Out in the Open (2 page)

The light coming in through the roof had faded almost to nothing when he was woken by the sound of rustling leaves. Some small rodent, he thought. He desperately needed to uncurl, to breathe freely, to shake off the mud covering skin and clothes, to dry his trousers, to get out of there. He must first make sure, though, that the noise that had woken him was not some kind of threat. He sat up and, very carefully, with the top of his head, lifted the roof of branches just enough to create a gap through which he could see. Only a few inches from where he was hiding, a field mouse was snuffling around in the curled leaves fallen from the olive trees. Then he painstakingly dismantled his roof branch by branch, twig by twig, like nest-building in reverse. He peeped out, turning his head this way and that like a periscope until he had scanned the whole of the olive grove and found no signs of life apart from that field mouse, now scampering away past the piles of prunings. By the time he emerged from the hole, the light had taken on a dusty, reddish quality. There was no sun on the horizon, but a yellowish glow lit the plain from the west, casting long shadows over the fallow fields. He stretched his body in every possible direction: squatting down, standing up, stamping his feet, and, for a moment, he completely forgot he was on the run and didn't even notice the geometric fragments of mud that detached themselves from the soles of his shoes. His trousers were still wet. He stood with legs apart and unstuck the fabric from his skin. If he had run away in winter, he thought, it would have frozen to him.

He had chosen that place months before because it was the wooded area nearest to the village. At the time, he didn't know at what hour of the night he would be able to leave his house, nor how much time he would have to reach his hiding-place. If he fled in any other direction, the men would be able to spot him from hundreds of yards away. At least there he had the protection of the olive trees. Within the grove itself he had chosen the northern edge, because that would afford him the clearest view of the plain he would have to cross.

He took off his clothes and draped them over some low branches so that they would dry in the air. His skin felt swollen and uncomfortable. Wood pigeons were fluttering about in the tops of the trees, hoping to find a roosting place for the night. He rubbed his body with dry earth as if he were an elephant and immediately felt better. He removed his knapsack from the hole and walked the length of the olive grove until he found a suitable tree. He sat down naked on the ground and leaned his back against the knotty trunk. Small stones stuck to his buttocks and the bark pricked his back. Once he had made himself relatively comfortable, he felt in his knapsack and took out a piece of hard cheese and a crust of stale bread. He ate the cheese and watched as the night gradually took possession of the earth. Above him, the pigeons were cooing. He gnawed at the skin of the cheese. When he had eaten it down to the rind, he was about to throw the rind away, but something stopped him: the memory of those men's voices calling him. He turned and glanced back into the olive grove, imagining the dark figures of the search party, silently shouting his name. He put the cheese rind back in the knapsack. He was still hungry, though, and again rummaged among the contents, knowing full well that, once he had eaten the cheese, all he had left was half a dry sausage. He took it out and held it to his nose. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to be filled by the scents of pepper and cinnamon. He licked the sausage and was about to bite into it, but again he felt the shadows of those men pursuing him and had no option but to keep the sausage for some time of greater need, which, he was sure, would not be long in coming.

He spent a long while running his tongue over his gums to allay the burning sensation left by the cheese. He bit off a chunk of bread, drank water from the wineskin, then lay down on the ground, resting his head on a tree root. The sky was a dark, dark blue. Up above, the stars were like jewels encrusted in a transparent sphere. The plain that lay stretched out before him gave off a smell of parched earth and dry grass as it slowly recovered from the rigours of the sun. A grey owl flew over his head and disappeared among the trees. This was the first time he had been this far from the village. What lay ahead was, quite simply, unknown territory.

HE WAS HEADING
north in the middle of the night, trying to avoid any existing paths. His trousers were still slightly damp, but this didn't bother him now. He was walking across the fallow fields, taking care to step only on the stubble left from the last harvest. The occasional partridge flew up as he passed, and he heard the sound of hares fleeing from the crunching sound made by his boots. Once he was out of the olive grove, his one plan was to keep going. He could recognise the Milky Way, the W of Cassiopeia and the Great Bear. From there, he could locate the Pole Star and that was where he was directing his feet.

Although he had not as yet spent one whole day on the run, he knew that more than enough time had passed for fear already to be racing through the village streets towards his parents' house, an invisible torrent that would carry all the women of the village along with it to form a pool around his mother, who would be lying limply on her bed, her face as wrinkled as an old potato. He imagined the turmoil in the house and in the village. People perched on the stone bench outside, hoping to catch a glimpse through the half-open door of what was going on inside. He could see the bailiff's motorbike parked outside: a sturdy machine with a sidecar on which he drove through the village and the surrounding fields, leaving dust and noise in his wake. The boy knew that sidecar well. He had often travelled in it, covered by a dusty blanket. He recalled the greasy smell of the wool and the cracked, oilcloth edging. To him, the roar of that engine was like the trumpet sounded by the first Angel, the angel who had mingled fire and blood and cast it down upon the earth until all the green grass was burned up.

The bailiff was the only person in the region to own a motorised vehicle, and the governor was the only one to own a vehicle of the four-wheeled variety. He himself had never seen the governor, but had heard hundreds of accounts of the time he came to the village for the inauguration of the grain silo. Apparently, he was welcomed by children waving little paper flags, and several lambs were sacrificed in celebration. Those who had been there described the car as if it were a magical object.

Tiny and dark in the midst of that still-greater darkness, he wondered if he might find something useful on the imaginary line he was following due north. Perhaps some fruit trees along the road or fountains of clean water or endless springtimes. He couldn't really come up with any concrete expectation, but that didn't matter. By heading north, he was travelling away from the village, away from the bailiff and from his father. He was on the move, and that was enough. The worst thing that could happen, he thought, would be to exhaust his limited strength by going round in a circle or, which came to the same thing, returning to his family. He knew that by keeping on in the same direction, sooner or later he would come across someone or something. It was just a matter of time. He might walk right round the world and end up back in his village, but, by then, it wouldn't matter. His fists would be as hard as rocks. More than that, his fists would
be
rocks. He would have wandered almost eternally and, even if he met no one else, he would have learned enough about himself and the earth for the bailiff never to be able to have him in his power again. He wondered if he would ever be capable of forgiving. If, once he had crossed the icy Pole, penetrated dense forests and traversed other wildernesses, the flame that had burned him inside would still be burning. Perhaps, by then, the desperation that had driven him from the home God had intended for him would have dissipated. It might be that distance, time and ceaseless contact with the earth would have smoothed away his rough edges and calmed him down. He remembered the cardboard globe at school. The large sphere wobbled about on its rickety wooden stand, but it was easy enough to find their village on it, because, year upon year, the fingers of several generations of children had worn away the spot, indeed, had erased the whole country and the surrounding sea.

In the distance, he could make out what appeared to be a bonfire and he wondered how far away it was. He stopped and tried to calculate, but in the indecipherable darkness, it was impossible to judge. What he imagined to be a distant bonfire could just as easily, he thought, be the flame of a match only a few yards ahead or even a whole house ablaze miles away.

Like an Indian dazzled by the glittering trinkets offered him by a conquistador, he headed towards that one luminous point. For more than an hour he tramped over clods of earth and over stones. The wind was in his face, which meant that if the person who had lit the fire owned dogs, they would only notice his presence if he made a noise. He had no clear objective in approaching that point of light. The fire might belong to a shepherd, a muleteer or a bandit. He hoped that, as he approached, the light from the fire would bring him the necessary information. The idea of coming face-to-face with a criminal terrified him, and who knows what mangy dogs would be sleeping around that fire? On the other hand, he did know that he was going to need food and water from whoever had lit that fire. Whether he would ask for it or be obliged to steal it was something he would decide when he knew just who it was he was dealing with. He heard a chorus of what sounded like tinkling bells coming from that direction and this reassured him. He still took extreme caution when covering the last few yards, placing his feet as gently on the ground as if he were walking on a bed of rose petals. Shortly before he reached the encampment, he found a clump of prickly pears and hid behind them to observe the scene.

On the other side of the fire, facing the flames, a man was lying on the ground, although the boy still couldn't tell how old he was because a blanket covered his whole body, from top to toe. A gentle glow, like a distant ember, was beginning to appear above the horizon, revealing the shapes of trees that the night had kept hidden. He thought he could make out several poplar trees and assumed that the herd of goats was there for the same reason that the trees were. A goat emerged out of the darkness and walked behind the goatherd before disappearing into the pre-dawn shadows. Its bell drew a line of sounds in the air like a piece of knotted string. To one side lay a donkey, its legs folded meekly beneath its chest. Scattered around, he could see the motionless bodies of goats, which would doubtless soon wake up. At the man's feet lay a bag and a small dog curled up asleep.

The now faint light from the fire made the shadows dance like black flames. The boy peered round the cactus plant, trying to get a better look at the man. Something pricked his arm and he drew back. The buckle on his knapsack clinked. The dog immediately opened its eyes and pricked up its ears, then got to its feet, sniffing the air in all directions. The boy kept a firm grasp on his arm, as if the treacherous limb had a life of its own and was again about to hurl itself against the cactus spines. The dog began to move towards him, keeping close to the goatherd at first, then widening the radius of its search and slowly getting nearer to where he was standing. Watching the dog approach, the boy did not think it seemed terribly fierce, but he knew that one can never trust that kind of dog. In the village, people called them
garulos:
mongrels, which, through years of cross-breeding, had grown ever smaller, any distinctive racial characteristics now an unrecognisable blur. When the dog was just a few feet away, it stopped and focused all its senses on the clump of prickly pears. It again sniffed the air, and then, for some reason, relaxed and walked all around the intruder's hiding-place, wagging its tail and clearly curious. When it discovered him, it showed no alarm and did not even bark. On the contrary, it went over and licked the placatory hand the boy had held out to keep it from barking. With that gesture, the boy's fear of betrayal evaporated. It was as if the smells of earth and urine with which he was impregnated brought him closer to the world of the dog. He grabbed its head in his two hands and stroked it under the chin. For a while, the boy kept the dog quiet with his caresses, the time it took to decide whether or not to cover the few yards separating him and the bag lying at the man's feet.

He opened his own knapsack and took out the remaining half-sausage – all he had left. Leaving the dog busily gnawing at the dried meat, he emerged from his hiding-place and began to creep towards the bag. The light from the fire cast a gothic shadow over the prickly pears behind him.

As he approached, he felt afraid and would have liked to go back where he came from, to withdraw to some safe place and wait for daylight in order to reconsider his options. However, behind the prickly pears, the dog was devouring the only food he had and he knew there was no turning back.

He returned to his first plan, as simple as it was terrifying. He would go over to the bag and gently drag it towards him by the strap amidst a surrounding chorus of bleating. He would definitely not attempt to uncover the man's face, because that would be both wrong and provocative. Apart from the food that the dog was now eating, he had never stolen from an adult and was only doing so now because he had no alternative. At home, the very stones of the walls were the guardians of an ancestral law according to which children must keep their eyes firmly fixed on the ground whenever they were caught doing something they shouldn't. They must present their executioner with the back of their neck as meekly as if they were sacrificial offerings or propitiatory victims. Depending on the seriousness of the crime, a slap on the back of the neck might be all the punishment they got or, equally, it could merely be the preamble to a far worse beating.

Standing very near the man now, he was again gripped by doubt and even considered not stealing the bag. He would simply wait by the fire until the man woke up. Then he would reveal himself to him as he was: a defenceless, unthreatening child. With luck, he thought, the man wouldn't be from around there, but had come in the hope of finding some stubble for his goats. Accustomed to solitude, he might even be grateful for some company. The man would offer him a little food and something to drink, then each would go his own way.