Out in the Open (16 page)

Once out of the woods, the boy crawled the first few yards, his knapsack clasped to his side, until he had reached a point where he had a fairly clear view of the village. He stayed there for a while, watching for any signs of life. He would have preferred to spend more time scrutinising each of those houses in turn, but the memory of his last bout of sunstroke began to beat like a pulse on the back of his neck, and he decided to carry on. Head down, walking briskly, almost running, he got as far as the cemetery, but this time he didn't stop there. He continued running, not in a straight line, but in an arc so as to take early advantage of the church as a screen between him and the inn. During all that time, he kept his knapsack clutched to him and his eyes permanently trained on the village. When he reached the church, the muscles in his neck were stiff with tension and the base of his skull ached. He leaned his back against the wall and slid down it, causing bits of whitewash to flake off. A microscopic snowstorm in the desert. The sun was almost immediately overhead now and, for a moment, he was tempted to wait there until the sun had proceeded on its way and provided him with a little shade from the building. From where he was, he could see the grey, earthy colours of the oak trees and he thought of the old man leaning against the trunk where he had left him only shortly before. He recalled the goatherd opening his jacket to show him his bruised torso, the wounds in his sides and the suppurating scar between his ribs similar to the wound Christ must have had on the cross. He had a sudden vision of the old man, which emerged from some unknown place inside him and which, in the middle of that godforsaken wasteland, filled him with cold fear. The field he had just crossed was like the image of some deeply painful experience. For the first time since he had met the goatherd, he felt he was losing touch with the one solid piece of ground that had sustained him in the midst of that sea of shifting sand. He wanted to go back to the oak wood and even placed his hands on the ground and made as if to move away from the wall. Then he stopped, because there was more salvation in the cripple's cured meats than there was in his fear that he would never see the goatherd again.

Keeping close to the wall, he walked round the church and concerned himself solely with watching the far end of the village where the inn was located. He did not expect to see many signs of life from a man as badly disabled as the cripple. At most, an open shutter or a little smoke from the chimney. He felt a grumbling in his intestines, as if someone inside him were boiling a pot full of rubber bands. During the time he had been standing there, the shade from the acacia tree next to the porch had reached as far as a large clump of agaves at the entrance to the village. Hunched down and still without taking his eyes off the inn, he made his way over to that clump and again waited. This was the last bit of shelter before he would be forced out into the open. He once more weighed up his options and, although he had seen nothing to indicate that the cripple was in the village, the fear of another encounter with him nevertheless gnawed at him. Around him, the stems of the agave flowers stood like dead spears, their papery blooms like withered bouquets. He rubbed his face with his hands, grimacing and screwing up his eyes. His wounds had grown dry with salt and fear.

For a long time, he was gripped by doubts, in a state of the most terrible tension. Not even the sun beating down on his head could get him to move. Faced by the open space between him and the inn, he was somehow hoping that his legs would start walking of their own volition, but this didn't happen until the headache brought on by the sun grew unbearable. Then he crawled out from behind the agaves and very gradually straightened up and began to run unobserved towards the backs of the empty houses.

He reached the low wall of a corral and lay down, listening and watching for any sound or movement. He had completely blanked out the few moments he had remained in full view. His heart was pounding so hard that he could feel his pulse in his neck, his temples and his groin. His head was throbbing and, looking back at the church and beyond that, at the oak wood, he realised that what was holding him there was the fear of reaching a point of no return: the place where he was now, far from the shade of the oak trees, far from the many escape routes along the perimeter of the wood, far from the old man's poor bruised arms. Enemy territory with no soldiers visible, but full of shadows and dark corners.

He sat down by the wall and shook his head, trying to shake off his inertia. He tried taking some deep breaths, and his mind, as if by magic, emptied of all the things that had been paralysing it. He again felt that grumbling in his stomach, and the feeling of tightness and pressure in his brain eased. He turned round and peered over the corral wall, which was immediately adjacent to a house with its roof caved in. The bare bones of wicker chairs with no seats and no backs, contorted piles of chicken wire resembling souls in torment or skeletons made of smoke, piles of rubble consisting of roof tiles and the mud from the adobe washed out by the rain and deposited at the foot of the thick house walls. A breeze blew through the building, from the front to the courtyard at the back, setting the cobwebs trembling. He crouched down and, keeping close to the wall, he began heading north along the backs of the houses, slipping like a shadow in and out of each crumbling cavity, until he reached the last house before the inn. There he found a final refuge in the doorway, where he waited in silence, just in case he heard some sound from the cripple. He waited for as long as seemed prudent, until he felt sure that the man was not inside. Although maybe it was so quiet because the cripple was asleep either there or in the shade of the vine trellis covering the façade. Only the vague memory of those sausages and cured meats tempted him to throw caution to the wind and enter the house like a policeman or a thief, but this was a big risk to take with someone like the cripple. Not because of the cripple himself, but because of whoever had brought him back. Into the boy's head came that final image of the man lying in the road. The drool, the blood, the mud. He ran his hand over his own forehead, as if expecting to find there the wound the donkey had inflicted on the cripple when provoked by that stone. Then he looked around him and, abandoning the safety of the doorway, crept over to the back window of the inn. He was protected there by shutters identical to those at the front. Green metal shutters with a diamond pattern of perforations in the centre of each leaf. He pulled the shutters slightly open, then waited, his ear on a level with the window ledge. After a while, he stood up and peered in. He felt cool air coming from inside and allowed that air to lick the tight skin on his face. The air smelled of damp flax and stillness, of the crumbling whitewash and mud from the adobe that had accumulated around the skirting boards. He stayed in that position for a while, as if he had plunged his face into a clear cool stream. In other circumstances, that breeze would have ruffled his hair, but after so many days without washing, his hair was thick and matted. Behind the shutters were two metal-framed glass windows. The few unbroken panes of glass were covered in grime and dust. Through the gap in the shutters he could see into the dim interior of the room. The first thing he noticed were the pinpricks of light on the floor from the diamond-shaped pattern on the shutters. When his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, he could make out the table and the iron bar from which hung the various cured meats. His mouth filled with saliva and he felt a pain in his stomach as if someone were gripping his intestines with pincers, and then, as if both will and fear had been simultaneously vanquished, he opened the shutters fully and climbed up onto the window ledge. From there, he pushed open the windows, allowing new light into the room and, from that moment, he had eyes only for the sausages, their skins pearled with oil, and the sides of ham dripping grease like some kind of porcine still. He jumped down, and the tile he landed on wobbled beneath him. The floor tiles, he noticed, bore a faded geometric design. There was a strange tension in the air that he hadn't noticed before. He glanced rapidly around the room and, seeing no one, fixed his gaze on the meat.

In three strides he had reached the opposite wall, grabbed the nearest chorizo and held it in front of him in his two hands like someone about to coil up a rope. He stuffed the red meat into his mouth, undeterred by the spiciness or by the nervous state of his stomach. He simply surrendered to the savage instinct that says: eat first and worry about getting ill later. He devoured the entire sausage, swallowing bits of it almost whole, and when he'd finished, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, smearing it with grease and paprika.

While he was gulping down the last piece, he paused for a while, studying the metal bar, wanting something different to sink his teeth into. Standing on tiptoe, he sniffed the salami, but it smelled slightly off. He then sniffed a blood sausage and was seduced by its fragrance, almost imperceptible amongst all the other smells. He tugged at the string and bit into the sausage and, as he did so, he heard a noise which, at first, he interpreted as the sound of a tooth breaking. He touched his cheek, but, feeling no pain, he spun round, like someone suddenly aware of being watched. His eyes explored the most brightly lit areas first and then the darker ones, some of which were plunged in impenetrable gloom. He could see nothing. He carefully put the sausage down on the table and stood – legs apart, ready for action, ears cocked like a horse – in the middle of the rectangle of light flooding in through the window onto the tiled floor. He turned round very slowly and that was when he saw him.

He was lying inside the pantry located in one corner of the room, concealed behind a patterned curtain. The curtain did not quite reach the floor and underneath it he could see what appeared to be an elbow. He took shelter behind the table, waiting for something to happen. He kept his eyes fixed on that elbow, but saw not the slightest movement nor heard the slightest sound. At first, he thought the owner of the elbow, possibly the cripple, might be asleep, only to realise that no one in his right mind would choose to take a nap in such a place. Perhaps it was a drunk or someone, like him, who had come in search of those sausages or the wine in the earthenware pitcher. He looked around for something he could use to lift the curtain without having to get too close. He found a long pole with a kind of pincer at the end, like the one used by the shopkeeper in the village to reach the highest shelves. He picked it up and approached the pantry. When he was about six feet away, he reached out the pole and with the pincer end touched the curtain. However, he couldn't sustain the weight of the pole held at full length and one end dropped down, accidentally striking what must have been the head of the man behind the curtain. He again drew back and waited for some response, but nothing happened. The light coming in through the window by which he had entered seemed to lend volume to the air. Outside that block of light, in the spot where he could now see that elbow, and in all the other shadowy corners, unimaginable dangers lurked.

Trembling, he again reached out the pole to the curtain. This time he managed to pull it aside and immediately recognised the cripple's face. The wound was still there on the man's forehead, like a brand. In his efforts to reveal the whole body, he tugged so hard that the metal curtain rail came off at one end. Rail and curtain fell to the ground with a dull thud. The dust from floor and curtain flew up like pigeons startled by a passing horse, then dissolved into the darkness.

The cripple's naked body reminded him of a full wineskin, completely hairless and with scars like stitching on his rounded stumps. He went over to the body and with the tip of his boot touched the man's stomach, chest and shoulder, but there was no response. Bending down, he grabbed the man's chin and shook his head. He opened the man's eyelids and found only two blank spheres the colour of yellowing ivory. He walked backwards, his eyes still fixed on the man, until he collided with the wall, where he sat down.

He studied that formless body for a long time, wondering if he had been the one to kill him. After all, the last time he had seen him, that had been an option. True, he hadn't acted on that option and the cripple had only been unconscious, not dead, when he left him by the water tank. Given his physical limitations, however, and the inhospitable nature of the place, he could easily have died there. He stared hard at the man's chest to see if there was any sign of breathing, but there was nothing in him now that could fill his lungs. The boy struggled to understand what could have happened, but he only had room in his head for the idea of death. He had heard a lot about death, although usually only in the priest's sermons. The Egyptians dying in their thousands beneath the waters of the Red Sea, Herod massacring the innocents, or Jesus crucified on Golgotha. But this was quite different, and he didn't know what to do about it.

He spent a couple of hours contemplating the corpse, marvelling at its shapes and paralysed by the gravity of what he could see. During that time, the afternoon light softened and things in the room grew dimmer. And even though he had hardly slept the previous night, he did not succumb to sleep. While he was studying the cripple, he couldn't even thread two thoughts together, his mind entirely occupied with his contemplation of that strange sight. It would not have taken much for him to remember the hoofprints heading off in different directions from the water tank where he had left the cripple. And yet he didn't even notice the purple line around the cripple's neck, clearly left by a noose, nor did he ask himself why the body was naked. He didn't realise the danger he was in and remained in that stunned state until he heard something scratching at the door.

He leapt to his feet and stood with his back and the palms of his hands pressed against the wall. When he identified the noise as coming from an animal scratching at the wood, he relaxed. He went over to the door and opened it a crack. The goatherd's dog was gazing up at him, wagging its tail, its tongue lolling. He opened the door fully to welcome the dog, which jumped enthusiastically up at him. As he had done so often before, the boy bent down and scratched the dog under its chin. From that position, he could see the legs of a man sitting on the bench outside one of the windows and, realising who it was, he sprang back, intending to shut the door.