the tip of his greasy nose covered in a network of bulging blue veins.

He turned round, because although he had exhausted all escape routes, something inside him was nonetheless hoping that the ground would open up beneath him or that the walls might suddenly sprout new doors. Instead, what he found under the inn's fragile roof was the dapper, feline figure of the bailiff. The sight shook him to the marrow.

‘Well, look who's here.'

The bailiff took off his hat and smoothed his hair.

‘Have you seen this, Colorao?'

His deputy nodded, leaning his elbows on the window ledge, and he continued nodding as he examined the room. He gave the same degree of attention to the roof beams as to the cripple's naked body and, when he had inspected every corner of the room, he gestured to the bailiff, indicating the sausages hanging from the bar. Still without taking his eyes off the boy, the bailiff grabbed a sausage and threw it to his colleague. The man missed, and the sausage struck one of the panes of glass and fell to the floor. Resting his belly on the window ledge, the man stretched down to reach the sausage. He picked it up, wiped off any bits of glass with his sleeve, then walked away, chewing on the tough meat.

The bailiff also scanned the room as if it were a place full of memories for him, then went to the back window. Stepping over the broken glass on the floor, he gazed out at the plain. Then, as if a storm were approaching, he reached for the shutters, pulled them to and put the catch on. The dog had come into the house and was lying at the boy's feet, sniffing at the puddle that had formed there.

Someone tapped on the shutters and the bailiff opened them again.

‘Any chance there might be something in there to drink, boss?'

The bailiff's deputy again leaned on the ledge while the bailiff searched the room. The deputy looked the boy up and down, as if imagining what was about to happen to him. The bailiff returned and handed him a half-gallon flask of wine.

‘Now go away and don't bother me again.'

The deputy uncorked the flask and tossed the cork into the room. Hooking two fingers round the wicker handle, he rested the flask on his forearm, which he then lifted to his lips before taking a long, long drink. The bailiff said tetchily:

‘Don't overdo the wine, all right? You'll have work to do in the morning.'

The deputy lowered the flask and gave the bailiff a leering grin, his eyes bleary and heavy-lidded. Staring at some vague point in the room, he belched loudly, then turned and left.

‘Useless bloody drunk,' muttered the bailiff, leaning out over the ledge to close the shutters again. When he had drawn the bolt, he pushed at the shutters just to make sure they were securely closed. He looked through the slats of one of them, then turned round, the broken glass again crunching beneath his boots. From there, he studied the boy from head to toe, as if regarding some tasty morsel.

‘Don't be afraid, boy. Nothing's going to happen to you.'

The bailiff smiled and added: ‘Nothing new anyway.'

Very slowly, he crossed the room and when he reached the boy's side, he bent down, picked up the dog's lead, led the dog over to the door and shut him outside. Before closing the door again, he saw his deputy meandering down the street towards the entrance to the village. In one hand, he was holding his shotgun and, in the other, the flask from which he took long, regular draughts. The bailiff closed the shutters on the front of the house too, and the room was left in darkness. A few grim seconds passed during which all the boy could hear was the man moving about somewhere in the room. Then the bailiff flicked on his lighter and, with it, lit a large tallow candle that the boy hadn't noticed before. Then he walked around the room, picking up whatever bits of food he fancied – smoked pork, chorizo and ham as well as the bottle of olive oil. He poured some wine from the large pitcher into a smaller earthenware jug and placed it on the table. When he went over to the pantry, he had to kick one of the cripple's arms out of the way in order to get a tin plate and a glass from a shelf. He also helped himself to a handful of breadsticks from a jar. When he had everything he needed, he sat down and started to eat as if he were entirely alone. He cut slices of sausage to eat along with the breadsticks, occasionally adding a drizzle of olive oil.

While the man was eating, the boy remained standing, head bowed. His wet boots, his grimy skin, the smell of the food, an end to his bold adventure. He took for granted the coming nightmare and didn't cry, because he had been here dozens of times before. It was a matter of indifference to him now whether the bailiff killed him or took him back to the village. His fate was decided, as was that of the goatherd.

By the time the man had finished eating, the pinprick pattern of light from the shutters had faded completely. He pushed away what remained of his food with one arm, then got up. He grabbed a handful of walnuts from a sack leaning against one of the walls and deposited them on the part of the table he had just cleared. He sat down again and cracked them open, sticking the point of his knife into the base of each nut and turning it until the shell split in two. Then, despite his large fingers, he managed to scoop the kernels out almost whole and put them in a bowl. All this time, the boy stood motionless. The puddle at his feet had seeped into the grouting around the tiles, but his trouser legs were still wet and he could feel a slight numbness in his calf muscles.

‘It's important to do things properly.'

The bailiff made this remark while holding one half of a nutshell in each hand. Then holding each half between two fingers, he put them together so that they fitted perfectly like a brain with four hemispheres.

‘And you haven't.'

The boy continued staring at the wall, transfixed by the magnetic presence of the bailiff and by his memories of him. Those memories swam around like catfish at the bottom of a well of black water.

‘How often have I told you not to tell anyone else about us?'

‘I haven't said anything to anyone.'

The boy lifted his head slightly, and there was a note of almost childish complaint in his voice.

‘What about the goatherd?'

The bailiff took a bite out of a walnut, then returned it to the bowl. The boy said nothing, trying as best he could to play a role that was no longer his.

‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘I mean the old man you've been travelling with these last few days. Or do you expect me to believe that you got here all on your own?'

Then the boy's legs gave way beneath him and he sank to the floor, feeling utterly helpless, even more helpless than when his father had taken him to that man's house for the first time and left him there, at the mercy of his desires. He shrank in on himself, as if trying to unite two wetnesses, the damp floor and his own moist eyes. The liturgy, so often repeated, was starting all over again: the bailiff sitting down, placing one foot on his knee in order to untie the laces on his boots, which he then picked up by the heels and placed neatly on the floor. Pushing the chair to one side and getting to his feet in order to unbutton his shirt. Walking over to him, bare-chested.

‘Stand up.'

The boy obeyed and stood before him, head still bowed.

‘Raise your head.'

The boy did not move, head down, fists and toes clenched.

‘I'm ordering you to look at me.'

Up until then, the boy had managed not to cry, but now he suddenly let out a sob.

With one hand, the bailiff smoothed the boy's matted hair. He stroked his neck and ran the back of his fingers gently over the boy's wet cheeks. The man then raised his fingers to his lips and tasted the mixture of salt and soot and tears.

‘Look at me.'

The bailiff tried to force the boy to lift his head, but again, the boy resisted.

‘Okay, if that's how you want it.'

He then propelled him towards the table and ordered him to place his hands wide apart on the wooden tabletop. Tears spilled forth from the boy's swollen eyes and rolled grimily down his cheeks into the bowl of walnuts.

The candle, which, by now, had almost burned down to nothing, cast harsh shadows of their bodies onto walls and ceiling. Behind him, the boy heard rhythmic movements and the bailiff's heavy breathing.

Suddenly, the candle went out, and the man gave a snort of annoyance. In the dark, he fumbled around in the corner where he had found the candle, but, failing to find what he wanted, he went over to the pantry. He stepped over the cripple's dead body and picked up the fallen curtain. He tore a couple of strips from it and went back to the table, twisting them in his fingers. He poured some olive oil onto his plate and arranged the two strips of cloth to form a cross, making sure these were thoroughly soaked in oil. Then, like someone twirling a moustache, he twisted the ends so that they stood upright to form four points. He felt for his lighter in his jacket pocket, flicked it on and held the flame to the bits of cloth until four small crackling flames appeared. The new light lit up the room, and the boy could see the bailiff's boots next to his chair, his shirt draped over the back. The man again positioned himself behind the boy and was just about to start again, when someone knocked at the door.

‘Bloody hell, Colorao! Didn't I tell you to leave me in peace? What the fuck do you want now?'

The bailiff's voice echoed around the room as he turned his head towards the door. The door creaked very slowly open and the breeze from the street made the flames flicker. Standing on the threshold, holding the deputy's shotgun, the goatherd cut a faintly ridiculous figure: his bent back, his baggy trousers and his face gaunt from exhaustion and years of hardship. He was so weak he could hardly stand and had to lean against the door frame so as not to fall over. He was breathing hard.

‘Go away, old man.'

The goatherd did not move, the eyes of the double-barrelled shotgun fixed on the bailiff's head. He tried to say something, but choked and coughed. Without lowering the shotgun, he spat out a bloody gob of spit, then said:

‘Come here, boy.'

With the bailiff's hand still grasping his shoulder, the boy did not move.

‘You'd better drop the shotgun, old man, or you're going to regret it for what little remains of your life.'

‘Lie down on the ground, boy, and cover your ears.'

The goatherd's voice sounded as firm as the handshake of a strong young man. It had a stone-hard quality that came from some hitherto unknown place inside the old man, a voice completely out of keeping with the spectral figure saying the words. An Angel of Fire come to break down walls. The boy obeyed that second order and very slowly shrank back, leaving the bailiff standing, his hand poised like a pincer where the boy's shoulder had been. The bailiff was paralysed not by fear, but by astonishment.

‘You haven't got the balls, goatherd.'

‘Don't look, boy.'

A noise, cavernous and absolute, as if emerging from the end of a long tube. A buzzing in his skull and a deafness that would take days to disappear entirely. Many of the pigeons who soiled the filthy houses with their excrement escaped through the sunken roofs and flew off wildly in all directions. The boy felt the body fall at his side as the displaced air pressed up against him. The tiled floor received the man's body and the boy felt the vibration. In his bewilderment, he heard the last sound the bailiff made, that of his skull hitting the ground. Like a very ripe pumpkin. The thick skin that yields only to the machete or the bullet, its filling of dense, tightly packed, floury pulp spilling out. A single blow and it was all over.

When the boy finally opened his eyes, the goatherd had come into the room and was leaning against the table. The boy didn't know how long he had kept his eyes closed. He could feel liquid coming out of his ears. A small plume of smoke was still issuing forth from the barrel of the shotgun and a sulphurous cloud was rising up into the gaps between the roof beams. Next to him lay an incoherent, lifeless heap of bones and muscles. The warmth of that body close to his. The goatherd's voice reaching him as if in a paraffin-drenched dream. A scream opening its way through the inflamed ducts of his ears. Growing in volume. Then just a few seconds later, the voice of the old man shouting:

‘Look at me, boy! Look at me!'

The boy directed his gaze at the place where the old man's voice was coming from and there met his grave eyes, trying desperately to distract him from the sight of the bailiff's shattered head. The goatherd held out his forefinger and pointed at his own eyes. ‘
Look – at – me
,' he said with exaggerated gestures. ‘
Look – at – me
,' he repeated, meanwhile beckoning to him.

The boy crawled over to the goatherd and there, grasping the edge of the table, he managed to stand up with his back to the bailiff. The old man put his hands to the boy's face and the blood from the boy's ears stained his palms. He made the boy turn his head and pressed it against his own broken body. The boy's jaw dropped and trembled as if he were shivering. His eyes empty. The dog poked its nose round the door, but did not come in.