Out in the Open (7 page)

He remembered the fringe of olive trees that extended along the north side of the river bed. The very olive grove in which he had taken refuge. An ancient, woody army tingeing the landscape with leathery browns. Often, each tree was supported by two or three gnarled trunks that reached up out of the earth like an old man's arthritic fingers. It was rare to see an olive tree that really looked like a tree. Instead, there were endless knotty trunks full of deep cracks into which the rain had first penetrated, then frozen and split the wood open. A bunch of soldiers returned from the front. Wounded, but still marching. A march that had been going on for so long that no one could now testify as to their continued advance. They were not witnesses of the passage of time, but rather time owed its very nature to them.

He mentally travelled along the railway line that traversed the village from east to west, following the axis of the old valley. It arrived raised up on embankments and sleepers and disappeared into the distance as if scissored out of the landscape. On one side was the village proper, with the church, the town hall, the barracks and the palace. On the other, a group of low houses built around an abandoned vinegar factory. The vaulted roofs on some of the warehouses had caved in and a pestilential smell percolated out from a rusty tank, little by little, day by day, like an unending curse. The time spent in the bone pit seemed positively pleasant in comparison with the invisible atmosphere generated by that place. Next to the factory, the single railway track branched off into three. Beside it stood the station building with its cantilevered roof and broken windows. In the centre was a platform like a large island lit by half a dozen rather feeble gas lamps and, next to this, a brick-built cattle-loading yard and two sheds with doors barred shut. Beyond that, above the last set of tracks, rose a faded-yellow grain silo crowned by a red sign bearing the word ‘
ELECTRA
'. A vast, imposing edifice that dwarfed everything else, and from whose roof one could see the mountains to the north marking the end of the plateau. A great hulk casting a dark, oppressive shadow.

His family lived in one of the village's few stone houses. It had been built by the railway company at one end of the station, just where the line was crossed by the road leading towards the fields to the south. Everyone called it the pointsman's house. On summer evenings, the shadow cast by the silo completely covered the roof and part of the surrounding yard – an area of trampled earth that was home to a dozen or so hens and three piglets. Apart from the bailiff and the priest, no one else in the village kept animals.

Before the drought, his father had been in charge of the crossing-gate and had helped the stationmaster with the points. Four times a day he would work the mechanism that lowered the gate with one hand, while ringing a bell with the other. A few truck drivers would turn off their engines, get out and roll themselves a cigarette while they watched the slow convoys heading off in the direction of the sea. Those were the days when the trucks would arrive empty and leave laden with oats, wheat and barley from the silo. Then the drought came, and the fields gradually languished, then died. The grain stopped growing, and the railway company either scrapped the wagons or simply abandoned them. They closed down the station and despatched the stationmaster somewhere further east. In one year, more than half the families in the village left. Those who survived were the few who had deep wells or had made money out of the cereal crops and others who had neither well nor money, but submitted themselves to the new rules imposed by that drought-stricken land. His family belonged to the latter category and stayed on.

They stopped to rest near some old almond trees. It was a warm night, and they drank nearly all of the little water they had left. It seemed to the boy that, this time, the goatherd knew where they were going. At one point, they reached a wire fence and followed it until they came to an opening through which they passed over to the other side. They crossed a barren field that emerged onto a new path heading west. This sudden change of direction away from the north made the boy think that perhaps the goatherd still had no fixed destination and was merely wandering aimlessly. As long as they kept moving away from the village, that was all the boy cared about.

At first light, they spotted the remains of a large building on the horizon. The undulating ground meant that, as they advanced, the ruin appeared and disappeared behind the withered crops. As they climbed the last steep slope, the details of this elusive edifice were gradually revealed: a high stone-and-mortar wall topped by crenellated battlements and separated from the path by stony ground. This solitary wall, marked by several putlock holes, survived only thanks to the round tower to which it was attached. On top of the tower someone had placed a figure of Jesus holding up his hand to bless the plain. From behind his head emerged three bronze rays of lights. The boy recognised the image and immediately recalled the legend that all the children in the village would have heard at one time or another. According to the most common version, a castle had been built to the north or north-east of the village. It was inhabited by a man who, apart from his fearsome guards, lived entirely alone. This man spent his days and nights standing on the wall with one hand raised, warning travellers not to approach. Others said that he wasn't raising his hand, but wielding a weapon, while still others said that from his head emanated rays of light that swept the plain in all directions. There was also talk of wild dogs and of how the guards would capture children and take them to the man so that he could inflict the most savage tortures on them.

They descended via a gentle slope leading down to the castle and stopped midway to take a closer look. The path continued on a little to join a towpath that ran parallel to an old aqueduct, whose broken pillars shimmered in the hot air rising up from the earth. They could still see the vast ravine along which barges had once travelled, laden with timber and sacks of wheat. They left the path and crossed the area of stony ground, stopping, either out of caution or unconscious fear, at a point where they would not be crushed were the wall to collapse. For a long time, they stood contemplating the ruins, as if they were some rare marvel: the wall, the round tower to the left and, beyond that, the horizon from which they had come. To one side of the tower was a rounded arch containing a bricked-up door. On the highest part of the wall, above the keystone of the arch, was a machicolation supported by three corbels. For their part, the goats happily dispersed, guided only by their need for food in the form of dry tufts of grass. If the wall did collapse, it would kill almost all of them. The boy paused to examine the sculpture, which reminded him of the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the village church. Just for a moment, he felt a desire to go back and rejoin the other children in the school playground and tell them about his discovery and tell them, above all, that there was no need to visit a castle in order to be terrified, that terror rode the streets of the village in the form of a backfiring motorbike and clouds of toxic smoke.

After a while, the boy turned to the old man, expecting him to abandon his contemplation in order to unload the donkey and to rest. However, the old man continued to stand there, staring blankly at the wall. The boy thought he must have gone to sleep. From his lesser height, he could see the old man's wide nostrils and the long white hairs sprouting from the darkness within; his grizzled four days' growth of beard; and his jaw from which hung the slack skin of his blank face. The boy felt like tugging at his sleeve and dragging him away, but could not allow himself such familiarity. He cleared his throat, scratched the back of his neck and shifted from foot to foot like someone desperate for a pee, but still he couldn't get the old man's attention.

‘Sir.'

The goatherd spun round as if he'd been insulted, and only then did they start to walk towards the wall. When they reached it, the old man almost collapsed against it, and it was the boy who took charge of unloading the donkey. He removed the various bits and pieces from the panniers on the pack frame and placed them next to the old man. When he'd finished doing this, he detached the panniers themselves and put the goatherd's belongings back inside them. The old man asked him to bring him the packsaddle to use as a pillow. The boy tried to get it off the donkey by lifting it from the side, but it was too well embedded on the animal's back and, however hard he tried, he couldn't shift it. He searched the panniers for a length of rope left over from the netting and tied it to the donkey's cinch strap. Then he attached the other end to a large piece of stone fallen from the castle wall and gave a tug on the halter. The donkey immediately started forward, and the saddle slipped backwards over its rump onto the ground.

He carried the packsaddle over to the goatherd and, seeing him from close to, the boy thought that not only did he look much tireder than on previous days, he looked quite ill. The old man said that they would stay there for a couple of days because there was a well nearby, plus it was the only shade they would find for many miles and there was food for the goats. The boy glanced around him and, for as far as he could see, there was nothing but stones and baked earth. The only food available for the goats was a few withered clumps of astragalus and some scattered stubble left from the last harvest. Up until then, they had always managed to find shade and, as regards food for the goats, this was one of the poorest places they had camped. He turned to the old man and found him lying down on the stones, his head resting on the packsaddle and his hat covering his face. The boy assumed that he must be exhausted after so much walking and that they had stopped there because the man could go no further. He bent down and, picking up the flasks, shook them to see how much water they had left.

At midday, the boy managed to load the panniers onto the donkey's back and in them placed the flasks and the milking pail. From where he lay, the goatherd described exactly what he would find, pointed him in the direction he should take and, before he left, lent him his straw hat.

Although the water tank was right next to the well and was clearly visible from the castle, by the time the boy reached it, sweat was pouring down his face. There was the water tank, just as the old man had said and, a few yards away, the well itself with a brick arch from which hung a four-pointed hook. Someone had thrown sticks down the shaft, making it impossible to lower the bucket into the water. With the help of the hook, however, he managed to remove some of the sticks and make a gap large enough for the bucket to pass through.

It took him a couple of hours to fill the two flasks. He put in the corks, but when he tried to pick up the first one to carry it over to the donkey, it was far too heavy. He had to empty out half the water from each flask, and even then it was a titanic struggle to lift them into the panniers.

He returned to the castle in the late afternoon, exhausted by his efforts. The old man was lying where he had left him hours before. The boy unloaded the water, removed the panniers and hobbled the donkey. Then, when he'd finished giving water to the goats, he sat down next to the old man and stayed there, watching the light change in texture as the sun set behind the wall. He heard pigeons cooing as they returned to the tower to roost.

By the light of the half-moon they dined on rancid almonds and raisins and when they had finished, the boy tidied up, then cleared the stones away from a spot a couple of yards from where the old man was lying. In doing so, he discovered the delicate, smiling skull of a hare. He held it in his hands and ran his fingertips over its complex contours. He imagined its head fixed on a small oval of dark wood, as if it were a miniature hunting trophy. The brass plaque underneath would bear the name of the hunter and the date on which he had felled the beast. He put the skull to one side, rolled up the saddlecloth and placed it under his head. He was so tired that even the smell of donkey exuded by this makeshift pillow seemed almost pleasant. He said goodnight to the old man and, as usual, received no reply. Lying down, he scanned the heavens in search of the constellations he knew, then turned his attention to the moon. Its milky glow hurt his retinas. He closed his eyes and, from behind his lids, he could still see that arc of dazzling light. He remembered the skull he had found while he was preparing his bed. Memories of the bailiff's gallery of hunting trophies paraded past beneath his moist eyelids. He recalled the first time he'd entered that place. His father had gone with him. The acrid smell of wood and the creaking floorboards, the like of which he had never seen before. The two of them waiting in the gloomy reception room, with his father clutching his hat to his chest, obsessively turning it round and round. The dark coffered ceiling and the vast room adorned with the heads of mouflon, deer and bulls.

‘Is this your boy?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘What a lovely child.'

The memory of the bailiff's voice pierced his eyes, and it was as if blood were springing up from beneath his swollen eyelids. Staring skywards, he bit his lips and felt a kind of oily liquid filling his tear ducts and blocking his nose. He sniffed hard, trying to clear his airways, and the noise he made alarmed him because he was afraid the goatherd might hear.

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

The old man's voice seemed to emerge from the earth itself, cutting a path through the rocky strata in order to destroy the toxic cloud threatening to engulf him. The boy was struck dumb, his neck stiffened. Then, from somewhere, he heard the whirr of cicadas and began to swallow down his tears, until he felt pure air once more penetrating his nostrils. He dried his eyes, placed his two hands together beneath one cheek and, shortly afterwards, fell asleep.

Despite having lain down to sleep a couple of yards away from the goatherd, he woke the following morning to find himself lying pressed up against the old man's motionless body. The harsh glare from the plain forced open his eyes, and the first thing he noticed was the putrid smell emanating from the old man, as potent as the smell he himself gave off, only less familiar. He blinked in an attempt to wake himself up and crept back to the spot where he had originally lain down, hoping that the goatherd was still asleep. The old man, who had been lying in exactly the same position all night, turned his head and asked the boy to bring him a goat. The boy felt ashamed when he realised that the old man had woken before him and he was at a loss as to how he could interpret the fact that their two bodies had remained so close, and that the goatherd hadn't moved away. He stood up and brushed the dust off his clothes. His shirt was covered in large grease stains and the bottoms of his trousers hung in tatters.